WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint ◈

Chapter 1: I Think I Possessed the Protagonist Who Might Become a Saint

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South Korea, 2030...

Castrato Medical Center was peaceful as ever!

“Have you secured the field with suction?”

The operating room was in uproar over an alert for hypotensive shock, but that was everyday life in a hospital OR.

Even more so in trauma surgery.

So yes, the hospital was peaceful today as well.

I hummed as I pulled on my surgical gloves when the resident at the operating table urgently called out.

“Fellow! The patient’s vitals are dropping!”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m hurrying. Rushing me won’t make the formula come out any faster.”

Today’s patient had been crushed by a truck in a traffic accident.

Once I had finished preparing, I looked into the patient’s open abdomen.

“Thankfully, the spleen isn’t too badly ruptured. But the upper GI tract is completely necrotic. The volvulus is severe too. What did they do to turn someone’s intestines into twisted doughnuts?”

“I heard there was a bit of an incident during the rescue after they were crushed by the truck.”

“How long did it take to get them to the hospital?”

“About four hours.”

“We can’t save this.”

“Pardon?”

The resident stared at me in horror.

Realizing I had misspoken, I quickly corrected myself.

“I mean we can’t save the stomach and small intestine. Of course we can save the patient. I’ve saved people in far worse condition than this.”

I had even saved a patient with a bullet lodged in their heart.

While their heart was still beating, too.

You don’t believe me?

I couldn’t believe it worked either.

“Let’s do a total gastrectomy. Leave a little for a later Roux-en-Y reconstruction. For now, staple it off.”

As I untwisted the intestines, I used a stapler to close off the ends of the esophagus and small intestine.

Finally, I inserted a feeding tube into the small intestine and created an opening in the abdomen for stool to pass through.

“What did they eat for their stomach to be filled with this?”

“Won’t they develop sepsis?”

“Eh, infectious disease will handle that. It’s their job.”

I changed my gloves several times after they were contaminated with food matter.

After suturing the ruptured diaphragm and inserting a chest tube, the operation was over.

“Phew...”

I lowered my mask and removed my gloves.

“You can close up. And...”

I patted the shoulder of the resident sitting in front of the computer.

“Tell Professor Kim from GI that we’d like them to handle the reconstruction once the patient stabilizes.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Oh, and don’t forget to send the photos showing the surgical sites. They need to know where I placed the feeding tube so they can avoid it later.”

“Yes, sir!”

“I made myself clear, right? Don’t forget like last time and get the whole group disciplined.”

“Yes, sir! Understood! Good work, Doctor!”

“Right. And.”

Before leaving the OR, I added one last instruction.

“Admit the patient under GI. If you call me, I’ll block your number. If there’s a problem, talk to another professor. I’m going to sleep through my entire day off.”

The moment the surgery ended, exhaustion crashed over me like a tidal wave.

When I checked the clock, twelve hours had passed since I came to work.

The hit-and-run, the fall, the stabbing, and now the truck accident...

It had been a truly packed day.

Ah. Looking again, the date had changed.

It had not been twelve hours. It had been thirty-six.

‘Fuck. Let me go home already.’

Thirty-six straight hours of surgery.

No human being should have to do this.

Then I suddenly remembered the most important thing I had forgotten.

I immediately returned to the operating room.

Then I called over the medical students who had been blankly observing from a corner of the room.

“Students.”

“Y-Yes!”

“This was a twenty-million-won operation.”

“Pardon?”

“Trauma surgery fees went up two years ago. When we perform one of these, the six people in this OR split twenty million won. They deduct material costs, of course, but we still make a lot.”

“...?”

“And if you operate after six in the evening, you get nearly double. Trauma surgery makes great money. So? You should choose trauma surgery, right?”

The students’ gazes traveled from me to the resident, then to the nurse.

Heroes drenched in blood and sweat, with deep dark circles beneath their eyes.

Wasn’t this enough to make anyone fall for us?

One of the students hesitated before speaking.

“I-I’m sorry.”

Ah, why?!

* * *

The instant I got home, I threw myself onto the sofa like a corpse.

I didn’t even have the energy to wash up.

“Haah... I need to sleep soon...”

But then modern humanity’s chronic disease struck.

My body was drained, but my brain refused to rest and demanded dopamine.

Out of habit, I turned on my smartphone.

“Is there a novel with a light plot to read...?”

Reality itself was a fantasy filled with ghosts, entities, and patients.

Trauma patients had been flooding in lately, so trauma surgery never got a break.

I didn’t want to read something gloomy in a novel too.

“Something calm... something healing...”

As I scrolled, an interesting title caught my eye in the rankings.

<Schnabel’s Memoir>

#Fantasy #FusionPunk #Misunderstanding #Medical #...etc.

“Schnabel? A plague doctor?”

Schnabel.

