I’m Not a Saint, Not a Priest, Just a Healer

Unlike priests who are called the full sons and daughters of the Celestial Deity, healers are half-baked clerics.
Healing is only possible by directly touching the wounded area, and purification is the same.
Since purification requires directly inserting one’s arm into the contaminated area and infusing divine power, hardly anyone seeks purification from healers.
It’s not that they don’t know how to do it, but the risk is too great – that’s the nature of a healer’s purification.
Yona infused divine power for a long time.
It was called a sacred tree, but whether it truly was one or not, the demonic energy fully filling it was indeed formidable.
Black smoke rose.
As the demonic energy burned away by the divine power was annihilated, black smoke rose high into the sky like a death rattle.
‘…Huh?’
She had been burning away the demonic energy for quite a while.
Just as the sap of what used to be the sacred tree was almost bottoming out, something touched the tip of Yona’s fingers.
A very smooth surface.
A round surface that her fingers glided over without catching on anything.
Yona grasped it.
Unlike the round surface that seemed as if something had broken, it felt like sharp glass shards.
After the last wisp of smoke rose, the sap pool revealed its bottom.
“I don’t understand how this happened.”
While Alec poured water from his canteen to wash the sap off Yona’s arm, Yona stared blankly at James.
“Um, Mr. James.”
“Hmm?”
James, who had been looking into the now empty sap pool, turned at Yona’s call.
As Alec twisted her arm to make it easier to wrap the holy cloth, Yona faced James.
“Didn’t you send someone to the church?”
“We did.”
James looked inwardly dejected.
It wasn’t just adventurers; they had sent people to the church too.
Anyone could see that such a huge black bear with glowing red eyes was definitely not an ordinary wild beast.
Moreover, it was strange that such a bear had killed half of the vigilante group.
While requesting help from the adventurers’ guild, they also sent people to the church to request investigation and assistance.
Of course, the response was – we’ll send someone soon.
But no one came.
“No one came?”
Yona sighed as she patted Alec’s head in thanks after he finished wrapping the holy cloth around her arm and clipped it at her shoulder.
Well, it was predictable.
Why would the church care about what happens in such a rural village?
“Is this roughly settled now?”
Alec asked James.
They had killed the bear that caused trouble in the village, and Yona had resolved the reason why the bear had become like that.
But they still didn’t know why the sacred tree had turned into a pool of demonic energy.
“…I suppose so, probably.”
When the four people returned to the village, it was already dusk.
In the village that still showed no signs of vitality, James led the three to the village chief’s house.
Although he was an old man with white hair, his sturdy physique, forged by a lifetime of hunting activities, looked around at the three with interest after hearing James’ explanation.
“Are you saying that the sacred tree was really contaminated with demonic energy?”
“Yes, it was. And this young lady Yona here resolved that demonic energy.”
Yona flinched at being called “young lady,” but given the situation, she just kept her mouth shut.
“Are you a priest?”
The old man’s sharp gaze turned to Yona.
The nun’s habit she was wearing, and the holy cloth wrapped around the right arm of that habit.
“You’re a healer, I see.”
“…Yes. Is there a problem?”
“How could there be? Rather, the priests didn’t even respond to our request. I think that the Celestial Deity is still watching over us.”
Yona kept her mouth shut at the old man’s words.
It made her think again about the meaning of the church’s existence.
“…The church is always a busy place. There are always too few priests. It’s not that they didn’t care, but that they couldn’t spare the attention.”
The old man stared at Yona silently.
Yona felt burdened by the old man’s gaze, which seemed to sparkle as if will-o’-the-wisps might fly out, and turned her eyes away.
“Well, anyway, it seems the matter has been resolved for now. May we take our leave? We were just passing through, and it’s difficult for us to delay any longer.”
Alec intervened, trying to smooth over the strange atmosphere.
His words were true; after all, their current journey was to go to Yona’s community.
They had already been held up for three days, and the third day was coming to an end.
Having been delayed for four days, it was a situation where they needed to leave quickly.
“Please do. Our village will prepare compensation for you when you depart tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
Kairoc didn’t say much.
He just nodded a few times and stood up, and Alec and Yona also stood up as if following him.
“I’m sorry. The village chief has been quite on edge lately.”
“Well, it’s understandable, so it’s fine. And the apology should be directed not to me, but to Yona who actually resolved the issue, don’t you think?”
James bowed his head to Yona as well.
As Kairoc said, while it was Kairoc who created the opportunity to kill the bear, it was Yona who resolved the pool of demonic energy.
If they had only killed the bear, and that sap had remained, probably another beast would have become like that.
“No, it’s okay. I didn’t do it expecting gratitude.”
Yona filled a cup with water and pushed it towards Alec.
Meanwhile, Alec cut the smoked meat into small pieces to fit Yona’s mouth size and put them on a plate.
“Here, bread.”
Alec handed bread to Yona, who was looking for rye bread.
The rye bread was already deeply hollowed out in the middle, so Yona only needed to scoop up the meat and stuff it inside.
“Is big sister really that amazing?”
Yona, who was about to take a bite of the bread that resembled a sandwich, only turned her eyes at the words of James’ eldest son.
“Of course, big sister is an incredibly amazing person.”
While Alec answered instead, Yona bit into the bread.
The sour taste characteristic of rye bread with uneven grains was masked by the aroma of smoked meat, making it taste quite good.
“You guys have no idea how amazing big sister is.”
Yona took a sip from the milk cup Alec handed her and made a mischievous laughing sound, “Hehe.”
“Big brother is the amazing one.”
At Yona’s words, the children’s eyes widened.
It was the reaction of children who seemed to have heard something strange, but Yona looked triumphant as if she didn’t care.
“Big brother? Not big sister?”
James’ eldest son, Ederon, asked.
No matter how you looked at it, she was a woman, so he couldn’t understand why she referred to herself as “big brother.”
Her hair was long, her face was slender, and even to Ederon, an orc, she was truly beautiful.
She was so beautiful that even sister Jessie, who was called the most beautiful in the village, would pale in comparison.
And her chest… it had an overwhelming volume that made Ederon’s heart flutter, just entering puberty.
Yet she called herself “big brother,” which Ederon’s mind simply couldn’t comprehend.
“Ah, I was originally a ma-”
“Ah, aah! Big sister must have made a mistake! Because big sister is an adventurer, you know? It’s like, um. That kind of thing!”
Alec interrupted, cutting off Yona’s words.
Because of this, Yona frowned and was about to hit Alec’s bald head, but couldn’t due to the eyes around them.
“Hey, what are you doing right now?”
“Is that something you should say when you’re about to casually destroy the children’s innocence?”

