Chapter 30
*
Long ago.
Back when I was a young man who had just graduated from medical school in 21st-century South Korea.
I went camping on a graduation trip with a few of my close classmates.
One of my classmates said this on that trip.
— “This FireSteel seems defective. It won't light.”
— “Idiot. Who the hell scrapes it against fresh wood?”
— “What are you talking about? It's camping, so of course you have to light the wood on fire. Then where are you supposed to light it?”
— “Jungjun, do you really think freshly cut wood would catch fire? If it did, why would there even be a thing called a firebreak forest?”
— “What's a firebreak forest?”
— “Sigh, damn it. Let's not even talk about it. Seriously, how did this guy pass the licensing exam?”
At the time, the guy in charge of the fire had brought nothing for fuel except branches snapped off the trees in his own front yard.
Naturally, freshly snapped green branches he'd cut that morning weren't going to catch fire easily.
Thanks to that one idiot, our group nearly ended up unable to eat the meat we'd brought.
Luckily, a kind newlywed couple at the neighboring campsite was able to trade us charcoal for the meat.
'The even more ridiculous part was that the idiot was the son of a barbecue restaurant owner.'
It was an absurd incident.
And the reason I suddenly remembered that memory was because I could compare the present situation to it.
Magic, in the end, isn't all that different from science.
The fewer conditions or symbols there are, the more mana is needed to activate magic.
You could compare it to how fire magic costs more mana in damp places.
The same goes for curses.
The stronger the caster's mana, or the more sacred the target's status, the more the mana required for the curse rises exponentially.
That's also closely tied to why black mages prefer plague curses.
Just as disease doesn't care about rich or poor, plague curses aren't affected by the target's status.
'This all happened because the concept of immunity hadn't been discovered yet.'
That's perfectly understandable, given that even basic hygiene was lacking.
Belzian, a Rank-2, had probably chosen the plague curse for this reason.
Because the title I carried—Angel of the Brothel District—could function like a kind of sacred status.
On top of that, using smallpox as the catalyst for the plague was an extremely efficient choice.
Smallpox was such a vicious disease that it had even been used as a bioweapon in my past life.
The problem was that he didn't know we were immune to smallpox.
'Because I secretly vaccinated everyone.'
The first thing I did after opening the clinic was give everyone a smallpox vaccination.
In modern medicine, you have to take smallpox prevention as a given before you can even talk about anything else.
The method was cowpox inoculation.
I secretly vaccinated every patient who came in by smearing cowpox pus on their arm.
By the way, I had to do it in secret because, in this world, if I explained cowpox inoculation plainly, I'd be branded a black mage and burned at the stake.
Isn't forgiveness easier than permission?
I'll get permission later, after I've gotten more famous.
Eri and Wangcho had also gained immunity to smallpox through that same method.
'I'd been curious how the plague curse would work on someone who's immune, and I never expected to find out like this.'
I thought, looking at skin so smooth it was hard to believe a curse had just been cast.
Just in case, I asked Eri to confirm.
“Do I feel weird to you?”
“No? You seem healthy.”
Okay.
So it wasn't even the incubation period.
Only after getting that confirmation did I meet eyes with the black mage staggering in the distance from mana sickness.
Belzian's eyes were full of panic.
“What in the world did you do...!”
“Beats me.”
“Please, tell me! How did you dispel my magic!”
Dispel.
It refers to the phenomenon where, if you insert the wrong conditionals into a spell, mana is consumed but the spell doesn't activate.
Taking fire magic as an example, you have to encode the humidity and temperature precisely into the formula to activate it.
If the error is too large, only mana is consumed and no fire catches. That's what we call a dispel.
And in fights between mages, there are techniques that use this phenomenon to neutralize an opponent's magic.
By disturbing the conditions or environment the opponent overlooked, you make it impossible for the spell to activate in the first place.
“Tell me, Mr. Schnabel! Do you have some black-magic knowledge I don't know about!”
