Chapter 103
***
Imperial Capital.
The front lines, which had briefly fallen back a year earlier after the tragedy of the mutant beasts, had stabilized, and the Empire settled into its usual gloomy peace.
Under a smog that let in little sunlight.
The poor quietly sickened in the dark, and the common people wrung out their blood and sweat to keep from falling.
And the nobles enjoyed their rightful privileges in this peace.
It was a dark peace, but one that had remained stable for the past several centuries.
But unlike those commoners and nobles, the healing academia was in an uproar over one person.
It began that summer.
The Black Saint — Shun Isa.
That healer with no divine power, who hid both his face and race beneath a raven mask, had published a single book that turned the healing world upside down.
================
<General Treatise on Parasites>
— Author: Elia & Arian Schnabel, Simeon Ronald
— Translator: Dr. Schnabel
================
Parasites, and the Schnabel couple.
When those names surfaced in academia again, the first to react were the old healers of the capital.
“The Schnabel couple, you mean?”
“Why would the Black Saint take interest in people like that…?”
“Why is a theory that was already declared wrong fifteen years ago only being brought up now?”
About thirty years ago.
The Schnabel couple swept through the healing world like a typhoon.
Parasites might be the cause of demon disease.
They discovered that divine power actually encouraged parasite growth, and announced that this was the cause of demon disease.
Indeed, looking at the patients the couple presented, the theory seemed plausible.
They fed the patients poisonous herbs such as water hemlock and heavy metals, knocked the patients unconscious for a moment, then revived them with high-tier Heal, and the demon-disease patients were cured.
Healers immediately began using the couple's treatment method on demon-disease patients.
And while the couple was still alive, healers began to hope they had found a way to defeat demon disease.
But right after the couple disappeared on the southern front.
Parasitology began to collapse rapidly.
— “The parasite treatment has too many side effects. It seems the medicine is killing the patients instead.”
— “It seems the medicine must be wrong.”
It started when patients who had been treated according to the couple's method began turning up one after another, unable to ever get back up.
Healers who wanted to inherit the couple's fame all rushed to try the method.
But all that came back were countless vegetative patients.
The healers who failed the treatment began to suspect the couple.
— “Could those poisonous herbs have been a smokescreen to hide the real medicine?”
— “Other treatment centers do that too. When they train jointly with other centers, they add unnecessary decoys to the catalysts they use.”
— “That must be it. Then if you remove the poisonous herbs and remove the heavy metals… what? It doesn't work at all?”
Each of the twelve treatment centers had their own secret arcane techniques and catalysts.
So when they performed treatments in front of other healers, they would deliberately add unnecessary stones or metals to confuse them.
The healers suspected the couple had done the same.
But whenever they removed what seemed unnecessary, the treatment stopped working.
Then, one incident occurred.
— “The cause of demon disease is not parasites!”
— “We tried treating hundreds of demon-disease patients with the parasite method, but most of them failed!”
Healers grabbed any demon-disease patient they could and subjected them to the parasite treatment.
As a result, countless failures were reported.
What was more, healers who failed to treat nobles in the process were sent to the execution block.
Unable to watch this any longer, the Mencia sect where the Schnabel couple had learned healing arts made a statement.
— “Not all demon disease is caused by parasites, and the couple's treatment method was also completely wrong. Accordingly, our sect hereby declares that the parasite theory itself is flawed and that parasites are not the cause of the disease.”
In response, the healing world reversed its theory.
Rather than parasites causing the disease, parasites appeared in people weakened by demon disease, just as maggots gather in rot.
Parasites were reduced to something not to be treated, but merely a finding occasionally observed when diagnosing demon disease.
And the couple's fame for supposedly being the first to cure demon disease was also overturned.
In human history, the record of demon disease having been cured vanished once again.
That was fifteen years ago.
So no one expected that couple's names to come up in academic circles again.
That summer,
Shun Isa had engraved the two names on the cover of a general treatise and brought it to the academic society.
“You mean we’re supposed to accept that as is?”
“Why not read it first, at least once?”
“So the couple's treatment wasn't wrong? Then what about those patients, then?”
