"Anyone in need of treatment, raise your hand. I will see you at once."
News of the vanguard's occupation of the fifth floor was encouraging for the subjugation force.
The vanguard is effectively a reconnaissance unit by nature. It grasps the battlefield's structure and hazards and buys the main body time to make tactical judgments.
For a vanguard unit of a mere twenty to occupy the fifth floor, and without a single Erosion casualty at that, was a good sign.
The main body was ten times their number, so anyone could predict the dungeon subjugation would not be difficult to the end.
"An incised wound. Cut by a hellscorpion?"
Journeyman Physician Marcen went up to a knight who had raised his hand and checked his condition.
"This much heals if you apply herbs and simply do not reopen the wound for a day or so. Just be careful with motions that extend the shoulder backward."
"Understood. But, Physician, might I ask one thing of you."
"Speak. The medical corps came along to treat you so that you can give your full strength."
"Could...... could Doctor Grimwald take a look at me instead?"
"?"
At the unexpected name Marcen's expression curdled.
"Why Grimwald?"
"I heard that in the main body's fight, Sir Berhaizen was treated by Doctor Grimwald. They say he cured Erosion, no less."
"No."
Marcen thumped his chest in frustration.
There was not one correct thing in that.
"Grimwald is the commander, the commander. He is not even a Physician, he is a self-proclaimed doctor. I was treating the man perfectly well and he butted in as he pleased. And it was not even Erosion he cured."
"Is that so? I heard he already has experience curing Erosion."
How was the rumor spreading this fast? While they were kicking up a circus upstairs, was the vanguard not out subjugating monsters?
To the aggrieved Marcen, the knight said.
"Never mind that, help me get an examination from Doctor Grimwald. I cannot see the cut myself and it makes me uneasy. It would not do for Erosion to set in."
"No."
"And they say he is very handsome. I have never seen him up close and I am curious."
When the knight flushed pink in the face, Marcen boiled over to the top of his head.
"Making a fuss over a light scratch! There is not so much as a hint of Erosion. Put on the herbs and get back to your post!"
Marcen gave the knight a slap with the flat of his hand. The knight grumbled and returned to position.
"Hah, good grief."
What sort of situation was this. The knights who ought to trust the medical corps were asking only for that quack.
Dunker Grimwald. Marcen turned the name over and resolved himself.
'At this rate a Physician's dignity is in tatters. I must show treatment superior to his, whatever it takes.'
Journeyman Physician Marcen took out a medical text and began busily sorting potions.
***
"Commander Grimwald has arrived."
I walked along under the escort knights' guidance.
We had passed the vanguard a while back. Why were we going somewhere with steadily fewer people around?
Had she heard the report from the main body and found something not to her liking? Was she going to call me aside and chew me out?
'In that case I will go chew out Hammer.'
Passing the chewing-out down the line is a foundational culture that arises spontaneously in every country and every era.
"I have come at your summons. Congratulations on subjugating the fifth floor, Your High——"
I failed to finish the sentence, having witnessed an unexpected sight.
Drip, drip. The sound of water echoing through the cave.
The spring. The very spring we had found in the earlier expedition and meant to use as a resupply point.
The problem was that in the middle of it.
—Splash!
Schnellia was bathing, stark naked, without a single thread on her.
What was this? An exhibitionist?
It was true that I could not see properly. It was a cave area and dark, and she was turned away, so her long black hair covered most of her back.
Her dedicated escort knight was drying her body with a towel. She seemed to double as head lady's maid.
'If you are going to be busy with something else, why summon a person.'
Had my common sense become too modernized, perhaps?
I asked Charlotte in a whisper.
"Is it normal for imperials to hold a meeting and a bath at the same time?"
"Surely not. That could not be so."
"Right? So it is not only strange to my eyes?"
I was relieved to have it confirmed that Schnellia was the abnormal one.
If I were the two-eyed man in the village of the one-eyed, I would have to gouge one out.
