Chapter 38: Firefly Prince (8) |
A few days after completing the Vaccine. At the clinic.
“Teacher. Are you taking your medicine properly?”
The air in the clinic was as warm as ever from the heating.
My daily life hadn't been turned upside down just yet.
No matter how brilliant the invention, it takes time to be recognized by the world.
Even Quinine and Insulin, which had shaken the Empire, took a full year to become widely available to the public.
Besides, a vaccine isn't a medicine with immediately noticeable therapeutic effects; it's a preventative that ‘keeps you from getting sick.’
It would take at least two years to prove its true value.
'For the time being, my life will be the same as it is now.'
Even more so than my teacher, who had made all sorts of fuss on the day the Vaccine was completed.
'A Vaccine, of all things.'
If you were to pick the Greatest Of All Time in medical history, it would be an invention that could be called a miracle in human history, always standing shoulder to shoulder with antibiotics.
The moment the existence and value of this Vaccine become properly known to the world, I will no longer be able to remain a small personal physician holed up in a corner of the Limbus Pit.
Whether it's the Imperial Court, the Magic Tower, or the Great Nobles.
It's obvious that someone will rush to put a leash on me.
'Even if the world changes, my salaried life will probably stay the same...'
Still, until then, I will treat more people in the Limbus Pit before I have to leave.
I'll accumulate as many cases as possible, hand over as much as I can, and if possible, even show my face from time to time.
I made that promise to myself and focused on today's patient.
“Teacher. So, I'm asking if you've been taking all three of the medicines I gave you without skipping any.”
At my persistent questioning, the Great Sage Louis Edelhardt's brow furrowed.
“Yes. I've been taking that horribly smelly medicine properly.”
“No. Why do you think I asked if you were taking all ‘three’ of them properly? You didn't skip the other two, did you?”
“Hey! Of course, I took them! Why are you nagging so much!”
My teacher raised his tone of voice.
“How many times have you asked this? You check once a week, every time. I haven't gone into senility yet!”
“I will keep asking because it’s important.”
“My ears are about to grow a scab, and a mushroom is about to sprout from that scab. Stop asking.”
“No.”
Of course, the thought that I might be overdoing it did cross my mind.
However, this was something I could not compromise on.
“In treating chronic lead poisoning, taking only Dimercaprol can be disastrous.”
Medicine and poison are separated by a fine line.
If the dosage instructions or dosage are even slightly off, a person can die in an instant.
This was especially true for Dimercaprol, the treatment for lead poisoning.
“Teacher, lead has been accumulating in your bones for a whole 1,000 years. This is not a condition that can be cured by taking medicine for just one or two months.”
Dimercaprol.
The cure I gave my teacher, made from eggs and garlic.
This medicine, made from the sulfur abundant in eggs and garlic, has a high affinity for lead.
So, when Dimercaprol enters the body, it draws the lead accumulated in the bones out into the blood.
Once the lead is extracted, the Dimercaprol takes the lead and exits through the urine.
This is the principle by which Dimercaprol treats lead poisoning.
The problem is, this drug doesn't just exit through the urine with the lead.
“Unlike other drugs, Dimercaprol is a medicine that also flows into the brain.”
Dimercaprol also has an affinity for the brain.
So, the substance that should be excreted in the urine sometimes takes the lead and goes to the brain instead.
As a result, a fatal situation can occur where all the lead stored in the bones flows into the brain.
To prevent this, I prescribed two additional medicines.
“That's why I'm telling you that not taking this sour medicine and the pill with it can be a huge problem.”
Citric acid and bear bile.
These two drugs help Dimercaprol go straight to the urine and liver instead of the brain.
It is because of these two that Dimercaprol can act as a medicine, not a poison.
“So please make sure to take them. Even if you forget the Dimercaprol, you must take these two.”
“Ugh... Still, this is the 30th time I’ve heard this story.”
“Even so, I will continue to do this.”
I gave a firm answer to my teacher who was attempting to compromise.
Because this was the most dangerous time.
Just as one's attitude is different when entering and exiting the bathroom, the same goes for patients.
They take their medicine well right after they get sick and right after they are cured.
But the moment their condition improves slightly, or they think they know what they’re doing, they start taking their medicine carelessly.
Then, when their condition worsens, the medicine doesn't work as well, and they reach a point of no return.
That's why I am tormenting my teacher to this extent.
Because chronic lead poisoning can cause side effects that, if mishandled, can never be reversed.
“This is my Mindscape. Please respect it.”
“Ugh. To think I took in such a stubborn youngest disciple in my old age...”
My teacher grumbled but gathered the medicines.
“Alright. So, you're saying I must never skip these two?”
“Yes. You must never take only the smelly medicine.”
“I understand. It’s as if my mother, who passed away a thousand years ago, has come back to life.”
