Chapter 85
Inquisition Bureau Propaganda Unit, Office 3.
Colloquially known as the Room of Liars.
Their main job was to publicize saints and saintesses.
It was not a job they could proudly acknowledge in public.
They hid among the people, using a few lies and some magic to distort history.
They generally admitted, quite matter-of-factly, that they were liars.
But if asked whether they took pride in their work, they could nod without hesitation.
Sometimes, a sweet lie was more necessary than a harsh truth.
Someone in this world died every day.
Today, another fiefdom had disappeared in the north.
A knight order had failed to return from the Eastern Kingdom.
Wails echoed through the Western Kingdom.
Amid all those reports, there was one reason people could still bake bread the next morning.
It was thanks to their faith that the gods had not abandoned them, but were sending down their children's children.
That was why they took pride in their lies.
Even if history recorded them as liars who had distorted history.
As long as they could spread the hope of baking bread the next morning, they were ready to bear that condemnation gladly.
But today.
Something happened that slightly cracked their pride.
“… What on earth are we supposed to publicize?”
The chief of Propaganda Unit 3 fell into thought.
The canonization of the Saintess of the Lamp and the Black Saint had recently been decided.
Accordingly, before making them public to the masses,
the Propaganda Unit had begun work on embellishing the miracles they had performed.
But,
— “When they put me beneath the black flag, I knew my fate was sealed. All the humans laid beside me looked like they were in terrible shape, so of course I had to realize it. But then a priestess came over, cast holy magic on me, and prayed for me.”
— “Whenever I felt my eyes closing, she would come back, cast holy magic on me, and cast it again…. At first I was grateful. But as time passed, I began to resent her. It hurt so much.”
— “Then, after who knows how long, the priests suddenly came swarming toward me. They put me on a cart. At the time, I thought they were going to dump me in the incinerator while I was still awake. I even resented the priestess who kept me alive.”
— “Then I fell asleep in the cart, and when I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a bed at a clinic. Later, I asked the healer who saved me, and they said I had been able to hold on until my turn because that priestess kept pouring holy power into me.”
— “What else can I say except that I’m grateful? Truly. Hmm? You think it sounds like a lie? Ha ha, my friend. If you don’t believe me, grab any knight in this parade ground and ask them. There are dozens of people here who survived thanks to that priestess. Dozens.”
Before they could even begin a full-fledged propaganda campaign.
People were already pouring out eyewitness accounts as if they had been bewitched.
At first, the people in the Propaganda Unit regarded this as a kind of mass hallucination.
When multiple eyewitness accounts become tangled together in a chaotic situation, the achievements of many people can sometimes be packaged as one person’s feat.
The Saintess of Victory was a representative example.
A saintess said to have fought across five battlefields simultaneously two hundred years ago.
In reality, her exploits had been created by five entirely different female knights.
As rumors accumulated embellishments over the years, she eventually solidified into a single saintess clad in golden armor.
So when they first heard the story of the northern gate.
the people of the Propaganda Unit had the same suspicion.
But after gathering and cross-checking countless eyewitness accounts.
they reached the conclusion that, while the accounts contained some exaggeration, they were fundamentally true.
— “My little brother said that priestess came to visit me every night while I was hospitalized.”
— “When I was hovering between life and death, there was an angel who pulled me out of that quagmire. This face? Yes! This was the face!”
— “I’m an adventurer, so I’ve spent a lot of time in clinics. Once you lie down in one of those beds, you never know when you’ll open your eyes again, right? But they say that at the clinic where that priestess was, no one stayed unable to open their eyes for more than three days.”
In this world, a hospitalized patient had roughly a fifty-percent chance of ending up in a coffin.
Murky air carrying the smell of filthy water.
Yellowish bedsheets where corpses had lain only a few days earlier.
Twenty-person wards shared with plague patients.
Death was always a companion in a clinic’s inpatient wards.
But the wards remembered by those who had met the priestess—Aila—were completely different.
The scent of flowers placed beside every patient’s head.
White bedsheets washed bright and replaced every day.
There, just before patients closed their eyes again and whenever they opened them, the person they always saw was Aila carrying a lantern.
— “It may sound blasphemous, but I still have to say it. She is unquestionably a saintess.”
