"You are telling me to aim for Grand Physician?"
I confirmed it again with Third Princess Schnellia.
She nodded slowly.
Long black hair swayed and gleamed. Every single strand asserted its presence as though it were alive.
She was a beauty, as you would expect of imperial blood.
Only, there was something off about her, if I had to say.
It felt like facing a statue rather than a person.
"Why me?"
"I am going to be the most perfect Emperor in history. As the great commander who overcame the continent's mortal crisis, and as the leader who reunified a divided Empire."
Her dreams were grand.
She threw out, without hesitation, a sentence that would destroy twenty percent of the brain of a small-time citizen like me just to imagine.
The frightening part was that if it was this woman, she might actually do it.
"I need subjects who are perfect to that same degree. Knights, magistrates, a finance minister, and...... a Physician."
The hair at Schnellia's temple slid down. Her eyes, meeting mine, felt as though they saw straight through me.
"I do not know whether this humble one is a man who will meet your expectations."
"My eye for people is accurate."
Schnellia lifted the corner of her mouth lightly.
"I did not know you had an interest in power. Is your place in the succession not low?"
"Fifth. I am the youngest. But a number is only a number."
"Is it to build the merit to become Emperor that you go about subjugating dungeons?"
"Of course. But that alone is not enough."
Schnellia stressed it.
"High merit makes you the finest knight, not the Emperor."
She was right. Even if Commander Charlotte became the strongest swordsman alive, in the end the ones giving the orders were the power-holders, the nobles.
"What do you think power is?"
"Hm. Financial strength, is it not?"
"People."
Schnellia declared it.
"Talent is power itself. Capable subjects who are absolutely loyal to me alone and who will help govern the nation. That is what I need."
"Then may I take it that this instruction to become Grand Physician is a proposal from Your Highness personally, not from the imperial court?"
"Correct. The Medical Institute is an organization as important as the knight orders. I must have it in hand for the succession."
"Mm."
It was not that I had no interest in a Physician's post.
It was the only occupation in this world granted state certification as a "real doctor."
If I could work as a real doctor rather than an intern or a resident.
It was true that Grand Physician Archibald's offer had felt appealing.
But entering Schnellia's service gave me pause.
At least for now, knowing her future.
"Might you give me a little room to think it over?"
At my answer, Schnellia pushed her lips out slightly, as though dissatisfied.
What. Was she sulking?
"Is there a need to deliberate over a proposal from this one, of all people?"
Sweat broke out on me.
"I will think on it as positively as I can. Only, there are various matters to consider."
"Matters to consider? Is there some obstructor? Give me the name."
"It is not that, it is my house's position as well......"
"What about its position?"
She was a persistent woman.
"I ask merely for reference, but if I were to decline, you would not judge my entire house as a hostile faction...... would you?"
"I sense an impure intent in that question."
"No, I mean nothing by it. I have simply heard a little of the rumors."
At my words, Schnellia raised the corner of her mouth slightly.
Her eyes stayed perfectly still, which made it more frightening.
"Young Master Dunker Grimwald."
"Yes."
"Whatever rumors you have heard, they are nothing but the past that has flowed by."
"Right?"
"What matters is the history to be written from here on."
Only then did she draw away from me.
"Deliberate slowly."
"Yes."
With the sight of her stroking the pigeon as my last impression.
I barely escaped from the entrance to hell.
***
For several days after that, the treatment of the Lionheart Knight Order's scurvy continued.
"This is killing me."
Cast the spell, cast, cast. Vita Five Hundred, pop.
I was so used to it by now I could do it with my eyes closed.
THWACK! Hammer smashed a lime set on a tree stump with her hammer.
"If it's hard on you, leave the rest to us. Your fingers have gone completely yellow, Young Master."
"I can do compounding work all night long. That isn't the problem."
Charlotte, who was carrying out her escort duty, spoke up.
"Something must have happened in your private talk with the Third Princess."
"Charlotte, good instincts. Do not leave my side, seriously."
"There will be no assassinating you, so do not worry. So long as the princess does not come out herself, there is no one who can match me."
"You sleep too. What if an assassin ambushes you then?"
"I can sense a presence well enough even while asleep."
A knight commander, as expected. Reassuring.
Charlotte looked down at me with a triumphant smile.
"What. What is it."
"You are rather the coward, Young Master."
"Hey, you try getting shut in a room alone with her. I held up well enough. Who in this world doesn't value their own life?"
"Agreed. The Third Princess is on another level entirely."
"You felt it?"
"She has no intention of hiding it. Merely looking at her, I feel crushed by her aura to the point of suffocation."
"I don't know how the Lionheart puts up with it."
Neither Charlotte nor Hammer had any objection.
Being marked by her really might have been bad luck.
"I ought to just work. Simple labor at least puts my mind at ease."
The Lionheart Knight Order's treatment was gradually wrapping up. Most of the patients had improved from scurvy.
Knights really did have a different order of healing.
