The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#346 Delinquent Priest Rufus (4) - Something Small "A Saintess...? You're joking, right?" "Does it sound like a joke to you?" Raphaela looked at Rufus. He spoke with his eyes narrowed and a broad smile, so that even his sincerity felt like a joke, and his joke felt like sincerity. Would it be too much to say that his very appearance was the crystallization of suspiciousness itself? "Well, to put it simply, it's just a matter of building up some name recognition. You, Raphaela, are an excellent pharmacist, and a doctor besides. If you treat many people and gain a reputation, wouldn't the odds of your words reaching the Heavenly Realm grow a little greater?" "Oh, ah. That kind of Saintess. Here I was startled, thinking you meant a female Apostle chosen by a god…" Throughout history, priests occasionally appeared who were chosen by a god and wielded tremendous power as that god's representative. Saint, if male; Saintess, if female. In the Sacred State of Hasht, such people were called Apostles—beings with whom Raphaela had no connection whatsoever. Raphaela could handle mana well enough, but she couldn't use even a speck of Divine Power. To begin with, that was power a god 'bestowed,' so while she never said it aloud, the compatibility itself was poor with someone like Raphaela, whose leanings were heavily those of a nonbeliever. "But, um, to set up a medical clinic in a city like this… wouldn't that take an insane amount of money?" Of course, Raphaela wasn't the type to calculate profit when it came to saving lives, but that didn't mean she was entirely without a practical sense of economics. If Rufus planned to stay in Kargal's domain forever, that would be one thing, but his Pilgrimage required him to move on to other gods' domains after touring Kargal's. Which meant investing money in a building just to make one appeal to a god here was an enormous waste. A house couldn't be used once and thrown away, after all. "Ha ha ha, it's fine. I'm planning on just something small, a modest, temporary building." At Rufus's words, Raphaela felt relieved. Fortunately, it seemed he had no intention of pouring out money so extravagantly. To state the outcome first, that relief had come far too soon. "U-um, Lord Rufus?" "What is it, Raphaela?" "Didn't you clearly say you'd do it 'modestly,' as something 'temporary'?" "Yes, and that's exactly what I'm doing, isn't it?" At the sight of Rufus tilting his head as if to ask what the problem was, Raphaela silently stared at the building before her. That's right. It was a building. "Why is the floor marble?" "Because if you just leave a dirt floor as is, dust kicks up. It's for hygiene." "Why are the walls and roof entirely sealed with stone, and even papered over in white on top of that?" "If you're going to treat patients, thorough heating and cooling are a must. It's basic." "And what about that bed and that chair with wheels over there?" "Shouldn't you have at least that much if you're going to give examinations?" "….." "….." "…Yes, well, it's nice." "Ha ha, I'm glad." *** A corner of some barracks in the city of Boots. Mirdin, a young Warden of Hasht, sat perched on a creaking bunk, slumped over like a corpse that had just crawled out of its grave. Mirdin, staring blankly into empty space with deeply darkened eye sockets and eyes yellowed and steeped in exhaustion, glanced down to check his own ankle. Wrapped over and over in strips of cloth torn off in long pieces, that spot looked, even at a glance, to be in terrible condition. The skin was stained in a mottled array of colors, and the flesh was so swollen that the boundary between ankle and instep had long since vanished. "What in the world do I have to do to make this heal…" Mirdin lamented in a voice steeped deep in despair. At first, it hadn't been this bad. He'd thought it was just a minor sprain during training, and in fact, there had been nothing much wrong with it on the surface. The squad leader had said something that minor should be overcome through sheer grit and made him take part in training without exception, and Mirdin had gone along with it. But even as one day passed, then two, the pain didn't subside—instead, it began to grow worse. Realizing something was wrong, Mirdin tried treating it in his own way. He wound cloth tightly around it, pressing so hard the blood barely circulated; he followed a fellow soldier's advice that burying the sore spot in sand mixed with hot ash would heal it; and he even crushed the leaves of various plants and applied them. None of it worked. No, more than not working, it actually