Chapter 149
***
When do you think a person loses their childlike innocence?
The day they realize the tragic truth that the Santa Claus who visited every Christmas was actually their uncle?
The day they realize the old saying that their beloved puppy went ahead to wait for them was a lie?
The day they realize the New Year's cash gifts their mother said she was saving to give them later had been invested in stocks?
No.
At least, none of those things broke my childlike innocence.
Of course, when I learned in my senior year of high school that my New Year's cash gifts had been invested in stocks, I lost my mind and staged a protest against my parents,
but that wasn't what broke my childlike innocence.
The stocks were in a semiconductor company, so I later kissed my parents' feet.
My first childlike innocence lasted longer than most people's.
After falling in love once with the image of a surgeon in a drama and then falling in love again with the professor who covered up my mistake, I chose a career in surgery.
I was someone who valued a child's romantic ideals more than an adult's interests.
I even managed to preserve my childlike innocence after serving in the military, which could be called the graveyard of innocence.
They say most people lose their innocence because of senior soldiers' abuses of power in the military, but that didn't happen to military doctors…….
The event that made me lose my childlike innocence.
It was none other than unpaid wages.
‘They definitely said they'd buy me something delicious.’
I followed my professor on summer vacation because he had clearly said he would buy me something delicious.
But when I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of an overseas disaster site.
— “Professor.”
— “What is it, punk?”
— “How is this a three-star Michelin restaurant?”
— “A meal you eat after saving people is three-star. What else could be three-star?”
— “Excuse me, but may I swear to your face?”
— “I'm your supervising professor.”
After that day, the Little Prince living in my heart put on a red headband.
The boy who had lost his innocence learned how to make legitimate demands and settle accounts from then on.
— “When I leave, there won't be another junior in trauma surgery for the next ten years. Can you handle that?”
— “……I'll let you cut into a steak before we return to Korea.”
— “Nice.”
Even that was mocked once more by the dirty, despicable schemes of an adult.
Damn it, I didn't know he meant the hamburger steak served as an in-flight meal.
In the end, on the plane back to Korea, the Little Prince had become Captain Hook.
……The Little Prince is the kid who lives in Neverland, right?
Anyway.
The process of letting go of the childlike innocence one has cherished and accepting reality is quite difficult.
And admitting that life doesn't go the way you want is even harder.
That was why all I could do was quietly cheer Freyja on from afar as she went through her belated adolescent turmoil.
Of course, if I were an exemplary adult, I would break that innocence cleanly with flawless logic.
— ‘Rewarding good and punishing evil? Sounds nice. But reality is too dark for that.’
Reality doesn't work that way.
You're not capable enough for that.
But I wasn't like that.
I wanted Freyja's noble ideals not to be broken.
Even if she was wounded, her light dimmed, and she grew worn and shabby in the process.
I wanted that conviction of hers to live on.
That was why I waited for her.
Rather than breaking her ideals, I hoped the experience would temper her conviction into something stronger.
And so two months passed.
The sweltering summer ended,
and the second semester in the Academy territory drew near.
An incident occurred.
“Brother. You can heal this hero, can't you?”
“……I can, but for now, there's also a chance I'll fail. The magic isn't complete yet.”
An incident in which her conviction finally bore fruit.
***
Two months had passed since Freyja's belated adolescent storm began.
She had quietly received instruction in magic from Count Barlotte throughout summer vacation.
During those two months, she achieved astonishing results.
“Lady Nihirit. Is House Nihirit perhaps a collateral branch of our family?”
“It is not.”
“Then how can you absorb our family's secret magic so well? If you weren't the daughter of a viscount, I would adopt you into the family as a foster daughter this instant.”
The compatibility between Freyja and House Barlotte's secret magic was astonishingly high.
In just two months, she had achieved a level comparable to the Nihirit family's secret art, which she had spent half her life training in.
This was because the talent required by House Nihirit was highly compatible with House Barlotte's secret magic.
“You said that a keen ear was important to your family? Since observation seems to be important to ours, I suppose the two methods complement each other well.”
“It is all thanks to you, Count.”
Freyja lowered her head in a deep bow.
This was the last lesson.
