Only God
Chapter 307 - 265: Steady Old Lady

Chapter 307: Chapter 265: Steady Old Lady

The Midwife.

Throughout history, this has always been a complex and unimaginable role within various civilized societies.

Despite the many differences between these societies, with each race holding distinct values, customs, and cultural practices, no race ever overlooked the importance of procreation.

Even the Beastmen, who lived ravenously and wildly, took as much care as the Three-eyed Ape People in nurturing their offspring as heirs.

After all, without procreation, a race would cease to exist.

Nearly every race unanimously believed that giving birth and procreation were sacred missions and responsibilities bestowed by the Gods.

In light of this need for procreation, the profession of the midwife was born.

Mostly, they were elderly women who had gone through multiple childbirths themselves, holding significant status and reputation in a village, a town, or even a city.

For this reason, midwives might also be endowed with some divine qualities or powers, such as the ability to predict the gender or destiny of a child, or the power to bless the mother and infant so they emerged unharmed.

But childbirth has always been a perilous affair.

In those times, it was not uncommon for women to die from complicated labors, and even if the infants were born, sadly, many perished within days.

In such cases, midwives were often the first to be blamed.

Thus, at times, midwives were castigated as witches, accused of sorcery, and if a midwife had too high a tally of infants dying on her watch, the villagers would deem her an outcast or even an embodiment of malign spirits, resorting to exile or to purging her with fire, hanging, etc., to rid the village of malevolence.

Because of the mysterious nature attributed to midwives, along with their association with death, they were often linked with ghosts, prophecies, and Witch Doctors, intertwining with the darker aspects of society.

Carlo was a midwife.

And, quite unfortunately, her predecessor, who was also her mentor... had been expelled from the village due to too many infant deaths during childbirth.

Midwives using the term "mentorship" to describe their relationship was quite strange; typically, there wasn’t a fixed lineage of mentorship among midwives.

But Carlo didn’t know how else to characterize her relationship with the previous midwife beyond "mentorship."

Her predecessor had been skilled in the art of childbirth, delivering more than a dozen babies annually around the age of forty and having nearly ten survive, which was a fairly good rate.

As the former midwife aged, and with bouts of misfortune, she began to fail more frequently in the past five or six years, with the worst year seeing only three survivals out of thirteen infants.

Villagers gossiped, reviled, and slandered her behind her back, convinced she was marked by Death or possessed by phantoms. After one disastrous childbirth, the midwife was driven out of the village by exasperated villagers.

Carlo watched her mentor’s tragic fate helplessly.

Now, even though the midwife had been driven away, the villagers still needed someone to assist with childbirth; just having women with birthing experience was not enough.

Carlo naturally became a midwife who helped women give birth.

She was thirty-three this year, young for a midwife. With two previous husbands and six children of her own, she certainly didn’t want to take on this burdensome role but had no choice when pressed by the villagers.

And in those initial days of becoming a midwife, fortune didn’t favor Carlo; she failed in two childbirths, and both infants tragically passed away, the only relief being that the mothers survived without serious harm.

In about a month’s time, Carlo was to attend to her third delivery.

Looking at the expectant mother’s increasingly swollen belly, Carlo’s heart was filled with sheer dread.

She tossed and turned on her bed every night, and when she finally managed to fall into a troubled sleep, it was nightmares that jolted her awake.

Even amidst the bright sunshine of spring days, she was restless, constantly thinking about the pregnant woman’s belly.

Carlo now deeply regretted,

"I should never have asked her to teach me medical skills."

This phrase became Carlo’s most repeated lament over these days.

The "her" naturally referred to the former midwife.

The primary duty of a midwife is childbirth, but in a village, a midwife sometimes also plays the role of presiding over rituals, picking herbs, and treating the ailments of villagers.

Carlo, more than a decade ago, serendipitously sought medical knowledge from that midwife and hence became her disciple.

The belly of the pregnant woman grew rounder by the day, the child inside seeming ready to burst through the amniotic sac at any moment. Carlo was frantic with anxiety, fearing another failed delivery and the unhappy outcome that would follow.

Gradually, Carlo turned her head toward the secret forest.

"I remember, I remember there’s an herb that can help with easy childbirth...

What is it called... the Angloosh Flower!"

Carlo’s mind was filled with thoughts of that particular herb.

It was said that this herb formed from the tears of a divine being, capable of aiding a pregnant woman to safely deliver a healthy baby, but it was enormously precious and only grew upon the face of cliff sides.

As time became more pressing, Carlo could no longer afford to dwell on past failures; she could not face a third unsuccessful childbirth.

Therefore, Carlo ventured alone into the gloomy depths of the secret forest.

The forest was deathly still, roots entwined and twisted, with the air heavy with the scent of unknown flowers and plants. The deeper she went, the more eerie everything became.

The villagers held numerous superstitions about this dark forest—tigers, wild boars, wolves, and other fearsome demon beasts were the least of their worries. What they truly feared was the proliferation of ghost stories within the forest depths.

After all, in these times, individuals often chose to hang themselves amidst the trees.

The unfathomable forest thus became synonymous with the sinister.

Carlo, a midwife over thirty, driven to desperation, would not have ventured so deep into this untouched forest otherwise.

As she walked, she surveyed the flowers and plants on either side.

Even if she couldn’t find the legendary Angloosh Flower this time, she hoped to find some other herbs to assist the pregnant woman in delivering her baby smoothly.

As Carlo approached deeper into the forest, mist slowly enveloped her, lowering the visibility.

Fog was setting in amongst the trees.

Everything in front of her blurred, and the ordinary branches through the haze looked like ghosts’ arms, clawing and waiting for their prey.

In this eerie atmosphere, Carlo shivered involuntarily.

Her mind was flooded with various rumors about the ghosts in the forest.

"Death God Nakbet, bless me, I beg of your mercy, keep your scythe far from me."

Midwives generally worshipped both the gods of childbirth and the Death God.

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