got worse. Bizarre bruising formed, the pain in the bone grew severe, and something like strange hives broke out on the skin. By now, he couldn't even walk without a cane. The squad leader said he'd put in a request for medical support, but Mirdin knew better than anyone that those words were empty. "If only this had happened during combat—no, if only it had happened just a few months later…!!" Within Hasht, those capable of handling Divine Power made up roughly one-tenth of the total population. Among them, those who could wield the power of healing were fewer still. Naturally, supply and demand were bound to be extremely skewed, and that healing was allocated first to fellow priests, or to believers who held high standing. Whether it was a conflict with a neighboring nation or a monster subjugation, when a 'great battle' broke out, the benefit of healing was extended even to common soldiers as a way to boost morale—but in peacetime, and especially for an ordinary soldier injured merely during training, the priority was far, far lower. Because Mirdin, thanks to steady effort and decent talent, had been evaluated as someone who could realistically aim for promotion to officer rank if he just built up a few more months of results, his despair was all the greater. If he'd suffered the very same injury after being promoted to officer, it would have ended with him receiving treatment without any trouble at all—yet here he was, his life about to be ruined over the gap of a mere few months. Just where was anyone supposed to make use of a soldier crippled in the leg? The very fact that not a single person said anything to him even now, holed up in the barracks like this, was proof enough of that. To begin with, they no longer saw him as manpower, but as someone who would soon be gone. Unable to endure the self-loathing seething within him and the anxiety toward his future any longer, Mirdin kicked himself off his bunk and stormed out of the barracks, without even knowing where he was headed. Using a wooden spear as a cane, moving with jerky, unnatural steps—it was then that something strange suddenly caught his eye. In the northern outskirts of the city of Boots, a corner of a back alley strewn with junk and empty cans. In a spot where, by rights, only some shabby tent-house should have stood, there was, for some reason, a large, white, tremendously expensive-looking building. "What is this? Since when has a place like this been here…?" Just a week ago, when he'd made his patrol rounds, there had been no such place. That meant it was a building slapped together within a single week, and yet the craftsmanship and finish of the house, far from falling short compared to any ordinary Estate in the city center, actually seemed to surpass them. On the sign in front of the building, neat lettering read as follows. 『Pain, inflammation, fractures, bruises. Treated regardless of type. Treatment fees negotiable according to symptoms.』 Mirdin's pupils trembled. Just from the shape of the building alone, it screamed luxury. He couldn't even imagine how much the treatment fee might demand. But at the same time, there was also a trust that arose precisely because it was such an upscale building. The hope that a place this impressive might be able to fix an ankle that, no matter what folk remedy he'd tried, had only ever gotten worse instead of healing. 'Damn it, it's now or never! Even if I end up in debt, as long as I make it to officer rank…!!' Under normal circumstances, he would have weighed things more carefully and analyzed the suspicious points, but right now, Mirdin had no room for that. He stepped into the building almost as if entranced. And once again, he couldn't help but be startled. 'Why is it this clean?' It was white. And bright. Every "wound-healer's shop" Mirdin had ever seen up to now had, without exception, mostly been gloomy and ominous places. The prime example was bloodstains. They'd display, as if showing off, knives and various metal instruments caked with patients' blood, and bloodstains on the walls, and even knowing that this served as proof they'd "seen that many patients," Mirdin could never quite shake an inexplicable sense of unease. But what of this place? It was spotlessly clean. The floor was so smooth that he hesitated to step onto it with his muddy feet, and a distinctive scent of herbs lingered in the air, so that just breathing it in gave him the feeling his body was somehow getting better. "Where does it hurt? What brings you here?" At the voice that reached him, Mirdin turned his gaze, and there, a woman stood watching him. Her long, curly hair was