Chapter 81
*
Archbishop Raymond Lyelik.
To summarize his life, it was as follows.
He began his service as an army medic on the Western Front.
Recognized for his achievements at the front, he rose from military medical officer to become the Imperial family's personal healer.
And five years after becoming a personal healer.
The Imperial family released him in response to his earnest request to care for ordinary people in accordance with God's will.
Afterward, he took charge of all the treatment centers and cathedrals in the Imperial capital as its diocesan bishop.
People called him ‘the Lord God's most faithful servant.’
Archbishop Raymond liked the nickname quite a lot.
Whether he was kneeling in the mud of the West or on a silk carpet,
he always held one conviction in his heart.
‘The Lord's servant must always remain among the Lord's flock.’
His life was, so to speak, that of the eldest son who had worked most faithfully in the Lord God's courtyard.
The scriptures said that the eldest son must help his father and watch over his siblings.
The fine clothes and abilities bestowed upon the eldest son had been given by his father for that very purpose.
So he had always lived a life that guarded against pride and served others.
The scriptures also said that the eldest son did not demand wages.
That it was enough for the eldest son simply to guard his father's house.
So he had always lived a life that pursued the Lord God's will before wealth.
Raymond had always tried to live according to God's will, and took pride in believing that he did so.
It was five years ago that he first heard the name Shun Isa.
The man in the crow mask who was said to keep performing miracles of healing that healers could not accomplish.
The Church's initial reaction was wariness.
Because someone unaffiliated with the Church had trespassed into their territory.
But Shun Isa soon supplied all the medicines he developed exclusively to healers affiliated with the Church.
— “Medicine can become poison depending on how it is used. Our trading company will strictly regulate it so that no one other than professional healers can handle medicine.”
Shun Isa taught every technique he developed exclusively to the Church's treatment centers.
The Church immediately lowered its guard toward Shun Isa.
The man they had thought would oppose healers was instead their staunchest supporter.
Shun Isa's actions continued to win their favor after that.
Whenever he developed a medicine, he always requested the Church's cooperation.
He hired healers with nowhere to go at his clinics and opened his own purse to provide treatment for commoners.
He taught countless secret techniques that could easily have been kept as family secrets, freely and without any conditions.
The Church had no reason to dislike Shun Isa.
Before long, their wariness had turned into gratitude.
As both a healer and a diocesan bishop, the archbishop also admired and respected Shun Isa.
But at the same time, he envied him.
‘Why him?’
He had always been the Lord's faithful servant and eldest son.
He believed that because he had served God faithfully, God had bestowed these abilities upon him.
But Shun Isa had not.
He had never sat at the Church's table.
He had never once spoken the Lord's name.
He had never knelt in a sanctuary, opened a prayer book, or fasted.
And yet the Lord God—
‘Why have You bestowed power upon someone like that, rather than upon me and the priests who have prayed all our lives?’
It was as if the fatherly Lord God loved Shun Isa more.
That was why the archbishop envied Shun Isa.
Like the jealousy of an eldest son whose parents' love had been taken away by his younger siblings.
‘I have prayed for more than fifty years. Why is this vessel still like this?’
At such times, he often placed a hand over his chest and lamented that way.
After lamenting, as he always had, he covered the place where jealousy had been with prayer.
Ashamed of his own pettiness.
Then, one day.
‘Triage… I see….’
News arrived that the extermination expedition had suffered catastrophic losses at the hands of a variant beast.
As diocesan bishop, Raymond hurriedly sent official requests for cooperation to the other treatment centers.
After requesting the cooperation of every treatment center, he checked the clock and found that two hours had already passed.
‘I must hurry.’
He urged his aging body onward and climbed into the carriage.
And on the way to the northern gate.
He heard about the situation at the scene from his attendant priest.
“They say Director Shun is holding out at the scene on our behalf, leading the clinic healers.”
That man again.
“And they say he proposed a new classification method there called triage.”
Triage.
A classification method completely different from the existing system of classifying patients.
Under the existing system, the priority of the wounded was often determined by hierarchy and title.
This was for the strategic reason that the life of one Tier 1 person was more valuable than the lives of three Tier 0 people.
But Shun Isa's triage proposed an entirely different standard.
The more urgent person first, rather than the person who could endure longer.
The Tier 0 patient who might die soon before the Tier 1 patient who would not die right away.
