WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint ◈
Chapter 21: Winter in Limbus Pit (2)
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* * *
“Eri, don’t rush.”
“Someone’s life is at stake! How can I not rush?!”
“But will rushing change anything? We can’t go up there anyway, not after Otto was taken down.”
“...”
“More importantly, it’s already too late.”
“Even so, we need to hurry...!”
Crash!
Before Eri could finish, the front door shattered inward.
The hinges tore free, spraying splinters everywhere.
I had those hinges fixed only last year after they froze over...
‘Bastards. The clinic is already operating at a loss.’
Of course, those thugs did not look inclined to respect my financial circumstances.
Figures pushed through the dust.
One, two, three, four, five.
And one more peeking out from the very back, making six.
They were all clowns, marked by lipstick stretching from the corners of their mouths to below their ears and ridiculous wigs perched atop their heads.
The first thing that came to mind was a group of clowns who had lost money in the stock market.
The man peeking out from the back, however, wore different makeup.
“Hee hee hee...”
Like the other clowns, he wore lipstick and a wig. But his face had also been painted white.
He was especially small compared to the others.
“Ahe... eheehee...”
The white-faced man laughed.
More accurately, he tried to laugh.
It was such an awkward laugh that it sounded as though it creaked.
With only his head poking out from behind the first five, he looked like a mouse sticking its nose out of a hole.
“H-hello, Mr. Healer?”
I was a doctor, not a healer.
Eri did it too, and so did Wangcho.
Why did people here keep calling me a healer?
“I-I am Kaski, the Weißgesicht of the Rahenden Carnival.”
The clown bowed.
“S-since you’re an outsider, you can call me White Face.”
Rahenden Carnival?
Weißgesicht? White Face?
What was that supposed to be, you damn nerd?
Thankfully, Eri explained before I had to ask.
“The Rahenden Carnival is an artist faction from H Sector.”
“Artists?”
“Even if organizations all make money off people, they differ in how they process and sell them. Factions like the Rahenden modify people and sell them as artworks or spectacles. That clown is one of them.”
So, a freak show from another world.
Not the sort of people I wanted anything to do with.
Someone objected to Eri’s blunt assessment.
“Clowns?! In this barren world, we spread laughter! To insult our mission like that...”
He was no longer stammering when he got angry. Looks like that hit a nerve.
Eri ignored Kaski’s protest and continued.
“From the bottom up, they’re called crowd-starters, Red Noses, White Faces, and Kings of Fools. A White Face is about the same as one of Wangcho’s squad leaders.”
“Ah.”
Strict hierarchy for a small-time organization.
Kaski, the White Face, seemed to be a mid-level executive in his group.
“So, what do you want?”
“W-we need you, Doctor.”
“Do you have patients waiting for me?”
“You have c-comrades waiting for you.”
It looked like they had come to recruit me.
“I decline.”
There was no hesitation.
I was the protagonist. A doctor protagonist, at that.
How could I join an organization that did things like that to people?
Why would I ever choose to join a bunch of lunatics like them?
White Face Kaski calmly nodded, as though he had expected that answer.
“A-ah, what a shame. Then we have no choice but to...”
Eri cut him off, drawing a revolver.
“Sorry, but our doctor isn’t the kind of person who takes orders from someone else.”
It was the gun I had kept for self-defense.
She must have taken it while organizing the bags earlier.
Click.
Eri cocked the hammer and aimed the barrel between Kaski’s brows.
‘Wait. Is it all right for a twelve-year-old to carry a gun?’
For a moment, I wondered that, but then remembered that this was a world where magic was an even nastier kind of personal weapon.
Right. Compared to that, it was basically a child’s self-defense weapon.
“Eek?!”
Kaski screamed and hid behind one of his subordinates.
He held a wigged clacqueur in front of him like a shield and wrung his hands.
“C-couldn’t we settle this with t-talk...? I-I only came because I was t-told to...”
Eri frowned at White Face Kaski’s reaction.
I let out a hollow laugh behind my crow mask.
He was far too different from the squad leader on Wangcho’s side.
That man lived like he had a spare liver, to the point that after getting stabbed in the stomach, he tried to go drinking the next day until I scolded him.
Meanwhile, this organization’s squad leader was using his subordinates as shields because a gun was pointed at him.
Perhaps that showed the difference in quality between their organizations.