A German word meaning beak.

It was also associated with plague doctors.

[Do not call Schnabel a saint. That is not a miracle.]

[Please do not trust the Crow Doctor. A plague doctor is not what you think.]

I put together the description and tags.

Misunderstanding, denial, and a saint.

Schnabel was a German word associated with bird beaks and plague doctors.

In other words, the protagonist of the original novel was probably a plague doctor who wore a crow mask and went around saving people.

The people around him must have mistaken him for a saint and revered him for it.

How many web novels had I read?

I could figure out this much at a glance.

‘I can already estimate the original plot.’

The protagonist would casually wrap someone in bandages or prescribe some medicine, and a northern grand duke’s daughter or imperial princess would pass by and say, “You’re the first person to ever treat me like this,” before becoming obsessed with him.

Then the protagonist would be revered as a saint or prophet while he felt burdened and tried to escape.

Only to be caught again and showered in wealth and glory.

“This guy has it easy.”

While someone else was about to lose their mind sewing up the insides of a patient crushed by a six-hundred-kilogram truck.

Meanwhile, he was the protagonist of a misunderstanding story who received praise just for breathing.

It would be nice if I could live like that too.

‘Let’s see how this guy lives in another world.’

I immediately opened the prologue.

Before I could even read the novel’s first sentence...

Crack!

A terrible pain tore through the center of my chest.

It was as if a sharp axe had split my sternum and sent agonizing pain radiating through my spine.

My smartphone slipped from my hand and fell to the floor.

Cold sweat poured down like rain, and my vision flickered white.

‘Urgh... damn it... I had been feeling indigestion lately.’

If I was dying before I could even scream... Acute myocardial infarction? Or an aortic dissection?

I always told medical students that they should consider heart disease when a patient complained of indigestion.

Yet I had assumed it was just indigestion and had been looking for digestive medicine this whole time.

‘Damn it... I was so close to a professorship...’

* * *

When I opened my eyes, I was in another world.

‘I lived through that.’

Though I had survived in a different sense.

Still, I was alive.

The name I received at birth was Julian Schnabel.

The moment I saw the surname Schnabel, it wasn’t difficult to guess that I had taken possession of someone in the novel I had been about to read.

And of all people, I had become its protagonist.

‘I envied the protagonist. That doesn’t mean I wanted to become him.’

I also experienced firsthand the setting of the novel that I had not been able to check at the time.

This world was a mixture of dark fantasy and fusion punk.

Humanity had been driven back by magical beasts and demonkin, so they built walls and chose to hide behind them.

Even then, news occasionally came that another fortress had been overrun.

A dreary setting that I would definitely rank near the bottom if I could choose where to transmigrate.

The first adult I saw in that world was not my biological parent, but a friend of my parents.

Apparently, my parents had left me in that person’s care before departing for the Southern Front to treat soldiers.

“Julian. Your parents were truly wonderful people.”

Perhaps because that was the sort of world it was, my parents never returned from the Southern Front.

‘Even if I was reincarnated, why did it have to be somewhere like this?’

It was a reincarnation with problems in many ways.

But it wasn’t entirely bad.

If my memory was correct, the novel had been tagged as a misunderstanding story.

It could only mean one thing.

‘At least the future is bright.’

The present might be a little unhappy.

But eventually, the future would be happy.

As long as I made even a little effort.

There was no need to be discouraged by temporary unhappiness.

‘An opportunity will definitely come. Until then, I should keep reviewing so I don’t forget anything.’

I was imagining that happy future when a chilling possibility suddenly crossed my mind.

I remembered the platform where the novel had been serialized.

‘Wait. If it’s Topvelpia... what gender am I right now?’

I immediately looked down.

...Thankfully, it was there.

‘Whew... At least the Crown Prince and Grand Duke won’t become obsessed with me.’

Time passed.

One day, while I was staying in the annex of my godfather’s estate and constantly reviewing my medical knowledge, a setting I had not cared about came crashing into my life.

The bodies of my parents, who had been declared missing, were found.

My status as a potential orphan became that of a confirmed orphan.

“Julian. Let us go see your parents. At the very least, shouldn’t you see them off on their final journey?”

As soon as my godfather heard the news that their bodies had been found, he took me to the Southern Fortress.

We traveled by airship, crossed the Demon Realm, and arrived at the Southern Fortress.

There, I attended my parents’ funeral.

I wasn’t allowed to see their bodies directly.

I was told they were not in a state that a child should see.

All I could see were two blanket-covered bodies being pulled from a swamp.

Only then did my father’s death truly sink in, and I felt a little down.

Not enough to cry, but enough that I needed a slight change of mood.

“Julian. If it is difficult, go take a walk.”

With my godfather’s consideration, I had some time alone.

Then I happened to see something.

The red liquid a local guide was drinking.