The Propaganda Unit had no need to spread propaganda.
A folk belief had already begun to form: if the Saintess of the Lamp passed by and left a flower, that patient would see the sunlight the next morning.
“Chief, do we really need to touch up the achievements of the Saintess of the Lamp?”
“… Let’s leave it alone.”
In the end, the Propaganda Unit discarded the scenario it had prepared for the Saintess of the Lamp.
It felt blasphemous to sully her mystery by meddling with it for no reason.
And the rumors about the Saintess of the Lamp were nothing compared to those about her teacher, the Black Saint.
— “Mr. Schnabel? Ah, he was famous in Limbus Pit to begin with. You see that friend over there who’s blind in one eye? A few days after Mr. Schnabel gave him some medicine, he could see again. What was the medicine called again…. Heparin?”
— “A long time ago. You know that alley over there? It used to be where people who couldn’t walk sat and begged. But you don’t see them there now, do you? Mr. Schnabel used to give those people something. He even made sure they had beans. After that day, all the people who couldn’t walk disappeared from there.”
— “Mr. Schnabel? I know him well. See this scar on my back? I was stabbed here with a knife in an alley once. After that day, I couldn’t walk. But look at me now. I’m a little unsteady, but I can walk somehow, can’t I?”
Before this incident.
When Shun Isa’s hand touched someone, the blind regained their sight and the lame stood and walked.
Those whose bleeding would not stop stopped bleeding, and the possessed stopped convulsing.
Even before this miracle, the miracles he had performed in the slums were too numerous to count.
And at the northern gate this time, the eyewitness accounts of those miracles reached their climax.
— “Shun Isa? Yes. Even if I hid that I was hurt, he found me and treated me anyway. He stuck something like a needle into my chest. There were quite a few friends like me beneath the red flags. I hear a lot of people call that needle the Sacred Nail (a holy nail).”
— “See this? This isn’t my jaw originally. It’s a rib. Amazing, right? I think it’s amazing too. Come to think of it, didn’t the creation myth say that a man was fashioned from a woman’s rib?”
— “…He is a god. He reattached my severed penis. Even after it was attached, there was no problem except for the scar. Do I need to explain further?”
The final eyewitness account bothered him in a strangely specific way.
In any case, the miracles performed by the Black Saint did not end there.
Some of the eyewitness accounts had even come from priests who had watched his exploits from nearby.
— “I’m telling you, it’s not an exaggeration. It’s true! He really opened up the man’s head! I saw it while assisting him with holy magic!”
There had been countless cross-checks.
No matter how they looked at it, it seemed like a mass hallucination.
But the more they verified the accounts.
the more they were forced to conclude that they were true, without exaggeration or misunderstanding.
“… Could drugs have spread through the imperial capital without my knowing?”
“You know that drug cartel was crushed ages ago. They say you can’t get drugs in the imperial capital these days.”
“Then are you telling me to believe this is real?”
The chief pressed his temples firmly.
The Propaganda Unit had taken pride in spreading hope through lies all their lives.
But,
“Oh, my gods. I’m almost afraid to touch this.”
“The cardinal received the report as well, and instructed us not to force the propaganda for no reason.”
This time, their lies were not necessary.
If anything, they were afraid that leaving artificial traces might sully the two saints’ achievements.
In the end, regarding these two saints, the Propaganda Unit decided to minimize any further intervention.
A little propaganda. And a little cognition alteration to protect their identities.
Beyond that, they would not touch the miracles the two had performed.
After deciding on that policy.
the chief of the Propaganda Unit rose from his seat.
“… I feel like attending evening prayers for the first time in a while. It seems the gods haven’t abandoned us after all.”
When one spends one’s time in a position that bolsters faith with lies, one inevitably becomes cynical about everything.
That was because one might begin to wonder whether the faith one believed in was itself an old manipulation carried out by one’s predecessors.
But this time was different.
Pure miracles, without a single lie.
The more he cross-checked them, the more it felt as though the excitement of the faith he had forgotten was awakening again.
In the end, the chief could not bear that swelling emotion and headed for the chapel.
***
The Spring of Those Who Never Returned.
That was what people called the disastrous failure of the subjugation campaign.
