The Physicians froze at Dunker's shocking declaration.
"Potions, a useless prescription? What on earth."
Journeyman Physician Marcen raised his tone.
It was a matter of pride.
When black curse residue is observed at a wound, you prescribe a potion and suppress the Erosion. That was obvious common sense.
If what he said was true, how many potions had been misused until now?
"Look at the black curse smeared on the wound. The patient's condition is worsening as well. It is a clear sign of erosion."
As he said, the knight was arching his back like a shrimp as he endured the pain, drenched in sweat.
Aura he had lost control surged at his fingertips.
"The first hour after Erosion begins is the golden hour. Treat him within that or the curse reaches the brain and he becomes a minion. Surely you are not ignorant of even the most basic of basics!"
"I know that perfectly well."
"Then why are you obstructing us?"
"Look at the wound closely."
"What about the wound......"
The Journeyman Physician blinked hard.
"Do you see a Seed of the Curse?"
"That is......"
Dunker had put his finger on the precise point. From the sharply severed, gaping wound, blood and curse merely clotted and ran together; there was no lumpy tumor anywhere.
"The disease called Erosion is quite unusual. The most unusual point is that its pathogen is large enough to be seen by the eye. Large enough that surgical removal is effective."
The Seed of the Curse.
The tumor itself serves as the source of infection.
Dunker argued it with conviction.
"Contact with the Seed, the pathogen, can produce symptoms of infection. The phenomenon of the body blackening. But it cannot spread the infection beyond that. Because the pathogen has not taken root in the body."
Dunker carefully wiped the blood from the wound. Around the laceration the skin had merely discolored to black; no pattern of transmission was visible.
"Would an Erosion Resistance Potion be effective at this stage?"
"......Erosion is the most dangerous symptom of all. The principle is to suppress it with a potion prescription at the slightest sign."
"A patient is brought in with abdominal pain. If a hernia is visible and he is in severe pain, of course you operate. Would you operate at once on a patient with mild pain from constipation as well?"
At Dunker's analogy the Journeyman Physician could not argue back and jutted out his chin.
"The cases are different. How can you be certain a potion is unnecessary?"
"Erosion has clear stages of progression."
"You are saying there are degrees to Erosion?"
"Call falling to minion-hood the terminal stage. The state in which the Seed has spread tumors through the body is Stage 2, and this state, with only the blackening phenomenon remaining, is Stage 1. Meaning it is mild."
Marcen still wore a dubious expression.
He had explained enough. Treating the patient at once was more important. Even mild, it was certain Erosion came with considerable pain.
"Irrigate the eroded area, suture the laceration, and it is finished."
The Journeyman Physician shook his head as if dumbfounded.
"Are you by any chance a spy for the Outer Gods? I cannot believe this talk of not using potions. It could be a plot to increase the Outer Gods' minions!"
Marcen decided to follow his own principles. Once again he moved to pour the potion onto the wound on his own authority.
Tak. Dunker caught his wrist and stopped him.
"I command this unit. Have you forgotten?"
"An order has to be convincing before it is followed! Are you telling me to stand still in the face of Erosion while you invoke some nonsense theory? Have you even examined an Erosion patient directly? A self-proclaimed doctor at that!"
"Refrain from any further discourtesy, Physician."
There was another hand gripping Marcen's shoulder.
Charlotte, Dunker's escort knight.
"The Young Master already has experience treating and fully curing a severe Erosion that a Seed of the Curse had burrowed into."
"Do not lie. Who would believe such a tall tale......"
Fwip! Charlotte rolled up her sleeve.
"This is......"
The traces of black blotches stained into the skin of her upper arm.
A scar, cleanly sutured and healed, appeared before his eyes.
"That is unmistakably a mark of Erosion......"
"The Young Master treated it."
"It cannot be."
Only then did Marcen loosen his grip on the potion.
"That is enough, Journeyman Physician Marcen. Doctor Dunker's theory has merit."
When even Archibald stepped in, Marcen clenched his teeth and slowly withdrew.
Archibald turned to Dunker and asked.
"Doctor Dunker. Erosion can be classified and defined by degree. Is that claim certain?"
"It is precisely so."
"Mm."
The eyes were unwavering, filled with conviction.
Archibald was the only person there who understood Dunker's explanation exactly.
'Every disease differs in symptom according to degree. If, as he says, the Seed can be regarded as a pathogen, the source of the illness.'
This knight is currently in a state with no source of infection. The wyvern's curse-smeared claws had certainly burrowed in, but they had not managed to plant a Seed.
Assuming that, there would be no Erosion beyond this, and Dunker's claim that potions were unnecessary was correct.
"Begin the treatment."
"Hammer, bring drinking water. One liter."
"Yes, sir."
Dunker took out pure white gloves and put them on.
Hammer prepared clean water in a basin.
"We irrigate the infected area with an acidic solution."
"Acidic solution...... we can hardly use sulfuric acid."
"We substitute with this."
Dunker took a yellow flask from the medicine chest and poured it out into the basin.
"You can irrigate with Vita Five Hundred?"
"The ascorbic acid in the vitamin is weakly acidic. This concentration is just right."
Dunker took out gauze and soaked it in the yellow water.
"Swab."
"Yes."
Hammer helped him wipe the bloodstains from the wound.
"Nngh!"
The patient was on the verge of thrashing from the pain. Charlotte and several knights immediately seized his body and held him still.
'With no anesthetic it is crude as hell.'
The exposed wound.
He wiped away the black fluid smeared over the severed site, piece by piece, with gauze.
—Hisssss......
As though burning in flame, the curse residue vaporized and gave off acrid smoke.
"Good heavens, I do not believe it."
Marcen blinked hard.
