The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 353 The Delinquent Priest Rufus (11) - Proof of Divinity Raphaela had been spending extremely busy days recently. If someone asked why, since she wasn't working alone like before, she could only answer that it was precisely because she wasn't working alone that things were more of a problem. First, let's look at the composition of the workforce that had come to work with her. "Teacher Raphaela! I want to join you in your cause!!" First, the pure volunteers. These were patients Raphaela had treated, or people who were something like fans, smitten after watching her actions. People whose support for Raphaela, and whose enthusiasm for work, were higher than anyone else's. The problem was that, since most of them came from ordinary backgrounds, they had almost no practical medical knowledge or skill. In other words, everything had to be taught from scratch, one thing at a time, and as a rule, teaching while working is twice as hard as simply working. "I'll work hard. I'll work hard, so please, just keep that madman away from me!!" Second, the city's upper echelon, including Mayor Fredrick and the priests. In truth, these were people whose support for Raphaela, or whose enthusiasm for work, was not particularly high. Only their survival instinct—their refusal to grovel before Rufus—burned fiercely. Still, whether set to administrative work or medical work, they managed to do the work of 0.7 to 0.8 of a person, which, compared to the first case, actually made them easier to use. They did have the bad habit of trying to solve everything with a quick burst of Divine Power, but conversely, that also meant that even if there were minor flaws in the purely medical procedure, as long as the overall framework was right, the rest could be patched up with Divine Power as a reinforcement. "Ah, that's what I'm saying!! Water is the root of all disease!! Bathing pours bad energy all over the body, so it absolutely must be forbidden!!" Third, the people from the medical field who had come after hearing news that a large clinic was being established. In a way, they could be called the group that caused Raphaela the most headaches. It would have been fine if they'd simply come after money or power—she could just openly filter those ones out. The problem was the ones who had their own convictions or pride in their skills. Since plenty of them actually claimed to have treated people according to their own methods, and had more years of experience than Raphaela herself, the process of persuading them was not easy in itself. Empty cans, brimming with enthusiasm and obedient, but with nothing learned. Opportunists with ability but no motivation, who only ever watched to read the room. Stubborn types with motivation, but whose direction ran wild however they pleased. Raphaela, whose only experience was running a small herb shop by herself with never once having hired a single subordinate, could only rack her brain over it. All the more so since, to begin with, she wasn't particularly skilled at dealing with people in the first place. Still, as things in this world tend to go, amid all the chaos and clatter, it somehow rolled along regardless. Those who simply worshipped Raphaela as a person, without any real passion for the practice of medicine itself, were assigned to administration, facility management, or security, while only the small number whose passion aligned with their talent were assigned to medical work. Those with ability but no motivation, and those with motivation but a direction that didn't match Raphaela's, were persuaded through an appropriate "conversation" and then assigned to medical work. Everyone else was placed wherever suited them best. "Oho, so these days paralyzing someone with poison is what passes for a 'conversation.' Well, discipline does seem to have been firmly established afterward, so I suppose the effect is quite good." "...U-um, this is my private room, you know. Walking in like it's the most natural thing in the world is, well, a bit much." "But it's a building I built with my own money. What's the problem with the landlord doing a little inspection of the interior?" "I—I think the problem is a man entering a woman's room without permission." "It's fine. It's true that priests in this world generally can't keep their lower halves in check, but I'm different." Raphaela decided to shut her mouth. It was the wise thing to do. As a rule, one should never converse with a madman. But the nature of conversation is such that, even if I refuse, if the other person keeps talking, it can't help but continue unless I ignore them outright. "I run things as I please, treat patients as I please, and teach as I please. If anyone gets in my way, I'll smash the heavens themselves!" "......? What's that?" "It's a truth of organizational management. A workplace is, as a rule, a space for the boss's self-actualization, not the subordinates'." "That's just a mad tyrant." "If you don't like it, you can just be the boss yourself." "Still..." "Or there's always the option of accepting your subordinate physicians' theory that drinking water mixed with the ash of a burned talisman is an instant cure for coughing." "I'll just go with the tyrant route." At least on the matter of medicine, there was no such thing as compromise for Raphaela. Rather than