Freyja had to return to her studies.
“If anything is lacking or you have any questions, come ask me anytime.”
“Thank you for your kindness, Count.”
On the day her final lesson with Count Barlotte ended,
Freyja walked back toward the Academy territory as usual.
It was the tail end of summer.
Sunlight diffused by the smog lay yellow across the paving stones, and the cries of cicada-like magical insects leaked out from between the ivy.
This particular magical insect was classified as a magical beast.
But it merely cried throughout the night, masking the sounds of other magical beasts approaching; its own danger level was zero.
That was why the Academy barrier didn't bother filtering it out.
However, regardless of its danger level, the dormitory students hated this cicada-like magical beast for crying at night and hunted it down out of sheer hatred.
But they were hard to find near the mansion where Freyja lived, so she didn't bother going to the trouble of catching them.
There was also the fact that if one of those cicadas really tried to flee, the effort of chasing it was far greater.
Thwack!
At that moment, a mana bullet shot toward the sound of the cicada.
Before the magical insect could even react, it was split into dozens of pieces and fell into the flower bed.
Freyja turned her head toward the direction from which the mana bullet had been fired.
In the direction of her gaze, an old guard was waving at her.
“Good afternoon, young lady.”
“I hope you have a good afternoon as well, sir.”
It was a face she passed every day.
The students didn't know the old guard's name.
Most of them only knew that he always stood in the same place, guarding the main gate in the same posture.
The other students hardly noticed him.
They merely regarded him, standing fixed in the shade beside the main gate, as part of the scenery.
But Freyja greeted him every time.
That was because she knew not only the old man's name, but every detail of his past as well.
‘Lord Ainell remains dignified despite his age.’
Ainell, the Spear Hero.
He was a hero who had been active about thirty years ago.
A tragic hero who developed demon disease and retired just after his name began to spread, before the public had properly learned his face.
Naturally, the reason Freyja knew even a hero like that was her hobby.
‘Perhaps because he was active in the insect-ridden south, his mana bullets are exceptionally precise.’
She had just greeted the old guard as usual and was passing through the main gate when—
“……Excuse me, sir?”
“What is it, young lady?”
“Does…… does your stomach…… hurt very badly?”
Freyja's gaze turned toward the old man's abdomen.
Because an ominous sound had come from there.
It was a sound she often heard.
It was the sort of sound that frequently came from Erica's stomach after she proudly drank milk so old it smelled like Yakult, declaring that it was merely aged.
She also heard it from classmates who had drunk too many potions.
Grrrgle—
But the sound coming from the old man's stomach was even worse.
It was practically at the level where she wondered if his intestines were twisting.
Only then did Freyja realize that the old man's complexion looked unwell.
It was usually the color of earth, but now he was slightly pale, even sweating coldly.
There was one more strange thing.
Even for a former hero, his posture was somehow awkward.
In the end, Freyja couldn't ignore the oddity and asked him directly.
“Sir. If your stomach is upset…….”
“Ah, there's no need to worry, young lady. I recently had surgery from the Saint. The Saint said my digestive ability might be somewhat reduced…….”
But the old man couldn't finish his sentence.
The old man staggered while clutching his stomach.
His posture completely collapsed, and he stood at an angle while leaning on his spear.
The cold sweat on his forehead poured down like a waterfall, and his lips trembled, as bloodless as a blood fiend.
“……Sir?”
It was the moment Freyja took a step toward him.
Thud.
The spear fell first, and the old man collapsed after it.
“Sir!”
A pungent, fishy smell suddenly filled the air.
Freyja knew that smell.
She found it difficult to explain exactly what the smell was.
But she knew instinctively.
The smell of death.
The smell of blood and feces given off as a life died.
It was her first time smelling it, but she knew without anyone having to explain that this was what it was.
She looked at the old man.
The old man's trousers were becoming soaked in dark red.
Against his will, he was bleeding into his lower garments.
The veins stood out on the back of the old man's hand as he clutched his abdomen.
“Ngh…….”
The old man couldn't even let out a proper groan.
Freyja did not hesitate.
She hoisted the old man onto her back.
Her mana-honed body easily bore the old man's weight.
“Just hold on a little longer.”
