The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

Chapter 347: Delinquent Priest Rufus (5) - Don't Tell Me Let's suppose that right now, you're holding a hundred-sided die in your hand. Roll the die, and if it comes up 30 or below, a minor injury or illness occurs. Roll the die once more in that state, and if it comes up 70 or above, you recover; if it's 30 or below, your condition worsens; and if it falls in between, things stay the same. You have to roll that die every single day, for every little trivial action you take. That was exactly what life felt like for the ordinary people living in the city of Boots. No matter how hard you tried, no matter how careful you were, illness struck when it struck, and injury happened when it happened. And once something started hurting somewhere, whether it healed or not was purely the domain of faith. That doesn't mean Divine Power healed people. It's that, aside from praying, there was nothing else one could properly do about it. There was no way to know whether this wound or illness would heal by tomorrow. There was no way to know whether the method used to treat the wound or illness was even correct. Using a folk remedy might end up making things worse, or conversely, doing nothing at all and simply letting it be might result in healing. An individual's constitution, nutritional state, surrounding environment, and every other factor probably influenced the value of the die, but since there was no way to know what influenced it or how, all one could do was live day to day, praying. It couldn't be helped. A "special" power like Divine Power was far too noble to be handed out carelessly to ordinary people. "There's a shop that treats any kind of wound or illness?" "And the cost is so cheap that even an ordinary person, with just a little effort, can get treated without much difficulty?" "And they cure illness using nothing but human skill, without any Divine Power or anything like that?" Then one day, a strange rumor began to spread among such people. At first, everyone thought about it sensibly. "Must be a con artist. Or maybe someone just got lucky and happened to recover." To begin with, there was no concept of a "hospital" or a "clinic" within Hasht. The temples fulfilled a similar role, but this too was nothing but another world entirely for ordinary people without special abilities, positions, or wealth. It wasn't as though there was no one who came forward claiming they knew how to treat illness, but among them, the ones who were truly skilled worked as personal physicians to the reasonably wealthy. That paid far better and came with better treatment, and there was no need to wear yourself out seeing a crowd of people for no reason. But a doctor who barely charged any money, saw any patient at all, and was even exceptionally skilled, had deliberately opened up shop in some run-down place to hand out treatment? If this wasn't a baseless rumor or exaggeration, then what on earth would be? But there are always people, everywhere in the world, so desperate they'd grasp at straws, and they stepped into the clinic despite the negative opinions around them. "Ohh! My leg!! My leg is moving!!" "To think the skin disease that's tormented me for half my life is gone!!" "Thank you! Thank you so much!! Thanks to you, my mother's life was saved…!!" And with that, they went mad with joy. In truth, there was no other way it could go. After all, people are the sort of creatures whose quality of life plummets straight down over something as small as a single ingrown toenail. So what must the lives and desperation have been like, for those who had endured injuries and illnesses far worse than that, with no proper way to cure them and nowhere to voice their suffering, doing nothing but bear with it? The clinic that on the first day had held nothing but crisp, clear air began, on the second day, to show the occasional shadow of a person creeping in, and by the third day, showed a population density that was almost reminiscent of a marketplace. It was only thanks to Rufus having set the rules—"11 to 1 is lunch and preparation time," "no patient intake accepted after 7 in the evening"—that things didn't get out of hand; had that not been the case, she might truly have had to see nothing but patients all day long, whether the sun was up or down. "Please boil your water whenever possible. If firewood is too expensive to make boiling difficult, soak this leaf in your water jar for over six hours, then drink only the water skimmed from the top—that should help some." "Thank you! I'll be sure to keep that in mind!" After seeing off the last patient. Looking at the inside of the clinic, finally quiet, Raphaela let out a long sigh. She was exhausted. But if asked whether she was so overwhelmed she felt like she'd die, that wasn't quite true either. At this rate, honestly, she could probably take on a few more hours of patients— "No." "—Hic!" Flustered, Raphaela barely managed to steady the chair that had nearly toppled over backward. Then she spoke to Rufus, who had somehow appeared behind her, wearing a suspiciously cheerful grin. "W-when did you get there!?" "That's not particularly important." No, it felt like an extremely important issue. That was what Raphaela thought inwardly, but the thought didn't get to continue. Because Rufus immediately started poking at her sore spot. "You were thinking something like, 'This much is manageable, I could probably see a few more patients,' weren't you?" "Is there perhaps a Divine Power for reading minds?" "That's not important." 'I'm telling you, it seems like an important issue.' Ignoring the retort Raphaela had voiced inwardly, Rufus continued speaking. "When it comes to this work, Raphaela, you're essentially doing everything almost entirely by yourself. Reception, examination, treatment, prescriptions—all of it. Honestly, even now, it's close to an excessive workload." "B-but, I don't need to gather medicinal herbs myself like before, and all I have to do is finish the processing, so it's manageable." "Both stamina and energy are consumable resources. If you work beyond the amount that recovers in a day, even if it doesn't show right away, your body and mind will gradually wear down. Isn't that something you often told your patients?" "Um." Put that way, there really was no logical counterargument. There wasn't one logically, but Raphaela opened her mouth anyway. "But there might be patients who'll miss their chance forever if I don't treat them now." Honestly speaking, Raphaela had never imagined that the state of medical care in the city of Boots would be this dire. After all, wasn't it a city? A place with a far larger population, more abundant facilities, and overflowing supplies and infrastructure compared to the rural village she'd come from. She wasn't the only pharmacist in the world, nor the only one with medical skill, so naturally she'd assumed the medical environment here would be better than in the village she'd had to shoulder all by herself. It had been a misconception. Every medical system in the city of Boots converged on the temple, and while that temple possessed a cure-all called "Divine Power," its benefits were granted to only a scant few. How many patients had she seen whose illness or injury, which could have been simply resolved with proper initial care, had instead worsened due to wrong treatments or actions? Thinking that, among the patients who'd waited in line today only to turn back and leave, there might be some who would miss the right timing in just that way, left Raphaela thoroughly uneasy. "Hmm." Rufus stared intently at Raphaela's face. For Raphaela, it was a gaze that weighed heavily on her—she had no idea what emotion those eyes, narrowed to slits, might be holding. 