Serious Witch's Travel Book

She looked at a row of tools standing against the wall of the wooden shed.

Although the venue is very simple, it seems that the people who tidied up here have put a lot of thought into it. All the tools are placed in several long open wooden boxes and arranged according to categories: palm-sized wide-faced medicine knife , brushes, round wooden spoons, and wooden shovels are neatly lying in the downturned wooden box. It seems that there are three to four sets of tools of similar style, and each one is scrubbed clean without any dust. and residues of medicinal residues.

There are other tools that match it—although it seems that only Numelia is busy here, but there is indeed a chopping board in front of Gnicia, which may have been prepared for her in advance; On the simple wooden cabinet are seven or eight bowls, large and small, and more than a dozen small-mouth clay pots the size of beer glasses. In addition, there are several sieves hanging on the wall, as for other pestles and medicine rollers. Ready, no more details.

Following Numeria's example, she took out the medicine cutter from the wooden box, um... "sneaky" and cut down the plants on the chopping board.

These dried plants have been sun-dried and crisp, and the knife cuts off immediately. Although Gnicia has learned some basic life skills and has some experience in using weapons, she has only cut radishes a few times. She is not proficient with cucumbers anyway, and secondly, she is very flustered now, and as a result, the simple cutting work is done crookedly by her, as if a vicious old hen whizzed past, and then A bunch of green chicken feathers were left on the chopping board.

After she had cut a herb, she imitated the nuns and moved them to one side, and then she began to rummage through the piled dried herbs on the wooden shelf, but her movements were not agile enough. Numeria finally noticed her again before the second herb was taken down.

The nun put down the knife in her hand, frowned and asked Gnicia: "Are you really a pharmacist?"

"Um...um. My mother is."

In order to excuse her incompetence, Gnicia had to tell a lie with a guilty conscience.Pharmacists, like professional blacksmiths and other craftsmen involved in dangerous goods, are restricted industries in the empire. The imperial government has special officials to supervise the restricted occupations in various places, and prohibits ordinary citizens and civilians from Engaging in related businesses without permission-when facing a war, these special talents will be directly recruited.

Another point is that this occupation has a high degree of inheritance.

Knowledge is not something that can be obtained casually. The empire will not open libraries to ordinary people. If ordinary practitioners want to learn skills quickly, they need to have the way of hand-to-mouth. Offspring can inherit their professional qualifications from their parents, so as long as Gnicia insists that her mother is, no matter how good she is, she can call herself a pharmacist before others can produce documents to deny it.

As for being exposed?Then we can think about it later. Her first concern now seems to be that she is motherless...

She doesn't grow up like ordinary people, she has been a well-developed adult since she was conscious, and "Power" sometimes teases her to call herself by her mother's name, but that seems to be basically just a joke—it's also It can only be a joke, after all, she is now claiming to have lost her mother, if she really puts the relationship of "my horse is dead" on the head of "power" and lets her know, Gnicia can guarantee that she will be severely ravaged fan...

"Then she taught it really badly. This is just an entry-level wound medicine. I learned it from the pharmacist here for a few hours."

Although she can be called a gentle person, Numeria's dissatisfaction is still palpable. She asked Gnicia suspiciously: "Then what medicine would you do?"

"Some... dressings, about bruises or something..." Gnicia racked her brains to recall the life skills the sages taught her. She seemed to have accepted the survival skills about medicines, but those were just about how to use them and prepare them well. Her potions, ointments and powders, as well as how to use bandages, veils and splints, she has no idea about making them, and can only say that she can barely tell the types of common medicines.

But she suddenly thought of something——

"And potions..."

For the sake of face, she couldn't help but say this.Potions are not something that ordinary people can make, especially in the church. The nuns can make blessed holy water, but I am afraid that there should be little research on this extraordinary thing...

As a result, at the same time as her last syllable was falling, Numeria suddenly dropped the knife and covered her mouth.

"Don't say that, it's in church."

Numeria quickly glanced around and whispered, "Tell me, you are not a witch, you are just a liar."

They got so close that Gnicia saw the crucifix on the nun's chest begin to glow—but not like Marianne's, its light more restrained and focused, like a shield with blurred edges; Nor was it as bright as Marianne, which looked distinctly gray, as if the mortal sunlight had been cast through thick clouds.

In any case, judging from Numelia's defensive but non-hostile demeanor, this statement may be for her own good.

Gnicia lowered her head and accepted her new identity helplessly: "Okay...I'm a liar."