"Wait. Then is she thinking of catching me on a charge of lese-majesty?"
"There would be nothing to be irreverent about, would there. There is nothing visible anyway."
"?"
When I tilted my head, Charlotte in turn showed an attitude of not understanding.
"You cannot see properly because of the aura, can you. It would be an intent to display her strength. There will be an intent to pressure you as well, Young Master."
"Aura?"
"Yes."
I could not see any fantasy-style light effect at all.
Only Schnellia's pure white back was distinctly visible.
Not that I had meant to look.
"Is aura normally visible at ordinary times too?"
"Pardon?"
At my question Charlotte made a dubious face.
"Well...... you can see it. An aura user emits aura from the body simply by breathing. Faint mana might be another matter, but at the level of aura there is no way not to notice."
"So you are puffing out aura too?"
"Yes. I have some confidence in my density, if I say so myself."
"Then how does Her Highness look to you?"
"My eyes hurt. She is not the sun, and yet the light is so strong I cannot make out her shape properly."
Until now I had never seen it, not from Charlotte or from the knights, except when they used a major technique.
Had I really become the two-eyed man?
I absolutely must not be found out.
"Ah, of course. Charlotte, your aura is dense; one look and you seem like a strong knight."
"Heh. Here I am at least within the top five fingers."
Charlotte shrugged with full confidence.
While we were at it there was a splash, and Schnellia finished bathing and came out of the spring. She wore a single towel.
"Young Master Grimwald."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"I received the report. You subjugated a wyvern, I hear."
"Word really does travel faster than feet."
"My subject should manage at least that much."
Her escort knight toweled her hair dry strand by strand with linen. That one had a hard life too.
Schnellia perched on a rock while she dried off.
"I heard an interesting rumor."
"What rumor would that be?"
"That among the wyvern's casualties there was one infected with Erosion."
Schnellia lifted the corner of her mouth.
"And that you cured him?"
I answered with a show of respect.
"Precisely speaking it was a mild case in which the Seed had not manifested. For that reason it could be cured with a simple prescription."
"What I heard was that you displayed handiwork as though the god of medicine had possessed you."
"You flatter me."
"Let me ask you one thing."
Schnellia's sharp gaze turned on me.
"Can you cure a complete Erosion as well?"
"By complete Erosion you mean?"
Schnellia tapped her own temple.
"The 'things' that have turned traitor into Outer God minions."
She had not used the word person.
Well, to my mind it was a reasonable way to put it.
Looking at a minion or an Apostle, it is genuinely hard to grant them humanity.
Monsters are better by comparison. At least they retain the form of the original beast.
But an eroded human, in particular, becomes, how to put it.
Hm......
I can only use the phrase grotesquely transformed.
'I nearly threw up the first time I saw this dungeon's boss too.'
It could have contended for a top ranking in a world's-scariest-design contest.
Eyeballs stuck all over the body like millet grains, and limbs that were neither joints nor tentacles......
Ugh, I had better stop thinking about it. I feel queasy.
Well, that was me.
"Treating a completely eroded minion."
Just returning that monster to human shape would be a miracle.
"It is not yet possible."
"Not yet, you say."
An expression I had used without thinking.
"Do you mean there is a possibility?"
"Well, that would take research. I have not been researching Erosion very long."
Precisely speaking it had not even been a few days. Only enough to have taken an interest after seeing Archibald's paper.
"You have been researching only a short while and yet you cured a mild case?"
"So it seems."
"Hmm."
Schnellia's air-mingled hum echoed through the cave.
Padding over on feet from which the water had dried, Schnellia walked toward me.
I wished she would stop coming closer. I did not know where to put my eyes.
Not out of excitement at a naked body wearing one towel, but out of worry over how to manage my gaze so as not to be taken in for lese-majesty.
"Then if you research in earnest at the Medical Institute, you could one day cure the completely contaminated as well."
Do not speak so lightly of another person's labor.
Those in high places know nothing of the working man's hardships.
