Chapter 14
*
The clinic's mornings start early.
“Eh? Teacher, why are you here so early.”
Still half asleep, Erica came out of the duty room to greet me.
Tsk, tsk.
An employee shouldn't be lazier than the boss.
“The clinic normally opens around this time. And don't they say the early bird catches the worm?”
“If you sleep longer, you get less hungry, so wouldn't you need to catch fewer worms?”
Oh.
That logic is pretty good.
But I couldn't go along with it, because I'm the protagonist.
Of course, I'd earned some money by now, so I wanted to be a little lazy too.
But then I had no idea what kind of snowball would start rolling later.
So unfortunately, I had no choice but to be an early bird.
“I can save one more person in that time, so I can't do that. Sorry, but you'll have to follow me.”
“Hmph.”
Erica swayed on her feet, her eyes puffed up from sleep.
According to what I'd heard, she'd been moving only at night to avoid people's eyes.
Because of that, mornings didn't seem to be familiar to her.
But that can't go on anymore.
I already even gave her a transfusion.
From now on, she should be active in the mornings as an ordinary girl, not as the Blood Fiend's Bastard.
After washing her face with cold water, Erica came back.
I held out a sheet of paper to her.
“Today's errands. Pick up medicine, contact patients, and clean now and then. Think you can handle that?”
“That's all? I thought this was to pay back my treatment.”
Eri's eyes went wide.
Judging from her reaction, it seemed she'd expected some grueling labor when I said it was in place of treatment costs.
But what I'd written on the paper was only errands that kids her age could easily handle.
“Isn't this too little?”
“Yeah. That's your quota for the day, so if you finish early, you can rest.”
But there was one thing she was badly mistaken about.
I don't need an errand runner named Erica right now.
What I want is to find out what kind of talent she has.
If I buy low while I know nothing, I can cash in on that connection and coast through life later, can't I?
But Eri, who had no way of knowing my true motives, only sent me a suspicious look.
“Lies. That can't be all, can it?”
Erica shook her head and glared at me.
“That alchemist guy in Block D-4 said so. My arms and legs are so thin that even if you flayed me, they'd only fetch 10 mard. I know your treatment costs more than that.”
“What would I even use your skin for?”
“If you have some kind of scheme, just say it quickly. I’d rather just let you have me once—”
SMACK!
I cut her off with a chop before she could say something no child should ever say.
“Ow!”
I was prepared for the darkness of Limbus Pit to always surpass my imagination.
But still.
Wasn't that a bit much for a teenage girl's mouth?
'What is this, an isekai where you need to call in the police and the FBI?'
The bottom rung of this city was a lot more rotten than I'd expected.
“Erica.”
The moment I called her name, Eri flinched.
I rose from my chair and crouched down to her eye level.
“Listen carefully. A mouth is an organ for savoring delicious food or expressing a person's worth.”
“No— mmph!”
I stuffed Eri's mouth, which had been about to object, with a star candy.
“Remember that the sentence that was about to come out of your mouth just now could turn you into filth worth less than the city's cheapest scrap.”
The chewing in Eri's mouth stopped.
She stared blankly at my mask.
Then, with a short puff, she spat the star candy into her hand.
“But if you do that, the deal doesn't work.”
“Right, right. You and I are in a deal now. In exchange for you doing my errands, I'll provide food, clothing, shelter, and treatment.”
I chided Eri in a stern voice.
“But a deal means each side puts up what they can put up—not what they shouldn't be putting up. If you suggest something like that, what happens to my dignity?”
“…Sorry.”
I wasn't telling her to apologize.
Somehow I'd ended up sounding like I was scolding her.
I snapped my fingers to freshen the mood.
“So? What's your answer?”
“I'll... do the errands.”
“Good.”
I tore a fresh white sheet of paper from the desk and made a memo slip out of it.
Eri gasped, seeming to begrudge even a scrap of paper that small.
I scribbled down a memo on the torn paper.
“All right, first errand.”
I wrote down the herbs on the paper.
“Go get these medicines from the alchemist. I already ordered them. I've paid, so you don't need to. If he asks whether I really sent you, show him this signature on the back. And of course, don't throw this memo away halfway through.”
Eri carefully folded the paper and tucked it into her chest.
As if the paper itself were her lifeline.
I'm not an emperor; she didn't need to treat a mere memo like it was some sacred mission.
“I'll be back.”
“Ah, and.”
Before she left, I remembered something I'd forgotten and called out to her.
“…What.”
“Let's sort out how you address me too. Will it be Teacher Schnabel, or Doctor?”
“…I'll go with Teacher.”
Eri said that and crossed the threshold, disappearing into the smoke-filled street in the early morning.
Maybe it was just my imagination, but her back looked strangely tense.