Belzian seemed to be under the firm impression that I had dispelled it.
In reality, it was just one condition—immunity—that had happened to be added by chance.
“Please—”
“Wangcho. Shoot him.”
I didn't answer Belzian and instead handed the gun to Wangcho.
Wangcho pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Bang!
The revolver's muzzle spat blue fire.
The silver bullet left a blue trail through the night air as it flew toward Belzian.
“Kuhk!”
Belzian's body was hurled to the far side of the alley.
A red flower bloomed from his shoulder as he fell.
“I missed. Sorry. I'm not used to pistols.”
“It's fine, Wangcho.”
The reason I had Wangcho shoot instead of Otto was because the target was a Rank-2.
Since I didn't know what defensive measures a Rank-2 might have, I had Rank-1 Wangcho pull the trigger.
“I never expected Wangcho to be able to handle him in a single shot anyway.”
And Wangcho's role wasn't to deal with Belzian.
It was to severely weaken him.
“Otto.”
Bang!
The finishing shot was fired at once.
Once again, a blue streak shot toward Belzian.
But the second bullet didn't reach Belzian.
Splat!
Black liquid burst up from Belzian's shadow like a fountain and swallowed the bullet.
The liquid that swallowed the bullet then swallowed Belzian as well, disappearing into the city's darkness.
“Damn it!”
Wangcho snapped his fingers in disappointment.
“Didn't they say you should take even a lion with a single shot? Letting a Rank-2 get away leaves a bad aftertaste....”
“I think it'll be fine.”
I said it gently, as if reassuring the worried Wangcho.
“I hit him once, so there's no need to be too disappointed.”
“But he's still alive.”
“It's a bullet that can leave even a Rank-4 count-class powerhouse permanently disabled if it hits wrong. Even if he survives, he won't be a threat to us anymore.”
The silver bullet's ability wasn't limited to simply neutralizing magic.
If it struck a mage, it injected divine power into the mage's mana circuit.
That divine power remained in the mage's mana pathways like a blood clot in a vein, interfering with the activation of magic for the rest of their life.
What's more, divine power doesn't leave the body naturally, so the only way to remove it is to join the Order and learn holy magic.
The problem is, there's no way the Order would teach holy magic to a black mage.
In other words, Belzian had effectively become someone who'd have trouble casting magic for the rest of his life.
“Practically speaking, he's as good as dead as a mage.”
He might still be able to research magic in some back room, but going into the battlefield or the back alleys for real combat would be impossible now.
For that reason, I didn't think Belzian, who'd fled into the darkness, would be a threat to us anymore.
“Well, that's a relief.”
Still, Wangcho was apparently unsatisfied, and clicked his tongue.
He handed me back the empty revolver.
I put the gun away and walked over to where Belzian had been standing a moment ago.
On the muddy patch where the black liquid had swallowed him and vanished, a single old, thick leather notebook lay there.
I crouched down and picked up the notebook, muddy and stained with blood.
“Huh? What's that?”
Eri, who had been scampering along behind me, tilted her head as she looked at the notebook.
“A grimoire.”
“What's that?”
“A mage's memorization notebook. You have one too.”
“This?”
Eri pulled a crumpled scrap of paper from her pocket.
A scrap of paper she had densely filled with notes to memorize the exceptions.
I nodded as I looked at it.
“If that counts as a grimoire, then I suppose it is one.”
“Then what's written in that old man's grimoire? Surely it's not forbidden knowledge or anything like that...?”
“Nothing like that.”
A black mage's grimoire doesn't contain anything especially blasphemous compared to other mages.
It's just filled with tricks for reciting their incantations.
Just like when people memorize the periodic table with 'su-he-li-be-bung-tan-jil...' and so on.
“And there'd also be Belzian's own research findings in there.”
“Huh? Then why carry something that precious around on you? Wouldn't it be better to keep it safe at home?”
Eri's question was answered not by me but by Wangcho.
