"Young Master! The patient's breathing!"
Hammer shouted urgently. Just as the treatment had finished and he was about to take a breath, the tension came back.
"Kh, kh, krrk."
The patient's breathing turned irregular. Hammer quickly checked the brace.
"Huh, this is fine. Why is this happening. Securing the airway...... cannot be done because of the brace."
Even if they wanted to tilt the neck back to secure the airway, the cervical fracture made it impossible.
Just as she had no idea what to do, Dunker shouted.
"Anesthetic first!"
"Ah, yes!"
Hammer took out the anesthetic and used it.
The patient's trembling subsided.
"Hold the brace tight so it does not shift. I am cutting."
"C-Cutting? Yes!"
Dunker's gaze was fixed on the lump swelling ever larger in the patient's neck.
Was that blocking the airway? Hammer understood the situation too and put strength into her hands so the neck would not move.
"Grimwald!"
An anxious voice cut in.
It was Schnellia.
"Putting a blade to her throat. What do you think you are doing?"
"No time to explain. Twenty seconds have passed!"
Dunker bellowed. At his manner, which had forgotten even etiquette, Schnellia took a step back.
The act of cutting a person's throat with a blade. By common sense it is closer to killing than saving.
But in this situation she had no choice but to hand control to him, the doctor.
'Dunker Grimwald. If by any chance Ersin dies......'
She would hold him duly accountable. Schnellia bit her lip.
"Hoo."
Dunker concentrated.
—Slice.
When he incised the upper part of the lump, congealed blood burst and flowed, spattering Dunker's face.
Hammer assisted. She immediately wiped the blood from the site with a towel. The pure white cotton towel was stained red in an instant.
"Sss, sss."
Rough breath continued through the gap.
She barely drew air through the hole opened in her throat in place of the blocked airway.
"Temporary airway secured. Keep wiping!"
"Yes!"
Dunker began feeling along her neck with his fingertips, searching for his target.
The Healing Knights watching the sight barely caught their breath.
"What on earth is......"
"An acute hematoma was blocking her airway. Even one minute of stopped breathing is a mortal blow to the brain. With the airway open she can hold out for a while."
"The blood keeps coming. Something must be leaking."
"I will find it. It needs cauterizing, so disinfect a blade, heat it, and hand it over."
"Yes."
Schnellia swallowed hard.
He moved familiarly through a region as delicate and as poorly explored as the human neck.
'Is this...... what a doctor does?'
It was the same feeling as when she had first witnessed aura or magic.
Mystery.
He performed an act she could not even comprehend, and did it so naturally and so skillfully.
'And yet the Tower of External Medicine's surgery is nothing but cutting off the afflicted part.'
It was not that Schnellia had never seen surgery before.
The Tower of External Medicine's surgeries were, like hangings, a kind of show the general public could come and watch.
The medical corps Physicians who had accompanied her expeditions used mainly potions and medicines; there was never one with handiwork of this order.
'Grimwald. Your medicine is.'
It would be no exaggeration to call it mystery.
The fact that she had taken him as a subject by secret contract now felt like a choice of the utmost importance.
"Found it. Bipol...... give me the dagger."
"Here it is."
A dagger thin as a concealed weapon. Hammer had heated it until it glowed red.
Its tip reached delicately into the inside of the incision, to the source of the bleeding.
—Hisssss!
The smell of burning flesh lasted only a moment. Hammer's eyes went round.
"The bleeding has stopped!"
"Temporary suture."
He had removed the source blocking the airway. Dunker's hands tied thread swiftly.
The patient, unconscious from the anesthetic, returned to steady breathing.
"......Did he do it?"
At Schnellia's question, Dunker pulled off his gloves and set down the blade.
"The crisis has passed. She must be transported to the main body and treatment continued."
"Hah......"
It was no different from a miracle. The tension drained from the face of Schnellia, who moments before had been preparing herself to lose her head lady's maid.
"We will move her to the stretcher."
"Leave the transport to us."
The patient was moved onto the stretcher. They tied the rope lowered from above firmly to both ends. Two knights each took an end and began transporting her up the cliff.
"Haah, I truly thought I was going to die."
Hammer caught her breath and wiped her forehead.
Dunker clapped her on the shoulder.
"Have you gotten quicker than before?"
"Because you have been riding me so hard, Young Master."
"Just keep doing that."
Hammer's bewildered expression soon brightened into a beam.
"Did you just compliment me? Wow!"
Hammer bounced around, expressing her joy with her whole body.
"How about it, I am rather useful, aren't I. Now you could not even treat anyone without me, could you?"
"I say one word and she makes all this noise."
"When you go to the Medical Institute later you have to take me as your assistant, all right? You cannot pretend not to know me."
"Stop bouncing and get ready to head back."
"Head back?"
Hammer raised her head and looked at the rock face towering far above. Below there was darkness as well.
Having lost herself in assisting the surgery, Hammer only now realized she was in the middle of a cliff.
"Hyup! We will not fall on the way up, will we? I have a fear of heights. Had I known, I would have lost some weight. Commander, one moment, let me prepare myse——aaagh!"
Charlotte tied a rope to the noisy Hammer and headed back up.
Dunker decided to return as well. But as he was preparing.
"Ah, we used up the rope."
The rope for descending had been used in treating the patient. He was about to ask them to lower one again when, whoosh.
"Your Highness?"
Schnellia had put an arm around Dunker's waist.
Considerable strength could be felt in it.
"The round trip would be a waste of time. There is no telling when the Apostle will return."
"That is true, but."
"Hold on tight."
Shk! Gravitational acceleration slammed into Dunker's head.
Before he knew it he was flapping in Schnellia's grip like luggage tucked under her arm.
"Khuk. Your Highness, one moment."
"We will be up shortly. You are quite feeble."