***
A week had passed since Eri became my errand runner.
To be honest, she was doing better than I'd expected.
“Teacher. I went to the Block D-4 alchemist. Here's your change.”
Clink.
A few coins were placed exactly on the desk.
As expected of someone who understood the back alleys' ways, her errand speed was pretty impressive.
That meant not only did she have a good sense of the streets, she also had plenty of stamina.
“Good job.”
But what made me even more satisfied than her speed was her honesty.
The people Wangcho sent, or Eri's predecessors, would sometimes skim a little change after their errands.
They probably thought I was making good money and the treatment room was always busy, so I wouldn't notice a few missing coins.
As if they didn't even know why ledgers existed.
I let those things slide, thinking of them as tips.
But unlike them, Eri didn't skim a single coin.
'Maybe you could call this a talent too.'
This was an environment where it was impossible not to dip your hand in.
Because of that, the fact that she could keep her honesty in such an environment meant Eri had a talent for integrity.
I mentally sorted Eri's talents and handed her a few coins.
“This is a tip. Use it to buy snacks or something.”
“Then I'll clean now.”
“Just do the bathroom today.”
Her cleaning skills and other miscellaneous chores were satisfying in their own way too.
Even though no one had taught her, she was doing a better job than I'd asked for.
Smart and highly trustworthy, huh...
'Could recommend her for banking, security, or maybe as a knight.'
This one might actually be pretty good.
At least it's not the kind of talent that makes you think of a bakery.
So a satisfying week passed.
“Next patient.”
The door opened and a patient on a stretcher was brought in.
He was one of Wangcho's subordinates.
He said he'd gotten his arm caught in a gear while brawling at the factory.
The wound was a problem, but more urgent than that was his blood.
The bleeding was severe.
“Has anyone ever made this man's blood record?”
At my question, his companion answered.
“Around last fall, at Brother Wangcho's orders, we had it made here.”
“Then things will go quickly.”
I opened a leather file with a pronounced vintage feel.
[Propositum : Matrix Sanguinis]
Literally, it means [Project: Blood Lineage].
In this era, there was no safe way to store blood.
If you drew it out, it would clot within a few hours, and if you transfused clotted blood, the patient would die.
There were magecraft tools like refrigerators, and I had enough capital, but I still didn't know how to make a preservative solution, so there was nothing I could do.
If I'd known this would happen, I should've studied transfusion medicine harder.
Enough with the digression.
Anyway, that was why I'd come up with an alternative.
Whenever I had time, I'd test people's blood types and record them in a notebook.
So I could call someone in right away and draw blood in an emergency.
For the record, the reason I wrote it in Latin was just because it looked cool.
Why? Latin is cool.
“What's the patient's name?”
“Donovan.”
“Donovan... he's type B.”
One notable thing about this file was that every member of Wangcho's organization, <Scarred Hyena>, had their blood type recorded in it.
Because these were people for whom knife fights were an everyday thing.
So this blood lineage also served as a kind of health insurance for them.
“Type B... If anyone nearby is among the names I call, please answer.”
“Roke, Heinz, Lewen...”
“Heinz! At this hour he'd be at that bar over there!”
“No drunks.”
“Emil, Rody...”
“I'm Rody!”
One of the companions who came with him raised his hand high.
I briefly examined the man's body.
Before the transfusion, did he have syphilis or cold symptoms...?
The conclusion was that he was healthy.
“Then Rody it is.”
Eri prepared the tools for the transfusion.
While she did that, I began to stop the patient's bleeding.
Stopping the bleeding wasn't anything special.
Just repeating the work of finding the vessel and tying it off, and packing cotton into the large holes?
In the meantime, the transfusion setup was ready.
“It's ready, Teacher.”
I immediately prepared to connect arm to arm.
The procedure used to prepare it was called Direct transfusion.
As the name suggests, it was a way of transfusing fresh blood directly, raw.
In my previous life, it was an inherently dangerous method, so I avoided it as much as possible.
But...
'Please, just don't let any side effects happen.'
I prepared the transfusion while praying to the power of this misunderstanding novel.
Drip, drip, drip—
Blood flowed from the donor's arm and spilled into the bucket.
Then it happened.
“Teacher.”
Eri, who had been sorting the trash beside me, suddenly spoke up.
“What's wrong, Eri? Did the tube get twisted?”
“No, I don't know how to explain it, but this person's arm seems weird.”
?
At that, I turned toward Eri.
Eri furrowed her brow and tapped Rody's forearm with her finger.
“Something... creepy? Noisy? Looking at this person makes me feel kind of strange.”
“Noisy?”
“Yeah. The inside is wriggling. It's like tens of thousands of insects are crawling around.”
At that, I turned back toward Eri.