tied back carelessly with a cord, and clad in a leather apron, her attire looked as though it had been chosen for practicality alone—and yet, somehow, an inexplicable air of nobility could still be felt about her. Mirdin hesitated for a moment before speaking. "My ankle… I hurt it. Could you take a look at it?" That he'd used such a polite tone of speech without even realizing it was because of the dignity the woman carried, and the expectation he held toward someone who might just be able to help him. The woman, Raphaela, looked at Mirdin's leg and soon began treating it with a serious expression. Every time she peeled away another layer of the filthy cloth he'd wrapped himself, Mirdin's face twisted in pain. But he couldn't bring himself to complain. Raphaela's expression as she examined the wound was so grave, and her hands moved with such delicacy. "The inflammation is severe. Though it's a relief it doesn't seem to be broken outright." Raphaela used clean water from a kettle and a basin to wash Mirdin's ankle, then spread on something like a green oil. "Good grief." Mirdin was startled. Because he could see the hives on his skin—the ones that had appeared after he'd wrongly applied that herbal juice earlier—receding at a speed fast enough to watch with the naked eye. "It's true that dwarf-flower root is effective for sprains, but that's only true for roots dug up in winter and early spring. Using it at any other time poisons the skin, so don't use it carelessly again." "Yes, yes ma'am!" While Mirdin sat there dazed, she used skilled hands to firmly immobilize his ankle with an impeccably clean, white roll of bandages and a splint. Whether it was the effect of the oil or simply thanks to how well it had been immobilized, Mirdin found himself marveling at how sharply the pain had already diminished, when Raphaela handed him a few additional medicines. "I'll give you medicine to clear the pus and medicine to speed up the bone knitting, so take one pill of each, twice a day, after meals. No drinking until the treatment is finished, and you're forbidden from putting weight on the injured leg just because it seems better. Come back once more in three days so I can change the bandage and check your condition." "Understood. But, um, the treatment fee is…?" "Well, about this much." The sum Raphaela named was about what an ordinary household in Hasht spent on food in a week. Impressions might differ from person to person, but at least to Mirdin, it felt like an absurdly cheap price. All the more so, considering it covered the examination, the bandaging, and even the medicine. Mirdin left the clinic and returned to the barracks half in a daze, and for nearly half a day afterward he remained blank-faced, prompting the soldiers around him to click their tongues at him. "Tsk tsk, he used to be treated as a promising prospect, and now the man's completely broken." "Showing off your results is all well and good, but not getting hurt in the first place really is best." It wasn't as if there were no one who rejoiced at Mirdin's plight, glad that a rival had vanished, but the voices of pity and sympathy outweighed them. That was because they knew the sight of Mirdin, broken as he was, could become their own fate at any time. But dismissing it as merely the gods' providence, they went on to forget about Mirdin. Thwaaack! "Guaack!!" "Next!" Some time later, they were left aghast at the sight of Mirdin, raging as though he'd never known injury at all, sweeping through the training grounds. "Oh, ohh! O Saintess! Your grace blesses me!!" …and they also whispered among themselves that, in exchange for his injury healing, his head seemed to have gone strange in a rather different sense. *** "Hmm, I wonder if we haven't stocked up too much." At that moment, Raphaela looked at the medicinal herbs piled up like a mountain in the clinic's storeroom and felt troubled. They were medicinal herbs Rufus had brought in through some merchant guild, and the quantity easily exceeded ten times what Raphaela used to run through at her old shop. She'd even had to somehow stop him from trying to hire a few more staff on top of that. What kind of temporary clinic got that much excessive investment poured into it? "It seems Father does have a tendency to overinvest, so I suppose I'll have to be the one keeping things in check." Raphaela felt pleased, thinking that even that inhumanly capable priest apparently had his shortcomings. …It was a murmur that, had her future self—the one soon to suffer under a runaway flood of patients—heard it, she would have grabbed herself by the collar and screamed in agony.