"Is this a puerperal fever patient?"
The Physicians were startled by Dunker's appearance without warning.
Stomp, stomp. Two knights moved in step with Dunker. The heavy sound of iron armor put the Physicians on edge.
"Fever, dehydration, and traces of vomiting. The color of the lochia?"
"Ah, that is. Red."
"And she does not appear to have been washed properly. Early-stage puerperal fever."
Archibald asked him.
"Doctor Dunker. Is puerperal fever this patient's disease name?"
"Good morning, Grand Physician."
Archibald received Dunker's greeting.
"Mothers often show fever symptoms after giving birth. The rate is about twenty percent."
"Twenty percent. That is high."
"It is a fearsome symptom in which roughly half of those who develop it cannot endure and die. Do you mean this phenomenon can be defined as an affliction as well?"
It was a symptom Archibald had ordinarily held questions about.
To that question, Dunker presented a clear answer.
"That is right. Think about it. As with every animal, it is as natural as heaven and earth for humans to leave behind descendants, so if they faced mortal danger every time they did, how would the population ever grow and flourish?"
"A reasonable inference. I too have always held the same question."
The unexplained death of mothers was a phenomenon the Medical Institute had taken continuous interest in.
The curious part was that this phenomenon was rarely seen among imperials or nobles.
For that reason the disease had been thought to occur only in commoners.
If a noble did happen to die after childbirth, it invited enough suspicion that she had been unfaithful and carried a commoner's child, or had been concealing her station from the start.
"The human organs are a place vulnerable to affliction. They are the weakest place in the body, which is why our bones protect them."
"A correct inference. In other parts the bone lies within, but the ribs are shaped as a shield defending the outside."
"In the process of childbirth, a mother is forced to expose that fragile interior to the outside. Which means it is a moment when she is correspondingly easy to afflict."
Archibald was impressed by Dunker's easily grasped explanation.
"Which is to say it is not an illness of the interior but an affliction carried in from outside. Like the phenomenon of the Outer God's Seed inducing Erosion, you mean a pathogen is the cause."
"Precisely. As expected of the Grand Physician."
Dunker nodded.
It was an age in which research into viruses and microorganisms had not yet been done. The concept of an illness invading from outside was unfamiliar, but thanks to the Outer God's Erosion of all things, the Medical Institute had gradually begun to raise the possibility.
Seeing Dunker's confident attitude, Archibald too grew certain of the concepts of "pathogen" and "infection," which had until now been no more than theory.
"For that reason, giving birth in a clean environment lowers the probability of contracting puerperal fever."
"So that is why it was a rare disease among nobles."
"That is right. You there, are you the patient's comrades?"
The knights nodded at Dunker's question.
One man with a particularly anxious expression stepped forward and answered him.
"Yes. We are in the same squad."
"And the child is healthy?"
"Ah, yes. Another comrade is watching over him. Since we had been keeping it secret, she had to give birth in a hurry during training."
"What happened?"
"We had to deliver the child in the undergrowth. I cut the umbilical cord with my teeth and tied it off."
Dunker looked at the dirt caked under the knight's fingernails and spoke.
"Delivered with hands this filthy, of course it got infected with all manner of bacteria."
"......I beg you. She is a precious comrade-in-arms and a diligent knight. Please save her, whatever it takes."
The fellow knight clenched his fist tight and bowed his head.
Dunker calmly took the mother's pulse.
"Her condition is not good. There is still a chance. We begin with irrigation. You there, my lord Physician, prepare drinking water and warm water in a basin."
"Hold on. Did you just give us an order?"
One Physician sprang up and objected to Dunker. Brass insignia flashed at his shoulder.
"I understand that you are a son of the count's house, but we are certified Physicians of the Medical Institute. I will not stop you playing doctor, but you have no authority to give us orders. Do not cross the line, Young Master."
He was a Physician of quite ample build.
Dunker knit his brow and squared off against him.
"What is your name?"
"Journeyman Physician Marcen of the Tower of Special Medicine."
He thrust out the insignia at his shoulder as though boasting.
Dunker whispered to Hammer.
"What's a Journeyman Physician. A veterinarian?"
"An Apprentice Physician becomes a Journeyman Physician once the years pile up."
"So, a resident."
Dunker scoffed.
"Journeyman Physician Martin."
"It is Marcen."
"I'm going to forget it anyway, so there's no need to correct me."
Dunker and Journeyman Physician Marcen faced off.
"There is a patient right in front of you and your pride comes first?"
"A country bumpkin who has never so much as visited the Medical Institute would have no way of knowing. There is an order for treatment. Who are you to judge the course of care?"
Marcen pushed back hard.
"The Grand Physician is right here. For a self-proclaimed doctor with no office to give orders is overreach."
The Journeyman Physician pointed a finger at the knights.
"These men are fortunate. Do you know how tightly the Grand Physician's consultations are booked? This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear the Grand Physician's opinion. It is no place for some self-proclaimed doctor of your sort to step forward."
"Seems you became a doctor working your mouth instead of your hands."