"I cannot guarantee it. It is no ordinary disease; it is the Erosion."
"Yes. The worst enemy there is, one that has devoured half the continent."
"I had not expected Your Highness to have an interest in curing Erosion."
"Hm."
Schnellia thought over her answer for a moment.
"Fighting the Outer Gods, I simply came to take an interest."
She was at the front line.
She would have had many occasions to come into contact with Erosion.
"Young Master Dunker Grimwald."
"Yes."
"If there is anything you need for the research, say it."
"Something I need......"
First of all I would have to raise this wretched level of medicine at least to a minimum.
The level is such that there is no telling whether Erosion could be answered even with all of modern technology brought to bear.
Even when I want to cut a patient open, the extent is limited. Because there is no pain management technique.
All I have made so far are the vitamin preparation, benzylpenicillin, and a tonic I ended up with while trying this and that.
'I want an anesthetic. With that alone I could open up patients as much as I liked.'
Nothing is so useful for surgery.
Because this is a world that cuts and slices crudely with a blade.
Not only could I prevent patients dying of shock, detailed local surgery would become possible as well.
"It would be good to have this."
I took out a notebook and drew.
"A fruit?"
"The fruit of a certain plant."
The poppy.
The raw material of the most widely used anesthetic in hospitals.
"Is it a potion ingredient?"
"It is."
Schnellia finished looking at the drawing and raised her head.
"I know where it is."
"Eh, really?"
"Follow me."
She signaled to me with her eyes and led the way.
Behind the spring, we ducked our heads and went into a small passage.
Water-soaked bedrock on all sides.
After perhaps a hundred meters of uncomfortable walking, a cavity appeared where sunlight beat down fiercely.
"Oh?"
Perhaps because water flowed from the spring and the humidity was sufficient, the interior had a great deal of moss and weeds.
Schnellia picked something up in a corner and held it out.
Well, what a surprise.
"This was here?"
Look at it from any angle, it was unmistakably a poppy pod.
Perhaps because it had not been cultivated, the shape differed a little from the one I knew, but it was certainly a plant of the same order.
"I was in the middle of checking for plants usable as food. Along the way I found a fruit I had never seen before and left it pending."
"Your Highness's grace flows like a great river."
It felt like receiving a gift when it was not even my birthday.
Schnellia looked pleased and shook out her hair to dry it in the incoming sunlight.
"You managed to find a place like this."
"Precise reconnaissance is basic."
"And it is remarkable that there is a place in a dungeon where the sun shines in like this."
The dungeon unfolds a new scene with every floor you descend. Rather than a tunnel dug underground, it is like a space fused with an outer world.
The upper floor was pitch dark like this, and the lower floor has blazing sunlight. Common sense does not apply.
Thanks to it I had obtained the poppy, so it was heaven-sent fortune.
"I will look forward to what you make."
"I will show you when the chance comes."
Schnellia stretched out her arms in enjoyment.
I bowed my head and spoke.
"By the way, Your Highness."
"What?"
"When do you intend to put your clothes on?"
At my question Schnellia knit her brow as though something were strange.
"It hardly matters, does it."
"It does matt...... Yes, of course. I understand the intent to expound your majesty, but please do not apply the charge of lese-majesty to me."
"......What exactly do you mean?"
"That Your Highness stood so boldly before me, who am not your escort knight nor a lady's maid, nor even a woman, is, how shall I say."
Public indecency is a misdemeanor.
I had put it as indirectly as I could in asking her to refrain. Would she catch it?
"What......?"
Schnellia chewed over my words for a long while.
Then suddenly her eyes went wide and she threw her arms across her body and said.
"Young Master."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Let me ask you one thing."
"Ask as much as you like."
"Can you see my body?"
"Pardon?"
When I asked it back, a flush spread over Schnellia's face and her expression turned more frightening still.
"I am asking whether you were looking. At all of it."
"Uh......"
Ah, I had better answer this one carefully.