'D-don't tell me. Is he going to just sell me off to a heresy trial because I keep not listening and being stubborn?!' Realizing she might have been whining too much, Raphaela hurriedly shrank into herself. She'd momentarily forgotten, since Rufus had taken care of so many things for her, but fundamentally, Raphaela was a criminal caught committing heresy, and Rufus was a priest at the very top of the food chain in this country. That very Rufus had gone so far as to spend his own money building her a place and providing medicine, and on top of that, for her to stubbornly insist on things just to satisfy her own personal feelings(?) and desires(?)—even she thought she might be overstepping, and found it hard to meet his eyes. "Well, that's not entirely wrong. Ultimately, it's meant to let your voice reach the heavens through renown and reform this city's unreasonable system, but focusing only on the goal while neglecting the process isn't the desirable attitude for a healer, either." "S-so then? Would it be all right for me to see more patients?" "No, it wouldn't?" "……." At the silent protest that seemed to ask whether he was just toying with her, Rufus grinned broadly. "Well, there's no need to be so anxious about it. A bite should be coming along soon enough, anyway." *** Wherever in the world there exists some kind of inefficiency or irrationality, there will invariably be someone who parasitizes it to reap a profit. And such parasitic people, far from feeling ashamed of their actions or minding others' opinions, instead think of it as their rightful due. "Just what the hell is that damned clinic supposed to be!! Where did something like that suddenly come from!!" The reason Fredrick, Mayor of Kargal's city of Boots, was so furious lay along the very same lines. Medicine meant money. Since everyone's body and life were precious to them, the divine power to cure illness and injury was, more than anything else, a formidable form of power. That was why the Mayor had been reaping a tidy profit in exchange for slightly adjusting people's "turn" to receive treatment from the temple's healing priests. This kind of manipulation of the queue naturally shot up in value when the waiting time was enormously long and there was no other alternative to turn to. And yet the very "cushions" that were supposed to fill up the waiting line and raise the value of trading turns were all slipping away to some entirely different place. "This is bad. This can't go on like this." Those who offered bribes to Fredrick or his subordinates broadly fell into two categories. One was people who were wealthy to begin with. The other was people who were poor, but had scraped together every last grain of rice for the sake of treatment. Of these, simply having the latter group drop out already meant a significant loss, and on top of that, there was the problem that the former group, now facing fewer competitors because of it, would end up paying less. Not only would this affect the Mayor's own accumulation of wealth, but some of the priests who shared in his profits might also voice their displeasure. If it were up to his feelings alone, he'd have wanted to crush that clinic, or whatever it was, right away, but the other party was too strange an entity to touch recklessly, so he had no choice but to proceed with caution. "The Brown Trading Company, was it? Just how did an outside merchant guild manage to get into Hasht in the first place?" Hasht, as a nation, had a national character that was, in itself, considerably closed off. To put it precisely, they were fond of Hasht's own things going outward to influence others, but disliked outside things coming in to influence Hasht. Outside merchant guilds found it hard even to obtain permission to enter, and their commercial activity within the country was bound to be severely restricted, and yet that so-called Brown Trading Company had come inside as though it were nothing at all and was openly conducting trade. This was something that would have been impossible without either a formidably powerful backer or an enormous bribe changing hands. If it were the latter, that would be one thing, but if it were the former, it might turn out to be troublesome, so Fredrick had to carry out a careful investigation before moving to sanction the clinic. And at last, the investigation bore fruit. "Those people don't have some tremendous backer or anything like that. It seems they just scattered piles of money around everywhere and forced their way in." "What's their objective? If they spent that much money, they'd be looking to reap a matching profit, so why sponsor something as random as a clinic? Didn't you say they charge very little for treatment, for something supposedly meant to make money?" "Isn't it probably that they're spreading things cheap for now, in order to seize the market first? They'll show their true colors later, I'd wager." "Hmm." "What would you like to do, Mayor? Shall we ask them to show some 'sincerity' on this end too?" At his secretary's words, Fredrick pondered for a moment, then shook his head. "There's nothing good about getting entangled with outside forces for no reason. Kargal's priests seem to be quite displeased about this whole affair too, so we need to deal out clear, severe punishment if we want to avoid any backlash." Just a wealthy outside merchant guild, versus one of the highest-power groups within the country. Wasn't it obvious, without even needing to think about it, whose hand he should take? "Then I'll handle it right away." "Yes. Bury them as the vanguard of foreign heretics who were carrying out espionage from within." Evidence wasn't even particularly necessary. If those above said it was so, then it was so—how dare those beneath even think to doubt it? He hadn't the slightest worry that things might go wrong. A merchant group that, however fairly wealthy, was foreign at its very foundation. Just a single pharmacist. And a single male worker of unclear identity—wasn't that all there was to it? The male worker had kept himself so hidden that his exact identity couldn't be confirmed, but it wasn't something worth worrying over much. As if some crazy priest would ever be doing menial chores in a place like that.