I stumbled upon this short manga while looking for a different one to no avail.

This review can contain some spoilers, but the work is so short that I don’t think it can matter that much if you can read it in about half an hour.

I can't deny that the reason I chose to read it was morbid curiosity, but I think overall it was a good read. There are some moral issues present throughout the whole work, such as how Mr. Apothecary bought the elf as a slave. I've read some people condemn that, comparing it to Shield Hero's treatment of slavery, however, I must disagree.
Apothecary clearly is disgusted at having to resort to something like that, and not believing he paid less than if he had purchased cattle. Besides, he's not a person with any sort of political power so that he could directly interfere with slave trade in order to demonstrate how he doesn't agree with the system. He's just a guy, and it's all he has in his power to save the girl.

Another issue I've seen regarding this work, is about the damsel in distress trope taken to the limit by including the elements of the elf being severely injured to the point of complete dependency on the Apothecary, and while I agree it could be fetishistic and creepy to some degree depending on what the reader seeks from reading such a work, I personally found it to be somewhat inspiring.
Apothecary is a selfish man who doesn’t help her out of his own kindness, as he explicitly mentioned it, but in the end he wants to become a better person. After all, he became an apothecary after being an assassin. And even if he helped Reszurre due to an egotistical motive, he still did all he could in order to help her recover.

About Reszurre herself, I can’t say a lot since in most of her appearances in this work she couldn’t even speak properly. Of course, a lot of the times one can only feel pity because of the abuse she’s been through, but once she regains consciousness, it’s kind of a beautiful thing to see her be strong enough to recover and keep on living as best as she can. Some people are not fans of the type of romantic development present here, and I don’t judge them, but I can’t help but feel warm and nice when I saw their relationship build up.

Finally, while I don’t think the ending is rushed in the “came out of nowhere” sense, as the story did seem to point it’d go in that direction, it was quite fast paced. I would’ve preferred if we had 20 or so more “chapters” (pages lol), but I’m satisfied with the result. I do like happy endings.

I get why some people wouldn’t like this work as it stems from a disturbing premise, and I myself haven’t read much of this niche to compare it to something else that might’ve executed it better or worse, but for what it is, it’s a heartwarming story that shows how helping someone else can also help you.

Don’t look up the prequel though, that was pretty unnecessary to exist.