“Can you be a little more specific?”
“Something feels like it's boiling inside? It's the same sensation I felt from pigs that were sick at the slaughterhouse.”
…?
At that, I temporarily stopped the transfusion.
A thought had just flashed through my mind.
Blood Fiend's Bastard.
Her nickname.
I'd thought it was merely an outdated expression of disgust.
But in this fantasy world, maybe giving her that nickname hadn't been a coincidence.
Especially the fact that she compared it to 'sick pigs' set my instincts ringing even louder.
I looked at Rody again.
And because the situation was so urgent, I noticed something I'd missed.
“Your eyes are a little yellow. When did that start?”
“Huh? They weren't like this yesterday.”
Then had they turned yellow just now?
Of course, considering jaundice doesn't progress that quickly, it might have been my mistake.
It might have been the lighting, or maybe just my imagination.
Besides, it was so faintly yellow that it was almost embarrassing to call it jaundice.
Even so, Eri's words bothered me.
So I checked once more.
“Mr. Rody, have you been anywhere recently?”
“Um...”
Rody counted on his fingers as he searched his memory.
“A few weeks ago, I went outside the Wall.”
“Why?”
“To pick up something Brother was trading for. It was near a swamp.”
“And you got bitten by mosquitoes there?”
“Yes.”
Damn it.
All the circumstantial evidence pointed to one thing.
Malaria.
The incubation period, when symptoms were still mild.
This blood can't be transfused.
“Cancel the transfusion. Let's find another donor.”
“Why?”
“You have malaria. If we put this into him, it'll be a disaster.”
After that, we hurriedly searched for another donor.
Fortunately, the transfusion ended successfully.
The patient made it through the critical moment, and the person who'd accidentally identified the malaria was prescribed quinine.
*
An hour later.
I called Eri over, who was wringing out a mop in the corner.
“Eri.”
“Huh? What is it?”
“Can you come over here for a second?”
I set three glasses on the desk.
Inside each was a small piece of bandage stained red.
“What's this?”
Eri approached, wiping her wet hands on her apron.
“A quiz.”
“…A quiz?”
“If you get it right, I'll raise your weekly pay and switch your meals to better ones.”
At that, Eri's eyes lit up with motivation.
“What is it? What is it?”
“Hold these jars with your hands. Then pick the quietest one.”
I pointed at the three glass jars.
A was from the mother who came in this morning with puerperal fever.
B was from Donovan, who'd gotten caught in the gear earlier.
C was from Rody, whom I'd been about to transfuse.
They were, in order, the marrow of a sepsis patient, a normal person, and a malaria patient.
However, I didn't tell her what they were.
“The quietest one?”
“Yeah. Pick the most quiet 'marrow' as you feel it.”
“…What does that even mean?”
Tch. It was my killer joke, and it didn't land.
Though she found my quiz strange, Eri reached for the jars.
A
“Ugh! Gross.”
She recoiled in disgust from the marrow of the sepsis patient.
B
“Hmm... just kind of so-so?”
She didn't find anything unusual in the normal patient's marrow.
C
“Ugh! This one's gross too.”
She picked B as the least bad jar.
Without a word, I put B away and pushed A and C forward.
They were, respectively, the marrow of the sepsis and malaria patients.
“What's the difference between these two?”
“Uuuh... they're both the same?”
…
I was a little disappointed.
“Why? Why!? Was I wrong?!”
Eri stomped her feet in disappointment.
I shook my head.
“No. It's perfectly correct.”
B was the correct choice anyway.
It would've been a bonus if she'd distinguished A and C too.
I reached a conclusion.
'Eri can distinguish the level of marrow activation by sense.'
'Gross' or 'not gross'—a binary classification at that level.
She couldn't distinguish malaria from bacterial infection, much less what kind of bacteria it was.
'Still, a little disappointing.'
Honestly, it would've been perfect if she could even tell the species of the germ apart.
Of course, I knew that was asking too much.
It's only natural that you can't tell that from bone marrow, and this wasn't even a blood culture.
And having the talent be in marrow rather than blood actually had its own advantage.
'You can screen marrow as a routine? And noninvasively at that? Man, if this were the 21st century, it would've caused a sensation.'
I can say that for sure.
Even if she hadn't gone to medical school, she'd still end up in infectious disease, rheumatology, or hematology.
They would've handed her a professorship and just had her screen patients at the ER entrance.
And her salary would've easily hit 400 million a year.
Even if I set medical considerations aside, this was an excellent talent.
It was one of a mage's talents, after all.
'Hit the jackpot.'
One year into the rain ritual.
At last, my efforts had borne fruit.
In my heart, I moved Eri from Tier 3 to Tier 1.
“Eri.”
“What.”
