Chapter 22
*
At the very moment Julian was loading silver bullets into the chamber.
Erica, lying on the floor, bit her lip at the cold sensation on her cheek.
A metallic tang spread through her mouth.
Pathetic.
She had wanted to be of help.
To the one person in this filthy world who had acknowledged her.
Of course, this situation had not been caused by her own mistake.
She had done everything she could, given her age.
The other side had simply been the problem.
But her young heart could not easily accept reality.
Tears blurred Erica's vision.
The sight of her own red blood scattered across the floor felt like useless filth, and she couldn't bear it.
Blood running down her forearm.
The revolver dropping to the floor.
The white-faced sneer looking down at her.
For a moment, everything felt like something happening in another world.
Then, warm and gentle words reached her ears.
- [— Child.]
A woman's voice, somehow nostalgic and yet carrying an authority she could not defy.
- [Don't let them take what you cherish most away.]
It felt as though the voice were guiding Erica.
Erica, following that sweet guidance, brought her lips to her torn wrist as if in a trance.
Lick.
The blood on her tongue burned hot as it slid down her throat.
Her lips began reciting a sentence of their own accord.
“「...Bones to the white-bone throne,」”
Erica staggered and forced herself upright.
The skin on the back of her hand swelled outward.
It tore through the skin, and white fragments burst out.
“「To the one who offered them, the recompense...」”
They were too short to be claws, too blunt to be spikes.
White fragments took shape in a form closer to knuckles.
Seeing this, Julian's eyes went wide.
Because it was unquestionably a magic incantation.
“「And so, with my remnants, I shall break their pillars.」”
Swish.
She swung her fist toward Kaski's left neck.
The white clown, distracted by Julian's gun, reacted too slowly to the attack.
The spike attached to her knuckle tore through the clown's neck as it passed.
“Kkhh…!”
Kaski screamed and stumbled backward.
Kaski groped at his wounded neck.
For him, fortunately or not, the wound had transferred to one of his subordinates.
The clown let out a sigh of relief and sneered at Erica.
“I-I was a little surprised. But, th-that won't... hehe... and besides, I still have Kläu... er... underlings....”
At that moment, Kaski's speech began to tangle.
“H-huh...? My tongue... what's wrong with it...? I still have underlings....”
His pronunciation slurred as if he had been given an anesthetic injection.
One corner of his tightly stretched mouth went slack, losing strength and drooping.
Only then did Kaski realize that his body was not normal.
“I... my body... i-it's weird....”
He hurriedly groped at his own face.
There was no sensation on the left side of it.
Soon, the grip of the left hand holding the jackknife loosened.
Thud. The knife fell to the floor.
Kaski lost his balance and staggered to one knee.
“U...uh...?”
Kaski drooled and swayed like a broken doll.
The terrified clown's eyes darted back and forth between his paralyzed body and Erica's weapon.
Erica, too, stared blankly down at her crumbling snow-white knuckles.
“Huh...?”
“It's magic.”
Julian patted Erica on the head.
He pieced together the symptoms while looking at Kaski writhing on the floor.
Hemiplegia. Dysarthria. Facial paralysis.
Classic acute cerebral infarction symptoms caused by embolism.
Julian knew of magic that could cause such a phenomenon.
“A bone-manipulating spell....”
More than likely, it was a form of occult magic.
He didn't know which family's magic it was, though.
“Its performance is vicious.”
From the way it was collapsing without ever striking anything, Julian could figure out the spell's purpose.
Judging by its durability, those knuckles were not magic meant to face spears or swords.
Rather, it was magic meant to collapse the moment it was created.
The collapsing knuckles, the moment they passed through an enemy's blood vessel, injected bone fragments and bone marrow into that vessel.
And once those bone fragments and that marrow flowed through the bloodstream, they would act as a vicious poison no antidote or healing magic could cure.
“A spell that causes embolism, huh....”
Fat embolism.
A disease in which bone fragments, or fat, travel through blood vessels and block vital organs.
Erica's magic was a spell that artificially induced that kind of disease.