About a month after that incident.
“You may be discharged now.”
“I’m truly grateful, Doctor.”
I was finally beginning to have room to breathe.
It had been good to save people with limited resources.
The problem was that, in exchange, my work-life balance had been utterly destroyed.
It couldn’t be helped.
That was the result of trying to replace the miracle of the top-grade healing spell Regeneration with low-grade Heal.
‘Regeneration takes only five minutes.’
I had seen the diocesan bishop, an advanced healer, use it.
A nobleman who had been on the verge of death was fixed up in five minutes flat.
Honestly, I was jealous.
To perform the same miracle, I had to struggle with low-grade Heal for an entire month.
‘I’m clearly the protagonist….’
If I was going to be reincarnated—or possessed—I deserved at least one more cheat.
Of course, I did like the fact that my memory was better than expected and that I had an aptitude for black magic.
Still, I wished they had given me some holy power too.
If they had, there would have been more things I could do.
Well, nothing changes just because I regret it.
Doing my best with whatever I had, even when circumstances were less than ideal, was something I had been doing since my previous life.
Putting my complaints aside, I focused on treating patients that day as well.
“You had your surgery last time and have started eating again, right? Are your bowel movements all right?”
“I have a bit of diarrhea. Is that all right?”
“Yes, that degree is fine. But if it’s too uncomfortable, I’ll give you a potion that’s good for diarrhea.”
One day, as I frantically returned patients to their daily lives.
a message arrived for me.
It was a message from Bishop Lailik.
[Brother. If you happen to have time right now, may I come visit you?]
“I finish treating patients at six. Would that work for you?”
The bishop paused for a moment on the other side of the crystal orb.
[Ah, is Miss Aila there with you as well?]
Miss Aila?
It was strange for the bishop to use an honorific for a mere girl aspiring to become a healer.
But I did not bother asking about it and answered.
“Yes, she’s helping with treatments today. I expect she’ll be with me after six.”
[That works out well. Then I’ll see you at that time. I’m sorry to take up your time, Brother.]
“Not at all. I’ll see you later, Bishop.”
Beep.
With that sound, the crystal orb’s magic cut off.
After that, it was another frantic round of treatments.
I checked the rehabilitation of the patients I had treated,
taught the other healers,
and gave Aila and her friend a little preview of healing studies.
Before I knew it, the time we had agreed on had arrived.
When I finished treating patients and came out into the waiting room, Bishop Lailik was there, wearing purple vestments with a purple cappa (Cappa) draped over his shoulders.
“Bishop?”
“Ah, you’ve finished treating patients.”
The bishop rose from his chair with a faint smile.
Beside him sat a cup of tea gone cold.
How long had he been waiting?
“When did you arrive? If you had told someone on our side, I would have wrapped up my treatments a little sooner.”
“No, no.”
The bishop waved his hands.
“I arrived a little earlier than the time we agreed on. I thought telling you I was waiting in the lobby might make it seem as though I were rushing you through your treatments, so I asked them not to tell you.”
The bishop slowly got to his feet.
I called Aila, who had been caring for patients in the inpatient ward, and showed the bishop to my office.
Inside the office.
Aila and I sat side by side across from the bishop.
“Thank you for making time for me, Brother. You must want to hurry home and rest, so I feel terrible that I’m making you leave work late.”
“Not at all. I’m actually glad to have an opportunity to see you, Bishop.”
“I’m relieved to hear you say that. How have you been lately, Brother?”
“Thanks to your help transferring patients to other clinics, I finally have some breathing room.”
“I’m truly glad I was able to help.”
The bishop wrapped both hands around his teacup.
I asked about the bishop’s circumstances as well.
“May I ask how you’ve been doing, Bishop?”
“It’s getting to be the time when people return to their families, so this is the period of deepest mourning. I’m not at ease either.”
Ironically, the bishop said this was his busiest time of year.
His work as the director of public health, commanding all the clinics in the capital, had ended, and his time as a priest looking after the faithful had begun.
Although the number of victims was said to be extraordinarily low for an incident of this scale, there were still no fewer than one hundred.
Even by the standards of this era, that was hardly a small number.
Memorial services and funerals were also the duties of priests, so the bishop had no choice but to be impossibly busy.