Because the black residue was being washed away by the solution and the wound was coming clean.
"Needle, size three. Thread."
"Yes, sir."
Hammer had it ready in Dunker's hand at once.
It was a mithril needle prepared in advance in case suturing became necessary.
Stitch, stitch. Dunker's keen fingers traveled back and forth between the split skin.
'F-Fast.'
'It was not only strange theories he knew.'
'Even a reasonably ranked Associate Physician of the Tower of External Medicine would not have suturing technique like that.'
Not only the medical corps Physicians but the Lionheart's Healing Knights watched the sight with their mouths hanging open.
They followed the arc of Dunker's arm. He was like a conductor directing a performance called surgery.
They were drawn in unconsciously, entranced by his handiwork.
Tok. At last he tied the knot and cut the thread with scissors.
"Suturing complete. Irrigate and finish up."
"Yes, sir."
Leaving Hammer to wrap up, Dunker pulled off his bloodied gloves and faced the patient.
"Hey, are you conscious? What is your name?"
"Haah, haah...... It is Franz."
"That is a name fit for a young lord. Handsome too, which is irritating."
"I am of the House of Viscount Berhaizen."
"An elite, then. Good work holding out."
The best way to check a patient's consciousness is to ask his name. Franz drank the water he was given while barely present.
"Haah......"
Soon the healing power of aura manifested and the pain lessened. His heartbeat stabilized.
—Ssssss......
Aura wrapped the sutured site. Already the blood had stopped completely and flesh was filling in bit by bit.
'Natural healing is broken as hell.'
A laceration like this should have required a month's recovery, but going by the progress it looked as though he would be fully healed in a few days.
"That was impressive, Dunker. I had not realized you had acquired surgical technique to that degree as well."
Archibald encouraged Dunker.
"Where did you learn the suturing technique?"
"My master was skilled."
"You had a master?"
"Ah, well."
How was he supposed to answer this?
Countless names flashed through Dunker's head. Modern medicine had not been completed one fine day; it was developed by great doctors.
"That's right. The Young Master studied medicine for a long time. We all thought he only ever went to taverns, but all that while he was being taught by a great master, is what I am saying."
Hammer, stop talking nonsense. Now it is harder to fudge.
A count's bastard who came back from a dungeon suddenly became a different person and started acting the doctor.
Suspicious to anyone's eyes. He would have nothing to say if suspected of being an Outer God's minion running a scheme.
So he had put together a rough excuse, but Hammer believed Dunker's words absolutely.
"A great master. You mean he taught you surgical technique as well as theory?"
"Yes, well, something like that."
"I had not thought there was a figure so remarkable among wandering doctors. What is his name? Was he perhaps a former Physician?"
Since it was the name of a person who did not exist in this world, answering off the cuff should be fine.
"Master William Stewart Halsted."
The developer of surgical gloves and the man who established the principles of modern surgery.
That ought to smooth things over. Dunker had hoped so, but Archibald's reaction was unexpected.
"From the name, he must have been a noble of the Kingdoms."
"W......ell?"
"Now I understand. West of the Empire, beyond the mountain range, the Kingdom Alliance was the first nation to suffer the Outer Gods' invasion."
Ah, there was a setting like that.
The Outer Gods' invasion of the continent began roughly thirty years ago. Compared to the Empire, which was relatively safe being inland, the Kingdoms stood at the front line, and ten years ago they finally fell.
The high, treacherous mountain range that had been the border at least served as a defensive line, but beyond it was a hellscape swarming with Outer God minions.
"They would have begun Erosion research before us, so their medicine would have developed as well. I had heard rumors that survivors who drifted in were living hidden in imperial territory, but what a coincidence this is."
"......I only just learned it myself."
It was in fact a fact he had just learned this moment.
Dunker had ended up distorting history without intending to.
Archibald looked at Dunker's hands and thought.
The Kingdoms were the first on the continent to fight the Outer Gods, and had achieved countless advances in combat and in medicine.
In fact, the Empire's present practice of organizing knight orders composed of aura users was itself modeled on the Kingdom army's strategy.
Thanks to that, the Empire had survived until now.
'It is presumed the Kingdoms accordingly held the most advanced medical technique. But now no one can know it.'
Knowledge like the hidden treasure of a fallen nation.
The man before him knows it.
Meeting him on a subjugation he happened to march out on was not merely the good fortune of meeting a candidate Physician.
It was heaven-sent fortune that would change the world.
'However fine a master one studies under, a seed sprouts by its own strength.'
Dunker was twenty; his study of medicine under a master would have been ten years at the most.
Only that much time. It is barely the span in which an Apprentice Physician who has passed the training-house examination passes through Journeyman and may or may not just reach Associate Physician.
This man had the technique to see through a disease, to systematize it, and to put a treatment into practice.
'If the Kingdoms' forgotten knowledge were joined with the Empire's advanced technique...... the shape of the war against the Outer Gods might change. This young man has that much potential.'
Now Archibald went beyond merely offering to scout him as a Physician and resolved that he absolutely had to bring him to the Tower of Special Medicine.
"Grand Physician? Your eyes are a little frightening."
"Ah, did it look that way. A misunderstanding. I look forward to working with you."
Archibald departed with a curious smile.
What is with that old man all of a sudden.
He had not been eroded, surely.
Dunker wondered about it as he finished tidying his medicine bag.
"Commander Grimwald, a report."
One of the Lionheart approached and spoke. He was a knight who had gone out with the vanguard.
"The vanguard has reached the fifth floor. We have secured the spring you mentioned."
"Oh, good. Casualties?"
"At a level the Healing Knights can handle. Regarding the matter of establishing a temporary encampment."
The knight delivered the message in a low voice.
"Her Highness the Princess is asking for you."