Eri seemed to reach the same conclusion, because the tension left her shoulders.
Her gun lowered slightly.
And in that relaxed moment,
Kaski suddenly burst into mad laughter.
“Hee hee hee!”
Kaski shoved his subordinate toward Eri.
The clacqueur looked shocked as well.
They clearly had not expected Kaski to do that.
Taking advantage of the subordinate becoming a meat shield, Kaski lunged at Eri’s gun.
The back he had bent so meekly sprang straight, and a gleaming jackknife flew from his coat.
“Watch out!”
Bang!
Before I could even finish shouting, Eri pulled the trigger without hesitation, her expression indifferent.
Kaski’s head snapped back.
Right in the center of his forehead.
A neat black hole opened above his red nose, in the middle of his white-painted brow.
“Gah...!”
With a ridiculous death cry, his body rolled across the floor, carried by its momentum.
I stared at Eri without realizing it.
She shrugged.
“You’re probably the only one in Limbus Pit who trusts tears and weakness, Doctor.”
Hmm.
Come to think of it, this was the Empire’s Gotham.
It seemed I had underestimated Limbus Pit.
* * *
Phew.
Eri blew across the barrel after dealing with White Face Kaski.
“Who’s next?”
Her gun turned toward the remaining five.
The five clacqueurs (crowd-starters) hesitated, exchanging glances.
Their executive had just died, yet they seemed more bewildered than angry.
“Hey, was that a gun? Did it really fire?”
“What the hell? A gun works here?”
“Was that doctor really that rich?”
A twelve-year-old girl was overwhelming five adult clowns.
It was an absurd sight, but their reaction made sense.
Whether it was a gun or magic, a person at Rank 0 would die from one good hit.
Unless the target was a superhuman at Rank 1 or above, a gun was just as threatening as it had been in my past life.
“A working gun...”
“There isn’t even a gun shop around here.”
“Guys from A Sector smuggle them in.”
“That’s a different district, idiot.”
“Was the doctor really this important? Did we mess with the wrong person?”
One clown swallowed.
A person holding a gun was no different from a mage.
Partly because they could kill people with one finger, but more importantly because a functioning gun carried symbolic meaning.
In a city filled with smog saturated with viscous mana, owning a gun required money as a basic condition.
Beyond that, you needed the social standing to receive a gun permit, as well as the authority to regularly buy ammunition.
Considering all that, perhaps a gun was more frightening holstered at someone’s waist than when its trigger was pulled.
“Is that all? What if they bought several bullets...?”
“Why? Want to find out how many are left?”
Eri cocked the hammer.
Click.
“That gun looks... e-expensive. Shall we talk this out?”
“Yeah. Bullets are too valuable. Sell that gun, and we could all go out for a meal.”
The clowns who had smashed through the door moments earlier now spoke politely.
Even in another world, a manners injector worked just fine.
Still, Eri could not pull the trigger so easily.
The revolver’s limited number of rounds held her back.
There were five clowns in front of us.
And five rounds left in the revolver.
She could take them down if every shot hit, but if they all rushed her at once, Eri would have trouble responding.
Perhaps instinctively sensing that, Eri chose to hold them at gunpoint instead of firing.
“Doctor. Let’s wait here until Wangcho arrives.”
At least time was on our side.
Otto had gone to get Wangcho.
So Eri calmly waited for Wangcho to arrive.
But the situation felt strange to me.
‘This is odd. If one gun could handle them this easily, Otto should never have been taken down.’
Otto had a gun too.
On top of that, he was a guard on the verge of reaching Rank 1.
The fact that someone like him had been defeated bothered me.
I was about to tell Eri to be careful when,
Thud!
The clown standing at the very back suddenly had their head snap backward.
As though they had been struck by an invisible hammer.
“Huh...?”
Thump.
The clacqueur fell limply.
And in the exact center of their forehead, where Kaski had been shot, was a black hole.
“W-what is this? I said we should talk!”
“I didn’t shoot!”
“Hee hee hee...”
An unpleasant laugh filled the examination room.
“Hee... Ow. That hurt...”
The white-faced clown who had fallen rose to his feet.
The hole in his forehead was as smooth as if it had never existed.
“That r-really hurt.... That was mean....”
Kaski grumbled as he got up.
Without asking what had happened, Eri immediately aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Kaski collapsed, clutching his chest.