My teacher chuckled and pocketed the medicine.
Only after confirming that the medicines were properly in his pocket did I open my mouth again.
“And about your lifestyle habits, not just the medicine...”
“When using lead, it can be absorbed through the skin, so you must wear gloves and a mask. And avoid inhaling lead fumes as much as possible.”
“And?”
“If your hands tremble, your pronunciation becomes slurred, or you lose strength in your body, you must call a healer first or have me come.”
“You know it well.”
I smiled brightly.
My nagging every time we met had paid off.
As they say, you can't spit on a smiling face, so my teacher just chuckled helplessly and shook his head.
My teacher slowly rose from his seat.
I quickly checked for his hand tremors.
'It's gotten better when he's grabbing something.'
The way his hand held the cane was natural.
It was evidence that his lead poisoning had improved considerably.
“I'll be on my way for today. So please, don't show up in my dreamscape to nag me.”
“I’ll try my best.”
My teacher opened the clinic door and left.
I gazed at the door my teacher had left through for a moment, then started organizing the charts on the table.
***
The highest spire of Sanctum Hill.
Returning to his laboratory, Louis placed the medicine bottles on his desk.
“Let’s see...”
— “You must take the other two with it.”
He recalled his disciple's nagging and picked up a medicine bottle.
First, the potion with the terrible stench.
The smell of rotten eggs and garlic stung his nose.
It was a stench he could never get used to, no matter how many times he consumed it.
Next, he drank the sour powder mixed with water, and then downed the bitter-tasting bear bile pill without leaving a drop.
He gave the empty bottles a quick rinse.
It was to recycle the used glass vials.
Of course, considering Yulian's wealth, there was no need to be frugal.
But the Great Sage, who was always short on research funds, had developed a habit of saving even a single glass vial like this.
Tock.
The washed glass vial was placed on the desk.
Next to the glass vial, the laboratory mask and gloves Yulian had made for him were neatly placed.
Louis glanced at the items his disciple had given him for a moment, then left the workshop with a satisfied smile.
The gentle lights of the magic tools faded one by one, and a deep darkness fell over the workshop.
The place he headed after leaving the laboratory was his bedchamber, located right next to it.
“Haam.”
Letting out a light yawn, the Great Sage lay his body down on the bed.
Removing his eyepatch, his remaining one eye closed, and his consciousness gradually sank into darkness.
***
“It’s been a while.”
When the Great Sage Louis opened his eyes again, he realized he was drifting through a dream.
Dreams are originally like mirages, bound to scatter to the other side of the unconscious upon returning to reality.
But after hearing that prophets who follow the stellar trajectory glimpse the future in these scattering dream fragments, the Great Sage began to research dreams.
As a result, he learned how to capture the moment the soul connects with the world's causality while the shallow human reason is asleep.
Simply put, he had figured out how to glimpse the future or a parallel world through dreams.
And after several decades, that opportunity had come to Louis.
“Qudo oculus vadent, moria tenet.”
Louis moved his lips, which wouldn't move easily.
As soon as the chant ended, the blurry sea of the unconscious churned.
Soon, the hazy dreamscape took on a clear form.
“Mm.”
Louis nodded in satisfaction.
Originally, this kind of dream was not something that came just because he wished for it.
Therefore, the Great Sage researched not how to have prophetic dreams, but how to remember them.
This magic was the result of that research.
Before long, the scenery began to flow.
To glimpse the future, Louis naturally entrusted his body to the flow guided by the dream.
As his vision gradually cleared, a familiar yet strange landscape unfolded.
The splendid reception room of the Imperial Palace unfolded before his eyes.
Louis was sitting on the sofa in that reception room.
And opposite him stood a young man.
“Great Sage. It is time for your consultation.”
A calm and polite voice.
Louis's one eye turned to the face of the young man standing opposite him.
'Hoh.'
Louis couldn't help but be inwardly impressed.
The young man was Yulian.
Not the youthful fifteen-year-old boy from reality, but a young man Yulian who had grown up to be in his mid-twenties.
Neatly swept-back hair and a flawless, high-quality alchemist's uniform that fell perfectly.
And above all, those handsome and mature facial features that strangely captured one's gaze.
'So that kid will look like that when he grows up. Tsk, tsk, he'll make many noble young ladies of the Empire cry. He might even frequent the Imperial Princess's bedchamber.'
As his teacher, he felt sorry, but he was once again relieved that the boy had no talent for Hypnosis.
The Yulian in the dream was very polite and devoted.
No different from the Yulian in reality.
Yulian approached Louis's side, checked his pulse, and offered a splendid silver tray with a gentle touch.
“You look well today, too. Now, it is time to take your medicine.”
