Chapter 320: Ashley's Obsessive Fantasies

With a weary sigh of surrender, he unburdened himself of long-concealed deceits and evasions. He and the Gray Divine Physician were not intimates - had never even met. Those ostensible miracle cures promising instantaneous panacea had been naught but overblown charlatanry to lure the gullible. As for the grandiose "First Divine Physician of Eldoria" honorific...it had been a bald-faced usurpation of his own master's illustrious title and renown, the better to insinuate authority where none legitimately existed.

A thunderous silence greeted these abject revelations. Then, as full realization took hold, a susurrus of infuriated muttering swelled into a torrent of virulent outcries and recriminations.

"Profiteering whoreson! That you should merely defraud us was sin enough - but to so blaspheme the sanctity of the Gray Divine Physician himself?"

"Aye, that exalted healer is beloved throughout Emerald City for his innumerable kindnesses and selfless works. That you would so spit upo