Chapter 99
*
“Then... if you execute those evil men who clearly defied God's will using a method that itself clearly defies God's will, how would the gods view that? Would they praise the destruction of evil first, or hate the act of blasphemy first?”
“….”
“Please answer me. Between good and evil, which do the gods value more?”
The dilemma Simeon posed.
It was both his complaint and his rebuke toward the gods.
‘Indeed, by that dilemma, either divine punishment is a problem or its absence is.’
If no divine punishment came for that act?
That would mean the gods prioritize good and evil.
But in that case, Simeon would ask again.
Why they stayed silent when the Schnabel couple—my parents—died.
Then what if divine punishment came down on that act?
‘If that happened, then the gods would be beings who prioritize their own authority over good and evil.’
Then the Church's basic doctrine would be wrong from the ground up.
The doctrine that teaches the gods love humans, that is.
If that were the case, would humans still have any reason to serve such gods?
Would there really be any reason to truly worship them, even if we fear them?
“….”
It wasn't a question that could be answered easily.
Because this must be an extremely important question to him.
It was probably why the healing priest, a disciple of the Schnabel couple at that, ended up wandering as a pilgrim.
‘The problem is, I'm a doctor.’
Not a philosopher.
I had never really thought about this question before.
There was no way an answer would come right away.
In the end, after much thought, this was the answer I came up with.
“Could I... postpone my answer a little? I need time to think about it seriously.”
It was too heavy a question to answer lightly.
One misstep could turn his wandering into a fall from grace.
So I needed to be a little careful.
Simeon's slit eyes widened slightly.
“The first person to take this question seriously was the Saint. Other priests always rebuked me, saying it was blasphemy...”
“Blasphemy, you say? If you want to avoid breaking taboos, you have to know what the taboos are. How can asking questions in order to understand the gods' will more deeply be blasphemy against the gods?”
Just as you have to dissect a corpse to learn how to save people.
To understand the gods' will, you sometimes have no choice but to ask slightly bold questions, too.
Medicine, too. Theology, too.
That's how they've developed.
“However, since it's such a heavy question, I'm a bit hesitant to answer it right here and now myself.”
“Then when can I hear that answer?”
“Let's meet again at the entrance tomorrow morning. I'll tell you what I think then.”
*
The next day.
As promised, I met Simeon again at the entrance to Necropolis.
I hadn't realized it when I saw him underground yesterday.
Under the morning sunlight filtered through the smog, he looked somewhat somber.
“Oh, you came, Saint.”
“Hello, Brother Simeon.”
People's eyes gathered on us.
A black Saint and a gigantic clergyman together—of course they'd stand out.
Looking around, I spoke to Simeon.
“There are a lot of eyes on us. I'd like to move somewhere else to give you my answer.”
“May I ask where you're going?”
“Limbus Pit, D Sector.”
His slit eyes twitched.
“The Saint...?”
“As they say, a healer must not turn away from even the lowest place and must examine it, wouldn't you agree?”
“….”
Simeon stared straight at me.
Hard to tell with slit eyes.
But in any case, it was clear he was looking at me.
“…I understand. Let's go.”
The burly priest followed after me.
I got into the car first, and Simeon squeezed his way in after me.
Tilt.
Gregor alone was already a fairly heavy load.
With Simeon added, the car seemed to sag once.
As the car carrying us headed toward Limbus Pit.
I looked at the book Simeon was hugging across from me in the limousine.
“…Today's the Scripture of Abundance, I see.”
“I don't devote myself to any one sect, so I serve all twelve deities. Yesterday I prayed to the Moon Goddess, and today I intend to pray to the Goddess of Abundance.”
He was a remarkably devout believer.
Usually, people tend to pray mainly to their own sect.
He was effectively saying he'd serve all thirteen gods, including the chief deity of the sun.
‘As expected, someone like him...’
While I was thinking that.
The car reached its destination.
Where we arrived was the D-4 Clinic.
An infection-specialized clinic.
Once inside, I saw many lower-ranking healers busily moving around, carrying things with great urgency.
Simeon looked around the clinic with curiosity.
“So this is the Saint's clinic I'd heard so much about.”
“Is this your first time here?”
“Haha. I'm a pilgrim, after all. I spend a lot of time outside the walls, and a lot of time down in the farthest reaches, you know.”
“I see.”
The Mercure Clinic had branches throughout Civitas Square and most sectors of Limbus Pit.
Except for F Sector, the sewage district, and H Sector, the hellhole district.
Simeon's main area of activity seemed to be those two places.
