The doctor's clinic was located on the ground floor, at the corner near the Masked Alpha's garden of thorns.
Zircon knocked on the door and informed Irida about Odette's arrival.
But Irida didn't seem to understand, so she kept the door shut and asked from the other side, "Who's Odette?"
"She is uh… the woman His Majesty brought to our kingdom a week ago," Zircon introduced.
"OH!"
Odette heard a few clanks, thuds, smashes, and cracks from inside before the door was opened, and a doe beastman wearing a white coat smiled awkwardly at Odette.
"P-pardon me, Your Grace. I was busy making a few medicines for my patients. I heard about you a few days ago but had no time to greet you personally just yet. My deepest apology," Irida, the doe doctor, bowed politely.
Odette was charmed by how cute the doe beastman looked. She was quite short and looked timid. Her white coat was stained with powders and she had a strong scent of herbs that was quite familiar for Odette.
Irida was probably the very first beastman in this kingdom who didn't intimidate her at the start, and Odette was ecstatic knowing that she might find her very first friend.
"It's okay! I-I spent the whole week in my room anyway," Odette gave a polite bow in response as well.
"Oh no! P-please, don't bow to me, Your Grace!" Irida bowed even deeper, not wanting to offend her.
Zircon looked at Odette and Irida, who bowed at each other repeatedly, and chuckled before saying, "Her Grace told me that she's proficient in medicine. So, she'd be more than glad to learn about medicine from you."
"Oh?! Wow, that would be the first, right?" Irida said excitedly. Her eyes glimmered with excitement as if hearing Odette being 'proficient' with medicine was the rarest thing in the world. "I might not be a good teacher, but I'll tell you everything I know, Your Grace!"
Irida grabbed Odette's hand and pulled her into her clinic, "Come, Your Grace! We have to start the lecture now!"
"Wha—uh—" Odette looked at Zircon, and the latter smiled and nodded;
"You should focus on this first, Your Grace. No need to worry. You have time," Zircon said before Odette entered the clinic, and closed the door.
The smile on Zircon's face slowly faded as he was left alone. His heart was hollow, but the despair lingered, "How much time you have left in this incarnation, Your Grace? Do we have to lose you so early again?"
**
As Irida dragged her into the clinic, Odette saw a row of beastmen resting on their beds. They were all in deep sleep, but the sweat on their bodies told Odette that they must've been in so much pain before.
Irida glanced at Odette, who was staring at her patients, and said, "I will tell you about them later, Your Grace. They're all sleeping after a very long and painful night, so it's better to let them be for now. Let's go to my apothecary for now!"
Odette followed Irida through a door where her apothecary was located, and the moment they entered the apothecary, Odette's nose was attacked with scents of herbs, from the fragrant ones down to the stinking ones.
She stopped on her track for a few seconds as she was overwhelmed by various scents coming into her nose at once.
Irida smiled at her and allowed Odette to process it. She couldn't hide her happiness. To be able to discern each herb and medicine based on their scents alone meant that Her Grace truly had talent in medicine, at least for her 100th incarnation.
"I'm so glad that you're talented in medicine this time, Your Grace. This is the first, and it's just—it makes me tear up!" Irida said excitedly.
"But this is our first meeting," Odette mentioned and laughed awkwardly. "I don't think that you would've known whether I'm good with medicine or not. All I did was learn from the healer in my pack when I was young."
"Oh—ah, y-yes! S-sorry, it's very rare for me to have someone to talk to, so I often ramble on nonsense," Irida said. She was so excited that she forgot Her Grace had not recovered her memory at all.
Irida quickly shifted the topic, "Well then, Your Grace, since you said that you've been trained by your pack's healer since you were young, let's see if you can differentiate between each herb, yes?"
Odette nodded. It was actually the same test that her teacher made her do when she was young. She would be blindfolded and had to use her nose to differentiate between each herb.
Slowly, she got used to the test and had a very strong capability of understanding the herbs based on their scent, even if they had been crushed, boiled, or ground.
Irida began pointing at each of the herbs in the apothecary at random, and Odette only needed one sniff to know what it was.
"Night cloves. Eastern red ginger. Moonlight star anise that has been mixed with sea salt usually used to treat headaches—" Odette was quite familiar with everything until she stopped at one herb. Her eyes widened, and she gasped when she saw it. "I-is this… seeds of living ivy? They are so rare! How could you get so many of them?!"
"They're not exactly rare in this kingdom's domain," Irida commented. "We're all stuck in time, and living ivy is a common plant in the south of the kingdom. I assume it must have become rare or extinct in the current era, yes?"
Odette nodded, "It's very rare. My previous pack only had one seed, and it was used to treat the current Alpha when he was young. He had an illness called Crushian Fever that would cause death if not treated fast, and we had to use our last seed to treat him."
Irida was stunned when she heard that, "Using the seed of living ivy to treat Crushian Fever?"