watch people come to harm, cracking the skulls of anyone—industry senior or not—was, by her code of ethics and morals, the correct answer. "So, um, what's the reason you came? Surely it's not just to chat. Is there something about the operation I need to hear?" Raphaela had recently been doing so much work that even two bodies wouldn't have been enough, but she had never once complained about it. To begin with, treating and caring for people suited her nature, and besides, she knew that the narrow-eyed priest in front of her was handling even more work than she herself was. For one thing, Rufus was handling the finances essential to running the organization, and the same went for materials management, and aside from medical personnel, he was handling all the rest of the workforce too. He had, quite literally, laid out the stage so that Raphaela could devote herself solely to the medical side of things. So Raphaela had assumed this time was about the same thing as well, but the topic Rufus actually brought up was something different. "Helmet, Pauldron, Breastplate, Vambrace, Belt, and various other places besides. Letters have come in their names." The cities of Kargal's Faith-Based Territory took their names from the pieces of equipment worn by Kargal, the god of war. What Rufus meant by "various other places besides" was probably "every city other than Boots." "What did they say?" "If I strip away all the long-winded flowery language and just say what it boils down to, hmm." Rufus said it as though it were nothing at all, perfectly calm. "—They said if we surrender immediately, they'll spare our lives." *** A monopoly, as a rule, is power. This is all the more true the more closely that field is tied to a human being's basic right to survival. In an agricultural society, "landowner" was a word synonymous with "person of power." After all, they could control the very food people needed to live on. A salt merchant had, since ancient times, been a symbol of wealth. Because salt was an element essential to human survival, it was impossible to launch a boycott against a salt merchant just because you found him distasteful. In the same vein, in the Hasht Sacred State—particularly in Kargal's Faith-Based Territory—medicine was, in itself, power. People, as a rule, get hurt and fall ill as they live. Unless one was born with an unusually exceptional constitution or tremendous luck, that meant everyone, differing only in degree, was a being in need of the benefits of medicine. When I, or my family, am hurt or sick. Could I dare to treat carelessly the one person with the power to heal it? Could I dare bare my teeth at them just because I had a complaint? That was why medicine had to be granted only to a limited few. It had to be a special gift bestowed by the priests, and must never be regarded as a right taken for granted. Therefore, the series of developments now unfolding in the city of Boots was, in itself, a serious disruption of the ecosystem and a destruction of order to the upper echelons of Kargal's Faith-Based Territory. "What in the world is Mayor Fredrick doing!!" "He's mad! He must have completely lost his mind! How could anyone do something so absurd!" Divine Power is a noble force. And so the manner of using it must be noble as well. And yet, priests learning and using the methods that only lowly commoners and drug-peddlers relied on, using Divine Power merely to supplement them? The fact that this method was far more practical and saved more patients was of no importance. No, perhaps it was the opposite. Precisely because it was a more practical method that could be granted to more people, it had to be evil. Because if they accepted it, they too would have to learn and practice this lowly technique themselves. And if they didn't accept it, they would earn the believers' resentment, being asked why they weren't using a better method when one existed. Either way, it was an unacceptable outcome. Even the nobles of those outside kingdoms would agree. If someone were to suggest to those who took pride in calling themselves blue blood that they should sweep the streets, on the grounds that it was "efficient," they'd draw their swords on the spot. "We must lead the Wardens to subjugate this at once! The band that stirred up this depraved affair, and every last one of those who went along with it seeking treatment—all of them must be put to death without exception!!" "Fredrick and the priests of Boots can be considered accomplices as well, so they must be punished accordingly!!" After the fervent denunciations had gone on for a good while. Someone, noting that the overheated mood had settled somewhat, quietly raised a practical concern. "But this man Rufus, who led the whole affair, is someone who single-handedly overwhelmed the entire Warden force of Boots. To deal with someone like that, we'd need to send elite forces including holy knights, or else mount a full-scale military operation with a large body of Wardens—but is that really feasible right now, with those beastkin in the forest moving in such an ominous way?" "Hmm." At the sharp observation, groans of dismay leaked out here and there across the meeting hall. The continent currently had five great powers. The Eizern Empire. The Cardian Republic. The Liu Empire. The Hasht Sacred State. The Omnium Beastkin Alliance. And these great