"Cough, cough. HATCHOO!"
Hammer broke the silence with a sneeze loud enough to shake the world.
Sniff, sniff.
"Ugh, that's filthy."
"I won't get any on the medicine, so don't worry."
"Don't touch anything until you go wash your hands."
"What? But that's a bother......"
"Hey now."
Hammer sulked and came back a little while later. It seemed she had gone all the way to the riverbank.
"HATCHOO!"
For all that effort, she sneezed again.
[Hammer / Age 22 Female / ○]
[URI (upper respiratory infection), mild fever]
Looking her over with Diagnose, she had the beginnings of a cold.
Where did she pick up a disease this time? She'll pass it to me.
"Hammer, didn't you drink Vita Five Hundred?"
"About half a bottle a day. It tastes good."
"Ugh, who drinks a potion because it tastes good?"
"It's your fault for making it taste good, Young Master. The Lionheart asks me every single day whether they can get more."
Vitamins raise immunity, but they have no effect that prevents infection itself.
Since there was no fundamental treatment, minor illnesses kept circulating among knights living in close quarters.
'It would be so much easier with antibiotics.'
One of the greatest inventions in the history of medicine.
A cold is viral, so you cannot eliminate it directly, but antibiotics prevent secondary infection.
'Wait.'
I could just make them.
Searching for materials only in the forest had been the blind spot.
The material for antibiotics was close at hand.
I got up on the spot.
"Hammer, follow me. Let's go fetch bread."
"Oh, are we eating?"
"Do you like rotten bread?"
"What?"
"I need bread with nice, friendly mold growing on it."
Hammer's beaming face turned to despair in an instant.
"Young Master, that's a nasty hobby. Feeding someone moldy bread is going too far. Though if it's an order I'll have to obey......"
"What do you take me for? What fun would I get out of torturing you with food?"
"How would I know? Maybe you enjoy watching people vomit."
"Enough nonsense, just get up."
I grabbed Hammer by the ear and pulled.
We headed straight for the mansion. Entering the kitchen, I called for a maid.
"You need rotten bread? That is......"
Somehow I could feel the maids watching my face nervously.
"Bread with bluish mold on it. Don't you have any?"
"We do have some, but...... Understood."
When I followed the maid's guidance, my eyes went wide.
Was there not a mountain of rotten bread piled up in the food storeroom.
"So the treasure vault was right here. Hammer, bring all of it out."
"Young Master, please wait!"
Someone came scrambling over and grabbed me by the trouser leg. It was the head cook.
"I apologize, Young Master. We have committed a capital offense. We went and laid hands on the ingredients prepared for His Excellency the Count and the members of the house alone."
"?"
The head cook had begun atoning out of nowhere.
I could not follow the situation and was staring blankly at him when he broke into loud wailing.
"You will have come knowing everything. We have been deliberately placing large orders for ingredients. Rather than discarding the ingredients that spoiled over time, the maids of the kitchen have been dividing them among themselves and eating them. But they have done nothing wrong. It was all led by me."
"Ah. So you deliberately ordered large amounts of fine ingredients and siphoned them off. And once the ingredients spoiled, you had your justification."
"It was because the wages alone are not enough to fill anyone's stomach. There are maids supporting children or aged parents. Please, do not throw away the spoiled food. If you do, all of us will go hungry for days."
I understood the circumstances. Everyone was squeezed dry.
And they thought I had found out about it. Normally a member of the house had no reason to come down to the kitchen.
Strictly speaking it was embezzlement. And since commoners had deceived a noble, it was a considerable crime.
But the first thought that came to me was.
'House Grimwald. Is this all right?'
A penny-pincher that will not even pay its servants a decent wage. The name of the Five Great Houses would weep.
Most noble houses were probably like this, of course, but with my current sensibilities I had to wonder what was so great about the privilege of nobility.
"This is actually better."
"Pardon?"
"Preparing this much moldy bread for me — you have done a very great thing."
"Er, yes......"
I clapped him on the shoulder and pulled out a purse of gold coins.
"I am taking all of the bread. Use this to buy other food instead. And don't go picking up mold to eat and give yourselves food poisoning."
"Pardon? A-Are you serious, Young Master?"
The head cook opened the purse half in doubt. As though he thought a scorpion might be inside, he peered at the contents through narrowed eyes, then immediately leapt into the air.
"You are giving us this much money?!"
"I settle my accounts properly. You prepared such fine material, so of course you get paid for your trouble."
"I-I cannot believe...... Thank you, thank you so very much!"
The tension melted from the faces of the maids watching us as well. Sighs of relief came from here and there.
Tsk, tsk. To be in a position of prostrating yourself in penance over a few loaves of bread. Was station really so important?
When Hammer and I came out beaming with the bread, Charlotte said to me.
"You have certainly changed somewhere, Young Master. Did studying medicine bring you some sort of enlightenment?"
"What did I do?"
"I naturally assumed you would punish the head cook severely for siphoning off ingredients and have him banished."
