The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#343 The No-Good Priest Rufus - The Sacred State's Heretic Healer Long, long ago. This land was full of faith. In the earth, in the rivers, in the trees, in the wind, in the wildflowers—truly, gods dwelled in every single thing in creation. The gods of the Heavenly Realm wandered the Earthly Realm and mingled with humankind, and by their loving grace, mankind was able to flourish. But, ah, what happened then? A wicked and vicious sinner. A servant of demons deserving every curse. Because of the 『apostate』, whose name is too filthy even to speak, calamity came upon the world. The gods, who had been the guardians of this earthly realm, grew disappointed in mankind and departed this world, and the world left without gods became an incomplete and ugly place. Out there in the world beyond, it is full of those who fell prey to the demons' temptations, or who were corrupted by desire after receiving their teachings. Only here, in our Hasht Sacred State, the last dwelling place of the sacred gods, can be called the last remaining lamp left in this world. Now, everyone. Let us devote ourselves for the sake of mankind. Let us sing for the sake of the gods. Judgment upon the unbelievers. The flame of purification upon defiled mankind!! *** Raphaela, a herb gatherer on the frontier of the Hasht Divine Kingdom, hated her own name a great deal. (E/N: I am going to call it alternatively Hasht Sacred State and Hasht Divine Kingdom) It was too grandiose, too eye-catching. It was an Apostle's name—a representative of the gods. Or the kind of name that only clergy who actually ruled the country beneath them might have. Every time she introduced herself normally, she would receive looks tinged with disgust, as if people were seeing 'some lowborn wretch desperately trying to imitate her betters,' and no matter how many times it happened, it never became an experience she grew used to. Grinding her teeth and telling herself she really ought to change this damned name, yet lamenting her own weakness and laziness for never once following through on that resolve, Raphaela busied herself diligently again this morning. First, she went to the hearth and coaxed back to life the embers that had been dying through the night. Once she added more firewood and the flames began to grow to a certain size, she set a cast-iron pot on top and boiled water. Moving back and forth among the bundles of herbs hanging thickly from the ceiling, she checked what was running low and sorted out the portion to be processed that day—a series of motions she performed with the utmost skill. The first herb Raphaela reached for was the poison spiderweb vine. As its name suggested, it was tough and coarse, and it even had thorns, so that once it caught on clothing it would tangle right in, and if the skin so much as brushed it while trying to pull it free, one would suffer a horrendous rash—making it one of the plants people loathed most. But by nature, the line between medicine and poison was an exceedingly faint one. With thick leather gloves on her hands, Raphaela set the poison spiderweb vine on the cutting board and began removing the thorns from its surface one by one with a small paring knife. When removing a thorn, she also had to carve out the venom sac hidden beneath it, and in the process she had to take care not to accidentally rupture the sac. That was because a ruptured venom sac, owing to its peculiar internal structure, would spray venom all around as if sprayed from an atomizer. If it touched the eyes, one would suffer a vicious burning sensation for at least half a day; if it touched the skin, it would flare up as if from a fever; and if, out of sheer bad luck, it got into one's nose or mouth, one could consider that day's ordinary life over. One would spend the whole day coughing and sneezing over and over, only to end up coughing blood from raw, ulcerated mucous membranes later on. That was also precisely why herb gatherers rarely touched the poison spiderweb vine easily, even though, once properly prepared and decocted, it could be used as a powerful painkiller with almost no side effects. After removing every thorn, Raphaela tore the remaining stem into long strips until it was almost thread-like, then dropped the pieces into the water already boiling in the iron pot. Once the venomous purple stems turned brown, she scooped them out with a strainer, put them into a mortar together with oil pressed from the plant, and ground them. After confirming it had become something between a viscous liquid and a solid, all that remained was to divide it among dozens of palm-sized containers made from processed mayfly bamboo, whose joints were spaced more closely than ordinary bamboo, and that was the end of it. Next, as she rose to prepare a wound medicine, she frowned at a sound that came from outside. Clang— clang— clang—! An ear-splitting metallic sound rang out from the old bell tower at the center of the village. "Haah." Raphaela let out a deep sigh, put out the campfire for the time being, and stepped outside the cabin that served as both her home and her shop. When she reached the village