“Alright. You must have a hard time coming all the way to the Imperial Palace when you’re so busy, Personal Physician.”
The Louis in the dream chuckled and accepted the medicine offered by the young man.
It seemed that on this side, the strong bond of a teacher and disciple did not exist.
Nevertheless, Yulian was sincere with his patient.
'Then...'
But.
Something was strange.
His intuition, honed over a thousand years, was sounding an alarm.
The young man before him was definitely Yulian.
His appearance, his voice, his tone.
Everything was the same as his beloved disciple's.
But the Great Sage couldn't feel any resonance from the young man before him.
But for now, the Great Sage suppressed the rising sense of unease and decided to entrust his body to the flow of the dream.
He intended to watch until the very end to see where the causality of this strange parallel world was heading.
“Haha, I can never get used to this awful smell, no matter how much I drink it.”
“Good medicine is always bitter to the taste, isn't it?”
“Yes. The Personal Physician is a hundred times right.”
The Louis in the dream chuckled and downed the brown potion on the silver tray—Dimercaprol—in one go.
And not long after the medicine went down his throat.
“Umm...”
Strength began to leave the limbs of the dream Louis.
It was a strange sensation.
The reasoning of the ‘observing’ Louis was clear, but his dream self was in a strange state.
It was at that very moment.
“...”
The atmosphere of the young man, who had been kind and devoted just a moment ago, changed completely.
The affable personal physician from before was gone, and something devoid of human emotion looked down at the Great Sage.
The young man slowly placed his hand on the head of the Great Sage, who was shaking his head groggily.
A low, sinister black magical power flowed from his fingertips.
The magical power began to carve a bizarre runic formula into the Great Sage's brain.
The one eye of the ‘real Louis,’ watching from a step back, was colored with astonishment.
'Is he controlling the mind of a living person by applying necromancy...?!'
Lead is a catalyst commonly used to control spontaneously generated undead.
Thanks to its symbolism of trapping the soul, it allows the caster to capture their souls.
And the Yulian in the dream was using this on the Great Sage.
'How is this possible?'
The Great Sage's mental barrier is fundamentally stronger than anything in the world.
No matter how skilled a black magician, casting hypnosis or domination magic directly on the Great Sage's brain is next to impossible.
But the Yulian in the dream was doing it with such ease.
Louis was able to figure out the principle behind it quickly.
'...It's the lead.'
The Yulian in the dream was using the years the Great Sage had lived.
The lead that had accumulated in his body for a thousand years.
He was marinating the Great Sage's brain with that lead, then casting black magic on it.
The side effect that the real Yulian had warned so much about.
This was the result of the worst-case scenario that occurs when one takes only the main drug, Dimercaprol, and skips the supplements.
'So this is why Yulian told me to take the supplements together.'
Louis was once again amazed by the endless knowledge of the real and dream Yulians.
The dream Louis muttered from within his fading consciousness.
“Personal... Physician.”
“Yes, Great Sage. Please speak.”
The dream Great Sage, his brain soaked in lead, mumbled like an old man in a state of delirium.
“How long... have we known each other?”
A question that was more of a rambling complaint.
To Louis's question, the young man Yulian answered without retracting the black magic flowing from his hand.
In an utterly calm and emotionless voice, without a hint of wavering.
“It has been about 10 years.”
10 years.
The time it took for a 13-year-old child from reality to become a young man in his mid-twenties.
This young man had been steadily eroding the Great Sage's brain for that long.
By applying the knowledge he already possessed.
'So this was the extent of this child's talent for black magic.'
But there was one question.
It seemed that this Yulian and Louis did not have a teacher-disciple relationship.
Nevertheless, the black magic displayed by the young man before him was as exquisite as the real Yulian's, no, perhaps even more so.
Then where on earth could this dream Yulian have learned such exquisite black magic?
As if mocking Louis's question, the young man Yulian whispered softly.
“It was a very beneficial time, thank you, Great Sage.”
Louis's one eye widened in shock.
Could it be...
This dream Yulian had been steadily stealing the Great Sage's knowledge over a long period of 10 years.
Using the connection forged by lead, very naturally and secretly.
'Good heavens... No, wait. Perhaps for this child, this is to be expected.'
He had seen the miracle that occurs when talent is directed in the right way.
Then, he should have thought that the opposite was also naturally possible.
At his disciple's terrifyingly overwhelming talent, Louis felt not disgust, but rather a cold thrill.
As if reading his emotions, the dream Yulian whispered.
“Even a thousand years of wisdom, once trapped in a decaying body, becomes so powerless. The years you spent accumulating wisdom have become your leash.”
“...”
If he had laughed arrogantly like a third-rate villain, it might have felt pathetic.
But that Yulian merely stated the Great Sage's future calmly.
As if this, too, was part of his grand blueprint.