The logic behind this method was simple.
Change the order.
And give up neither the Tier 0 nor the Tier 1 patients.
It was a perfect answer strategically, doctrinally, and academically.
So perfect that he wondered why no one had ever proposed such a method before.
‘Why have I never thought of something like this?’
Once again, feelings of jealousy began to raise their heads.
He wanted to make this achievement his own.
A method occurred to him as well.
It was a simple matter of taking over command in the name of the diocesan bishop.
If he took command at the scene this time.
History would record Archbishop Raymond's name, not Shun Isa's, as the person who applied triage in the field.
History and records tended to focus on what was visible.
The archbishop knew this well, having studied and pored over the scriptures throughout his life.
But.
‘Good heavens…. The viper is raising its head again.’
He shook his head and cast off the temptation.
It was something he must not do.
It would mean disappointing the Lord God as both eldest son and servant.
He steeled his heart.
‘At this scene, I must be a healer and nothing more.’
While reassuring himself that way again and again, he arrived at the scene.
The scene was utter chaos.
Insufficient personnel. Insufficient resources.
And yet the healers and rescuers were struggling on.
Reflecting once again on how he had been blinded by vainglory, the archbishop headed for the Guild building.
“Make way! Move!”
“We are the Church's healing dispatch unit! Please open a path!”
Walking along the path opened by his attendant priests, the archbishop entered the Guild building.
And when he stepped inside,
he was finally able to see him.
The man with the crow's beak—Shun Isa.
‘This is the first time I've seen him in person.’
The archbishop barely managed to suppress the emotion welling up inside him as he spoke to Shun Isa.
“On the way here, I heard the general details from the other healers. A triage classification system, you say. What an excellent system.”
— Hand over command to me.
The words rose to the very tip of his tongue.
— I am the diocesan bishop of the capital archdiocese.
— I am a former Imperial personal healer.
— I want my name to remain on the first page of this historic moment.
— Because I have devoted my entire life to it.
— Because I am growing old.
— Because I want to be remembered by history.
Barely suppressing his ugly vainglory, he spoke his next words.
“If I may ask, what am I supposed to do here?”
After asking, he felt relieved inside.
He had managed not to succumb to temptation today as well.
But the next moment.
Shun Isa made him an unbelievable proposal.
“Archbishop.”
“Yes?”
“Then from now on, would you take command of triage at the scene?”
“—?”
Raymond held his breath for a moment.
Had Shun Isa somehow read his mind?
The archbishop could not help asking.
“…Then what will you do, Director?”
“It looks like I need to return to my main job.”
The crow's beak briefly turned toward the red and black flags.
The archbishop could not speak for a moment.
He wanted to accept immediately.
It was a chance to leave his name in that historic moment.
But as a man of religion, he could not bring himself to accept while being driven by vainglory.
So he refused once.
“Director. I do not know why, but I do not think this is a position I should take. You created this classification system, so would it not be right for you to continue directing it as well?”
“No. I created the classification system, but I am lacking in too many ways to apply it to reality.”
But Isa's attitude was unyielding.
“I do not know how far healing magic can reach. That is because I cannot use divine magic. My perspective is not particularly broad, either. I have no experience commanding on a battlefield, and I do not properly know how to distribute resources.”
These were his sincere feelings.
Until now, he had somehow managed to direct the scene.
But that had reached its limit as well.
Shun Isa knew very well how inadequate he was as a triage officer.
His triage classification system was based on twenty-first-century South Korea, where divine magic did not exist.
But in the current situation, those standards were not correct.
Equipment, personnel, and the miracles available to them.
The standards for classification differed in every respect.
“I could create the initial framework for triage, but I cannot complete it. That is why I need your help, Archbishop.”
The triage officer they needed now was not a twenty-first-century doctor.
What they needed was someone with experience on countless battlefields in this world, someone who had led countless healers.
“And, as it turns out, I am better suited to saving people with my own hands.”
But there was one biggest reason.
After all, he could perform best as the leader of the treatment team, not as a triage officer.
“So please classify the patients in your own way, Archbishop. I will save the people under the red flags.”
“….”
The archbishop stared silently at Shun Isa for a while.
‘I had misjudged him.’
He had thought Shun Isa was merely a lucky genius.
He had even envied him, wondering why the gods had given this man abilities greater than his own.
But,
‘He never needed to belong to the Church in the first place.’
