[Forgotten Journal]
Schnellia von Kondenburg.
After the continent came under the Outer Gods' invasion, the Emperor judged that a new weapon was needed to oppose the unknown enemy.
Born as the Empire's decisive weapon, she had fought the Outer Gods in a manner befitting her mission.
The Emperor's judgment was accurate. The Third Princess, who could without exaggeration be called the continent's strongest aura user, felled countless enemies, and in the process won over noble houses, lending strength to the imperial court's political power.
But.
—Dunker Grimwald. This one is disappointed in you.
The deepest level of the dungeon called the Swamp of the Abyss.
Having lost every knight who had served her loyally, and with even her proud aura waning to faint waves.
The princess faced an aberration that should never have existed in this world.
—Since first meeting you seven years ago, not once did this one wish for such a reunion.
A black shadow approaching, warping space as it came.
Darkness flashed from the heart of the towering human shape.
Human words no longer reached it.
—At the least, this one will end it with her own hand.
The sword she raised was dyed with light.
No one witnessed what happened afterward, and it was never recorded.
But one thing was certain.
It was the worst meeting of all, the one that would later lead the world to ruin.
Page 54. The Day Ruin Was Sealed
[A page of fate has been rewritten.]
[You acquire a Boon.]
***
"Guide. What is your intent?"
Third Princess Schnellia was flustered.
An imperial's command was absolute. There could be subjects who offered remonstrance.
But she had never seen anyone so graceless as to openly contradict her judgment and call it wrong.
Dunker Grimwald.
For all that he was decently built, he was a man with a loose, swaggering way about him, thoroughly unruly in his bearing.
"Exactly as I said. Your knight order needs treatment. They cannot set out to subjugate the dungeon right away."
"Time is more precious than gold. A dungeon is a hazard that may run wild at any moment. It must be subjugated with all haste."
Strike down the Empire's enemies.
Schnellia had been born for that purpose alone, and had kept to it without wavering.
By rights, the man before her was an obstacle standing in her way.
But why was it?
'This one finds herself wanting to hear his reasons.'
His untrustworthy attitude instead evoked a strange sort of faith.
Above all.
'How did he discern the Lionheart Knight Order's condition?'
Outwardly the knight order had not a single fault to be found.
It was the Empire's supreme force, composed only of its most skilled and renowned knights.
They were not the sort to fall over from cracked lips.
But their expedition, subjugating dungeons across the continent, had by now reached its first year.
She could not claim they had no injuries, great or small.
"I do feel Your Highness's spirit in wanting to strike down the Empire's threat with all haste."
Dunker continued at his ease.
"But even the Empire's finest knight order cannot simply keep fighting without treatment and rest."
"The Lionheart is strong. They are loyal men who have fought the Outer Gods with valor."
"Come on, they only did it because Your Highness said jump."
The tone was flippant, but the point was accurate.
"Look at them. They aren't making frightening faces on purpose. Their mouths are clamped shut because it hurts. Leave this alone and it becomes a serious illness, you know?"
Schnellia's neatly arranged bangs stirred slightly.
She looked back at her knights. An unbending posture, silently awaiting her orders, but.
"......Haah."
Bloodshot eyes trembled faintly.
Perhaps he was right. That continuing the subjugation like this was suicide.
"Can you cure it?"
Pop. Instead of answering, Dunker opened the flask's cap.
Then he thrust the potion right under her nose. A sour scent rose from it.
"Give this a try. The effect is killer, I'm telling you."
Schnellia stopped moving, unsure how to react.
What was with this man?
Was he sane?
"......Remove it."
"Come now, don't be like that, have a taste. This is an elixir, I tell you, an elixir. One bottle a day and your fatigue vanishes, you'll be bounding around. Your gums clear right up too."
"This one has no injuries."
"Only the outside looks fine; you never know about the inside. It's good for the skin, too."
