WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint ◈

Chapter 14: The Blood Demon’s Illegitimate Child (3)

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* * *

The clinic started early in the morning.

“Huh? Doctor, why are you here so early?”

Erika emerged from the on-call room to greet me, still only half awake.

Tsk, tsk.

An employee shouldn’t be lazier than the boss.

“This is when the clinic opens. Besides, you know what they say. The early bird catches the worm.”

“If you sleep longer, you’re less hungry. Wouldn’t that mean you don’t need to catch as many worms?”

Oh.

That was some excellent logic.

But as the protagonist, I couldn’t agree with it.

Of course, I’d made a decent amount of money by now, and I wanted to be a little lazy too.

But I had no idea what sort of snowball effect that could cause down the road.

So unfortunately, I had no choice but to be an early bird.

“I could save one more person in that time, so I can’t do that. Sorry, but you’ll have to follow my lead.”

“Ehh.”

Erika staggered around with puffy eyes.

I heard she’d only moved around at night until now, avoiding people’s eyes.

That was probably why mornings felt unfamiliar to her.

But she couldn’t keep doing that anymore.

I’d gone so far as to give her a transfusion.

It was time for her to live in the morning as an ordinary girl, not as a blood demon’s illegitimate child.

Erika returned after washing her face with cold water.

I handed her a note.

“Today’s errands. Pick up medicine, contact patients, and do some cleaning now and then. Can you handle it?”

“That’s all? You said it was in exchange for my treatment.”

Eri’s eyes widened.

Judging by her reaction, she must have braced herself for grueling errands when I said she’d be working off the cost of her treatment.

But the paper listed errands a child her age could easily manage.

“This is too little.”

“Right. That’s your daily quota. If you finish early, take a break.”

But she was seriously mistaken about one thing.

What I needed wasn’t an errand runner named Erika.

I wanted to find out what talents she had.

I needed to invest while she was still cheap and knew nothing, so I could coast through life later on thanks to that connection.

But Erika had no way of knowing my ulterior motives, so she only looked at me more suspiciously.

“You’re lying. That can’t be all.”

Erika shook her head and glared at me.

“The alchemist in D-4 Block said my arms and legs are so skinny that even if someone skinned me, they wouldn’t get ten mar for it. I know your treatment costs more than that.”

“What would I use your skin for?”

“If you’re scheming something, just say it. I’d rather let you have me once...”

Smack!

Something a child should never say looked ready to come out of her mouth, so I cut her off with a chop.

“Ow!”

I’d prepared myself for the darkness of the Limbus Pit to easily surpass my imagination.

But even so.

A teenage girl shouldn’t be saying things like that.

‘Do I need to call the cops and the FBI in this other world?’

This city’s underbelly was far more of a cesspool than I’d expected.

“Erika.”

At the sound of her name, Eri flinched.

I rose from my chair and lowered myself to her eye level.

“Listen carefully. Your mouth is for savoring delicious food or expressing a person’s worth.”

“No, I... Mmph!”

When Eri tried to protest, I stuffed a star candy into her mouth.

“Remember this. The words that were about to come out of your mouth could turn you into filth worth less than the cheapest scrap in this city.”

Eri stopped chewing the candy.

She stared blankly at my mask.

Then, with a small ptoo, she spat the candy into her hand.

“But then this deal doesn’t work.”

“Yes, yes. You and I are making a deal. In exchange for running errands, I’ll provide food, clothing, shelter, and treatment.”

Keeping my voice stern, I lectured Eri.

“But a deal means both sides offer what they can offer. It doesn’t mean offering something that shouldn’t be offered. If you suggest something like that, what happens to my reputation?”

“...Sorry.”

I hadn’t meant to make her apologize.

Somehow, it had turned into a scolding.

I snapped my fingers to lighten the mood.

“So? Your answer?”

“I’ll... run your errands.”

“Good.”

I tore a clean white sheet of paper with a rip, making a memo slip.

Eri even gasped at the waste of a single sheet of paper.

I scribbled a note on it.

“Here’s your first errand.”

I wrote down a list of medicinal ingredients.

“Pick these medicines up from the alchemist. I already ordered them. I’ve paid, so you don’t need to pay again. If they ask whether I really sent you, show them the signature on the back. And obviously, don’t throw this memo away halfway there.”

Eri carefully folded the paper and tucked it into her clothes.

As if the sheet of paper were her lifeline.

I wasn’t the Emperor. She didn’t need to feel such a sense of duty over a memo slip.

“I’ll be back.”

“Oh, and one more thing.”

Before she could leave, I remembered something and stopped her.

“...What?”

“Let’s settle how you address me too. Would you rather call me Doctor Schnabel or Doc?”

“...Doctor Schnabel.”