Now he thought he understood.
Why the gods had bestowed such genius upon him.
Altruism.
The spirit the doctrine emphasized so strongly was something Shun Isa practiced naturally.
Hierarchy, fame, title.
That sublime desire to save people purely, without caring about anything in the secular world.
How could anyone not respect that nobility?
Now he understood why the gods loved him.
It did not matter that he was outside the Church.
Surely it meant that the gods wanted him to accomplish something outside the Church.
“…I understand, brother.”
His jealousy melted away like snow.
In its place was pure respect.
“I will direct the scene. May God's will be with you, brother.”
*
Julian — Before Shun Isa changed his position to treatment team leader.
He entrusted the archbishop with a few things.
“Now that the standards have changed, you and the other healers will need to reclassify the patients.”
“Understood, brother.”
Triage was a highly fluid classification system.
Depending on the situation at the scene, it was not unusual for patients to move between yellow and red.
“The classifications must be reassessed at least once every ten minutes.”
In addition, the triage officer had to recheck the patients periodically.
A patient in the yellow section could suddenly worsen, while a red patient could receive treatment and become yellow.
This was also why Shun Isa had found it difficult to focus on treatment.
Classify, treat, command, then reclassify again.
Of all those tasks, the reclassification work had been especially holding him back.
But now that was over as well.
“Lastly, this is the most important thing.”
Shun Isa said, pointing at the black flags.
“Before classifying someone as black, contact me once if they are still breathing.”
“Pardon?”
“I trust your judgment, Archbishop, but even so, I do not want to give up on a patient I might be able to save.”
“You mean….”
“The patients I judge to be red should be sent to me.”
It was a bold declaration.
It revealed a confidence that he could save patients from surgeries other healers had no choice but to give up on.
“Are you sure?”
“I have handled patients worse than this.”
Julian was confident.
Obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, internal medicine.
None of those were his specialties.
That was why he had relied on the logic of a misunderstanding story.
But trauma surgery was different.
‘This isn't a misunderstanding.’
He had operated on a case involving a patient with a bullet lodged in the heart.
And that had been in a world without the miracle of divine magic.
What would it be like in a world with miracles?
“So even if a patient looks hopeless, please contact me at least once.”
“Understood, brother.”
“Then I will prepare at my clinic.”
Shun Isa left those words behind and headed for D Sector, where his clinic was located.
Together with the students they had brought with them.
Afterward, Archbishop Lyelik began classifying the patients with his attendant priests as the triage officer.
“Send this yellow patient to the Plenilunium Treatment Center in Sector 3.”
“I hear the Reinfeldt Treatment Center in Sector 2 has room now. Send only three injured people there.”
“Please contact the Mercure Clinic in E Sector and tell them we are sending two patients.”
When an injured person arrived, they classified them first,
escorted them to a treatment center according to urgency,
and, if necessary, treated them with divine magic on the spot.
The healers had been worried that Archbishop Lyelik might not be able to replace Shun Isa,
but as if to dispel those worries, the archbishop successfully performed his role as triage officer.
His command was even smoother.
“Cast High Heal on this patient and classify them as green.”
“Take turns with the people in the prayer room. Those who still have divine power left should go as well.”
Unlike Shun Isa, he actively incorporated divine magic into triage.
Properly distributing the limited resource of divine power was something he had done countless times on the battlefield.
The archbishop felt quite proud as well.
Although he was merely riding on Shun Isa's coattails, he had still been able to place his accumulated experience atop the foundation Shun Isa had prepared.
It was while the effort to deal with the wounded was gathering momentum.
“This person….”
While reclassifying the patients.
The archbishop's gaze lingered for a moment on a black-flag patient.
A patient with a large claw mark across his abdomen.
His organs were spilling out through the open wound.
Regeneration could save him.
But using it would mean giving up on a hundred patients who could be saved with High Heal.
That was why he had classified him as black….
‘If it were Director Shun….’
He held on to hope and contacted the D-1 Trauma Clinic.
The reply came immediately.
— [Up to three patients.]
If another healer had answered that way, he would have scoffed.
What a waste of divine power.
Had youth driven him out of his mind?
But because Shun Isa had said it, it did not sound like empty boasting.
The archbishop did not deliberate for long.
“Reclassify every black-flag patient with injuries like this as red, then send them to the D-1 Clinic.”