Freyja ran without hesitation toward the nearest clinic.
No explanation was necessary.
Helping people, especially helping someone who had spent his life doing good, required no reason at all.
*
Freyja burst through the doors of the Mayer Clinic and shouted.
“I have a patient! Severe bloody stool accompanied by fecal incontinence!”
She shouted using the briefing method she had learned by watching her brother over his shoulder.
At the words “bloody stool,” the healers in white priestly robes instinctively raised their heads.
Bloody stool severe enough to require emergency transport was one of the most critical emergencies, where every second counted.
One of them approached to examine the old man, then stopped short.
“……This man is…….”
The healer looked back and forth between the old man's ashen face and his dark-red-soaked trousers.
The healer's expression darkened as well.
And a cruel verdict fell from his lips.
“We can't treat him.”
“What?! Why not?!”
“He has demon disease.”
At those words, the bustling clinic fell silent.
Everyone's eyes fixed on the old man.
The words “demon disease” had stirred their curiosity.
The healer attending to Freyja gestured to the others.
It was a warning that the patient was not a spectacle.
The healers lowered their heads in shame at their own barbaric curiosity.
Afterward, the healer attending to Freyja said,
“We operated on this man a few months ago.”
“Ah, I heard. The Saint operated on him.”
“Yes. That's right.”
The healer removed his glasses and pressed hard on his eyelids.
“He has demon disease, and the Saint removed part of his intestine after determining that there was no way to treat him for now.”
“Could his surgical wound have burst?”
“It might have.”
The healer let out a deep sigh.
“But it will be difficult to cast healing magic on him.”
“……Because he has demon disease.”
“Yes. That's right.”
Demon disease.
A disease that ought to be cured by holy magic, yet instead devours holy power and worsens.
Freyja knew the horror of this disease better than anyone.
Because she herself had suffered from it.
“Normally, after an intestinal resection, we attempt to restore the intestines using holy magic…… but because this man has demon disease, even that wasn't possible.”
The healer attending to her knew the horror of this disease even better than Freyja did.
In an ordinary intestinal resection, skillful use of Greater Heal can restore the severed intestine to some extent.
Trauma patients often recover their internal organs that way, even if it takes time.
But this was forbidden for demon disease patients.
Past experiments using pigs had confirmed that casting Heal on a demon disease patient caused the disease to recur in the severed intestine.
In the end, even the Saint could do nothing for this patient but remove part of his intestine.
“Lay him down for now. Over there, in the corner. We should be able to give him painkillers.”
“What about treatment…….”
“We removed half his colon last time. If he undergoes surgery again…… Given his age, I'm not even sure he'll survive until then.”
Freyja lowered her head.
She had been forced to face the limits of reality once again.
More than that, her own helplessness seemed to tear into her chest.
Someone might say this.
He was only a guard she happened to pass by, so why was she grieving for this old man so deeply?
But Freyja had ample reason.
‘A hero's ending can't be like this…….’
A fitting reward for the good.
A fitting punishment for the wicked.
For someone who had lived in pursuit of that conviction, this reality was unbearably unjust.
‘There has to be some way to treat this man…….’
She was sinking into that helplessness once again when—
“I'm sorry, student. We'll call the Saint, but I'm afraid there's probably nothing we can do…….”
The moment she heard the healer's words, one person's face flashed through her mind.
The Black Saint was out of the question.
But…… what about that person?
“……Wait a moment.”
Freyja laid the old man on the bed and stood up.
Perhaps her brother could do it.
Professor Yulian could.
It would be difficult for the Saint, the symbol of holy magic, but if it were Yulian, the symbol of black magic,
perhaps he could save this man with black magic, just as he had saved her.
Holding on to that small hope, Freyja immediately ran out of the Mayer Clinic.
A few minutes later.
“Brother. Have you made any progress in your research on demon disease?”
Freyja visited Yulian's laboratory, where he had been putting the new graduate student he'd acquired a few months earlier to highly efficient use.
Yulian welcomed Freyja, who had arrived without warning, without becoming flustered.
“I've more or less finished classifying demon disease. I plan to reveal it together with the cure once the treatment is complete. But what happened?”
