Chapter 150
***
Pericia's driving was rough, ‘as usual.’
Was it because she was a former soldier?
She drove an expensive car as though it were a military vehicle in the middle of a war.
‘This is why I hate riding in cars driven by Pericia.’
When I told her to hurry more than usual because there was an emergency patient, her driving became even rougher than usual.
Cutting across lanes was the bare minimum, and whenever she felt like it, she even pulled off spectacular drifts as she drove toward the clinic.
Inside the car, I was tossed from side to side in the back seat like a pinball.
It was only thanks to Freyja holding on to me.
Otherwise, it wouldn't have been strange if I had been flung out the window.
In any case, the scenery of the Academy territory's residential district streamed past the car window.
Meanwhile, I rearranged the formula in my head.
The catalyst was steroids.
The framework of the formula was Wither's modified equation.
The target was the colon's rampaging immune cells.
And the final variable.
That was compassion and mercy.
While checking those conditions, I discovered one problem.
‘I probably won't be as desperate as I was when treating Freyja.’
I am not a saint.
In other words, I am by no means a paragon of virtue capable of loving a complete stranger as much as a blood relative I had spent my entire life with.
Even if the patient were someone I'd operated on, I would still find it difficult to feel as much compassion for them as I had for Freyja.
I would try my best to feel compassion, but this was not something I could control, since it was a matter of my innate nature.
‘Emotion is symbolism. To make up for insufficient symbolism, I need an equally thorough ‘understanding of the formula’ to make up the difference.’
Fortunately, symbolism, catalysts, and formulas complemented one another.
That meant one could not replace any of them entirely, but they could amplify one another.
Take fire magic, for example.
Without a catalyst of combustible material, fire would not ignite no matter how good a symbol you brought in.
Just as multiplying any number by zero still gives you zero.
But if you prepared even a small amount of combustible material first, you could make up for the insufficient quantity with more symbolism and a deeper understanding.
As long as there was even one, the result would differ from zero.
The same applied to this patient.
Since I had less of the symbol of compassion than I had with Freyja,
it needed to be accompanied by a correspondingly more detailed understanding.
I had to examine it more deeply than I had back then, when I had glossed over the relationship between acquired immunity and viruses.
‘Wait. What was the mechanism behind Crohn's disease again……?’
The immune system is complicated.
It cannot be divided into simple categories like white blood cells and T cells.
Even at the most superficial level, I had to consider things like CD19 and NK cells.
Naturally, I was a surgeon, not a gastroenterologist, so I did not know that much about it.
When internal medicine sent me a Crohn's disease patient for a bowel resection, I was the one who did the cutting; why the disease developed in the first place was outside my department.
‘I did learn it back in medical school…….’
I tried to recall the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease from my hazy memories.
Naturally, nothing came to mind.
In the end, I decided to use ‘that method’ for the first time in a long while.
In the swaying car, I quietly closed my eyes.
Until half a year ago, I could only use it in my old room, but now I could access the library of memories by meditating elsewhere as well.
I imagined the scenery of my cozy room.
The infinite bookshelves stretching out there.
In the past, I would have spent hours searching through these countless books for one about Crohn's disease.
But after repeatedly training with Count Barlot, I had now mastered the knack of quickly extracting the memory I wanted.
‘The time period is a memory from thirty-two years ago. Keywords: first- and second-year medical school. Category: gastroenterology.’
The countless bookshelves began disappearing as if filtered out.
The number of bookshelves left was by no means small, but at this rate, it was something I could search through in five minutes.
‘Then, the pathophysiology of Crohn's disease…….’
I was just about to pick out the book I wanted.
Clatter.
From inside my room came the sound of bowls and tableware bumping against each other.
When I turned my head toward the sound, just as expected,
the demon with a cosmic-sized head, Babel, was eating a meal.
The menu was tête de veau.
It was a dish made with calf's brain.
At least, that was what the dish appeared to be.
I had no way of knowing whether the ingredient was actually a calf.
Babel clattered away at his tête de veau.
I set aside my questions about how that meat was absorbed into his cosmic-sized head, how he could taste it, and where it went.
Instead, I greeted the demon.
“Good afternoon, Babel.”
“It’s morning here. I just woke up, you see.”
“Are demons primarily active at night?”
“Rather, I can only tell you that you and I live in slightly different times.”
As expected.
As always, Babel answered in such vague terms that I could not tell whether we were actually having a conversation.
While cutting his meat, Babel glanced at the book in my hand.