The archbishop's heart was pounding as he said that.
Along with the hope that the tragedies he had been forced to accept on the battlefield until now
might become stories of the past as of today.
***
Inside the D-1 Clinic.
Before the trauma patients sent by the archbishop began flooding in.
I quickly issued instructions to the healers under my command.
“First, when patients arrive, the trainee healers should focus on using Low Heal to keep them alive as much as possible until surgery. And use chloroform for anesthesia before surgery.”
Chloroform.
The second anesthetic I was introducing to this world, after cocaine.
Chloroform had been created quite a long time ago.
Back during the Octagon Incident.
The anticonvulsant I had used while treating the count's newborn had been a sibling of this anesthetic.
The anticonvulsant was called chloral hydrate.
It had originally been created by accident while trying to make an anesthetic.
And after repeated improvements to that anticonvulsant, I finally completed the anesthetic I wanted.
“You need to finish preparing the patients for surgery before I begin. Time is life, so please cooperate fully.”
““Yes!””
The healers prepared to receive the patients who would soon come pouring in.
And amid that chaos.
I nodded toward Aila.
“Student Aila, how much longer do you think you can keep using Refresh?”
“I’m not sure, but I think I can use it as long as I have the strength.”
“Good. Then come into the operating room.”
Aila, who still had divine power to spare, went into the operating room.
Her friends, whose divine power had been depleted, had work to do as well.
I took one of them along to assist in the operating room and stationed the other three beside the various healers in the emergency room.
In a situation like this, you can never have too many hands.
A few minutes after Aila had been standing in the corner of the operating room like a folding screen.
The patients sent from the scene began flooding into the D-1 Clinic.
“Director, we have a patient! Male in his thirties, with multiple penetrating wounds and lacerations across the abdomen caused by a beast's claws. In particular, there are four deep lacerations in the right upper abdomen and left flank, and a considerable portion of the small intestine has prolapsed outside the abdominal cavity.”
Healer Kou gave a quick briefing.
He normally specialized in diabetes.
But that did not mean he could not treat other patients.
After all, every healer at this clinic had to rotate through the emergency room as a basic requirement.
That man had once worked with me in the emergency room as well.
So I made him my surgical assistant.
“There is extensive bruising and swelling on the back, apparently caused by blunt trauma, with signs that he struck a wall or the ground hard while being thrown. His consciousness is clouded, and there has not yet been massive leakage of intestinal contents, but there is a very high possibility that claw fragments remain in the abdominal cavity. He is at high risk of rapidly progressing to multiple organ failure.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve worked with you, Mr. Kou. I like how clean your briefings are.”
“Thank you, Director.”
“We’ll perform an immediate laparotomy.”
As soon as I confirmed that the patient was anesthetized, I prepared to open his abdomen.
Before that, there was one thing I had to do.
“Student Aila’s friend. What was your name?”
“Joel, Director.”
“I’m busy right now, so we need someone to call the time-out. Can you keep track of the time?”
“Understood!”
“Then I’ll call the time-out. Male in his thirties, 9:14. Let’s begin the surgery.”
First, I did not force the prolapsed intestines back inside. I wrapped them in water-moistened gauze and gathered them on the right.
Then the scalpel began opening the patient's abdomen.
“Student Aila. Refresh.”
“Yes. Casting Refresh.”
The small bleeds caused while opening the abdomen were stopped by her Refresh.
Normally, we would burn the flesh with a Bovie (*electric cautery) to stop the bleeding.
Here, Refresh took its place.
That saved one minute.
“Mr. Kou, suction the blood. I’ll pack.”
“Suction.”
While Kou drew out the blood pooled inside the abdomen,
I pushed four gauze packs into the abdomen.
One each in the upper right, upper left, lower right, and lower left.
Since serious bleeding often occurs in these areas, you press them with gauze whether you can see the bleeding or not.
“Heal. Low Heal. Stop at hemostasis; don’t regenerate the blood vessels.”
“Heal.”
Normally, you need time to apply pressure with gauze and wait for hemostasis.
But Low Heal skipped that step.
That saved three minutes.
“I’ll perform an internal assessment. Grade 2 splenic rupture, laceration of the right hepatic lobe. Blunt trauma to the back and associated arterial rupture confirmed. Three lacerations in the small intestine. We’ll start with the spleen.”
Should I perform a splenectomy?