‘Right—pilgrims are the kind of people who go to places like that.’
It made sense that he wasn't familiar with clinics.
“Then since we're here, may I give you a brief tour of the clinic? I think it may help answer your question.”
“To be personally guided by the Saint himself, to such a humble pilgrim as me? There's no greater honor.”
“Then let's move this way first.”
Infectious-disease clinics have every room separated by barriers.
You could call it the world's first infectious-disease isolation ward, or a negative-pressure ward.
Naturally, it was an enormous money sink.
From the catalysts used for the barriers every day to the wages of the mages.
This was the real money-eating hippo that made Mercure's board of directors wince.
Of course, I wouldn't explain that backstory to a guest.
“This is the syphilis treatment room.”
I stopped in front of one room.
Syphilis.
A disease inseparable from the red-light district.
“You treat syphilis...?”
Simeon's eyes widened.
Like malaria, syphilis is a disease that has tormented humanity for a long time.
For one reason.
“Could you have discovered a catalyst that lets you treat syphilis with holy magic, like Southern fever?”
Because I hadn't found a usable catalyst yet.
Holy magic is a kind of magic too.
In other words, to maximize magic's effect and save holy power, a catalyst has to exist.
The reason ordinary colds and some infectious diseases could be treated without such catalysts was that those diseases heal on their own.
The body's white blood cells were already acting as the catalyst themselves.
But for diseases like syphilis and malaria, where you can't expect natural healing, the story is different.
To treat those, you either have to pour in overwhelming holy power, literally, or hope the infected person was a freak of nature.
Quinine was what changed that.
Malaria can be treated with quinine alone, but adding holy magic on top of that made the effect dramatic.
And Simeon was bringing up this background.
“A cure for syphilis...? When did you make it?”
“I came up with it eight years ago, and I only made it safe last week.”
The cure for syphilis had been in my head for ages.
The problem was that every method could potentially take down the patient, too.
‘After all, syphilis can originally be dealt with using arsenic.’
Arsenic-extracted Salvarsan.
If I make this drug, I can get rid of syphilis.
But I was reluctant to use it because a tiny mistake would also wipe out the patient.
So the method I developed was the second one.
“A few days ago, I succeeded in breeding a monster that can deliberately induce malaria.”
“…Huh?”
“Ah, for reference, the Imperial Family and the Church gave their approval, so don't worry.”
There is a malaria-based treatment for syphilis.
1. Infect the syphilis patient with malaria.
2. The fever from malaria burns the syphilis bacteria to death.
3. Cure the malaria with quinine.
4. Ta-da! Syphilis treatment complete!
Surprisingly, this is an official treatment.
The one humanity used before penicillin was invented.
It even won a Nobel Prize, so it's definitely a bona fide treatment.
There was a reason I only started this treatment last week, though.
“Like this, you infect the patient with malaria through an insect-type monster trained by black magic, and then treat it with quinine.”
“My word...”
There was no way to intentionally infect people with malaria.
I remember they used to transfuse the blood of malaria patients in the world I came from.
But in this world, that was a little dangerous.
As you can tell from the fact that the malaria here nearly killed my father, who was a tier-3 superhuman,
there turned out to be monsterized variants among the malaria parasites too.
If you got it wrong, they'd just go berserk and kill the patient outright, so I needed a way to stabilize them.
So I borrowed a little from black magic.
“Isn't that an insect-type monster from the southern front?”
“Yes. I succeeded in taming it with the Imperial Family's help.”
More accurately, it was the Great Sage's help, not the Imperial Family's.
Taming that mosquito monster was a job in itself.
A generation that wouldn't breed like crazy, would carry safe malaria parasites, and wouldn't carry any serious other germs.
The master and I spent a while replacing several generations of mosquitoes because of that.
‘Without gene-editing technology, it was pure manual labor.’
No gene-editing tech?
Then we make up for it with overwhelming time and sheer numbers.
Anyway, thanks to that, a safe malaria mosquito(?) was made.
Huh...
Simeon could scarcely close his mouth.
I took him to the lab in the clinic's basement.
Unlike the upper floor full of healers, inside countless alchemists were administering something to rats and pigs.
“This is where new drugs are researched.”
Inside the lab, where the squeals of countless rats and pigs rang out,
the alchemists were carrying around red substances and busily testing them.
— “Failure. This medicine kills the pigs.”
— “That one's a failure too. Rookie, burn it properly.”
Simeon's gaze stuck to the red stuff.
“This is...?”
“Dyes.”
“Dyes?”