Then he moistened his lips with wine, nodded, and said,
“Treating a patient with inflammatory bowel disease, are you? You’re attempting a rather interesting treatment, Yulian.”
“You recognized it at a glance.”
“Between you, who visits this library occasionally, and me, who practically lives here all day, who do you think knows more about the knowledge contained here?”
After saying that, Babel suddenly pulled out a book and handed it to me.
“You’ll need this.”
I accepted the book he offered without replying.
I did not know what this demon's purpose was, but every bit of knowledge he gave me was helpful.
The moment I touched the book, memories flowed into my head.
They were about how to balance steroids against antibiotics.
“If you aggressively treat a Crohn’s disease patient with steroids after surgery, their immune system will be severely weakened, leaving them vulnerable to infection. So you’ll need to carefully strike a balance between the two with antibiotics.”
This was something I had overlooked as well.
Considering the patient's age, it would not be strange for an infection to develop immediately after steroid treatment.
That was why I needed to prescribe antibiotics in advance.
However, after receiving that memory, I couldn't help feeling a little put out.
It was not that I had been unaware of it.
I had merely been too preoccupied with the urgent need for steroids to spare any thought for it.
In the first place, all the knowledge in this library was part of my own memories, so it was not even appropriate to say I had not known it.
I spoke to the demon with a hint of petty defiance.
“……This is my library.”
“I know. You would have remembered it even if I hadn't been here. I simply wanted to show off a little.”
The cosmic demon seemed to laugh.
Though I could not tell, since he had no expression.
I sighed and stood across from him at the dining table.
“Given the urgency of the situation, I’ll simply make a quick toast before I go.”
Still, to maintain proper manners, I reached for a glass so that I could make a toast before leaving.
At that moment, Babel covered the empty glass with his hand as if to stop me.
“I don’t recommend that you drink this wine. I’ll prepare some wine you can drink later, so I’m sorry, but go back empty-handed today.”
As he said that, Babel took a sip of the dark red wine.
I nodded awkwardly and stood before the door leading out of the library.
Without getting up from the table, the demon spoke to my back.
“I wonder what choice you’ll make this time, too. Do your best.”
Before I could ask what he meant,
my consciousness had already returned to reality.
“We’ve arrived, Sir Yulian.”
Pericia's voice brought my consciousness into focus.
I wanted to turn back and demand an explanation from Babel, but since we had already arrived at the clinic, I had no time for that.
I organized what I knew about Crohn's disease in my head and prepared to get out of the car.
Bang!
Before the car had even stopped, Freyja opened the door and jumped out.
I grabbed my medical bag and followed after her.
The air was thick with a mixture of disinfectant and blood.
Healers in priestly robes bustled back and forth.
It was a fondly familiar smell—the same one I'd encountered during my morning shift.
Though it was stronger without my crow mask.
In the middle of it all, a middle-aged healer was clutching a communication orb and anxiously stamping his feet.
“No, I mean, why isn’t the Black Saint answering his calls?!”
“Perhaps the saint is resting as well?”
“But he usually answers just fine.”
The middle-aged healer was speaking to another healer through the communication orb in an almost tearful voice.
‘Looks like Mr. Bine is on duty in the emergency ward today.’
Bine.
He was one of the healers assigned exclusively to the emergency ward.
Bine anxiously stamped his feet as he stared at the crystal orb, which still wouldn't connect to Shun Isa.
Beside him, an apprentice healer (resident) spoke worriedly.
“Couldn’t we ask another healer to perform the surgery?”
“This is a demon disease patient. None of the surgical healers can take this case.”
It seemed they were acting this way because of the patient Freyja had brought.
Watching them, I felt a little guilty.
‘The Black Saint won't be coming.’
The problem was that the Black Saint was an authority on holy magic.
There would be all sorts of problems with using the dark magic needed right now.
That was why Freyja had brought Yulian, not ‘Shun Isa,’ in the first place.
Meanwhile, Freyja started walking toward the middle-aged healer.
But I stopped her.
“Take me straight to the patient.”
“What? But doing that without a healer present……”
“I have my reasons.”
Who would believe me if I said I intended to treat a demon disease patient with dark magic?
I could see them blocking me, insisting that they could not try such an uncertain method on a patient.
— “Professor Yulian. I acknowledge that you’re an expert in dark magic, but this is a clinic. We can’t permit something like that.”
At the very least, they would stop me and tell me to get permission from the Black Saint first.
By then, the patient would be on the verge of death.
Naturally, I did not like such a frustrating procedure.