Chapter 31 026. Herbalism from Scratch

However, even if Gnicia accepted the nun's words, Numeria still seemed to be very worried about her.

She picked up the medicine cutter again, and while continuing to cut herbs on the chopping board, she asked her, "Didn't your mother teach you the necessary common sense to walk around?"

"No."

"To be honest, she is not very responsible. How could she let you come out alone? Which border uncle does she serve, is she a pharmacist authorized by the empire, or is she just a 'black household'?"

The so-called "black households" are people who engage in restricted industries without permission, or who have lost their qualifications for various reasons.The Gaul region has always adopted a very subtle attitude towards "black households", because the population of this remote administrative region is difficult to drive the commercial vitality of the entire region, and some small-scale towns are not enough to have a systematic industry system. In order to survive, the common people Some professionals enough to meet the needs of the region will be born on their own. The empire usually turns a blind eye to this. The situation in Gaul is already too chaotic, and the governors have no spare energy to care about such trivial matters.

"I don't know. We live in the suburbs of Dijon. The locals respect their mother very much. I don't think there is any problem with her status..."

In order to convince Numelia, Gnicia had to start making up things about her "mother" again.

"As for me... my mother passed away last year, we've been living in the Valley, and she hasn't said anything else to me..."

Numeria's knife stopped for a moment: "I'm sorry, please forgive me."

"It's ok."

"You're not young, she didn't teach you the necessary prescriptions? I heard from the pharmacists here that the Empire has requirements for pharmacists' basic knowledge, and some entry-level emergency medicines must be mastered by every pharmacist. things, as they are frequently used against fevers, plagues, dysentery and wars..."

"I only use things from my home medicine garden... sorry, I'm just an apprentice, and I haven't had time to learn many prescriptions yet."

Lying made Gnicia extremely ashamed, she couldn't help but lower her head and dared not look at the nun again, but this action got some wrong interpretations in Numeria's eyes, she felt that although this movement was well developed, her mind was completely weak. How mature girls may be sad because they have been touched.

The nun sighed again, she had seen a lot of things like this, but it might be the first time that someone who really had this kind of experience came to her and had relatively close contact and communication.

She moved the finely chopped green pine grass into a bowl, then left the table, and took a few pieces of dry and hard bark from the shelf where the medicinal herbs were dried.

"Learn to deal with this first."

She gave Gnicia all the bark to replace the grass on the girl's cutting board.

"This is?"

These book covers are all peeled off in large pieces, each piece is like a large piece of open vellum, they are still very thick, Gnicia tried to feel them, they are all old bark, the thicker part is thicker than hers. The fingers are also thicker.

She simply asked, "What should I do?"

"Break these into pieces, and use this." The nun gave her a stone mortar and pestle: "Knock it as finely as possible, the smaller the better."

"it is good."

It didn't sound like a difficult job, at least it was easier than identifying those hay, Gnicia readily agreed.

She started to get the bark, but Numeria grabbed her hand. In the girl's confusion, she held Gnicia's palm in front of her and looked at it carefully.

"...You are really a lady, your mother must love you very much."

It was difficult for Gnicia to tell whether it was a compliment or a complaint, so she had to laugh a few times along with her.

She let go of Gnicia's hand, and the two began to deal with the tasks in front of them separately.

It was the first time for Gnicia to do this kind of thing. According to the nun's request, she first broke the bark into larger pieces, then broke them into smaller pieces and put them into the stone mortar, and finally smashed them into smaller pieces with a pestle. Small, flat pieces.

It is not difficult to deal with the very dry bark. Although they are still a bit tough, they are smashed into pieces by a pestle. A dry and strong woody fragrance slowly overflows from the broken wood fibers. Although it is full of the unique fragrance of grass and trees, it has a faint richness of oil.

This job is a bit boring, but Gniccia, who has never been in contact with it before, enjoys it. After the initial jerky, she quickly mastered some skills, and she has more or less a style of doing it, at least it is much more efficient. .

Numeria is obviously stronger than her. When Gnicia was still struggling with the first bark, she had already chopped a whole bowl of green herbs.

She put down the knife for a rest, and casually asked Gnicia, who was still struggling with a broken piece of bark: "Do you know what we are going to do?"

Gnicia thought of the medicines that the other nuns gave to the wounded in the church: "Grind them into powder, I suppose?"

"It seems that you still know some basics."