“Since I can't make everything myself, I'm researching whether there are any existing things we can use.”
I have one body and limited time.
So these days, instead of only making new things, I leave the search for existing ones to other alchemists.
“Is there a particular reason it's red dye?”
“Because it's the most common.”
That was a lie.
Because I know there's a correct answer hidden in red dye.
“Then can you tell me what you're trying to make?”
“…A poison that kills only the disease.”
“Pardon?”
“For now, I'm thinking of calling that poison an antibiotic.”
*
Antibiotic.
Doctors' friend.
Doctors' lover.
Doctors' lord.
Honestly, it's no exaggeration to say that without antibiotics, the word 'doctor' would scarcely even make sense.
Especially for surgeons!
‘Honestly, I've already made all the other medicines, but this one antibiotic is way too hard.’
For modern 21st-century people, antibiotics are a familiar medicine.
Honestly, there probably isn't a modern person alive who hasn't used antibiotics at least once.
But apart from the impression that they're common, in the history of medicine they're basically endgame content.
Anesthetics came before antibiotics, apparently.
‘Even if I want to take the easy route, the world won't let me.’
At first, I thought that if I just knew the penicillin recipe, I could make it easily.
Blue mold on bread.
Everyone knows penicillin's origin story, don't they?
Since I even memorized the Viagra formula separately, I figured penicillin's manufacturing method wouldn't be difficult.
But it wasn't.
‘I don't know how to make blue mold grow however I want...!’
Not all blue mold is the same.
There's a particular mold that produces penicillin.
On top of that, mass-producing penicillin requires an even more special blue mold.
So penicillin still hadn't been made even after more than twenty years.
So I turned to another antibiotic first.
‘All I need is to find the dye.’
Prontosil, the 'first antibiotic ever used clinically,' made from red dye.
A sulfonamide antibiotic; this guy predates penicillin.
Actually, penicillin was discovered first.
The problem was that, for years, they couldn't figure out how to manufacture enough penicillin to treat hundreds of people, so Prontosil stole the title of first clinical antibiotic.
In other words, the first antibiotic used clinically was Prontosil.
‘If I can just find this one, I'll finally breathe easy.’
So I searched every market in the world, and had alchemists hunt down anything and everything related to red dye.
And I've been testing those dyes on sick rats and pigs.
In the hope that one of them will turn out to be the one.
I still hadn't found the antibiotic I wanted yet.
There's one reason.
“Mr. Simeon, among poisons there are some that kill disease. But most of those poisons kill people too. So I want to find a poison that kills only the disease.”
There were plenty of red chemical substances that killed both germs and people,
but finding an antibiotic that didn't touch people and killed only germs was quite difficult.
“…Why are you showing me this...?”
Inside my office in the underground lab.
I was facing Simeon with a teacup between us.
For reference, Gregor is on standby outside the office.
“Does this have anything to do with the question I asked yesterday?”
“It certainly does.”
I almost lifted my teacup out of habit, remembered I was wearing a mask, and quickly lowered my hand.
“Before answering, we need to define divine punishment. What do you think divine punishment is, Brother Simeon?”
“It's when sinners are ultimately punished.”
“Like a bolt of lightning?”
“If not that, then I think it includes all kinds of misfortune—those who rise by the sword falling by the sword, falling ill, and so on.”
In other words, he was saying that all the outcomes of wicked people coming to misfortune could perhaps be divine punishment.
“Though no one can know for sure whether that truly is divine punishment.”
“Of course. In the end, we're only human.”
At any rate, the definition of divine punishment was set.
“Then, Brother Simeon, you were asking whether divine punishment falls upon evil, yes?”
“Yes, that's right.”
“I've thought about it...”
I tapped the beak of my raven mask toward the closed office door.
“I think divine punishment is like an antibiotic.”
“An antibiotic...?”
“The gods probably have plenty of weapons for punishing humans.”
It says so in scripture, too.
Back in the age when the gods actively communicated with humans,
the gods punished those who defied them with floods, earthquakes, and the like.
That said, divine punishment on that sort of massive scale would only happen if a city were a Sodom-and-Gomorrah-level hellhole.
“If all humans were evil, the gods would have had an easy way to punish them. But if there were good people among them, they'd have no choice but to think of another method.”
If you use arsenic on a syphilis patient, you'll kill the syphilis.
The healthy cells, too.
If you pour just any red dye into a sepsis patient, it'll kill the bacteria.
If you ignore the small problem of the patient dying from the poison.
Because of problems like that, medicine twists itself into knots looking for other treatments.