square at a brisk pace, hundreds of villagers who had arrived before her were already there, along with the Wardens who ringed the square as though keeping watch over them. So as not to catch the eye of the soldiers scanning the crowd with irritable glances and get saddled with some needless complaint, Raphaela squeezed in among the people gathered in the square and knelt on the ground just as they did. What followed next were fervent words of prayer. —O great Kargal. You who rule over war and the sea. —Save us, protect us from the demons who fill this world. —When, in the distant future, this wretched life of ours comes to an end, we shall follow you forever beneath the hem of your cloak. Prayers repeated without pause from the mouths of the people kneeling in the square. The endless feast of words continuing on and on from every direction honestly felt, to her, like a crowd of people babbling together. Endlessly begging forgiveness for their own faults, pleading for salvation, and praising the gods went on for about an hour. When the bell in the tower at the center of the village rang out once more, only then did the people begin rising to their feet, one by one. It was, of course, no easy thing. Without so much as a proper cushion, having knelt on the hard, freezing bare ground for well over ten minutes at a stretch, how could anyone's legs possibly be fine? The young still had it relatively better, but for the elderly, this daily prayer was practically an ordeal in itself. Watching the elderly barely manage to rise with the help of those around them, Raphaela's face creased into a frown. 'No matter how I look at it, this is a waste of time.' In the Hasht Sacred State, in that Divine Kingdom, the lives of common people were harsh. Even working and moving about busily all day long, it was hard enough just to scrape by, and forcing everyone to stop what they were doing and take part in prayer without exception was a waste like no other. That would be one thing if the prayer actually did any real good, but wasn't even its usefulness questionable? 'What could the god of war and the sea possibly have to do with the people of this village, anyway.' The village where Raphaela lived was inland territory. Nearby, there was not even a river that connected directly to the sea, let alone the sea itself. War was much the same. In a village where ninety-nine out of a hundred residents had never fought an enemy more dangerous than a rat rummaging through the storehouse, what reason could there possibly be to offer prayers to the god of war? Considering that a god only granted benefits to believers within the domain that god actually governed, what this village's people needed was Bestia, goddess of fire and the home, or Jeresh, god of agriculture and the earth—not some war god like Kargal. Of course, it was a thought she could never voice aloud. Which god the residents of a given region were required to worship was strictly determined by law. The very notion of 'choosing' a god according to one's own convenience was, in this country, the height of impiety—a sin so grave that merely mentioning it left one with no grounds to protest being branded a heretic. Forcing away her gloomy mood, Raphaela returned home and silently went on with her work. She relit the hearth she had briefly put out, processed her herbs, tidied up, and made mental note of the list of things she needed to bring on her next gathering trip. Only after finishing all of that did she finally get a moment to catch her breath, and so, taking the opportunity to spread a bit of jam made from herbs and small fruits she'd gathered along the way onto some dry, crumbly bread, she went to have her modest first meal of the day— Thud thud thud!! "Pharmacist! Please open the door! It's urgent!" "......" Raphaela stared with unmistakable regret at the bread she had only just now been about to take her first bite of, then, seeming to accept there was nothing else for it, set the bread back down and went to greet her visitor. There was no need to bother asking what the matter was. One glance at the little boy, one arm hanging limp and dangling as tears streamed down his face, and the man beside him patting the boy's back while breaking out in a cold sweat, was more than enough to make the purpose of their visit painfully obvious. 'I'm a herb gatherer and pharmacist, not a doctor' was what Raphaela swallowed back down her throat. Because saying so out loud would have done absolutely no good at all. Without a word, she checked over the boy's condition. A shirtsleeve ruined with mud and blades of grass. Small cuts on the skin. It looked as though he had likely tumbled down some steep slope. Examining him from every angle to gauge the extent of the injury, Raphaela's expression hardened. It wasn't the level of a minor dislocation or hairline crack. A fracture. And of all places, it had struck the growth plate. If it had been an illness, she might have at least been able to try something with her medicines, but with this kind of physical trauma, there was no good answer. Even applying a splint would only keep it from getting any worse—there was nothing to be done about bone