Though skeptical, academia trusted the Black Saint's reputation and began reading the book.
And as the pages turned, the old healers found themselves coming to terms with the theory.
“Not using everything in a single day, but treating them slowly over several weeks? A method like that…!”
“It’s the dosage that determines whether something is poison or medicine… Hah. How on earth did he come to such insight?”
“Was it our mistake? That not all demon disease was caused by parasites, only some of it?”
“So the couple made a mistake too. These weren't parasites. Even so, it wasn't as if they were entirely wrong… Goodness, how embarrassing.”
Shun Isa did not merely claim the couple had been right.
They were definitely wrong in some parts.
Nevertheless, their method was not completely wrong.
Most importantly, he described in detail the fact the couple had overlooked—a way to distinguish parasitic demon disease from non-parasitic demon disease.
[The Schnabel couple mistook all demon-disease cases involving stomach pain for a parasitic illness. But parasites were only part of demon disease, not all of it.
[Thus, this translator details physical examination methods for accurately distinguishing parasite infection.]
Parasites differ in symptoms depending on their location.
If parasites go to the brain, your head hurts; if they go to the stomach, your stomach hurts.
Based on that fact, the Schnabel couple and the healing world mistakenly believed that the various symptoms of demon disease were all caused by parasites.
Shun Isa was the one who cleared up that misunderstanding.
[Anemia symptoms are commonly seen in hookworm, whipworm, schistosomiasis, and malaria.]
[If there is a moving red, line-shaped rash beneath the skin, cutaneous larva migrans can be suspected.]
[If the legs are swollen, suspect lymphatic filariasis.]
[If you look closely inside the eye, you can find wriggling eye worms.]
[However, if these parasites cannot be directly confirmed, or if the symptoms do not match the parasites’ location, then it is highly likely that it is not parasites.]
He claimed that demon disease was a disorder made up of multiple illnesses mixed together.
Parasites were only one part of it.
And the couple had not been wrong.
They had merely been incomplete.
Thus, academia had no choice but to acknowledge it.
That the couple had not been completely wrong.
For the first time in decades, the Schnabel couple's names came back to life in academia.
Their demon-disease treatment was moved from a cautionary example to an official treatment case.
Voices also began to rise saying that the couple's parasitology should be recognized as a legitimate field of study.
And just as academia was beginning to accept this.
Shun Isa leaked yet another article to academia.
======================================
『On Things Smaller Than Parasites ─ Hypothesis One.』
— There may be organisms even smaller than parasites.
— Until now, we had accepted the 'humoral theory (imbalance of bodily fluids)' as orthodoxy, and 'miasma (bad air)' only in part.
— But perhaps both the humoral theory and the miasma theory, on which current academia is based, are wrong.
======================================
In autumn, when the leaves turned crimson.
The healing world was turned upside down once more.
***
After Shun Isa's theory was announced.
Academia's response split into three camps.
First, those who were endlessly favorable toward Shun Isa accepted the theory immediately.
“You say there’s no evidence yet? Heh-heh. My friend, just believe it. His words are bound to be right anyway.”
“They’ll probably make a new medicine based on that again… Should I buy Mercur stock now…?”
“What kind of medicine is he trying to make this time, to be laying such groundwork?”
It was still only at the hypothesis stage.
Yet there were already people who thought the hypothesis was correct.
But not every healer reacted so favorably.
“I can’t accept it without evidence.”
“People’s lives are at stake here. How are we supposed to accept something without evidence?”
“Using divine magic according to the humoral theory, we still save as many as half of them. What reason is there to take such a dangerous risk?”
“It’s far too radical a theory.”
Even Shun Isa had not yet presented evidence.
So there were healers who urged caution.
Most healers leaned this way.
And then there was the last group.
“Even Shun Isa has finally reached the point where he’s starting to slip.”
“He’s too radical, that guy.”
“I can’t understand why people are still being fooled by that fraud.”
They were simply healers who disliked him.
They were a very small minority, but also a group whose voices were louder than anyone else's.
As the healers were splitting into those three groups.
Shun Isa put forward a proposal to shatter the mood at once.