“You don't have to do errands starting tomorrow.”
Eri's shoulders twitched.
She must have thought she was being cut loose.
Her eyes wavered for a moment.
The fear of being cast out just when she'd finally settled in flashed across her.
Tears welled up at the corners of her eyes.
Seeing that, I hurriedly went on.
“From now on I'll have someone else do the errands, and you work beside me. You'll help when I'm treating patients.”
“Bweh...?”
“Not as an errand runner. You're my assistant now.”
A beat later, Eri's mouth fell open.
“Why? I can't even read.”
“Reading can be taught.”
I wiped away the tears in her eyes with a handkerchief.
“From now on, your job will be finding sick people with that sense of yours. It's a very important mission.”
“…Is it really that big of a deal?”
“Yeah. It's something only you can do.”
As I said that, I wrote down the salary she'd receive in my notebook.
The zeroes kept increasing.
One, two, three, four...
“Eh!? 400,000... 400,000 mard!?”
400,000 mard was about the monthly pay of a skilled worker in the upper districts.
For a back-alley orphan to suddenly skyrocket to craftsman level, it was no wonder she'd be shocked.
“…I-I can really take this?”
“You're worth that much.”
If I was going to recruit her, I had to spend at least this much.
If I thought of it as bringing in an MRI machine, this was cheap.
One, two, three, four...
Eri kept counting the zeros as if she couldn't believe this was real.
Why was she so surprised?
If you rack up seniority by staying by my side, that amount would increase tenfold.
I finished writing today's treatment log and put the record away in the storage room before saying,
“And one more thing.”
Eri lifted her head.
“What is it?”
“Since you're my assistant now, you'll commute with me too.”
“Commute?”
“I mean don't sleep here; come to work from where I live.”
This isn't just because she's my lucky break.
A mage's talent is rare.
To what extent? Enough that even nobles, steeped in that privilege-minded arrogance, will try to adopt one the moment they find one.
And if she also had a decent head on her shoulders, she'd be what you'd call SSR-grade mage material.
So whether as a misunderstanding story protagonist or as a baron's son.
I had a duty to bring her home with me.
Naturally, Eri, who had no way of knowing any of that background, seemed unable to believe this sudden, extravagant treatment.
“…At your house, Teacher?”
“More precisely, the annex. I'll give you a room.”
“A house with an annex??”
Eri stared at me with a blank expression.
“Let's go first. I'll explain as we go.”
I opened the clinic door and stepped outside.
Eri hurried after me.
In front of the clinic.
A black sedan was waiting there.
A smooth sheen.
Brass trim.
Even the smog reflected in its windows made it look luxurious.
Eri froze.
“…What is that?”
“A car.”
“You think I'm asking because I don't know? Why is a car here?”
“Is it not supposed to be here?”
“It's not even a carriage, so why is there a car...”
Ignoring Eri, who was mumbling in a daze,
I opened the door and shoved her inside.
Eri flopped onto the leather seat.
I sat down beside her and shut the door.
“Let's go.”
Beyond the rearview mirror, the driver Otto looked at me as if to say, What have you picked up this time?
From that look, I recalled Otto's position.
He was my driver and bodyguard.
And before he was my man, he had been the head butler's man.
When I remembered that and looked again, the atmosphere felt like he'd refuse to step on the pedal unless I explained Eri.
So I persuaded him briefly.
“Please contact the head butler. Tell him to prepare a room in the annex. I found a child with mage talent, so ask him to prepare things befitting her status.”
“Understood, young master.”
The driver's eyes changed.
If it was recruiting a mage, then that was understandable.
Only then did the car start moving.
Eri fiddled with the leather seat, eyes wide.
“I-Is this really leather?”
“Yeah.”
“Sniff sniff. The smell...”
“Could you restrain yourself a little in the car?”
Eri buried her face in the seat and inhaled the smell.
In the red-light district, when people said leather, it mostly meant scraps stitched together from leftovers tanned upstairs.
So it made sense.
Now that she'd adapted to the smell like a cat, Eri carefully leaned back.
And she looked out the window.
The black slate buildings of Limbus Pit slipped by.
“…Where are we going?”
I just told her to keep quiet and watch.
The car kept climbing.
It left Limbus Pit and crossed Civitas Square.
But the car kept climbing.
By the time it passed through Sanctum Hill without even being checked...
“Huh? Huh?”
“This is where you'll be living from now on.”
“…Grrk.”
Eri's head dropped with a thud.
It seemed her brain had chosen to shut down because too much information was coming in all at once.
I understand.
From an orphan in the brothel quarter to the right hand of a heavenly dragon, she'd been promoted in one leap.
….
I looked at the unconscious Eri with satisfaction.
'This was the reaction I was hoping for.'