"But... I want to ask, don't you all know magic?" Gnicia thought of the minutiae about the state religion, and as a conversation piece, she couldn't help asking the nuns beside her: "Why don't you use magic to heal the wounded? "

"I need to correct that a little bit, we usually call the powers from the angels 'blessings'. Gnicia, it's time for you to learn to use different words for different people. Maybe you treat these more casually at home, but Outside, if you say the wrong thing, it is likely to cause trouble."

The nun spoke very seriously, and Gnicia couldn't help nodding her head in agreement.

Numeria then explained to her: "In any part of the empire, you'd better not mention 'spell', although court mages are indeed allowed to use such a word, but commoners easily confuse it with 'witchcraft' ' linked together, understand?"

Of course she doesn't understand the difference, but Gnicia is still aware of the seriousness of the discrimination against "witchcraft" in the empire.

I don't know when this trend became popular. It seems that during the war between the Empire and the Assassin Empire, the Parthians used a large number of mage troops to cause such resistance.According to the sages, the most important magic faction in Europa originated from the Mesopotamian plain far away, and its history can probably be traced back to the extinct Kingdom of Israel on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

Even for an empire known for its well-armed and dominant legion tactics, "magic" still has unimaginable destructive power. It is difficult for fully armed metal armor and shields to have a clear advantage in front of magic. A long time ago In the war of , Crassus' Persian Expeditionary Army was wiped out by the caster's troops precisely because they relied too much on traditional tactics-for a long time, this huge shame made it difficult for the imperial soldiers to talk about it.

The biggest enemies of the empire have always been known for their spells: the mountain people of Dacia are good at shamanic magic, the barbarian shamanic magic of Germania and the druid art each have five points, and the Assassin , and Sasanian Persia, which replaced its founding country, has a complete mage academy system, so that even Egypt is famous for its various ancient secret arts.

However, none of these opponents took advantage of the empire in the end, because the empire has always established the country with unswerving beliefs in gods—first the Pantheon in the pre-empire era, and then the Universal Holy Follower Catholic Church, which is now the state religion. ——The gods have blessed the empire from beginning to end, so the people of the empire can prosper from generation to generation.

Under this general trend, people who use spells without relying on gods are naturally excluded.

Seeing that Gnicia should have understood, Numeria then continued: "Thanks to the blessing of the Most Holy and His angels, those who are truly devout can use His 'blessing'. But this kind of 'Blessing' is not an endless favor, even in the church, there may not be more than half of the people who can use the 'blessing', and among those who can use the blessing, the vast majority of people are favored Extremely limited."

She paused, and a little pride suddenly appeared on her tired face: "The people here should feel honored, including me, several followers of Sister Marianne are especially favored by the angels, and the gifts they have Blessings are enough to heal most of the shallow wounds, but...there are too many wounded now, just using blessings is far from enough."

"The power of the angels is too strong. Using blessings has a very large negative impact on the energy of ordinary people. If you try your best, each person may be able to heal three or five moderately injured people, but this is not enough for more than five hundred people. It is simply a drop in the bucket for one wounded person, so our strength is used to save those who are most dying... For the rest, it can only be said that it is more reasonable to use medicine."

Numeria sighed: "After all, pain does not wait for anyone. Maybe even an angel has to make some choices sometimes."

After she finished speaking, she pointed to herself: "Numelia, you can call me that."

"Oh oh!"

Gnicia was taken aback for a moment, and quickly responded.Death and rebirth confused her mind, and she remembered that she "should" not know the nun's name now.

"We are not eligible to have our own order of nuns. Now I and four other sisters are followers of Sister Marianne. You know her right? That tall woman with big breasts."

What she said was a little blunt, and Gnicia blushed after hearing it.

The head nun...was quite big. She used some violent means to herself in the morning. Although it made Gnicia very uncomfortable, they were very close at that time. Looking back now, she seems to be able to Remember that full squeeze.

It's just that she was a bit fierce, even if her attitude towards Gnicia was a little gentler later, Gnicia really didn't appreciate a woman with this temperament.

"She's fierce." Gnicia couldn't help muttering.

"She is quite fierce sometimes." Numeria didn't mind her commenting on her boss, she knew Marian's temperament well, and it was pointless to deny the facts. "But she's a good woman, you'll know when you get along with her a lot."

"Oh."

Gnicia replied dryly.

She had broken off all the large pieces of bark, and only the last bits remained which had not been crushed with the pestle and mortar.Numeria checked the bark residue she transferred to the wooden bowl after processing, raised her eyebrows, and praised: "Not bad, you did this job?"

"Understood."

"It can be finer next time, the effect will be better, and it will save a lot of trouble when using a roller later."