Only after exchanging updates for several minutes did we finally get to the main subject.
“The reason I sought you out, Brother, is that the church would like to ask you for a favor.”
At the bishop’s serious voice, Aila’s shoulders tensed.
By contrast, I was not particularly nervous.
I had a rough idea of what favor he was about to ask.
The bishop took a moment to catch his breath, then spoke.
“As the diocesan bishop, and on behalf of the Holy See of our church, I earnestly ask both you and Aila to accept this request. The church humbly wishes to canonize you both as saints, so please accept.”
The bishop removed his zucchetto and bowed his head.
Aila swallowed a gasp.
“…Hic.”
Then she froze on the spot with a small hiccup.
By contrast, I was utterly calm.
That was unavoidable, because rumors were bound to reach me when I held a director's position in a major merchant guild.
Our guild’s main customers, after all, were healers before they were patients.
I was bound to pick up some vague sense that they were trying to make me a saint.
Of course, that was probably also because the church had not gone out of its way to keep the matter tightly sealed.
Thanks to that, I had finished preparing myself mentally before the bishop even delivered the news.
‘As expected. So is the main story finally beginning according to the original?’
I fell into thought as I looked at the crown of the bishop’s head.
Quinine, insulin, Viagra, etc….
Honestly, I didn’t even know whether these were medicines the protagonist had made in the original story, or whether they were supposed to appear in this time period.
I had simply made them because they seemed possible to make.
So I had always wondered when the original story’s main plot would begin.
I had figured it would probably start once I became an adult.
I never expected it to start like this.
‘So in the end, this is how they mistake me for a saint.’
Of course, their misunderstanding was reasonable.
I was at least aware that the achievements I had established this time were impressive.
If the medical level of this era was equivalent to the nineteenth century, then I had demonstrated surgery and a medical system a full two hundred years ahead of its time.
It was no wonder they were astonished, like characters in a typical overpowered-isekai story.
But,
‘I’m definitely not a saint.’
If I thought about it calmly, I could never be a saint.
For one thing, I couldn’t use holy magic.
Even though my biological parents had been healers, I had somehow been unable to use holy magic.
I had also suffered from minor illnesses fairly often as a child.
So I did not perfectly satisfy the five conditions for being a saint.
And more decisively, I was not a good enough person to be called a saint.
They say even hypocrisy counts as goodness.
But still, I couldn’t exactly call myself a good person worthy of being called a saint.
Saints and saintesses were the GOATs of human history, people whom humanity was meant to hold up as examples for generations to come.
In Korea, that meant people on the level of His Majesty King Sejong or Emperor Chungmugong.
And they wanted to put me in the same lineup as those people?
‘Ugh. That’s a bit much….’
I was just a man who had lived to make money and coast through life.
Comparing me to people like them was crossing a line.
Maybe that was why.
I had acted with that intention all this time.
But now that it had actually reached my doorstep, I found it a little burdensome.
‘Just once.’
I decided I had to refuse exactly once.
That way, I thought, I might feel a little less burdened.
Of course, I knew it would not make the slightest difference.
Still, I thought leaving behind proof that I had said no would make me feel a little less burdened.
“Bishop.”
Archbishop Lailik raised his head.
“I am not a vessel for sainthood. I am by no means a great man worthy of standing among such figures, and I do not wish for the church’s traditions to be broken because of me.”
But as expected.
The archbishop would not let me go, pleading with me earnestly.
“Brother. In my lifetime, I have witnessed countless miracles. I have also seen the miracles performed by the saints and saintesses of this age. But none of them shone as brightly as you, Brother.”
His wrinkled hands clasped both of mine.
“There are those who have regenerated severed limbs, and those who have stopped plagues. But no one has saved such a great number of people. If you do not receive canonization, then who in the future could possibly be worthy of it?”
At those words, I gave a wry smile behind my mask.
As expected.
He was pleading this earnestly; I could not bring myself to refuse.
Even if I rejected him again, he would find some way to persuade me.
In the end, pretending that I could not withstand his earnest plea, I accepted the proposal.
“I understand. Though I am an inadequate man, if my lies can give people hope, if they can give them hope of baking bread tomorrow morning—”
I continued, quoting a verse from Scripture I remembered.