“Kid, you study magic and you're saying something that carefree?”
“What did I say?”
“Come on, even a Rank-2 mage can't cram those complicated conditionals and incantations into his head. Each formula has dozens of variables.”
Wangcho said, pointing at Eri's grimoire.
“You can't memorize it either.”
“Uh... well, that's true.”
“Tsk. How lightly is this kid treating magic?”
Wangcho took a pipe out of his coat and put it in his mouth.
He didn't light it, just kept it in his mouth as if chewing on it.
“Usually, mages memorize one or two spells they're most confident in, and carry the rest around with a book tucked under their arm, reading from it whenever they need to remember them. That's why people who can cast spell after spell without a book are called archmages. You're an aspiring mage and you don't even know that?”
Eri tilted her head at Wangcho's explanation.
Then she whipped her head toward me and pointed a finger.
“Huh? Our teacher writes things on the blackboard without even looking at a book, though?”
“Eh. Five or so might be possible if you're a genius....”
“It was thirty! And I said I had to memorize that many too!”
At Eri's revelation, Wangcho's gaze slowly shifted toward me.
I shrugged and nodded.
Who do you think I am?
Three years' worth of coursework in three months or something....
Anyway, a genius.
Wangcho's expression soured at the memory.
“Damn it. Isn't it cheating to have that face and that brain? Please, at least be three centimeters shorter.”
“...?”
“Nothing.”
What the hell. I feel like I just heard something really nasty.
Wangcho awkwardly averted his gaze from me.
Instead, he lightly bonked Eri on the head with a big fist to settle things.
“Ow!”
“Kid, geniuses are called geniuses for a reason.”
Wangcho cleared his throat and finished explaining.
I shifted my gaze from them back to the notebook in my hand.
A precious research journal belonging to a Rank-2 black mage.
It'd be a lie to say I wasn't curious.
But checking its contents could wait until later.
“For now, let's head home.”
These days, it feels like quitting time keeps getting later and later.
I stopped Wangcho and Eri, who were still bickering, and hurried them along on the way home.
“Otto, please get ready to head back up as well....”
That was when it happened.
Cough!
Otto suddenly started coughing nonstop.
Cough! Cough!
He was shaking like a leaf.
Seeing him suddenly start coughing, Eri and Wangcho slowly put some distance between themselves.
“Don't tell me....”
“The curse....”
I immediately put their unease to rest.
“There's no way....”
Otto had definitely also received a vaccination from me.
There was no way he could have been cursed....
Ah.
“Otto.”
“Yes, *cough*.”
“Take sick leave for the time being.”
“Huh?”
“Go home and rest.”
Come to think of it, Otto was the only one whose vaccination had been delayed.
He kept putting off getting treatment from me because he was a bodyguard, and I remember he only got the shot a few days ago.
When he came back after recovering from his torn face, I finally managed to sneak the shot in under the guise of a checkup.
That was roughly four days ago.
In other words, he was the only person here whose immunity to smallpox hadn't fully developed yet.
“Don't tell me... the curse....”
“No, it's probably just a bad cold.”
Because the curse hit before the immunity had settled, the symptoms were probably only showing up a little.
He'd be a lot less miserable than someone who hadn't been vaccinated.
It probably wouldn't be life-threatening.
Still, he'd suffer through it about as badly as the flu.
Given that it was the curse of a Rank-2 mage, it might be just a little worse than that.
Naturally, in a case like this, there was no answer besides natural recovery.
So I prescribed Otto sick leave.
But Otto didn't seem to like that prescription.
“I... I'm fi...ne....”
Thud.
He collapsed before he could finish his sentence.
I sighed, looking at my bodyguard and driver lying on the cold stone floor.
“Wangcho.”
“Yes. I'll lend you a communication device. Rest at the restaurant in the meantime.”
Tsk.
Is this really a bodyguard?
A few hours later.
We were finally able to head home with the head butler, who had come down after receiving our call.