With that, Eri stepped over the threshold and vanished into the street, already thick with morning smog.

Maybe it was my imagination, but her back seemed strangely tense.

* * *

A week passed after Eri became my errand runner.

Honestly, she’d done better than expected.

“Doctor. I went to the D-4 Block pharmacist. Here’s the change.”

Clink.

Several coins landed neatly on my desk.

As someone who understood the ways of the back alleys, she was remarkably quick at errands.

It meant she had both the head for the city’s geography and considerable stamina.

“Good work.”

But what pleased me more than her speed was her honesty.

The people Wangcho sent over, or Erika’s predecessors, occasionally pocketed some of the change after errands.

They probably thought I made plenty of money and the clinic was always busy, so I wouldn’t notice a few missing coins.

As if I didn’t keep a ledger.

I let it slide, treating it as a tip.

But unlike them, Eri hadn’t pocketed a single coin.

‘Maybe that’s a talent in itself.’

This wasn’t the sort of environment where it was easy not to be tempted.

Which meant that staying honest in a place like this was proof that Erika had a talent for honesty.

As I sorted through Erika’s talents in my head, I handed her a few coins.

“This is a tip. Buy yourself some snacks.”

“Then I’ll clean now.”

“Just clean the toilet today.”

Her cleaning ability and skill at miscellaneous chores were satisfying in every way too.

No one had taught her, yet she cleaned to a standard beyond what I required.

Smart and trustworthy...

‘She’d be worth recommending to a bank, for security work, or even for knighthood.’

This one was pretty good.

At least it wasn’t the kind of talent that made me think of a bakery.

A satisfying week passed like that.

“Next patient.”

The door opened, and a patient on a stretcher was carried inside.

They were one of Wangcho’s subordinates.

They’d gotten their arm caught in a gear during a fistfight at a factory.

The wound was a problem, but blood was more urgent right now.

The bleeding was serious.

“Has this person had a Blood Registry made?”

One of their colleagues answered.

“Last fall, maybe. We had one made here under Wangcho’s orders.”

“Then this will go quickly.”

I opened a leather file with a distinctly vintage feel.

[Propositum: Matrix Sanguinis]

Translated literally, it meant [Project: Blood Registry].

There was no way to safely preserve blood in this era.

Once drawn, it clotted within hours, and if you put clotted blood into a patient, they died.

There were magical tools like refrigerators, and I had more than enough capital, but no one knew how to make a preservative solution yet.

If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve studied transfusion medicine harder.

Putting that aside.

In any case, I’d prepared an alternative.

Whenever I had time, I tested people’s blood types and recorded them in a notebook.

That way, I could summon people immediately and draw their blood in an emergency.

Incidentally, I wrote it in Latin just because it looked cool.

Come on. Latin was cool.

“What’s the patient’s name?”

“Donovan.”

“Donovan... Type B.”

One notable thing about this file was that it recorded the blood types of every member of Wangcho’s organization, the Scarred Hyenas.

They were people for whom knife fights were routine.

That was why this Blood Registry also served as a kind of health insurance for them.

“Type B... If anyone whose name I call is nearby, please answer.”

Locke, Heinz, Lewen...

“Heinz! At this hour, they should be at that tavern!”

“Drinkers won’t do.”

Emil, Rody...

“I’m Rody!”

One of the colleagues who had come with them raised a hand.

I briefly examined Rody.

Before a transfusion, I needed to check for syphilis, cold symptoms, and so on...

The conclusion was that Rody was healthy.

Then Rody it was.

Eri prepared the equipment for the transfusion.

Meanwhile, I began stopping the patient’s bleeding.

There was nothing special about it.

Finding and tying off blood vessels, then packing large holes with cotton. Repeating that process, really.

By then, the preparations were complete.

“It’s ready, Doctor.”

We immediately prepared to connect arm to arm.

The procedure was called Direct transfusion.

As its name implied, it was a method of directly transfusing fresh blood.

It was generally avoided in my previous life because it was dangerous.

But...

‘Please, don’t let any side effects happen.’

Praying to the power of this misunderstanding story, I prepared the transfusion.

Trickle, trickle.

Blood flowed from the donor’s arm into a pail.

That was when it happened.

“Doctor.”

Eri, who had been clearing away trash beside me, suddenly spoke.

“What is it, Eri? Is the tube twisted?”

“No. It’s hard to explain, but I think there’s something wrong with this person’s arm.”

“?”

I turned toward Eri.

Frowning, she tapped Rody’s forearm with her finger.

“Something is... disgusting? Noisy? Looking at this person makes me feel strange.”

“Noisy?”

“Yeah. Something’s wriggling inside. Like tens of thousands of bugs are crawling around.”

I turned toward Eri.

“Could you describe it in more detail?”

