Chapter 35
*
Impostor syndrome.
Many residents experience this psychological phenomenon, and it was something Eri had gone through before as well.
It refers to the tendency to downplay your achievements, even after accomplishing great things, and to look down on yourself.
Put more simply, it means attributing your success to luck rather than effort.
It usually appears in people who have experienced a sudden rise in status.
I’ve had that experience too.
Back when I finished residency and became a fellow.
Once the years piled up and my promotion to professor was practically certain, the way I was treated at the hospital changed overnight.
If I had to describe how I felt back then in one sentence, it would be this.
— Who am I? Where am I?
And now, after being possessed in another world,
I was remembering that feeling after a long time.
‘Huh? Who did you say?’
To put it in terms doctors would understand, it felt like I’d prepared myself for the dean, only for Hippocrates to suddenly show up.
I almost broke character and asked again who he was.
‘If you ask whether I dislike it, the answer is no.’
First of all, let me make one thing clear: I don’t hate rising in the world.
In fact, I’ve been stirring up trouble precisely for the sake of advancement.
I made quinine and extracted insulin, all to enjoy wealth and glory and build my reputation.
I was already prepared for the day some powerful person would try to put a fancy collar around my neck if I stood out too much.
That’s the fate handed to the protagonist of this kind of delusion story.
If a collar was going to be put on me anyway, I just chose the one plated in gold.
‘If I’m going to be a slave no matter what I do, I’d rather be a winning slave than a defeated one.’
So I’d been working hard to rake in as much money and fame as possible before the master who’d hold my leash showed up.
But…
‘But this is way too sudden.’
No matter how you look at it, there should be a reasonable slope on the road to success, right?
Having the apex of the magical world suddenly slap a collar on me feels way too steep.
Usually something like this shows up in the latter half of the story, or maybe the middle at the earliest.
For someone who wasn’t even an adult yet, getting an offer like this felt a little too early.
‘What on earth is this old man seeing in me to act like this?’
Where had this misunderstanding even begun?
Judging from everything so far, I doubted the misunderstanding would ever be cleared up, but I asked anyway because I was curious.
“Why do you want to take me in as your disciple, of all people?”
“Didn’t I say so? I was impressed by your ideas and creativity.”
“But I’m an alchemist. I don’t have even a shred of talent for magecraft.”
“Hmm. I see you’re the type who doesn’t believe in yourself. Tsk, tsk. Why are talented people always like this? Though polishing a rough gem like that is one of the few pleasures left in my old age.”
“?”
The Archmage Louis lifted his teacup.
“I’ll give you reasons to believe in yourself. First, because you do not fear failure.”
That was because I knew I was the protagonist and had already seen the results in advance.
I don’t have the heart of a beast that leaps blindly into failing research.
I only ever touch research that I know will succeed.
But to Louis and the others, it wasn’t strange for me to look like a persistent sort.
“Second, you have the nature to forgive others’ mistakes. It’s a virtue that’s hard to find among young mages these days.”
That was thanks to my experiences in my previous life.
When you work with residents long enough, you naturally learn to look at mistakes with affection.
Once you learn that, you stop getting disappointed.
Because you never expected anything in the first place.
You also learn how to clean up after your juniors’ mistakes.
I forgave Section Chief Shen for the same reason.
He’d stolen silver coins I didn’t mind losing, so I had no reason to be hurt.
That’s why I forgave him.
“Third. You did not turn away from the filthy. Seeking wisdom even in taboo black magic is precisely the quality a mage ought to possess.”
That was because I was a doctor from the twenty-first century.
In the twenty-first century, medicine and poison were not clearly separated.
Every poison could become medicine depending on the dose, and medicine could become poison too.
Even the concept of a vaccine is, strictly speaking, the injection of weakened pathogens, after all.
Depending on the perspective, mishandling it could easily start a pandemic, so it’s a dangerous act.
Still, its benefits were greater, so we just went ahead and used it.
“And fourth, the most important one. You don’t jump to conclusions about things that can be overlooked in daily life. Discovering the symptoms caused by lead must have been possible because you possess such a broad perspective. That is an innate talent. More than anything else, it is the talent a mage needs.”
The last one was definitely a misunderstanding.
If I had discovered it through my own observations, I could accept that.
But in reality, I was just bringing over knowledge from my previous life and talking as if I’d discovered it myself.
I had never carefully observed those things, nor organized and studied them.
I was just freeloading off the knowledge of scholars who came before me.
So if anything, I was the one who should not be deluding myself.
The moment I started mistaking this for my own knowledge, my lack of foundation could be exposed in no time.
“No, elder. I’m merely standing on the shoulders of giants. Even if I look down on the world from up here, it doesn’t change the fact that I myself am a dwarf.”
