After taking over the toothbrushing duties for Pecorine, Jhin had no intention of expanding his caretaking role to cover everything else just because he was already doing that much.
Setting aside whether Megumin and Kokkoro would even agree to it — helping someone bathe was simply a line he could not cross. Megumin would probably accuse him of scheming to get a look at Pecorine's "Great Pudding" and make his life miserable.
The resentment a flat chest harbored toward an ample one was not something that faded easily, and Jhin had zero interest in getting dragged into that endless war.
After breakfast, Pecorine obediently retreated to her room to rest. Jhin drew out Kokkoro's Void weapon to use as a research subject while he studied healing magic.
He sat cross-legged with the Void weapon laid flat across his lap and let the glowing orb of life-energy sink into his body. Unlike an ordinary cluster of light-element particles, healing magic seemed to be composed of only about a third light element — the remaining portion was some special, life-suffused substance he had never consciously noticed before.
Could it be that, beyond the eight great elements — light, dark, water, fire, earth, lightning, ice, and wind — there existed a ninth? A life element, unique to healing magic?
If it were a true element, I should be able to sense it on its own.
No matter how hard Jhin tried, he could detect no trace of that mysterious substance drifting freely in the surrounding air — only inside the healing magic drawn out through Kokkoro's Void weapon. It left him thoroughly puzzled.
As luck would have it, two mages — Megumin and Kyaru — were both nearby. Jhin called out to them. "Kyaru, Megumin — I have a question about healing magic. Do either of you know much about it?"
"Healing magic? That's not my area. I can't help." Kyaru's expertise lay in offensive and crowd-control spells, so she was at a loss — but she tilted her head toward Megumin. "What about you? You always seem to know something about every kind of magic."
"Well..." Megumin scratched her cheek with a troubled expression.
She did know the basic principles behind healing magic — but only the very basics. Her all-consuming devotion to Explosion magic meant she had never paid much attention to anything that wasn't an offensive spell during her lessons. Explosion magic was always being held up in class as the gold standard of offensive power anyway, so why bother with the rest?
"All I know is that healing magic is different from ordinary magic — it contains a unique life-force. Light-element magic in ancient times wasn't even classified as support-type; it was attack-type.
"It was only later, once healing magic was developed, that its gentle nature gradually shifted the whole school toward the support category."
"That's basically just a history lesson — completely useless," Jhin said.
Megumin shot him an irritated glare. "That's all I know, so take it or leave it!"
"By the way," Kyaru said, "why don't you just ask Kokkoro? She's the only one in our guild who actually uses healing magic, isn't she?"
Kyaru's words snapped Jhin out of his fog. He smacked himself on the forehead and felt his brain click back into gear.
Because he'd been so fixated on inventing his own magic, he'd fallen into a mental rut — assuming he had to build everything from the ground up, starting from first principles.
But why on earth was he wasting time reinventing the wheel? This wasn't some entirely new magic no one had ever seen or heard of. The sensible approach was to go straight to someone who already knew how to use it, learn from them, and then optimize and refine from there.
He had never received any formal magical education in this world. How could he possibly hope to out-theorize someone who had spent years mastering the field?
Jhin grabbed Kyaru's small hand to express his thanks, then bolted straight into Pecorine's room to find Kokkoro — leaving Kyaru standing rooted to the spot, tail ramrod-straight, blinking in startled silence.
Megumin stepped in front of her and waved a hand in her face, trying to coax her soul back into her body. "Hey~ come back to us."
When those emerald-green eyes finally blinked, Megumin grinned and gave Kyaru a nudge with her elbow. "Savoring the feeling of a boy grabbing your hand, are we?"
"I am not! He just caught me off guard, that's all. I'm not used to it." Kyaru lifted her swanlike pale neck, let out a dignified little huff, and walked off. "I'm heading out. I'll be back before dinner."
"Sure~"
Back in the bedroom, Jhin asked Kokkoro to explain exactly how healing magic worked — how it was cast, and where that life-force came from. Her answer was simple.
"Life-force is something every living thing in the world possesses. Even a single blade of grass produces enough of it to cast several high-level healing spells."
"Then how do I sense it in the air around me?"
"Master doesn't actually need to draw on the life-force from the outside world," Kokkoro said, blinking her large eyes with patient warmth. "When I cast healing magic, I use the life-force that naturally radiates from my own body."
"Your own?"
"Yes. Breathing, moving — even just having a conversation — all of it generates life-force. The moment a living being can no longer produce it through any of those things... that is when life reaches its end."
Jhin closed his eyes at that, sinking into a meditative stillness to carefully sense everything that accompanied each breath.
There was, however, a problem neither of them had thought to consider: their races were not the same. Elves were a race with lifespans that knew no end, and the life-force they generated was on an entirely different scale from that of humans. That was precisely why Kokkoro could freely draw on her own body's output to fuel her healing magic.
Humans simply could not afford to spend their own life-force as lavishly as elves did. Most skilled healers were either long-lived races or human specialists in the light element — people who had learned to stretch a single measure of life-force into a dozen uses.
At first, Jhin sensed nothing life-suffused in his own breath — no special substance at all. But as time passed, he became aware of something: his body was acting like a vacuum cleaner, steadily drawing in something from the surrounding air. Whatever it was, it was most concentrated around Kokkoro, right beside him.
Could this be what they call life-force?
But why am I absorbing it rather than producing it?
Driven by curiosity, Jhin kept guiding that mysterious substance from the air into his body. Gradually, a faint breeze with a subtle pulling force began to swirl around him.
From Kokkoro's perspective, he looked like a black hole — silently consuming all the life-force drifting through the air. Fortunately, the method was gentle enough that it didn't seem to affect anyone else; otherwise she might have had to interrupt him.
An indeterminate amount of time passed. When his body quietly signaled that it had had enough, Jhin stopped absorbing and slowly opened his eyes.
"Master, how do you feel?"
Faced with Kokkoro's question, Jhin searched for the right words and came up with a peculiar expression. "Like my entire body has been completely renewed."
"Even by elven standards, Master's life-force right now is truly extraordinary."
Hearing that, Jhin pulled up his personal attribute panel and checked his skill list — and found he'd gained a brand-new skill.
[Life Spring Lv.1]
What does that mean? Have I turned into a walking wellspring?
____
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