"Everyone works to eat. Why would I do something that demonic?"
"The Young Master of old, I think, would have led with his foot before his words, right there on the spot. It truly felt like a doctor who puts human life first."
"Good grief."
Settling my karmic debt was going to take a long while.
No, wait. Rumors that a person had suddenly changed were not good. They invite suspicion of Erosion.
"Hey, don't go climbing all over me because of it. You know my temper. Cross the line and it's straight to disciplinary drills."
"Of course. Rather, when I cross the line, please point it out sharply. There will be times I fail to keep to etiquette, not having been educated."
Charlotte said it flatly. Her conduct and speech were knightly to anyone's eyes, and yet she worried.
If anything it was Third Princess Schnellia who was far from chivalry. I wished someone would teach that woman manners.
"Bread's all gathered. What should I do with it?"
"Tear it open and collect only the mold. Like this."
I put strength into my hands to tear the bread.
And was it not completely immovable.
"What is this. It's not bread, it's a lump of stone."
"You aren't an aura user; how are you supposed to tear bread with your hands?"
I had not known because the servants had always cut it for me. In this era you were not to expect a soft, fluffy texture from bread.
The knife made for it was practically a circular saw blade.
Clang, clang. You could use it as a mace.
"Hup."
CRACK! CRACK! Hammer brought her hammer down and broke each loaf apart. At times like these, being crude was helpful.
"Oh. There it is, there it is."
Blue-green mold, bloomed here and there across the crumbling pieces of bread.
It felt like finding a gold mine in a desert.
"It does seem odd to me. Eating mold usually gives you a stomachache, doesn't it? Can you really make a potion out of this?"
"Have I ever been wrong? Just watch."
Whoosh! I let mana flow from my fingertips. A tidy circle and geometric figures were drawn on the ground.
***
Grand Physician Archibald was staying at the Grimwald mansion together with the Physicians of the Tower of Special Medicine.
"Hm. Remarkable."
A report that had come up from the barracks medical corps. His eyes moved quickly, reading the text.
"In a single day the oral bleeding stopped in ninety percent of the knights, and now on the fifth day nearly all are fully healed."
The Medical Institute's four towers. The Tower of External Medicine, the Tower of Internal Medicine, the Tower of Pharmacy.
All were run by renowned Grand Physicians serving as Tower Masters.
Among them, Archibald's Tower of Special Medicine was the odd one out. Unlike the other towers, which accumulated experience chiefly through practical treatment and clinical trials, Archibald sought to answer afflictions with theory and analysis.
Accordingly he had published many papers, but the tower was at the same time characterized as weak at treating patients in the field.
"Even the Tower of Special Medicine would find it difficult to classify afflictions this finely."
Bleeding was bleeding and a fracture was a fracture. Afflictions were distinguished only by broad symptom categories.
Dunker Grimwald was subdividing afflictions further, and his treatments were specialized as well.
'I would like to see more of this young man's work.'
He had just entertained that mild wish when it happened.
"Grand Physician, an emergency patient!"
A Journeyman Physician burst in.
That they had come looking for him meant it was a serious patient they could not handle.
Archibald rose at once and hurried his steps.
"A critical patient has emerged in the Lionheart Knight Order."
"What are the symptoms?"
"A high fever. She complains of lower abdominal pain, and lochia is present as well."
"Are you saying there is a new mother among the knights?"
"It, it appears so."
"Let us hurry."
Archibald headed for the barracks infirmary.
"Grand Physician!"
When he entered, several knights had gone pale as sheets.
Their faces wore an expression Archibald had seen countless times.
The desperation of those who despair at a loved one falling to an affliction and reach for even a single thread of hope.
The knight lying in the sickbed was groaning, drenched in sweat.
Archibald immediately cast a spell to check her condition.
"High fever and dehydration. She is on the verge of losing consciousness. Since when has she been like this?"
"The third day."
"Which means three days have passed since the birth?"
The knights glanced at one another.
"Speak honestly. You will not be punished."
"......This knight's name is Paula. She learned of her pregnancy after the expedition had begun."
"Ordinarily one cannot deploy on an expedition mission while pregnant, so we kept it secret."
"We, her squad members, have been supporting her all this time."
Archibald pressed them.
"You kept it a secret while a pregnant woman took part in a forced march?"
"We are the Lionheart. Dropping out due to injury during a mission is a dishonor."
"Paula insisted on it for that reason as well."
Knights were such people.
Honor and loyalty are more important than life.
Archibald accepted it and cast further magic to examine her condition in detail.
"It is an affliction that women who have given birth often suffer. Treatment holds little meaning. There is nothing to do but pray she overcomes it. Help her rest as much as possible."
"Th-That cannot be......"
A statement that they might have to give up on their comrade. The knights were crushed.
That was when it happened.
"Is this a puerperal fever patient?"
A somewhat flippant, swaggering voice.
Archibald turned his head.
Dunker Grimwald.
He was standing there.