Having finished his deductions, Julian's crow mask turned to Erica with concern.
“Erica. Did you by any chance do exception handling?”
“Huh? Eh? Exception handling?”
“I see.”
He took a syringe and a small vial from inside his coat.
The vial of clear liquid sloshing inside it bore the label [Heparin].
Julian pulled Erica's arm and inserted the needle into a vein.
“Ah! That stings!”
“For the time being, let's keep you on heparin steadily. The fight isn't over yet, so there's still a bleeding risk, but to me your magic looks far more dangerous.”
“Why? Did I break imperial law or something?”
Looking up at Julian with a tearful face, Erica
still didn't understand what he was saying.
Julian chuckled at her adorable reaction and shook his head.
“No, not that. It's because you didn't do exception handling.”
“Excep...tion handling?”
“Magic only activates according to the formula written in the spell. It never comes with some function that automatically avoids you or your precious people.”
Every spell can have side effects.
Fire magic carries the risk of burns and elevated body temperature; lightning magic contains the risk of shock and nerve disruption.
That was why <exception handling> was a concept every mage had to learn before ever activating magic.
A basic principle, one might say: writing the conditions so that you or your allies are excluded as targets.
In coding terms, it was the same as learning conditionals before inserting a negation.
But among them, there were always some who handled magic without ever going through that basic process.
“Novice mages without a master don't know that. That's why many of them end up with irreversible disabilities the first time they demonstrate magic.”
Erica's magic also carried that kind of danger.
It seemed she also didn't really understand exception handling.
So just as she had caused Kaski to suffer a stroke, she herself was also at risk of one.
“Then I....”
“You don't need to worry. I gave you medicine, didn't I?”
Julian said this while pressing firmly on the spot where he had given the injection.
The expression that had been clouded with worry a moment ago relaxed considerably.
That was when he was carefully checking Erica's condition.
“T-Teacher...”
A white-faced clown, drooling saliva from his mouth, called out to the crow doctor.
“P-please, treat me too...”
“….”
The lenses behind the crow mask stared silently at the clown.
“I, I want one too...”
“…Understood.”
Julian nodded, filled a fresh syringe with medicine, and approached Kaski.
*
As Julian had done with Erica, he administered heparin to the white-faced clown.
Feeling the stinging pain in his right arm, the clown silently rejoiced.
As expected, a healer who came down to a cesspool like this would act this way.
Kaski's boss—Narenkönig—had said that healers with this kind of belief were the most profitable.
Maybe it was because of that naive faith.
They would lock him in a room and, as long as patients were brought in, he would treat them without refusing.
There was no need for threats or sweet talk.
Even if they kidnapped him and put shackles on him, he'd move exactly as they wanted on his own.
Heh heh. What should I have him do first?
Kaski fell deeper into thought.
Should he make him heal the ones who were broken by accident while carving the artworks?
Fixing the ones that had been damaged and then resold didn't sound bad either.
Sending him out secretly to VIP nobles who never wanted their bizarre tastes exposed also sounded nice.
Ah, come to think of it, he had fixed the piece he'd just made in an instant too.
Since he seemed to know that field well, asking him for advice on how to make the artworks didn't seem like a bad idea.
“T-thank you... Teacher....”
Kaski thanked Julian while drooling like a fool.
Once the paralysis was gone, he could take this naive and foolish doctor back to H Sector.
“No, Teacher... why would you...”
Erica, with a bewildered face, stared at Kaski from over Julian's shoulder.
The clown forced his facial muscles to move, sneering at her in mockery.
“Ahihihi….”
Whether Julian knew Kaski's inner thoughts or not, he looked down at him and whispered.
“By the way, do you know something?”
“…?”
“There's actually no study showing that heparin is effective for fat embolism syndrome. Back in the old days they used to give it in the hopes of grabbing at a straw, but even that was removed from the 21st-century guidelines.”
“What do you mean?”
“Heparin is for prevention, not treatment. To put it more simply, unlike Erica, time is the medicine for you.”
Having finished his explanation, Julian stood up.