“I will make good use of your body, Great Sage. The body of an 8th Rank Mage who has lived for a thousand years. What better vessel could there be?”
Just as the black magical power was about to completely swallow the Great Sage's remaining self.
“...”
The eyes of Louis, who had been watching the situation quietly as an observer, turned cold.
The madness and talent shown by the parallel world's disciple were certainly interesting.
But that was no reason to insult the spirit of the Archmage who had reigned for 1,000 years.
Above all, the intent of this ‘dream’ felt impudent, and he couldn't stand it.
The dream ended here.
“———!”
A single, short word of a chant.
At that moment, the scenery of the reception room, which had maintained its solid form, began to crack.
“Foolish mirage.”
Louis's voice echoed throughout the collapsing dream world.
“The possibility you have shown is truly surprising and horrifying. But did you really think you could deceive me with such a paltry variable?”
In the past, the young and arrogant Louis craved wisdom and the future.
He obsessed over a shallow future to grasp all the causality of the world, and the price was his right eye.
And in exchange for losing his sight, he gained insight.
“One cannot discuss the end of the sea just by seeing a single rippling wave.”
“...”
“Arrogant being. The end of the world will never be confined to the shallow page you have read.”
Crash-!
With a sound like a huge glass window shattering, the space-time of the false parallel world began to crumble.
Just before his consciousness returned to reality, the Great Sage spoke to the man who was calmly watching him.
“You won't hear me since you're just a creation of a dream, but I'll tell you anyway.”
“...”
“You are nothing more than a prince of fireflies.”
And, thinking of a certain boy, the Great Sage said.
“You will never become a star.”
Crash!
With those last words, the Great Sage's dream shattered.
*
“Hoo...”
Louis slowly sat up, letting out a dry laugh.
The face of a truly captivating and terrifying monster was vivid in his mind.
Louis turned his head and looked at the top of his desk.
There lay the three empty medicine bottles Yulian had provided, along with the crude but sincere mask and leather gloves.
— “You must never take only the smelly medicine.”
— “If your hands tremble, your pronunciation becomes slurred, or you lose strength in your body, you must find a healer or come to me right away.”
Under the crude magical lamp of Limbus Pit.
The youthful face of his disciple, who had smiled awkwardly there, came to mind.
Recalling that face, the Great Sage shook off the thought of the monster in his dream.
He vowed never again to make the arrogant mistake of judging the sea by its streams.
***
The following week, at the clinic.
“Teacher. You skipped the brown potion three times this week.”
At Yulian's soft-spoken question as he flipped through the chart, the Empire's Great Sage sitting opposite him let out a dry cough and averted his gaze slightly.
“Ahem. But I diligently took the sour powder and the pill you told me never to skip. So the poison won't go to my brain, will it?”
“You did well with that. But if you were going to skip the main medicine, why did you take the other two?”
The Archmage's face turned noticeably red at his disciple's gentle questioning.
“Well... I went to the washroom after taking the medicine, and I swear I've never smelled such a terrible rotten egg smell in my life. I have a big joint research project coming up soon, so it would be bad for my face to smell like that...”
“Ah, so it was because of your face.”
The moment he heard that line, Yulian felt the back of his neck grow warm.
'This is Dark Fantasy for you.'
If you smell after taking medicine, you can just wash, but the option of washing never crosses their minds, even on pain of death.
So they just choose not to take the medicine instead.
However, Yulian knew how to make even these patients take their medicine.
He put down his pen and smiled brightly.
“I stayed up for several nights in a pile of those smelly rotten eggs and garlic just to extract the medicine to fix your hand tremors. It seems my efforts were quite trivial to you, Teacher.”
“Uhm, no, that’s not what I meant...”
“Well, it doesn't matter if you don't take it.”
He picked up the chart again and added nonchalantly.
“You're the one who won't get the lead out of your system and will have to live with trembling hands for the rest of your life, not me. It's not my body, after all. If you really don't want to take it, you can just live your life trembling with a cane.”
“Ahem! I am sorry. I will do something about the smell. So please forgive me.”
The Great Sage of the Empire bowed his head to his disciple, showing the crown of his head.
It was a scene that would have made other mages foam at the mouth, calling it an outrage against the Father of Magic, a case of Deceiving Superiors and Contempt for Authority.
But Yulian felt no guilt and accepted his teacher's apology.
“I understand. Then I will write you a new prescription, so you must take it accordingly.”
“Ugh... I'm supposed to be the teacher...”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing, nothing at all.”
Yulian once again replanned his teacher's backed-up medication schedule.
A fantasy world with flying magical airships and great mages.
But no matter how much the world changed, one truth remained unchanged.
That in front of a doctor, even a Great Sage who has lived for a thousand years is just an ordinary patient who needs to be nagged.
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