“Something’s boiling inside? It feels like the sick pigs at the slaughterhouse.”

“...?”

I stopped the transfusion for a moment.

A possibility had suddenly crossed my mind.

Blood demon’s illegitimate child.

Her nickname.

I’d thought it was merely an old-fashioned expression of hatred.

But in this fantasy world, perhaps she hadn’t received that nickname by coincidence.

Especially since she compared it to sick pigs. That made my intuition ring even louder.

I looked at Rody again.

Then I noticed something I’d missed because the situation was so urgent.

“...Your eyes are a little yellow. When did that start?”

“Ah, they weren’t like that yesterday.”

Then they’d turned yellow just now?

Of course, considering jaundice didn’t progress that rapidly, it could have been my imagination.

It might have been the lighting or simply my mood.

Besides, they were so faintly yellow that it was almost embarrassing to call it jaundice.

Even so, Eri’s words bothered me.

So I checked once more.

“Rody, have you been anywhere recently?”

“Uh...”

Rody counted on his fingers as he searched his memory.

“A few weeks ago, I went outside the walls.”

“Why?”

“To collect some goods Wangcho was trading for. It was near a swamp.”

“And mosquitoes bit you there?”

“Yes.”

Damn it.

Every piece of circumstantial evidence pointed to one thing.

Malaria.

The incubation period, before the symptoms had become severe.

This blood couldn’t be transfused.

“The transfusion is canceled. We’ll find someone else.”

“Why?”

“You have malaria. It’d be a disaster if we put your blood into this person.”

We hurriedly found another donor.

Fortunately, the transfusion ended successfully.

The patient made it through the crisis, and the person whose malaria we’d discovered by chance received a prescription for quinine.

* * *

An hour later.

I called Eri, who was wringing out a rag in the corner.

“Eri.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Could you come over here for a moment?”

I placed three glasses on the desk.

Each contained a small piece of red-stained bandage.

“What are these?”

Eri approached, wiping her wet hands on her apron.

“A quiz.”

“...A quiz?”

“If you get it right, I’ll raise your weekly pay and improve your meals too.”

At that, Eri’s eyes shone with enthusiasm.

“What is it? What is it?”

“Hold these bottles in your hands. Then choose the quietest one.”

I pointed at the three glass bottles.

A was from a mother who had come in with puerperal fever that morning.

B was from Donovan, whose arm had gotten caught in a gear.

C was from Rody, who had been about to donate blood.

They were the bone marrow of a patient with sepsis, a normal patient, and a patient with malaria, in that order.

I didn’t tell her what they were.

“The quietest one?”

“Yes. Choose the most mellow marrow.”

“...What does that mean?”

Damn. I thought that was a killer joke.

Though confused by my quiz, Eri reached for the bottles.

A.

“Eek! Gross.”

She recoiled from the bone marrow of the patient with sepsis.

B.

“Mm... It’s just normal, I guess?”

She found nothing unusual in the normal patient’s bone marrow.

C.

“Eek! This one’s gross too.”

She chose B as the least unpleasant bottle.

Without a word, I removed B and pushed A and C toward her.

They were the bone marrow of patients with sepsis and malaria.

“What’s the difference between these two?”

“Ummm... They both feel the same?”

“...”

I was slightly disappointed.

“Why? Why!? Did I get it wrong?!”

Eri stamped her feet in disappointment.

I shook my head.

“No. You got it completely right.”

She’d already gotten the answer right the moment she chose B.

It would’ve been even better if she could distinguish A and C, but still.

I reached my conclusion.

‘Eri can distinguish the level of bone marrow activity through her senses.’

A binary classification of disgusting or not disgusting.

She couldn’t tell whether it was malaria or a bacterial infection, much less identify the specific bacteria.

‘That’s a little disappointing.’

Honestly, it would’ve been perfect if she could distinguish the pathogens too.

Of course, I knew that was greedy.

It wasn’t a blood culture. Naturally, she couldn’t identify something like that from bone marrow.

And there was an advantage to her talent involving bone marrow rather than blood.

‘She can screen bone marrow routinely? Noninvasively? If this were the twenty-first century, people would lose their minds.’

I could say it with certainty.

Even if she hadn’t graduated from medical school, I would’ve given her a professorship in infectious diseases, rheumatology, or hematology and put her in charge of screening patients at the emergency room entrance.

And she would’ve earned four hundred million mar a year without breaking a sweat.

Even apart from the medical perspective, it was an excellent talent.

Talents like this were one kind of mage talent.

‘I hit the jackpot.’

After a year of rain dances, my efforts had finally paid off.

In my head, I moved Eri from Tier 3 to Tier 1 on my tier list.

“Eri.”

“What?”

“You don’t have to run errands starting tomorrow.”