“Well, you see…….”
Freyja explained how she had transported the old man to the clinic.
After finishing her explanation, she looked up at Yulian with bright, earnest eyes and said,
“Brother. There is a treatment for this hero, isn't there?”
“……There is, but for now, there's also a chance I'll fail. The magic isn't complete yet.”
It was an answer that would normally make someone give up.
But Freyja hadn't given up yet and said,
“Then how much progress have you made on the magic research?”
“The catalyst is complete.”
Yulian glanced toward the room where the former black-mage graduate student was confined and said,
“Because I have a rather excellent assistant now.”
In any case, the remaining work in the steroid research was selecting fungi and yams suitable for mass production.
The work was so labor-intensive and mind-numbing that it was taking time, but they still had enough for small-scale production rather than mass production.
In terms of quantity, they had enough for about four attempts to treat demon disease.
The problem, however, was the magic.
“I've completed the catalyst and worked out the spell formula to some extent, but I haven't prepared the symbol or incantation yet.”
Creating a black-magic spell formula to use alongside steroids was even more difficult.
Though he was working hard on the formula while consulting his great-sage mentor from afar,
because it was magic that had never existed, or even been conceived of, development was progressing very slowly.
“I'm sorry, but treating that patient will be difficult.”
“Why?”
“He has Crohn's disease. If he's experiencing bloody stool even after surgery, he probably won't respond very well to steroids.”
By a cold calculation, using still-precious steroids on that old man felt wasteful.
From Yulian's perspective, it would be better to treat someone he could save with certainty.
That was simply how Yulian's convictions had always worked.
“The people I can save are more important to me.”
“……Then what if you cast on him the magic you used on me, using that medicine as the catalyst?”
“I don't know…….”
Yulian thought.
In truth, the reason the steroids had been reduced to four doses was the instability of this magic.
He had tried the magic many times during its development, but its success rate had been under ten percent.
‘I don't know what the variables are, either.’
He had tried the method he used on Freyja over and over again.
Using the same variables and the same symbols every time.
He had even wondered whether he needed to believe in feng shui, so one weekend he tried it in the same place using the brass holy symbol borrowed from Aila's mother.
But even then, the success rate showed no sign of rising above ten percent.
Even that had been the result of improving it as much as possible.
The initial success rate had been below five percent.
‘Perhaps treating Freyja really was a miracle.’
In any case, the point was that even if he used the magic, the chance of successfully treating the old man was exceedingly low.
“There are still too many unstable factors in the magic for us to begin clinical trials. It's difficult to control its strength, and there's a risk that I could accidentally put him into an immunodeficient state.”
“…….”
“Even so, do you want me to treat him?”
“……Yes.”
Freyja nodded.
“I think good people should be rewarded, and heroes should always get happy endings…….”
“Wait.”
Yulian interrupted her at that moment.
He suddenly checked the spell formula he had been researching and said to Freyja,
“Can you say that again?”
“That good people should be rewarded?”
“That's it!”
Yulian cheered, grabbing Freyja by the shoulders.
“Why didn't I think of that? Compassion and mercy are emphasized in holy magic too, so why had I left them out of this healing magic?”
Countless variables flashed through Yulian's mind.
Among them was one variable he had overlooked until now.
Compassion.
— “I'm sorry, Saint. We can't treat this person.”
Even healers couldn't cast holy magic on criminals they felt no compassion for,
so there was no reason black magic for treating demon disease would be an exception.
After all, the important element in magic was one's will.
‘Unlike with Freyja, there was no desperation when I was conducting the research.’
That was the cause.
Certain that he had found the answer, Yulian took Freyja's hand and rushed out of the laboratory.
Freyja could have resisted that feeble grip.
Yulian's strength really was that weak.
But instead of resisting, she relaxed her body and allowed herself to be led by his touch.
She thought she understood why he had suddenly hurried outside.
As they climbed into the car Pericia had left running, Yulian said in a slightly excited voice,
“You were right, Freyja. Heroes are supposed to have happy endings befitting them.”
“Then…….”
“This time, your way was the right answer.”
Yulian gave Freyja a small smile.
“I told you. This is why conversation is necessary.”