When Schnellia kept up her thoroughly wary attitude, Dunker gulped the potion down himself.
"Kaah. Oof, that's energizing."
"......"
Dunker wiped his mouth with an exaggerated motion.
He pulled out more potions and did not stop pressing them on her.
Try it, try it.
Do you know vitamin?
The sight was so ridiculous that she let out a snort despite herself.
"Ersin."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Drink it."
"Thank you for your patronage. This uses only fine ingredients, so the unit cost is high. But for Your Highness, a complimentary sample, special this once."
One escort knight stepped forward, took Dunker's potion, and drank.
Gulp.
"Well?"
"......It is delicious."
Before the escort knight had even finished answering.
The swelling around his mouth began to subside, visibly.
"Hoh."
The knights' oral bleeding had been reported to her several times during the expedition, a nuisance she could not resolve.
It was a symptom that had not healed with the Vitality Potions supplied by the Medical Institute.
Dunker asked with a sly grin.
"How about it? The dungeon can wait until the lads are treated, don't you think?"
"And if I refuse?"
"You can't go anywhere without me anyway."
He was a man who gave unexpected answers to the very end.
Schnellia laughed inwardly and thought.
'This man has not changed since then.'
Facing Dunker, she declared.
"Permission granted. Treat the Lionheart Knight Order."
"Yep. Ah, but this Vita Five Hundred is terribly tricky to make, so......"
It was a lie.
All that went into it was fruit sold at the market and weeds dug up in the forest.
"Do not concern yourself with the cost. This one will give you fitting compensation."
"Your Highness is most gracious."
Dunker bowed his head and withdrew.
'To think he had become a doctor.'
While Schnellia watched him with complicated feelings.
'Heh, operation successful.'
Dunker was satisfied with a deal well struck.
***
"Welcome to Grimwald county."
"I shall be in your care for a time."
The head of the count's house, Count Barkus Grimwald, paid his respects.
The other party was a tall, well-built middle-aged man. He too removed his hat and answered the courtesy.
"I never imagined Sir Archibald himself, Grand Physician of the Tower of Special Medicine among the Medical Institute's Four Medical Towers, would come in person."
The man called Archibald, dressed in a neat formal suit. Gold insignia gleamed at his shoulder.
It was a mark only the Physicians of the Imperial Capital's Medical Institute could wear. The serpent shape, richly wrought in gold and beryl, announced that he held high rank.
"The Lionheart Knight Order has been pushing dungeon subjugations across the Empire for a year now. The combat knights may endure it, but the Physicians accompanying them cannot follow along at every step."
"So the Tower of Special Medicine has been dispatched for this dungeon operation."
"Just so. We are to handle the Lionheart Knight Order's treatment and support for the duration."
Archibald was accompanied by twenty Physicians. With real combat ahead, their mood was heavy.
"Allow me to show you in."
Count Barkus grew more tense. The situation of an imperial knight order intervening in his territory was already a crisis, and now a Grand Physician had come in person, no less.
A Grand Physician meant, in other words, one of the four Tower Masters of the Medical Institute.
They developed Erosion treatments at the front line of the war against the Outer Gods, and stood at the pinnacle of power.
In noble terms it was equivalent to a marquess, so even Barkus, a count, had to show him courtesy.
"But did Her Highness the Third Princess and the Lionheart Knight Order not come with you?"
"I hear Her Highness is coming after finishing a monster subjugation in the north. We came straight from the Imperial Capital."
"Ah, I see."
Then where was the Lionheart Knight Order?
Barkus's question was soon answered.
"My lord."
The head attendant approached and whispered to him.
"Dunker met with Her Highness? And interfered with Her Highness's command authority?"
"They say he opposed Her Highness's decision to march at once and had the knight order quartered in the barracks."
"The boy has lost his mind."
Barkus clicked his tongue. Together with Archibald, he headed for the barracks where the Lionheart was said to be quartered.
However much a noble house might be capable of friction with the imperial court, in rank they stood below.