“Hmm. You even keep arrogance in check. As expected, you have more than enough aptitude to be a mage.”
But my sincerity seemed not to reach the Great Sage.
Of course, being the Great Sage, he did clearly see through the essence of it.
In the end, that subtle misunderstanding had just thrown things a little off course.
Just as I thought. Since this is a misunderstanding story, explaining things won’t clear it up.
In the end, I decided to accept my fate.
Still, for the sake of my character, I played hard to get once.
“I’m sorry, elder. But I don’t have the sense to keep track of my surroundings. I’m fated never to become a mage.”
“I know. Ever since I entered the room, you’ve been changing the conditions from time to time. Other mages might have complained about the confusion, but you didn’t seem to notice.”
Sigh.
As expected of a Great Sage who has lived for a thousand years.
He knew everything without me having to say it.
“In any case, it wouldn’t matter if you had no talent for magecraft. I wasn’t asking you to become a mage. Do you remember my proposal?”
“It was to become your disciple.”
“Exactly. I said to become my disciple, not to walk the path I walked.”
“Then….”
“You may continue on the path of alchemy. I simply want to lend you my wisdom. I’m curious what new horizons you’ll open.”
The one-eyed old man smiled broadly.
There was no logical way to wriggle out of it.
There was no reason to refuse here either.
If anything, this was a situation where I should gratefully accept.
“Understood, elder.”
“Good. Then I’ll come here once a week. Each time, I’ll teach you the knowledge you need.”
“Am I not supposed to go to the imperial palace or the magic tower?”
“Ho ho. My boy, I was taken with your free-spirited thinking. What I want to see is a bird soaring through the sky, not a bird trapped in a cage. If necessary, I can arrange a visit, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, does it?”
At the old man’s words, I nodded.
I still had too much left to learn at Limbus Pit.
I hadn’t even recovered all of my skills from my previous life yet.
It was far too early to head for the imperial capital or the magic tower.
Fortunately, I’d managed to avoid being thrown out into the world before I was ready.
There was just one surprising thing.
‘I was prepared for the leash event.’
But unlike what I expected, the Great Sage was a man with a free way of thinking that didn’t fit the times.
No, come to think of it, after living for a thousand years, maybe this kind of flexible thinking is more appropriate.
‘Then in the original story, was I not a character tied down to the magic tower?’
Maybe I had been mistaken after all.
The master holding my leash might not have been the magic tower.
Then maybe the original story had some duke or royal grabbing hold of my leash.
‘Or maybe it’s because I’m not an adult yet.’
Adults have legitimate ways of being leashed, like being a graduate student or a lifelong chancellor, but putting a collar on a child who isn’t fully grown would count as child abuse.
That might be why they’re holding off on putting a collar on me.
Still, in a world where children’s rights are practically nonexistent, that seems unlikely.
While I was thinking such silly thoughts, the Archmage Louis rose to his feet.
“Yes. Let us change how we address each other first. Since we are master and disciple, may I call you by your name?”
“Of course, Master.”
“Good. Do you perhaps need my name? If you want, I can even announce it across the entire nation.”
I considered my master’s offer for a moment, then immediately shook my head.
Too much attention is poison.
Especially when you don’t have the capacity to handle it.
My current level wasn’t mature enough to handle my master’s name yet.
If you were called Louis’s direct disciple, you’d be on the same level as the thirteen tower lords or the imperial family’s direct Archmages.
I was still far too lacking to stand alongside that group.
Of course, there was another reason too.
‘For some reason, keeping it secret seems like it would be more fun.’
No wonder that Cooking King guy went around with an armband, hiding his identity.
Keeping it secret and then revealing it later seemed oddly fun.
I planned to keep it secret not only from Erina Wangcho, but from my family as well.
The fewer people who know a secret, the better the security, after all.
“Then next time, should I go to your laboratory instead of your clinic?”
“Yes. Would it be all right if I saw you after my consultations are over?”
“Let us do that.”
“I’ll give you a key.”
“No need. Who do you think I am?”
“….”
The father of magic, boldly declaring he would trespass without permission.
He was so brazen that I was left speechless.
And of all things, he was Tier 8, so I couldn’t even tell him not to.
“Understood, Master. I’ll come at the appointed time.”
“Good. Then have a good day with your consultations today, Yulian.”
“Ah, before that.”
I called out to my master, who was about to leave the consultation room.
“You should take your medicine with you.”
Regardless of that, what needed treating had to be treated.
***
The highest point in Sanctum Hill.
The magic tower that overlooked the entire imperial capital.
The only place in the entire empire where it was permitted to look down on the world from the same height as the emperor.