powers, whether due to their respective positions, their national systems, or their ideologies, had formed a kind of rivalry with one another. The Eizern Empire, which pursued absolute imperial authority, and the Cardian Republic, which denied the class system and raised the banner of revolution, were ideologically opposed to one another. However, military conflict between the two rarely broke out, for three main reasons. One, several small and medium-sized nations existed between Eizern and Cardian like a buffer zone, so the two didn't share a direct border. Two, Eizern had already expanded to the very limit its centralized, absolute imperial authority could manage, leaving it in a state like a well-fed lion, content to consolidate internally with little interest in further external expansion. Three, if the empire's publicly known strength was rated at 10, Cardian's was only around 5 to 6, which made all-out war against the empire difficult unless it allied with another great power, or with numerous small and medium nations. For these reasons, these "great powers of the west" (strictly speaking, Cardian was a north-central nation, but was called this for convenience) merely bared their fangs and glared at one another, remaining fairly far removed from any actual war. Then what about the great powers of the east? For one, the Liu Empire wasn't in a direct competitive relationship with the other great powers. The desert-and-grassland belt including the Markanda region acted as a kind of barrier, blocking direct competition with the other great powers, and besides, they were busy waging civil wars among themselves, whittling down their own national standing all on their own. Of course, given their sheer population size and the martial masters springing up like mushrooms after rain from their peculiar martial arts culture, there were predictions that they'd recover their strength again before long, but in any case, since they weren't presently in a hostile relationship, they inevitably ended up lower on the list of priorities. That left only the Hasht Sacred State and the Omnium Beastkin Alliance among the remaining great powers. And these two had, by their very nature, far too many elements that made them prone to tearing at each other. Hasht was the last nation on a continent that had become a world of unbelievers to still hold onto its faith, and it was highly exclusionary. Omnium was the last refuge for fugitives who had lost supremacy to humans, and it too was highly exclusionary. What's more, unlike Eizern versus Cardian, there was no other nation to serve as a buffer between them, meaning they shared a direct border. "Because of that damned elf Guardian, those beastkin bastards are growing more and more arrogant and keep provoking us. Wouldn't it spell disaster if we pulled a large portion of our border forces away in a situation like this?" Just a few decades ago, Omnium hadn't even ranked among the great powers. The gap in military strength with Hasht had been so vast that comparison was meaningless. But Hasht hadn't even been able to approach the Great Forest where Omnium existed. Because the elf Guardian mercilessly shot down every human who set foot inside the Great Forest. Though the Guardian's domain was limited in that it couldn't extend beyond the Great Forest, thanks to that limitation, the beastkin, once driven to the brink of extinction, had recovered their strength and numbers within the Great Forest, and were now even occasionally provoking Hasht. It was still closer to the deviant acts of a few individuals than any large-scale military provocation, but for Hasht's upper echelons, it was an extremely unsettling matter. After all, who was to say something like that wouldn't suddenly spiral into a major incident? "Then let's do this. We'll send a polite 'recommendation' to the city of Boots—telling them to attend the Grand Council and explain themselves regarding this incident." "Do you really think they'd listen to that? They must know full well it would be walking into their own execution." "If they refuse, that refusal itself gives us grounds. A man who calls himself a priest failing to attend a council watched over by the gods—that means he's forsaken his priesthood. Then the city of Boots becomes a city that Heretics have invaded and now rule as they please. Which means that even without necessarily using our own strength, we can inform the Pantheon and request a resolution." "Well, I suppose if even one of the Apostles were to step in, the whole matter would be resolved at once." "But what happens if this Rufus person really is a priest? Even if he's not a priest of Kargal, couldn't he be a priest of some other order?" "We've already completed the verification process with the other Faith-Based Territories. There is no priest anywhere by the name of Rufus." "What if the gods themselves chose a talent from another country? That, that's what happened with the Saintess who defeated the Demon King of Massacre in the central region." "Ha ha ha, that's absurd. That only happened back then because filthy demons had defiled this land—since then, the ones of the Heavenly Realm have never once chosen talent from outside our borders." *** "By the way, Father. Is there a particular reason you always tend to the brazier's fire yourself?" "Those are the terms of a certain deal." "?"