If it took the shape of interfering with command authority rather than offering loyal counsel, it might be taken as a challenge to imperial power.
When they arrived at the barracks infirmary, Dunker was moving busily about with the Healing Knights.
"Dunker, what in the world has happened here?"
Dunker answered the flustered Barkus at his leisure.
"What else would it be? I am working with all my heart and sincerity for the dungeon subjugation force."
"Is it true that you objected to Her Highness's command?"
"I didn't object— on second thought, that's correct."
"Dunker!"
Barkus smacked his forehead.
While father and son were bickering, Grand Physician Archibald stepped into the infirmary and checked the sickbeds.
Curiosity flashing in his eyes, he examined the knights and then approached Dunker, who was mid-treatment.
"Are you treating oral bleeding with a potion?"
What had I just heard?
Was there someone here who used the term oral bleeding?
Dunker answered with the delight of a man who had found a pearl in the desert.
"At last, I've met a doctor."
Dunker had seen nothing but Healing Knights who had to be taught everything from one to ten. He approached Archibald in excitement.
"Do you know this disease?"
"A symptom that appears now and then, chiefly among sailors and soldiers on expedition."
Archibald spoke as he examined the Lionheart patients.
"In the early stage the gums and lips swell and fever accompanies it. Once the bleeding starts it does not stop, so one must be careful."
The level of the answer was considerable.
Even without the name scurvy.
"Oho. What treatment are you using?"
"Most recover within a month or two once hospitalized, but without rest it worsens."
"And the cause?"
"The Tower of Internal Medicine judged it a kind of endemic disease. They hold it to be a symptom arising when the organs fail to adapt to a changed environment."
"An interesting approach."
It was an understandable misconception.
In an age where disease mechanisms had not been fully uncovered, shamanism was bound to be mixed into medicine as a matter of course.
Along the lines of: I prayed hard to god and got better.
Archibald, intrigued by the grinning Dunker, asked.
"What is the potion you are prescribing?"
"Vita Five Hundred."
"I have not heard of it."
"Because I made it."
Archibald was considerably surprised by that.
Most potions in existence were manufactured and distributed by the Medical Institute's Tower of Pharmacy. Because brewing magic itself was difficult, private manufacture was rare.
'Judging by its purity, it is certainly no fake.'
And it was clearly a potion made with a fairly refined spell formula.
At the same time, another question arose.
"Oral bleeding is not a symptom that arises from simple fatigue. Were that so, a Vitality Potion should have cured it."
"Would it not be a matter of composition? A prescription suited to the mechanism is what is needed."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Even with the same bleeding, external and internal injuries have different causes, do they not? Only by removing that cause is the affliction truly cured."
"......Oho."
It was an impressive answer.
This was a world where diseases had not yet been systematically classified.
Most treatments responded to symptoms.
Yet this young man was inquiring past the symptoms into the cause.
"Are you a Healing Knight of Grimwald?"
"Ha ha, an honor to be taken for one. I am the guide for this subjugation campaign, serving concurrently as its doctor."
"A doctor? Do you mean you have never been trained by the imperial court?"
"That is correct."
"So an uncertified doctor claims certainty about the cause of the symptom."
"I know it."
Archibald's interest grew further at the unhesitating answer.
The oral bleeding that afflicted travelers had gone with its cause unknown for centuries.
'Judging by the condition of the knights under treatment.'
It was certainly no bluff.
The potion was treating the disease precisely.
"What do you judge the cause to be?"
"Oh dear. For nothing in return?"
"Mm. Indeed."
Thunk. He set a hand on the young man's shoulder and spoke.
"If I appoint you a Physician, will you tell me?"
The other Physicians accompanying Archibald, and the Healing Knights who understood what that meant, all gaped.
And Dunker, the man himself.
'Come to think of it, who is this old man?'
Was looking the Tower Master up and down with suspicious eyes.