The Great Sage Louis Edelhart sat perched on his workshop desk.
“....”
The Great Sage quietly looked down at the tiny glass bottle in his palm.
Pale moonlight from the open window shone on the bottle.
Inside the bottle was a sticky liquid of murky light-brown color.
Turning his head, he saw several more bottles containing that same liquid lined up on the desk.
They were all medicines made by the disciple he had taken in that day.
— “Master, you are currently suffering from chronic lead poisoning. It’s difficult to treat immediately, so there’s nothing for it but to keep taking this medicine regularly.”
The sage who received the medicine bottles at the time asked about the principle behind them.
For some people, 1+1=2 was an obvious truth, but the sage could not rest until he had uncovered the principle behind it.
Thanks to that temperament, he had been able to turn the concept of magic, which had once remained mere folk belief, into a field of scholarship,
and thanks to that curiosity, he was still able to retain the title of sage to this day,
the sage never felt ashamed to ask his disciple questions.
And Yulian welcomed Louis’s questions.
— “Lead sticks tightly to the bones and nerves in the body, so ordinary magic or antidotes can’t expel it. But I found that when you use this medicine, its ingredients bind to the lead inside you and carry it out through urine.”
— “Where did you discover knowledge like this?”
— “Sector E. There was a lead leak in Smoke Alley. I could tell because among the workers there, only the beastkin had mild symptoms. That culture often ate duck eggs or garlic dishes.”
There was no trace of disappointment in Yulian’s eyes as he answered Louis’s question.
Rather, he was admiring him.
He seemed amazed not that the sage didn’t know, nor even that he wasn’t looking down on him for it, but that he could recognize that ignorance so precisely.
‘To think he understands how important it is to know that you don’t know….’
At some point, the Great Sage stopped asking his disciples questions.
In an age when ignorance had become shameful,
the Great Sage was expected to know everything.
It was an age where a master had to surpass his disciples in every way, and the moment he fell short in even one thing, his prestige would be diminished.
Surely this wasn’t the attitude toward scholarship that the Great Sage had once preached.
‘But that boy was different.’
But Yulian was different.
He welcomed his master’s questions and admired not his knowledge, but his wisdom.
Just as the Great Sage had admired Yulian’s attitude.
And thanks to that attitude, Yulian knew knowledge the Great Sage did not.
“Chelate... that was what it was called, I think.”
Louis let out a dry chuckle and flexed his trembling right hand.
He was using magic to suppress the decay of his nerves, but he couldn’t fully control even the slightest tremor.
In truth, Louis himself had long known there was something wrong with his body.
Over the long years, while studying countless magic tools and alchemical arrays, the catalyst he handled most often was lead.
There was no insulator as perfect as lead for suppressing the flow of mana and trapping the vibrations of the soul.
Whenever spirit or summoning magic was used, lead was an indispensable catalyst.
Mages dimly knew that lead slowly gnawed at a person’s blood and sanity.
But they paid it no mind.
It was because of their arrogance in believing magical power would protect their bodies.
Louis was no exception.
For nearly a thousand years, he had kneaded lead with his bare hands and inhaled the fumes of molten lead while seeking the truths of magecraft.
The result was this trembling wrist and the terrible headaches that came from time to time.
Even that had only surfaced recently because his tier was so high.
When other mages developed symptoms like this, they would cut off the wrist and have it regrown with holy magic.
It was a method even the Great Sage used from time to time.
‘And to think there was a treatment like this.’
A treatment discovered by observing everyday life.
Come to think of it, I’d heard quinine and insulin were discovered in a similar way.
The corners of Louis’s mouth lifted.
How many years had it been, he wondered.
Since he had last seen someone who did not simply pass over the obvious as obvious.
He had always taken only such people as his direct disciples.
Because of that exacting temperament, the line of his last disciple had ended fifty years ago.
‘The emperor will be pleased.’
Louis opened the bottle and swallowed the powder and pills inside.
Louis grimaced briefly at the dreadful bitterness.
But he managed to swallow the supplements.
He had been told they were supplements he absolutely had to take after using the medicine prescribed by Yulian.
‘The name of that medicine was….’
Dimer… what was it again.
Dimercaprol? Dimercarol?
He couldn’t remember clearly.
It was because the name was unfamiliar.
Maybe his mind had grown dull from the lead.
But it didn’t matter.
He could simply ask his disciple again in a few days.
In fact, the thought that he might be able to ask other questions based on this made his heart race.
‘To think that, in my old age, I found a disciple with not a shred of mage talent.’
He couldn’t tell whether it was a prank of fate or the arrangement of a god.
But one thing was certain: from now on, his weekly trips to that shabby clinic in Limbus Pit would be thoroughly enjoyable.