Eri’s shoulders flinched.

She seemed to think she’d been fired.

Her gaze wavered for an instant.

The fear of being kicked out after barely finding a place for herself flashed over her face.

Tears welled in her eyes.

Seeing that, I hurriedly continued.

“I’ll have someone else run errands. You’ll work beside me instead. During consultations.”

“Wha...?”

“Not as an errand runner. From now on, you’re my assistant.”

A beat later, Eri’s mouth fell open.

“Why? I can’t even read.”

“I can teach you to read.”

I wiped the tears at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief.

“From now on, your job is to find sick people using that sense of yours. It’s a very important duty.”

“...Is that really such an amazing job?”

“Yes. It’s something only you can do.”

As I said that, I wrote down the salary she would receive in my notebook.

The zeros kept increasing.

One, two, three, four...

“Eek!? Four... four hundred thousand mar?!”

Four hundred thousand mar was about the monthly wage of a skilled worker in the wealthy districts.

For a back-alley orphan to suddenly rise to the level of a master craftsman, it was only natural that she would be shocked.

“...C-can I really take this?”

“You’re worth that much.”

I had to spend at least this much to recruit her.

If I thought of it as buying an MRI machine, it was cheap.

“One, two, three, four...”

Unable to believe this was real, Eri kept counting the zeros.

Why was she so surprised?

After gaining experience at my side, that amount would increase tenfold.

After finishing today’s treatment log, I put the records into storage and spoke.

“And one more thing.”

Eri looked up.

“What?”

“Since you’re my assistant now, you’ll commute with me too.”

“Commute?”

“It means you won’t sleep here. You’ll come to work from where I live.”

I wasn’t saying this merely because she was my lucky encounter.

Mage talents were rare.

They were so rare that even nobles steeped in privilege tried to adopt anyone they found with one.

And if they had a decent head on their shoulders as well, calling them an SSR-quality mage prospect wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

So, both as the protagonist of a misunderstanding story and as the young master of a baronial house, I had a duty to bring her into my home.

Naturally, Erika had no idea about any of that, and she seemed unable to believe this sudden exceptional treatment.

“...At your house, Doctor?”

“More precisely, the annex. I’ll give you a room.”

“A house with an annex too?”

Eri stared blankly at me.

“Let’s go for now. I’ll explain on the way.”

I opened the clinic door and stepped outside.

Eri hurried after me.

In front of the clinic.

A black sedan was waiting.

Smooth polish.

Brass trim.

It was a limousine that made even the smog reflected in its windows look luxurious.

Eri froze.

“...What is that?”

“A car.”

“You think I don’t know that? Why is there a car here?”

“Shouldn’t there be?”

“Why is there an automobile here instead of a carriage...?”

Ignoring Eri as she muttered in a daze, I opened the door and pushed her inside.

Eri tumbled onto the leather seat.

I sat beside her and closed the door.

“Let’s go.”

Through the rearview mirror, Otto looked at me as if asking what I’d picked up this time.

That look reminded me of Otto’s position.

He was my driver and bodyguard.

And before he was my man, he was the head butler’s man.

Remembering that, I looked at him again. He seemed unlikely to press the pedal unless I explained Eri.

So I gave him a brief explanation.

“Please contact the head butler. Tell them to prepare a room in the annex. I found a child with mage talent, so have everything prepared according to her station.”

“Understood, Young Master.”

My driver’s gaze changed.

Recruiting a mage made sense to him.

Only then did the car begin to move.

Eri touched the leather seat with wide eyes.

“I-is this real leather?”

“Yes.”

“Sniff, sniff. The smell...”

“Could you restrain yourself a little inside the car?”

Eri pressed her nose into the seat and inhaled.

In the red-light district, leather usually meant scraps left over after tanning that had been stitched together, so it was understandable.

Like a cat adapting to a scent, Eri carefully leaned back once she had gotten used to it.

Then she looked out the window.

The black slate buildings of the Limbus Pit passed by.

“...Where are we going?”

I simply told her to be quiet and watch.

The car continued uphill.

It left the Limbus Pit and crossed Civitas Square.

But the car continued uphill.

Eventually, just as the car passed through Sanctum Hill without inspection...

“Huh? Huh?”

“This is where you’ll live from now on.”

“...Gurk.”

Eri’s head dropped.

Too much information had come in at once, and apparently her brain had chosen to shut down.

I understood.

She had gone from being an orphan in a brothel district to the right hand of a Celestial Dragon.

“...”

I looked at the unconscious Eri with satisfaction.

‘This was the reaction I’d been hoping for.’

It seemed I’d gained an assistant with excellent reactions.

Footnotes:

“Celestial Dragon” is a reference to the privileged noble class in One Piece.

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