displaced on the inside. Applying physical pressure from outside, through the skin, to precisely set a bone whose exact damage couldn't even be seen, was practically an armchair theory, and cutting open the skin to fit the bone back into place was out of the question given her lack of both equipment and skill. Whew, Raphaela let out a deep breath. It pained her, but here she had to deliver the harsh truth. Your son cannot be cured. In all likelihood, as he grows, complications will arise and his two arms will end up different lengths. The best I can do is ease the pain somewhat and prevent infection from the wound. "It's fine. It's just a minor dislocation. I need to set the bone, so I'll take him inside for a moment. Please don't follow me in, you'll be in the way." "I— is that so? He was in so much pain, I really thought something terrible had happened...!" "It's fine. But there are a lot of dangerous medicines inside that only I can handle, so you must never, ever follow me in. If you're not careful, it could put the boy in danger too." She was insane. You really have lost your mind, Raphaela. What nonsense are you spouting right now. Hurry up and take it back. Say it was a mistake, correct yourself! In stark contrast to the screams echoing inside her head, Raphaela's movements were utterly swift. She swept clean a table crowded with various herbs and instruments, then laid the boy down on top of it. Slipping a sleeping draught into his mouth to rob him of consciousness, Raphaela immediately set to work preparing the medicine. She crushed and mixed several herbs from the shop in a set proportion, dissolved them in water, then strained the mixture through a filter. Had a professional pharmacist or herb gatherer seen this, they would have demanded to know just what on earth Raphaela was doing. And they would have had every reason to. Because, strictly speaking, what Raphaela was doing right now was not pharmacy at all. If one considered only the herbs' properties and their purely physical and chemical effects, the process she was carrying out right now was nothing but a complete waste of effort. Put another way, if one added a new condition beyond those above, meaning could arise where there had been none. For instance, performing additional processing using mana. Experts called this Mana Alchemy, and ordinary people just called it alchemy. And either way, within the Sacred State it was a blazingly serious crime. While furiously making excuses of 'it's fine as long as I don't get caught' to the part of her reason telling her to stop this madness at once, Raphaela finished preparing the potion, cleanly washed the arm of the boy who lay deep asleep and oblivious to the world under the drug's effect, applied a medicine with disinfectant properties, and then, with a blade of mana, cut into the flesh without hesitation. Delicately gripping the bone fragments displaced on the inside with telekinetic magic, she poured the potion over them in that state, and the shattered bone and torn flesh mended and closed up at ultra-high speed. Having thus completely healed the wound, Raphaela brought out bandages and a splint, finished the follow-up treatment meant purely for appearances' sake in front of others, then took the boy in her arms and stepped back outside. "He was in so much pain that I put him to sleep with medicine for now, and he'll probably wake up before evening. Since the medicine's effects will keep the pain away, he might feel like he's 'all better' and try to move around all he likes, but it'll actually take a bit more time to heal, so please make sure he doesn't undo the bandages on his own no matter what. Do bring him back again in two days." It was a shameless lie. The boy's wound had already healed completely. But doing it this way meant the parents would simply take the boy's words as a misunderstanding and keep the bandages on, which would let her avoid having the unnaturally rapid healing found out by those around them. Collecting a modest treatment fee (a pittance compared to the effort Raphaela had actually put in) from the boy's father, who kept thanking her over and over, she returned inside the shop and let out a sigh. "Haah. Idiot. What were you thinking, pulling something like that again, what if you get caught…." "I see. That was certainly a reckless thing to do. Within the Sacred State, all techniques that make use of mana are strictly regulated, and since the very existence of a mana user not under the Church's control is treated as heresy, a witch trial begins the very instant such a person is discovered." Raphaela froze solid. Because a man had walked into her shop with no trace of a presence at all, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and was now casually looking around the herb shop here and there. The man, with his narrowed eyes that looked shut even when open and his striking, dark-colored priest robes in a color scheme utterly unlike those of ordinary priests, smiled at Raphaela. "I'm Rufus, assigned as this village's priest as of today. Pharmacist Raphaela. Might I have a moment of your time?" Hic. That short hiccup was the very best answer Raphaela could manage.