Odette nodded as if it was just normal information that she could share freely.
"Seed of living ivy has always been used to treat Crushian Fever. It's a common illness for beastmen children, or so I've heard from my teacher—the pack's healer back then," Odette explained. "Unfortunately, the seed of living ivy is getting rarer, and it has become a very expensive herb that only a few people can buy. My pack isn't exactly wealthy, as we refuse to trade with anyone outside of our pack, so that seed was the last one we used," Odette added. She sighed as she felt burdened thinking about it, "Crushian Fever is still affecting the children these days, and their chance of survival is only fifty percent."
Irida listened attentively and commented, "I'm sure that you already know we've been stuck in this state for thousands of years, Your Grace. But thousands of years ago, Crushian Fever was a disease that affected both children and adults. The patients you see outside are affected by that fever, and in this era, we have yet to find any effective remedy for it."
"Y-you don't know that seed of living ivy is the medicine?" Odette asked, and Irida shook her head honestly.
"Nobody in this kingdom could die, but that doesn't mean we will not experience pain from injury or suffer from disease. The beastmen outside should've died long ago, but since they are immortal because of His Majesty's curse, many of the patients suffer from this fever for thousands of years without any effective remedy," Irida revealed. "At best, I can just relieve their pain. I assume that Crushian Fever's medicine was discovered not long ago, probably a few hundred years back."
Odette remembered some of the sickly wolves inside her pack back then. Since she was an assistant, she had to watch the agonizing deaths of many patients because of sickness.
They didn't have many herbs to treat various diseases. The healer was capable, but without correct medicines, he could only do so much with the shortage of herbs.
Odette was powerless back then. She was nothing but an assistant healer. She made the medicine with all the limited herbs they had, but even if she flipped their forest domain upside down, some of the ingredients for the medicine simply didn't exist in their territory.
Odette looked at all the ingredients inside the apothecary.
This place was complete with all the herbs she needed desperately when she was in her pack back then. She also saw many herbs that she could only read in her teacher's note but had never seen one in real life.
'I have never been useful in my pack. I don't have a wolf, so I can't fight. I don't have an affinity with magic, so I can't be a shaman. The only thing I did back then was to watch my brethren slowly wither and die,' Odette often blamed herself for being so powerless.
She was very grateful that she didn't get kicked out of the pack when her parents were still alive. So, she had always desperately tried to be useful somehow.
'But this is my new home now. Even if His Majesty doesn't want to have anything to do with me anymore, I still have to show my sincerest gratitude to him,' Odette told herself. 'But, do I have the skill to make the perfect medicine for them? I… I've only memorized how to make some medicines. Maybe I've even forgotten a few things."
Odette began to doubt her own skill. She had never been seen as 'important' in her pack. Even to her teacher, she was never seen as more than an assistant.
She didn't want to make a mistake when making the medicine that could harm, or even worse, kill the patients.
As doubt began to consume her heart, she heard a groan coming from the patients outside.
"Oh no, one of them woke up," Irida murmured as she quickly took a potion she had prepared beforehand. She looked at Odette apologetically before saying, "Your Grace, I don't have medicine to treat them, so the best I can do is to numb their pain with this potion. I have to go treat them first. Please excuse me."
Odette nodded and watched as Irida got busy with the patients.
She watched those patients from the door, and her expression got sadder. She had seen so many deaths in her life, and without that immortality curse, those patients Irida was treating would've died long ago, because Odette could see all the signs of someone barely hanging on to their lives.
The pain in their face was too painful for Odette to watch, so she turned around to ignore it.
'No, I-I shouldn't do anything about this. What if I make a mistake and hurt them even more? I don't want to hurt anyone…' Odette told herself, trying to convince herself not to overstep her boundary as she was nothing but a 'wolfless runt'.
However, when she heard the cries of those patients who were enduring so much pain, Odette's body began to tremble, and she clenched her fists.
She began praying deep in her heart to Selene, Goddess of the Moon whom her pack worshipped.
'Goddess Selene, you may not bless me with my own wolf of extraordinary talent. But please, just this time, bless me with hands that could make a perfect medicine for them,' Odette prayed in her heart. 'I cannot listen to their cries anymore. I need to help them.'
After she finished praying, Odette began identifying the ingredients necessary to make the medicine to treat Crushian Fever inside the apothecary.
Irida returned after a while. She wiped the sweat on her forehead and apologized, "I'm sorry for making you wait, Your Grace. I hope you don't mind hearing them cry from time to time. They are the worst patients in the kingdom so far, so they can't leave the castle at all, or they might affect others inside the city."
Odette turned towards the doctor. She saw the exhaustion in Irida's eyes. She might look excited and cheery in front of her, but Odette sensed that she must've been burdened and depressed seeing so many beastmen get ill.
Thus, Odette toughened her willpower and asked, "Irida, can I borrow your apothecary for now? I think you have all the ingredients necessary to make the cure."