Dunker looked at him coldly.
"You're not a knight. Isn't a doctor a profession that saves patients, not one that only follows orders? Aren't you ashamed?"
Dunker's words carried a great deal in them.
Archibald had in fact already finished his examination. Marcen had taken that judgment as absolute and had not so much as thought to look at the patient himself.
What a doctor must attend to is not a superior but a patient.
The question of whether he was ashamed struck Journeyman Physician Marcen directly in the heart.
He could only mumble, avoiding Dunker's gaze.
"......In any case, there is nowhere any reason for us to cooperate with you."
"You should know I am the dungeon guide. Do you intend to talk like that once we are inside the dungeon too?"
"Enough."
A deep, dignified voice rang out. Archibald stepped in between the two.
"Journeyman Physician Marcen. Assist Doctor Dunker. The same goes for the other Physicians."
"Pardon? Grand Physician, but......!"
"If there is a way to treat a patient, is it not a doctor's duty to carry it out?"
The Journeyman Physician clenched his fist tight. His feelings ran high, but the Grand Physician's order was absolute.
Before long he bowed his head.
"Understood. I shall follow your instructions."
"Mm."
Archibald turned his head toward Dunker.
"Thank you for your cooperation, Grand Physician."
"There is a condition in exchange."
"What condition?"
"I would like to observe your entire treatment process. Without missing a single step."
Dunker lifted the corner of his mouth lightly.
"Observers are welcome any time."
Dunker judged and acted quickly.
He had the Physicians move the patient onto the sickbed. Hot water and towels were prepared as well.
'Diagnose.'
[Paula / Human / Female, Age 23]
[Endometritis due to postpartum infection]
[High fever, chills, lower abdominal tenderness, purulent lochia observed. Pre-syncope progressing; immediate treatment required. Strong likelihood of septic shock if delayed.]
'Tch. This was no time to be arguing.'
Dunker immediately gave the Journeyman Physician an order.
"Tell me her temperature."
The Journeyman Physician took her pulse and cast a spell.
"Forty point one degrees."
Dunker's expression turned grave.
Past forty degrees, protein denaturation occurs, so life is directly at risk. Even if she were cured, the possibility of lasting damage arises.
And it was still climbing.
"What do you intend to do? For postpartum fever, rest is the best course, as the Grand Physician said. Use a Vitality Potion and it will only overload her mana circuits."
"You treat it with the appropriate potion."
"You mean such a thing exists?"
"Hammer, the bag."
"Yes, sir."
Hammer understood at once and opened the potion bag. She drew one out from among the various flasks.
"You were looking for the mold potion, right?"
"What kind of name is that? Call it penicillin."
The Journeyman Physician, overhearing their exchange, leapt up.
"What did you just say? Made from mold? That is not medicine, it is poison!"
Marcen's face flushed red and purple.
"To inject poison into a patient. You have lost your mind."
"Weren't you the assistant? Don't interfere. Get on with wiping the patient's body clean."
"To dare use us Physicians like nurses."
Not only the Journeyman Physician but the other Physicians too eyed Dunker with displeasure.
'Hmph. Let him do as he likes. The Lionheart is the Third Princess's property. If he uses poison and she dies, it is on his head.'
The Third Princess might hold him responsible and cut him out of the scheduled dungeon operation.
Not only that, he would surely face an enormous punishment. The Third Princess was famed for being fearsome.
The Journeyman Physician rolled up his sleeves, grumbling. He began wiping the patient down with a warm wet towel.
"Doctor Dunker. What meaning does irrigation carry?"
"Consider it this way. That every disease occurs on the same principle as the Erosion Seed."
"Ordinary disease as well, not only Erosion?"
"That is right. We call them bacteria. Tiny cellular organisms invisible to the eye, which can be transmitted through air, water, rats, all manner of carriers."
"I see. So by irrigating you washed those bacteria away. I had been speculating that the source of disease might be due to minute organisms."
Archibald nodded.
He had once published a paper putting forward a similar concept. He was the first person in this world to conceive of bacteria.
He found it gratifying that Dunker argued the same theory as his own.
Dunker was equally surprised by his answer.
"You mean you had speculated on the existence of bacteria?"
"While researching the Seed of the Curse, I judged that if other diseases existed in the same form, many phenomena would be explained."
"That is remarkable."
Even in modern medicine, the concept of bacteria was only established in the nineteenth century.
To speculate on the existence of bacteria at the level of medicine in this era, with its lack of basic knowledge.
No wonder he was a Grand Physician. Dunker was impressed.
'Even among the Physicians of my own Tower of Special Medicine there are almost none who grasp this concept. Dunker, his words and manner may be rough, but the breadth of his knowledge is remarkable.'
Archibald accepted it and continued with his next question.
"Then what is the purpose of the mold-based medicine you said you would use?"
"You mean this."
"Mm. I heard it is called penicillin."
The flask in Dunker's hand glinted.
"Mold has a toxicity that gives you a stomachache. Paradoxically, it kills every other bacterium."