— “Regarding my hypothesis, I would like to arrange a forum where I can formally explain the evidence before the senior members of every sect in academia.”
— “Both rebuttal and verification are welcome.”
— “The date will be in October, and the venue will be the main auditorium of the Capital Infirmary.”
Put more plainly, it meant this:
[It's me. Come in.]
Whether he intended it or not.
The provocation was extremely effective.
To verify his theory, countless healers boarded airships and flocked to the capital.
And there were those who did not welcome this atmosphere.
“Tomorrow is the day of the presentation.”
The evening before Schnabel's symposium.
In the east corridor of the Capital Infirmary, a small lounge set aside for the Mencia sect.
Beneath the dim glow of a magic lamp, three priests were drinking tea.
The man seated in the place of honor was named Dormun Mencia.
He was the archbishop of the Mencia sect, and its third-ranking senior healer.
“The specter of the Schnabel couple is raising its head again.”
Archbishop Dormun let out a deep sigh.
“As if clouding the eyes of young healers with that mistaken parasite theory weren't enough, he has now gone so far as to reject the humoral theory as well.”
“We are ashamed, Your Grace.”
“It is not your fault, brothers.”
The archbishop lightly waved a hand.
“It is the fault of us old men for being too weak-hearted to declare that couple heretics.”
The middle-aged priest on the right, Ansen, gave a faint sigh.
“Looking back, I can still see the day the couple first entered our infirmary, Your Grace. Both of them learned the low-ranking healer course in our sect… Then one day they suddenly left our sect and infirmary and started taking an interest in something called parasites.”
“They were my classmates as well. I should have stopped them somehow back then.”
The self-reproaching middle-aged priest on the left, Rataniel, lightly adjusted his glasses.
“They were ingrates. They should not have forgotten where their scholarship began. They forgot that it had grown from the soil of Mencia, and the couple presented it as though it were their own achievement.”
Of course, the couple had received no help from the Mencia sect while conducting their research on parasites.
But the basic knowledge that formed the foundation of their research was certainly the Mencia sect's.
A person who once belonged to a sect should not forget that grace.
For them, the couple's act of claiming it all as their own accomplishment was utterly infuriating.
“Nor can I forgive them for taking someone from the Ronald sect as a disciple.”
If they had accepted only people from the Mencia sect as their successors, we could at least have understood.
But the couple placed no restrictions on whom they took as disciples.
Countless sect members applied to become disciples, and in the end, the one who stayed by their side until the very end was Simeon Ronald.
“I never dreamed those two would choose a friend from the Ronald sect.”
“Brother Rataniel. That is not your fault. It happened because the couple and Simeon Ronald were blinded by greed.”
Sip.
Bishop Ansen sipped his tea and made the sign of the cross as if calming his anger.
“Even when that couple betrayed our brothers, Your Grace always waited for them to come back. But what did they come back with?”
“….”
“Even after death, the couple did not return their research to our sect, but instead told their disciple to publish it to the world.”
For the Mencia sect, it was infuriating.
Were not all those studies on parasites rooted in the Mencia sect?
If so, even if they wandered outside while alive, it would have been proper for them to return that knowledge to the Mencia sect when they died.
Just as nobles maintained their illustrious houses by passing down arcane magic to their descendants from generation to generation.
In place of their family line, healers were 'obligated' to return all research records to the sect that had taught them when they died.
This was an old tradition of the healing world that had continued for centuries.
The couple broke that obligation and entrusted the fate of those studies to a disciple of the Ronald sect.
“The couple really had no eye for people. That Simeon fellow was clearly using those research records as if he had every right to them, keeping them to himself and not telling the other healers.”
“And on top of that, his skill was mediocre.”
Priest Rataniel and Bishop Ansen traded remarks back and forth.
In between them, Archbishop Dormun intervened.
“There is no need to blame yourselves so much, brothers. Is that not why the gods discerned the couple's character in advance?”
Dormun slowly brought two fingers together and briefly made the sign of the cross.
“…The eyes of the flock are sometimes dim. But how could the eyes of the gods ever be dim?”
“….”