That red liquid looked strangely familiar.

So I asked.

“Mister, what are you drinking?”

“Oh, this? It’s water brewed from tree bark. When you have a fever around here, drinking this helps you endure it.”

It was the drink consumed by the local beastfolk guides who had been helping with the funeral.

Instead of water, they frequently drank reddish liquid.

“It’s from a Tirlun tree. Would you like to see it too, Young Master?”

“May I have a taste?”

“Here. But are you sure you’ll be all right with this?”

“With what?”

“It’s still something that lowly creatures like us drink...”

“These are the people watching over my parents on their final journey. I was never taught that it was proper etiquette to call people I am grateful to that.”

“...Thank you for saying that, Young Master. Please, drink.”

I took a sip of the water the beastfolk guide handed me.

The red liquid had the dry, bitter taste of a cocktail.

Like...

‘Tonic water?’

It was a taste I couldn’t mistake.

It tasted like tonic water.

At that moment, words assembled in my mind.

A Demon Realm overrun by mosquitoes.

A malaria-like fever.

And tree bark that tasted like tonic water.

‘I’ve struck gold.’

Putting it all together led to one conclusion.

I could make quinine.

Quinine.

The name of a malaria treatment.

In the past, Europe had been unable to colonize Africa because of malaria. Once this medicine was discovered, Europe was able to rule Africa.

In a sense, it was medicine that changed the map of the world.

‘This definitely tastes like a tonic-water cocktail.’

Tonic water was a drink made with quinine.

Its dry, bitter flavor was strangely addictive, so a substance first used as medicine came to be used in cocktails.

It was called a gin and tonic. Anyone who liked alcohol probably knew it.

Though not many people knew it originated with quinine.

Anyway.

It was no coincidence that quinine came to mind the moment I drank the red sap.

It was because this drink had that cocktail flavor.

‘Stay calm, Julian.’

I barely steadied my trembling hands.

Part of me wanted to begin researching the medicine immediately.

But this was a different world.

The disease might be different here, or this might be another medicine that merely happened to taste like tonic water.

So before beginning development, I first investigated the fever prevalent on the Southern Front.

After examining the symptoms, I became certain that the fever of the Demon Realm was malaria.

It mostly occurred in regions with many mosquitoes, and the fever rose and fell once every three days.

Those were classic malaria symptoms.

On top of that, drinking this red sap relieved the fever.

There was nothing left to confirm.

‘I’m already the protagonist of a misunderstanding story, and I have a stroke of fortune like this too?’

I allowed myself to indulge in all the wishful thinking I had been holding back.

Honestly, I didn’t know whether this lucky chance was meant for the original protagonist.

Perhaps it had been meant for a different supporting character.

But now that I had found it, doing nothing was not an option.

‘I don’t know if I should be developing this at my age, but who cares?’

I immediately began developing a malaria treatment.

I referred to the history of my previous life to make it.

Quinine, the malaria medicine, had been created by studying tree bark that indigenous Africans brewed and drank.

Europeans had seen this and processed the tree’s sap into quinine, a malaria treatment.

So I planned to do the same in this world.

‘I suppose there is no choice but to go through trial and error from the beginning.’

Fortunately, quinine was one of the simplest extracts to produce in pharmaceuticals.

I simply had to refine the sap that was already effective against malaria.

That made it perfect for my first creation.

For half a year, I boiled down and dried tree sap to make the treatment.

Then I realized that the trees of this world were a little different from those in my previous life and changed course.

‘In my previous life, sap was definitely the ingredient...’

In my previous life, the tree’s sap had been the medicine’s main component.

But in this world, the bark had a stronger therapeutic effect.

I had wasted half a year researching the wrong sap.

‘So what? I figured it out quickly enough.’

Still, I wasn’t particularly upset.

If anything, I felt relieved.

I had realized my mistake after only half a year.

From that day onward, I began studying the bark instead of the sap.

After that, I processed the bark every which way, occasionally slipping soldiers some pocket money to conduct clinical trials.

In the end, quinine was complete.

There was one small problem.

‘Can I call it quinine?’

At first, I wondered whether I should give it another name since it was made from the Tirlun tree.

Tinin? Tiro?

But I thought I would get confused, so I simply called it quinine.

If anyone asked about the name’s origin, I could say my parents had revealed it to me in a dream.

“The medicine is complete, but...”

It was complete, but there was a problem.

There were limits to supplying and selling this medicine in the body of a child not yet ten.

I was considering how to promote it when...

“The head of the house has collapsed!”

My godfather, who had gone on an inspection of the South, collapsed with malaria symptoms.

Author’s Note

++++++

I revised the progression of Chapters 1 and 2.

Only the order of the scenes changed, so those who have already read them do not need to read them again.

If the comments and the content do not match, that is probably why.

Footnotes:

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