"Oho. So you removed only the toxicity and extracted only the component that kills the bacteria, to make a medicine?"
"You see it exactly."
Dunker attached something to the end of the flask. A cork and a thin needle.
It was an improvised syringe.
He found the vein in her arm and pierced it without hesitation. When he opened the other end of the flask, the medicine began to flow into the patient's body through the difference in air pressure.
"Haah, haah......"
The patient's shallow breathing filled the quiet room, but only for a moment.
"......Her temperature. It is dropping."
Marcen spoke while staring at his spell as though he could not believe it.
'Good, it's working.'
The patient's panting breath steadied.
"No, this cannot be."
"How on earth......?"
Journeyman Physician Marcen sprang to his feet.
He had found Dunker thoroughly galling for talking with the Grand Physician all this while about things he could not understand.
"Feeding poison to a patient whose life was already hanging by a thread — a natural result. She is dying."
Unable to listen any longer, Hammer sprang up and shouted at him.
"You've got eyes like knots in a plank! Does this look like someone dying to you?"
"Her breathing is stopping and her body is going cold. Those are symptoms seen in a patient whose condition has worsened."
"Good grief. The Young Master may not be right in the head, but he isn't about to kill someone with poison in front of the Grand Physician, is what I'm saying."
"Hey, pick one. Compliment or insult."
Dunker gave Hammer a knuckle-rap on the head.
Contrary to the noisy mood around the sickbed.
Hoo. Hoo.
The patient was steadily finding stability.
When her condition had visibly improved some twenty minutes later, the Physicians fell silent as well.
"Treatment complete. Keep her stable and monitor her."
Dunker lowered the hand that had been taking her pulse and stood. He looked around at the Physicians.
"She is dehydrated, so make her drink plenty of water. Never a large amount at once. When you give it to her directly, tilt her head so it does not go down the airway, and put a wet towel in her mouth."
"U-Understood......"
The Physicians blinked and slowly nodded.
They had not trusted Dunker in the slightest back when he said he would feed her poison, but having been shown the treatment process with their own eyes, they had no choice but to accept it.
"......Young Master Grimwald, is Paula going to be all right?"
The fellow knight asked with anxious eyes.
Dunker clapped him on the shoulder.
"The danger has passed. Recovering her strength is the key. Stay by her and watch her closely. And wash your hands well before you touch her."
"Th-Thank you. Thank you, Young Master......!"
"Ah, and."
Dunker said to him in a whisper.
"Congratulations on becoming a father."
The knight's eyes went wide.
"How did you......"
"It's obvious from looking. Take good care of your wife."
Compared to the other fellow knights, he alone had been unusually anxious and desperate.
Dunker knew that face well.
It is an expression only a patient's family can wear.
The Lionheart's expedition had been a full year to begin with. If she had conceived before deployment the timing would not add up.
It was a knight order with strict discipline, so those around them must have kept the secret for them.
"......Thank you. Truly. You are a benefactor to me, to her, and to our child."
The knight clenched his fist with trembling hands and saluted with full courtesy.
"Remarkable."
Archibald spoke to Dunker as he left his place, wiping his hands.
"I had thought the treatment of the oral bleeding might have been luck. Your first prescription looked like nothing more than a folk remedy."
"Does a folk remedy not become medicine once it acquires theory and grounds?"
"Mm. It seems you have grounds."
"I do."
Dunker answered with confidence.
The medical texts he had opened countless times, the disease names and terminology he had memorized by rote.
The time he had spent running, operating on patient after patient.
His past life was finally being proven.
Archibald recognized Dunker's true worth.
The judgment to grasp a patient's disease name at once and immediately present the appropriate response.
It was an extraordinary quality not to be found even in Physicians of considerable seniority.
"Doctor Dunker, have you truly no intention of becoming a Physician?"
"Well. I am deliberating on it."
The problem was that he had caught Third Princess Schnellia's eye.
He wanted to be a doctor, but being dragged into politics was what Dunker feared most.
To such a man, Archibald cast his bait.
"The Tower of Special Medicine stands at the front line of disease research."
"So I understand."
"I would like to entrust the most important research to you."
Archibald brought out a single paper.
—Erosion Resistance Research: Toward Opposing the Outer Gods
'Oh.'
It was a title that stirred Dunker's appetite.
It was the medical text of which only the first page could be found in the original work's quest, the one that might have saved the world.
[Forgotten Journal]
—It is a story passed down like a legend.
—They say that in the old Imperial Capital's Medical Institute lies knowledge by which humanity might have won.
—Until the last day the Imperial Capital was stained with evil, the Physicians drove those supreme minds to the limit and researched.
—On the means to stop and resist erosion.
—Though it was never announced to the world.
—If the erosion could have been stopped, perhaps the world would not have darkened like this.
—They say it is stored in the Grand Physician's office of one of the Medical Institute's four towers.
—Be careful, Wanderer.
—For evil more terrible than any den you have passed through until now will surely be lying in wait in the imperial palace.