"No."
Of course I am weak compared to an aura user.
Is it normal to bound up a vertical cliff one-handed?
Dunker complained inwardly.
"Young Master Grimwald."
"Yes."
"I offer my gratitude."
Schnellia said it flatly.
Dunker was momentarily flustered, wondering if he had heard correctly.
The pitiless, merciless weapon of war, the Apostle Slayer, offering thanks?
"Had you not been there, Ersin would have died."
"Well, saving patients is my job."
"You did not save a mere patient. You protected this one's dignity."
Was it that much?
Dunker shrugged.
"Is every patient not someone's friend and someone's family?"
"Is that so?"
"I have friends and family too. If they died because of a quack doctor I would be angry. So I simply always do my best."
"Is that the path of the doctor you pursue?"
Rather than pursue, is it not simply obvious?
"However, one cannot say that every human possesses relationships of that sort."
Schnellia continued in a voice with no emotion in it.
"There will be those who are no one's friend and no one's family."
Schnellia's gaze glanced downward toward Dunker.
"Would you save even such a human? No. Even if they were not human at all?"
Schnellia's attitude was slightly tense.
It did not take long for Dunker's answer.
"Of course."
"What is the reason?"
"Is a reason necessary?"
Schnellia's eyes widened.
It was an answer she had not anticipated.
"......It is fortunate I took you as my subject."
"Pardon? What did you say?"
"No. It is nothing."
They climbed the cliff with a brief silence between them.
Schnellia spoke with a resolved look on her face.
"There is a patient I wish to ask you to treat."
"What sort of patient?"
"I will tell you later. If the chance comes."
"Is it a symptom severe enough that you must speak of it to me so secretively?"
"......If we are calling it severe, it is severe."
In that instant.
The illusion arose of bright red aura swirling around the iris of Schnellia's eyes.
"When the time comes, I will ask it of you."
"I will be waiting."
With that conversation as the last, Schnellia and Dunker finished climbing the cliff.
"Pull the rope!"
"Careful it does not drop!"
When Dunker came up, the knights were still hauling the stretcher.
The vanguard that had secured the eighth-floor staircase had returned and was helping as well.
"How much longer?"
"A good ten minutes will be needed."
"Ten minutes."
Dunker calculated the time.
It was coming up on thirty minutes since they had descended.
'It takes the Apostle Cave Centipede exactly that long to make one circuit of the seventh floor.'
Handled badly, they were going to run into it before they got back.
"Minimum personnel remain, the rest secure the return route in advance. If we are late it will be bad."
"Yes!"
He headed back through the tunnel with the knights.
Schnellia asked about the hastily arranged organization.
"Commander Grimwald, do you believe the Apostle will appear again?"
"Yes. And not long from now."
"If the timing is late we will be swept up by it again."
Whoosh! Schnellia clad herself in aura as she spoke.
"I will buy time at the front. In that interval take the knight order and return to the assembly point."
"Alone, Your Highness? Will you be all right?"
"Earlier I had to retreat because I was with the knights, but if a formation is prepared, it is possible."
An Apostle is a high-grade specimen possessing special authority even among the Outer Gods' minions.
By classification, Catastrophe-class. Let loose, it was a dangerous enemy that would evaporate an entire city.
Schnellia had just declared that she would face it alone.
'Schnellia's proposal is the best option.'
If they were late there would be nowhere to escape and they would be crushed and annihilated.
"Understood."
"Mm."
They reached the return point leading up to the sixth floor. Dunker began preparations to withdraw along with the knights.
Schnellia did not stop walking and ran straight on.
"The vibrations are getting worse."
Charlotte's report.
Rumble, rumble.
The tunnel walls vibrated faintly as something drew steadily closer.
"Patient recovery complete!"
"Move, move!"
Healing Knights came running with the stretcher.
At the same time.
—CRAAASH!!
An aberration appeared on the far side.
'Wow, that really is a disgusting design.'
A colossal bulk a good five meters high. The length was certainly dozens of meters.
Repulsive tentacles swarmed across the surface of the flesh mass that filled the tunnel without a gap.
The entire face was one enormous mouth. Between hundreds of teeth, an eyeball embedded like a tumor in its tongue flashed with light as it found prey.
'I will throw up just looking at it. The resolution is higher than the original work, so it is genuinely killing me.'
If the intent had been to shave away willpower through the uncanny valley, the Outer Gods' strategy had succeeded properly.
The knights' morale was shaved away just from seeing it at a distance.
And.
"This time it will not go as you think."
One swordsman standing before it, longsword raised.
Schnellia's heartbeat quickened.
"I command the Radiance."
—FWOOSH!
In an instant everything around grew so bright that not even a shadow formed, and Schnellia's sword expanded together with the light.
"At the price of this one's blood, the power to erase darkness."
The Covenant is realized.
The power for which a price has been paid grows stronger still.
"Haaap!"
—BOOOOM!!
Two monsters collided with an explosive roar.
Screech. Schnellia's boots, planted on the ground, scraped the bedrock and scattered dust.
"We have arrived!"
"Up, hurry!"
The knights transported the stretcher to the sixth floor.
One after another they escaped hell and made it out to the upper level.
"Your turn, Young Master. Go up."
"What about Schnellia?"
—FWOOSH!
The longsword of intense light stabbed into and cut through the Apostle's mouth.
A standoff. She held desperately, blocking its advance.
"Your Highness!"
Had Schnellia heard Dunker's shout?
She swung her sword in a great arc, then leapt backward toward the main body.
—KAAAAH!!
With a bizarre sound that could not be imagined as belonging to this world, the Apostle charged again.
"It is coming, hurry!"
Dunker climbed the rope and stretched out his hand.
Schnellia leapt high.
Clasp.
The two of them caught each other's hands in midair.