Gnicia looked at the bark left in the mortar, and continued to tinker with it while asking: "But I want to ask, is this bark? Are we going to use it to treat injuries...?"

"That's right, the dried bark of the old pine candle tree and the turquoise grass are ground into powder, which is the best wound medicine here. It can be used to stop bleeding and prevent the devil from taking the life of the wounded. Conditionally It would be better if the medicinal powder is fried and dried.”

"Oh……"

It's incredible, using wood powder to stop bleeding?

After the nun finished checking, she put the things in Gnicia's hands. She leaned against the table and watched Gnicia work. She waited for Gnicia to deal with the last point before interjecting: " Do you really know what a 'potion' is?"

Her voice was so low that Gnicia understood what she meant, so she replied in the same low voice, "Yes."

"Most of the 'potions' are contraband in the empire..." Numeria inspected Gnicia from head to toe, and finally blinked twice: "Only a few potions are allowed Made and sold by craftsmen, this is also the origin of the profession of pharmacist. I don’t ask how much related knowledge you have come into contact with, but I hope you can realize the seriousness of this problem: you are now a stowaway, no It’s no longer a pharmacist, understand?”

"clear."

"I will tell Marian about your situation, and we will deal with your problem when we are free, or we can survive." The nun looked towards the mountain outside the city and sighed faintly.

"Before that, you are a prisoner, and the imperial administrators will stare at you. You'd better keep your mouth shut. I know that some pharmacists may easily get involved in some... areas that shouldn't be understood , You may not have any idea yourself, but this is all illegal. People in other departments, even other nuns and monks, may not be able to tolerate these presumptuous existence. If you talk nonsense in front of others, they will not act like I talked to you so calmly, understand?"

"clear."

Numeria turned her head away from the table. She dragged out a stone medicine grinder from under the table, and moved it to the table with difficulty.

"I can't find a bench, so come on-maybe this is not the same as the field you are familiar with, but you have to learn to start from the most basic part now."

She poured the pine candle bark that Gnicia had pounded into the mill, and told her: "Grind them finely, without any hard residue in them, and then grind these into fine pieces after finishing." powder, and mix them together—of course, I will do the last, you just need to do the simple ones first.”

She suddenly patted Gnicia's curvy buttocks lightly, and cheered up: "Do it well, remember that you are saving your own life to save others, this will make you work harder, right?"

------

There seems to be something unorganized...

Uh, let's do this first, and I'll fix some wording later...

Chapter 32 027. The Nun's Private Words (2)

As a result, Gnicia spent the rest of the afternoon making wound medicine.

After all, this matter was much more boring than she imagined.

Gnicia's basic knowledge of "pharmacist" came from a thing the sages showed her, um, they called it a "movie", which seemed to be a note with pictures made and preserved by wizards in other worlds A class of things, the name seems to be something called "Ha O Bo X"... and some vague potion formulas in her mind are similar to the contents mentioned there: a boiling crucible, guiding the cooling liquid vapor retorts, and the right proportions of mixed solvents and precipitated and crystallized products—that's pretty much her understanding of "making drugs."

Find an underground spring that leads directly to the deep world, pour the muddy water into a cauldron made of cold iron, boil the whole pot of water with withered and rotten ash wood, and then throw in the devil's sharp fruit and the marrow of a castrated bull, together with The fat of the black rooster was boiled together for several days and nights, until the medicinal soup turned bright and scary red due to the infusion of the devil fruit, and then carefully scraped off the condensation on the upper layer, took out the clearest part of the soup, and put it into the legs of the black toad , the brains of boars in swamps, the hearts of goats, and the evil mushrooms growing from the rotting wood of the Black Forest...

That's what witches are supposed to be, isn't it?

It's a pity that what she's doing now doesn't seem to be a witch's job. "Potion" and "common medicine" seem to be different.

Fortunately, she was still a little excited, thinking that she could finally be of some special use.

However, it was her first job entrusted in the mortal world, and Gnicia still planned to treat it well.

Once the step of identifying medicinal herbs by oneself was eliminated, the difficulty of the whole work suddenly decreased a lot: After the two of them worked together for more than half an hour, a peasant man ran to the backyard, hoping that Numeria could make some dressings It is used to relieve pain and remove blood stasis, so the nuns changed jobs.Before leaving the table here, she specially picked out a pile of green pine grass and handed it to Gnicia, and told her to say hello if she ran out, and not to find those medicinal materials that looked like them privately. There are some strong herbs here that are not suitable for dealing with wounds.