“Did the gods not first recognize the nature of those two people—who severed the bond of brotherhood among priests on their own, tested their scholarship on their brothers' patients, handed that scholarship over wholesale to a priest of an opposing sect, and did not return even a single line to the sect even at death—and then render the proper judgment?”
Dormun closed his eyes for a moment.
“…Therefore, the fact that the scholarship produced by those two people ultimately concluded as faulty scholarship was, in our old men's view, no accident, I believe.”
Thus, the Mencia sect took the lead more than anyone else in pointing out the couple's mistakes.
Because the incorrect knowledge spread due to their own failure to manage it properly, they tried harder than anyone else to correct it responsibly.
They warned about the side effects of parasite treatment, exposed the couple's false treatment methods used to monopolize the cure, and made it known that parasites were not the cause of demon disease.
As the sect's third-ranking member, Dormun felt a sense of responsibility and erased the couple's mistaken traces.
“It took a very long time.”
“But despite your efforts, Archbishop, that Black Saint has awakened that scholarship again, hasn't he?”
“That is why I am worried as well.”
The archbishop sighed.
“It means even that saint is, in the end, only human. His eyes may grow dim, but to be blinded by people like that, of all things. I can only think the couple's sins truly ran deep.”
“Then what do you plan to do about this germ business?”
“Tomorrow, I must help the Saint open his eyes again.”
Sip.
The archbishop slowly set down his teacup.
“A theory that began from an incorrect root can only be wrong. That germ must have been nothing more than a misidentification of something like mana particles.”
“I certainly think so too. Then shall we inform the other sects of our position as well?”
“Please do so, Brother Ansen. In particular, since the brothers of the Adamberta sect and the Lapabri sect interact with us frequently, please ask them not to harbor mistaken prejudices.”
“Understood, Your Grace. Archbishop Erben will also be attending tomorrow's discussion forum.”
“That is very fortunate.”
Erben Adamberta.
The authority on bloodletting therapy in the Adamberta sect.
His bloodletting technique had reached the level of drawing out only the poison that flowed in the blood.
Even nobles who had been attacked by basilisks showed a 50 percent survival rate when he treated them. (The other 50 percent died of excessive bleeding, but it was a sufficiently acceptable number.)
And at the foundation of this bloodletting lay the humoral theory.
“If it’s you, Elder, you would surely be able to pinpoint the contradictions in the germ theory.”
Priest Rataniel smiled brightly.
That was only natural, because Erben was also living history of the humoral theory.
With elven blood running through him, he had saved countless people with that theory for three hundred years.
He would instantly realize how mistaken germ theory was.
“The other elders will also come to see how absurd this so-called germ business is.”
The three of them simultaneously brought two fingers together and briefly made the sign of the cross.
The dim light of the magic lamp washed over the three pairs of fingertips in the same hue before fading away.
The night of priests who truly believed in their own devotion deepened in prayer.
And so the next day came.
Awaiting the Black Saint's presentation, countless priests entered the auditorium carrying documents of expected questions.
An authority on bloodletting.
An authority on limb amputation.
An authority on mercury treatment, and so on.
Watching the countless elder healers enter the auditorium, Dormun prayed for the saint's repose.
‘No matter how much of a saint he is, it’ll be impossible to convince all of these elders.’
But what could he do?
People fail in life sometimes.
Dormun only hoped that, based on this failure, the saint would open his eyes again and continue striving.
‘After this presentation, we should also consider asking them to transfer the rights to parasitology to our sect.’
With those thoughts, Dormun waited for the saint to appear.
And when the curtain in the auditorium rose and the stage was revealed,
Dormun could instinctively tell that something was wrong.
[Elders.]
On top of countless desks.
Dozens of microscopes were laid out.
Considering that a single microscope made by a master cost several million mar, the auditorium now held microscopes worth the price of several houses.
Shun Isa pointed at the microscopes and began his presentation.
[It’ll be faster to see for yourselves than for me to explain. These are the germs I cultured and stained over the past few months. If anyone has questions during the explanation, please come up and check them yourself.]
For some reason, beyond the lenses of the raven mask, it felt as though the saint were looking at the elders with excitement.