So I decided to use a different method.
“Hurry, Freyja.”
“Ah, all right.”
After I pressed her, Freyja led me to the patient.
The patient looked in poor condition when we arrived.
The sheet covering the patient's lower body was stained red, and the apprentice healer guarding them was frantically running IV fluids and blood into them.
I approached the apprentice healer and said,
“They’re calling for you at the station over there. Healer Bine apparently has something to tell you about this patient.”
“Ah, understood.”
The apprentice healer hurried toward the station, flustered.
That left only Freyja and me beside the bed where the patient lay.
Once the apprentice healer was out of the way, I took up a position beside the bed.
Freyja, who had watched what I did, seemed to realize what I intended to do.
“Older Brother, surely you’re not……?”
“Keep them occupied for just two minutes so no one can interfere, Freyja.”
“Older Brother, are you perhaps becoming like Sister Erica?”
I prepared the magic without replying.
What I prepared were a brass-colored holy emblem and steroids.
I took out a hypodermic needle I had pilfered from the nursing station on the way here and injected the steroids into the patient's vein.
‘Let’s use a dose of about 40 mg.’
Next, I organized my knowledge of Crohn's disease in my head and sorted through the formulas.
Crohn's disease.
It was a disease in which the patient's own immune cells attacked the intestines, causing the epithelium to slough off.
As the epithelium peeled away, the intestines became highly vulnerable to infection, while reduced intestinal motility left them susceptible to various diseases.
The biggest problem was that if this inflammation kept recurring, the colon would gradually weaken and could eventually perforate.
That was why I was trying to treat it this thoroughly.
‘NF-κB and AP-1…… genes…… This should be right, shouldn’t it?’
The important point here was that if I constructed the formula exactly as I had for Freyja, the patient would die.
The colon was where feces were stored.
But if I killed all the immune cells there, it could lead to a serious infection later.
So I had to keep the cells alive and adjust the magic to target only the erroneous signals.
‘The formula is far more complicated than it was for Freyja.’
As a result, it took some time to construct the formula.
Once I had completed it, I prepared the same dark magic I'd used on Freyja for the patient.
With the holy emblem submerged in a basin of holy water, I clasped my hands and muttered as if in prayer.
“Sacrifice yourself once more. Apostle.”
Finally, I fervently wished for the patient to be cured.
I tried my best to feel compassion by imagining as much as possible what this old man's story might be.
Immediately afterward, I felt the mana drain from my body.
That did not mean it had succeeded.
Magic consumed mana and catalysts even when it misfired.
Since the spell's effects were not visible, I waited for the patient's reaction.
“……Uugh.”
The patient clutched his stomach, cold sweat beading on his brow.
Then the patient's breathing gradually steadied.
Soon, the old man was breathing heavily, his expression relaxed.
It worked.
‘Fuck yeah!’
The moment the magic succeeded, I unconsciously shouted crudely in my head.
I didn't usually think like this, but I couldn't help it this time.
This was the moment my ten-year-long wish had finally come true.
Even if Florence Nightingale or Hippocrates had been standing here instead of me, they would have shouted the same thing inwardly.
‘Now, if I just mass-produce steroids and train healers specializing in demon disease…….’
If that happened, the title of the first person to cure demon disease would be mine—Yulian's.
I was basking in my achievement alone when
“Um…… Older Brother?”
“?”
I heard Freyja's voice calling me from near the entrance to the intensive care unit.
When I turned my head, I saw the healers looking this way near the entrance, with Freyja bound and forced to kneel among them.
Freyja said,
“I held them off for ten minutes.”
“Looks like it took longer than expected.”
Apparently, constructing the formula had taken that long.
The gazes of the healers glaring at me from the entrance were ominous.
Well, I understood why.
Any mage capable of understanding even a little about formulas would realize that I had cast dark magic on the patient.
Besides, this was an emergency ward packed with healers.
It would not be wrong to say that most of the people working here had at least the makings of mages.
And in a place like this, I had suddenly cast dark magic on a dying demon disease patient.
‘No way I was getting a favorable reception.’
Behind the healers, I saw the paladins stationed in the emergency ward for security.
I reached out toward the paladins and said,
“I have not an ounce of shame over my choice.”
Click.
The handcuffs snapped shut.
I welcomed this misunderstanding.
The deeper the misunderstanding, the greater the impact when it was overcome.
‘They say it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.’
That was how Freyja and I headed to the holding cell side by side.
On the way there, the proud smiles never left the faces of the Nihirit siblings.