With the left hemisphere of his brain still paralyzed, Kaski could not properly understand Julian's words.
Julian checked the clock.
Then he continued, looking outside the clinic.
“Of course, if you still have any time left.”
“Huh?”
Thud.
The instant Julian's hand moved away.
A heavy hand settled on Kaski's shoulder.
It was rough and boorish, devoid of any etiquette or refinement.
“Hey. Even in the gutter, there's a code. Don't you think messing with a clinic is crossing the line?”
It was a voice Kaski knew.
His head creaked as he turned it around.
“Tao... Chen...”
“Listen to that pronunciation, bastard.”
Boss Taochen.
A line of cold sweat ran down Kaski's forehead.
Behind Kaski, the remaining lackeys hurriedly raised their weapons.
The Boss swept a glance over the lackeys.
“Knock it off, you lot. I'm tired.”
He didn't bother hiding his annoyance as he took a leather pouch from inside his clothes and shook it out onto the floor.
Clatter.
Eight blackened red noses, stained with fresh blood, rolled across the floor.
Just that was enough to crush the lackeys' morale, and they lowered their weapons.
“What the hell, why did you set up so many clown bastards on the way here?”
“Hiiieeek…!”
Kaski's face also turned pale.
“H-how... could you... get that many... so quickly?”
“Hey. What, is Tier 1 some dog's name? Trying to trip me up with nothing but a toughness-enhancing procedure and a bunch of numbers—have you no shame?”
The Boss grabbed Kaski by the nape.
Kaski struggled.
Naturally, the Boss didn't budge an inch.
Then Kaski drew a jackknife from his sleeve and swung it.
His target was the Boss's nape.
But the Boss didn't even dodge the jackknife and took it straight to the nape.
“Ow, that stings.”
The knife bounced off helplessly.
At the sight of such an absurd scene, Kaski was left speechless.
“Th-tha... that's impossible...”
“Hah. Impossible, my ass. What, did you think the D Sector boss was won by lottery?”
Boss Taochen brushed the knife away as if it were bothersome and twisted Kaski's wrist.
“Aaaagh!”
“Shut up, punk.”
Then he picked up the knife that had fallen to the floor and said to Otto, who was leaning against the entrance and looking this way,
“Brother. Thanks for helping clear a path. But you said this guy was the one who made your face look like this, right?”
Otto, panting hard, nodded with effort.
Boss Taochen smirked and brought the knife to Kaski's mouth.
“Hey, clown. My methods are famous even if I don't say so myself, right?”
“Uwa... uwaaa!”
Splatter.
Blood splattered against the clinic wall.
Kaski struggled in the Boss's grip.
He resisted about four times, but after blood splashed four times, on the fifth he stopped resisting and went limp.
Boss Taochen tossed the now motionless Kaski aside and said,
“Sorry I'm late, Teacher. The clown bastards wouldn't get out of the way on the way here.”
“No, it's fine.”
“I thought it would be fine not to escort you all the way to the exit since Otto was there, but I was too careless. I never imagined those stray dogs would be this bad.... For now, please go to my restaurant. I'll protect you until safety is secured.”
Only then did Julian lower the cocked hammer and let out a sigh of relief.
Then he took two silver bullets out of the revolver cylinder and put them back in his pocket.
“I'm glad I didn't have to use these.”
Silver bullets.
Bullets obtainable only from the temple that neutralize all magical miracles.
These bullets, each worth the price of eight houses, were not something Julian could fire easily.
Honestly, it was the kind of price that made anyone hesitate.
No matter how precious life is, if saving it meant smashing a Rolls-Royce into something, anyone would hesitate for a moment.
Julian was no different.
Even he had no desire to use silver bullets.
Fortunately, thanks to the Boss arriving just in time, Julian didn't have to pull the trigger on an eight-house bullet.
Relieved inwardly, Julian closed the empty cylinder.
Then, instead of bullets, he took out a notebook with the communication frequency written inside and said,
“Ah, if you have a communicator, could I borrow it?”
The special bullets he had were not limited to silver bullets alone.