“I shall dare to bear that yoke.”
The bishop’s eyes reddened when he heard those words.
“How can you be so humble….”
I seemed to have caused another absurd misunderstanding.
I did not correct him, not wanting to ruin the mood.
*
There was not much else to the discussion.
The date of the canonization ceremony,
the benefits given to saints and saintesses, and other such matters were listed one after another.
“Saints and saintesses are assigned fourth-rank holy knights for close protection at minimum.”
After all, they were the church’s mascots.
It was only natural that they would receive such treatment.
In addition, their families’ safety would be placed under the church’s highest level of security.
Cognition alteration could also be used if necessary to protect their safety.
Their residences would be moved to Sanctum Hill.
They would receive a carriage and an allowance, and would be treated at least like a marquis wherever they went, along with this and that….
There were a lot of benefits, as though they were insurance riders.
In short, it meant I had risen in status.
“Hic.”
Aila froze on the spot with another hiccup as soon as she heard about the benefits.
In any case, after we finished discussing the canonization.
“Ah, and Brother. I’m truly sorry to bring this up, but—”
The bishop set down his teacup and continued, adding a faint sigh to his words.
“There is a concern I would like to confide in you privately. Would that be all right?”
“If I can help, I would be glad to, Bishop.”
“Ha ha. After bringing you such momentous news, I feel terribly shameless asking for your wisdom yet again.”
The bishop gave a brief laugh.
Before long, that smile turned into a bitter one.
“Lately, healers have been submitting resignations from the capital’s clinics one after another.”
“….”
“The reason is….”
The bishop studied my expression.
I knew what he meant.
The healers who had recently joined our clinic had told me.
Apparently, a wave of resignations among healers throughout the capital had become a trend.
And the reason was, without question, me.
That day.
The healers who had observed the surgeries I demonstrated had returned to their clinics and spread tales of my exploits,
and healers had begun throwing down their resignations and applying to our clinic in order to learn those techniques from me.
We had already received plenty of applications to begin with.
But now the number had far exceeded what our guild could handle.
“I… Of course, I’m not saying this is the Saint’s fault. And I cannot say I bear no responsibility for this situation either.”
The bishop gave an awkward smile.
“The clinic directors are furious because of this. But we cannot exactly scold these healers for burning with a passion to learn…. So I wanted to ask whether we might borrow the Saint’s wisdom.”
At that, I pondered for a moment.
I tried to think of a way to overcome the situation.
For starters, instead of having them come to me, I could visit the other clinics periodically.
‘… That doesn’t seem very useful.’
The clinics and their associated denominations would probably just monopolize the techniques.
That was how this world worked.
With this method, I would have to visit the four major denominations one by one and repeat the exact same material.
It was not only practically impossible, but inefficient.
In the end, the problem lay somewhere more fundamental.
‘As expected, the root cause seems to be the failure of medical education.’
This world’s healing departments had no concept of clinical rotations or residency training.
What students learned at the academy’s healing department was limited to theory and the principles of magic.
A healer did not meet patients directly until after graduation.
To gain experience, they had to find work at a clinic as a low-ranking healer, and connections were necessary to find a proper mentor.
On top of that, each denomination had its own secret treatments.
To a medical scholar trained in twenty-first-century Humboldt education, the system looked incredibly inefficient.
‘As expected, I need to overhaul this part first.’
I had been thinking about it for a long time.
Once I made enough money, I wanted to build a university hospital in my own name.
But I still lacked enough money to build a proper hospital, so I had not been able to put the plan into practice.
Even a university hospital was far beyond what Viagra alone could fund.
The other major clinics were built only after several nobles pooled their resources.
But I decided that if I sold the value of the Saint’s name a little, I might be able to build one with the church behind me.
If things went well, I might even be able to get the imperial family to sponsor it as well.
After finishing my calculations, I cautiously broached the subject with the bishop.
“Bishop.”
“Yes?”
“What would you say to building a new clinic where students from the academy could all learn equally, regardless of denomination?”
And to be honest.
When I was a medical student, I dreamed of training at Johns Hopkins.
I couldn’t because my English wasn’t good enough.