It seemed a shame to remove it for only a grade 2 injury.
“First, I’ll check its responsiveness to divine magic. Student Aila, Refresh.”
“Refresh.”
There was no response.
Unfortunately, we had to cut it out.
There was no point clinging to false hope and letting the patient cross the River Styx, so I began the splenectomy immediately.
I gently lifted the spleen, then tied off the vessels.
After double-ligating the splenic artery and vein, snip.
Any minor bleeding along the way was immediately stopped with Aila's Refresh.
‘Dealing with all these tiny bleeds is such a nuisance. This is so convenient.’
This was why I doted on Aila.
So what if Refresh was all she could use?
Normally, tiny bleeds were surprisingly troublesome during surgery.
But it was a waste to use Heal on minor bleeding that could be handled with gauze pressure.
However, things were different when Aila was there.
I had never seen her run out of divine power.
So I could ask her for Refresh without holding back.
Thanks to that, the splenectomy that would have taken fifteen minutes was finished in ten.
“Splenectomy complete. Now let’s treat the aortic rupture. Bovine pericardium patch, please.”
The assisting healer handed me something that looked like a bandage.
Bovine pericardium patch.
A patch made by processing a cow's pericardium.
It could be used to patch a torn aorta or heart.
It was also something I had often used in my previous life.
Snip, snip.
I cut the patch to fit the torn aorta, then stitched it in place.
And once again, Heal.
“Good. The aortic rupture is treated as well.”
Two serious problems had already been solved in a flash.
Next were the liver and small intestine.
Neither of these was difficult, either.
Pack with gauze, cut away the parts that seemed impossible to save,
and Heal.
That stopped all the bleeding.
“Now let’s irrigate.”
Then I rinsed out the inside of the abdomen once with holy water,
“I’ll perform temporary abdominal closure. Gutta-percha, please.”
Gutta-percha.
I began heating the sheet made from tree sap.
I covered the open abdomen with the sheet softened by heat and secured it with sutures.
The reason for leaving the abdomen open was the same as the reason we had not replaced the skull during a craniotomy.
The organs inside the abdomen were severely swollen.
If we closed the abdomen in this state, the organs could press against one another and become necrotic inside.
So we left it open like this and placed something over it.
At least until the swelling went down.
“We’ll perform the reconstruction in three days.”
We postponed the surgery to reconnect the severed organs for several days.
Surgery places a burden on the patient's body.
If we performed everything from hemostasis to reconstruction in a single day, the patient might not survive it.
Therefore, today we would focus on keeping him alive.
Also known as Damage Control Surgery.
A surgical method popularized by the GOAT professor of trauma surgery in twenty-first-century South Korea.
“All right, then we’ll finish the surgery. Student Joel. Please sign out.”
“…Yes?”
“I’ll do it. 9:35. Surgery time: 21 minutes.”
Every healer in the room except Kou stared at me, stunned.
They had not expected me to save a patient who supposedly needed the miracle of Regeneration in just twenty minutes.
Using nothing but Low Heal and Refresh.
In the middle of those gazes, I savored a moment of euphoria.
‘See? If I focus only on treatment, I can save someone with a pierced abdomen in about twenty minutes.’
That was why I had told them to reclassify patients like this from black to red.
A surgery that would normally take forty minutes could be cut in half with divine magic.
And Low Heal alone was enough for that.
There was no reason to give up on them.
“Finish this patient, everyone. Mr. Kou, Student Aila, and Student Joel, move to the next operating room.”
We could reduce the time even further by running the operating rooms like a factory.
The keyword factory might conjure up the negative image of a factory-style hospital, but this was, surprisingly, a recognized operating method in trauma surgery.
Staggered Operating.
An operating-room system used in trauma medicine.
While surgery is underway in one room, the next team prepares the following surgery in another room and begins opening the abdomen.
Then I enter the next room and take over, while the preparation team moves on to the next patient and begins preparing again.
This way, we could save another ten minutes or so.
For patients whose survival depended on every minute and second, these small details often greatly improved the survival rate.
“Student Aila, change into surgical clothes and come straight to the next operating room as well.”
I urged the stunned healers on and moved to the next operating room.
And in the next operating room, I shivered faintly at the cool sensation against my fingertips.
‘Yes. This is the feeling.’
This cool, weighty sensation.
After all, people should make a living doing what they are good at.