Their whispered exchange didn’t reach the children’s ears.
“If you don’t want to be seen as a weird sister here too, fix your way of referring to yourself.”
“What are you saying, baldy.”
Yona pouted but didn’t say much else.
In fact, since Alec’s words weren’t wrong, Yona decided to agree to some extent.
They decided to leave this village the next morning.
Yona was sitting leaning against the headboard of the bed in a small room, a single room on the second floor of James’ house, looking at something.
“What on earth is this…”
It was the bead fragment she had brought after purifying the demonic energy from the sacred tree.
Not a complete bead, but a fragment as if a bead had broken.
It was quite ominous, being rather sharp and pitch black in color.
“It doesn’t feel like something good.”
What was even stranger was that the feeling was different when touching it with the left hand versus the right hand.
When touching it with the left hand, it felt like touching something very unpleasant, but with the right hand, it felt normal.
That made it even more peculiar.
“Anyway, this feels so strange…”
But no matter how much Yona racked her memories from her education at the church, she had never heard of anything like this.
Let alone a story of something like this remaining after purification.
If this is the first time – thinking about it, she wondered if it was right to head to Infula after going to the community.
“Ah, I don’t know.”
Thinking deeply was indeed not her forte.
Yona put the fragment in her sling bag and burrowed into the bed.
It would be good to sleep around now if they were to leave early in the morning.
Her feet had fully healed, and it was time to adjust her condition.
Just as she was about to fall asleep, there was a knock at the door.

-Yona, are you asleep?
It was Kairoc’s voice.