Maybe that's why the world ended up this way, too?
“The gods are so powerful that I think they're careful about meddling with humans. That's why divine punishment is delayed, or in some cases, it looks like nothing happens at all.”
To be honest.
I don't know whether this is the correct answer.
If the gods love humans, how does the world end up this messed up?
If they really loved us, shouldn't this be romance fantasy rather than dark fantasy?
Still, compared to the 21st century I came from, the gods in this world don't seem to be completely silent.
They answer prayers by sending down holy power on a subcontract basis.
Or, rarely, they deliver an oracle to the Holy King.
Looking at those things, we can at least say the gods definitely exist.
Unlike my previous life, where I didn't even know whether they existed for sure.
Since I can't deny their existence, this is how I fit the pieces together.
“What if you're wrong?”
“Too bad.”
I'm a medical professional, not a theologian.
Honestly, I don't think anything would happen even if I were wrong.
“So that's your answer, Saint? That the reason they're silent is because divine punishment is still coming slowly?”
But it seemed like a deeply disappointing answer to Simeon.
Naturally.
Because the focus of his question wasn't just divine punishment.
Knowing that, I continued.
“No. That's only an answer to Brother Simeon, who's fixated on divine punishment. It's not an answer to your question.”
“…No?”
“The gist of the question was why the Schnabel couple had to die, wasn't it?”
“….”
Why is it that the righteous are always the ones who suffer and vanish so pointlessly?
I've asked myself that question quite a few times, too.
And I still haven't come to a conclusion.
But,
“At the very least, I can be certain that God did not abandon that couple.”
“That means...”
That was when.
Simeon's slit eyes widened as he glared at my raven mask.
“Can you take responsibility for that?”
“….”
“No matter who you are, Saint, there are things you shouldn't say lightly.”
“Yes. I can take responsibility.”
This answer can't represent every righteous person.
But at the very least, I think it can explain my birth parents' case somewhat.
“At the very least, they didn't go in vain.”
Gnash.
“Their wishes were severed, and there was no sign anywhere of descendants who could enjoy the fruits of the good they had built up.”
It was a side effect of the perception rewrite.
By severing every trace of the Schnabels' child,
this is how a wandering pilgrim came to be.
“Where on this earth is their will supposed to remain?”
“No. It does.”
I thought it over carefully after going home yesterday.
And as soon as I reached my conclusion, I asked my father-in-law at the Inspection Bureau for one favor.
One person.
Whether it would be all right to leave a small crack in the perception rewrite to end that one person's wandering.
The answer I got back was,
— “If you think that person can be trusted like family and is sufficiently tight-lipped, you may tell them. You'll have to handle the aftermath entirely yourself, though.”
It was permission to go ahead and try.
And now.
I was facing Simeon.
“Isn't he right here? The one carrying on their wishes and enjoying the fruits of what they accomplished.”
I pointed at myself.
After thinking it over carefully, I felt like my existence was the answer.
I'm happy, weirdly lucky, and I'm living while carrying on their wishes.
Then their deaths weren't meaningless, were they?
Well, I'm not a philosopher, so
“…You. You're going too far. Even a Saint shouldn't dare say something like that.”
A dense surge of mana poured out from Simeon.
With his attitude as if he'd fire magic right in my face if I said one more word,
I could only manage a bitter smile inside my raven mask.
‘Tsk.’
I need to study rhetoric more.
Originally, I planned to persuade him slowly and reveal the truth.
Instead, it seemed like I'd only rubbed him the wrong way.
If I keep talking any longer, this could become a problem,
so instead of words, I lifted my mask up to my forehead.
Simeon froze in place.
“That hair color... those eyes... don't tell me...”
“You're probably thinking the right thing. Even like this, my godfather often told me that my face takes after my father, while my eyes and hair take after my mother.”
Clink.
I placed two cross necklaces on the desk.
The Schnabel couple's final keepsakes, engraved with the names of the two priests.
The traces of them that only one person had the right to possess.
“I don't know if this will count as an answer, but I hope it's the answer that ends your wandering.”
“Huuuu...”
Simeon's slit eyes widened to full moons, and tears streamed from his white-ringed eyes.
And then.
“Huuuuugh...!”
“…?”
“Huk...! Huuuuugh...!”
“Brother Simeon?”
“Hic... Hic...!”
“Brother! Your breathing! Slow your breathing down! Breathe into this bag! Gregor! Hurry and take him to the surface!”
With hyperventilation, he gasped for breath and clutched his chest,
then collapsed backward, his face drenched in ecstasy.