But his clothes remained intact instead of turning red.
“Urk...!”
At the same time, another clown’s chest turned red.
Seeing the same thing happen again, Eri urgently called to me.
“W-what is that, Doctor? The bullets are going somewhere strange. Is the gun broken?”
“No. You hit him.”
“Then why is this happening?”
“It’s a magical inscription. He’s received augmentation treatment.”
That explained how Otto had been defeated.
Who would expect something like that to appear in Limbus Pit?
Magical inscriptions were like tattoos that granted magical power to ordinary people who did not understand magic.
Unlike the magic used by mages and wizards, they were horribly inefficient with mana and limited in what they could do.
Even so, they were more than enough to rule over Rank 0 people as apex predators.
“The inscription effects are <wound transference> and <adaptation>.”
The <adaptation> inscription granted immunity to damage the user had received.
Theoretically, it sounded extremely powerful, but in practice, it was an utterly useless inscription.
In games, taking damage simply reduced health. In reality, taking damage the wrong way left you disabled.
On top of that, the immunity gained each time was not that great. To achieve complete immunity, you would have to be beaten nearly to death.
But this white-faced clown, Kaski, appeared to have offset that penalty with <wound transference>.
Wound transference let him pass his injuries to allies, automatically transferring fatal wounds as well.
Kaski had combined the two by transferring damage to his subordinates until he gained immunity.
‘That explains how Otto was defeated.’
Using game terms, Kaski was a gimmick boss.
Not powerful, but the type of boss you could not beat even if you brought a max-level character without knowing the strategy.
Eri grimaced after hearing my explanation.
“They called me rich because I had a gun, but they’re using something even more expensive!”
That was what bothered her?
Eri aimed at the fallen Kaski again.
I stopped her.
“Eri. Not that one.”
Kaski was not the target.
As I had said, Kaski could not be beaten if you did not know the strategy.
Put another way, he was easy if you did.
“Shoot the three left behind him. Wound transference works in reverse too.”
The strategy was not to let Kaski draw all the aggro, but to deal with the sacrifices first.
Wound transference was a mutual inscription. It did not only transfer Kaski’s wounds to his subordinates.
If his subordinates suffered fatal injuries, those could automatically transfer to Kaski instead.
The transference also had nothing to do with immunity, so it did not matter how tough Kaski became.
‘There’s a reason they call both of them trash inscriptions in the upper districts.’
If that combination were invincible, everyone in the upper districts would be using it.
There was always a reason people did not.
“Got it, Doctor!”
Eri immediately fired at the three remaining subordinates.
But Kaski, who had regained consciousness at some point, threw himself in front of them as if protecting them.
The third bullet that hit Kaski flattened against him like it had struck a steel plate and fell to the floor.
“What? Why did he adapt already?”
“...Because of Otto.”
Damn.
I had not accounted for that.
It seemed he had gained most of his immunity to guns while fighting Otto earlier.
His being knocked unconscious by the first two attacks had been an act to hide that fact.
“Hehe.... Your guard was really strong. We lost twenty subordinates on the way here.... We originally brought fifty people to deal with Tao Chen, but the ones left could only hold him up....”
One more piece of bad news.
It seemed time was not on our side after all.
Wangcho was not a wizard.
Even if he was Rank 1, as long as he used knives and fists, he had to carefully break every enemy’s neck one by one.
And if the enemy deliberately tried to delay him, it would take twice as long.
That would be plenty of time for Kaski to achieve his goal.
‘This is supposed to be a misunderstanding story. Why are my opponents thinking things through so well?’
Their needless cunning and strategy made exhaustion wash over me.
But Kaski had overlooked something.
Just as he had used capital to obtain strength, I could overwhelm him with even greater capital.
“Eri. Hand me the gun...”
“Hee hee hee! That tickles!”
Before I could finish, Kaski burst into laughter and rushed at Eri.
Eri emptied all her remaining rounds into the charging White Face.
But even after three gunshots rang out, Kaski was unharmed.
“There aren’t any bullets left now, right?”
Kaski stopped stammering once he had the advantage.
He closed the distance in an instant.
His jackknife slithered in and grazed Eri’s forearm.
“Ah!”
The revolver flew from Eri’s hand.
Kaski then slapped her across the cheek, sending the little girl rolling across the floor.
“Y-you’re being a nuisance. Y-you’re pretty, so I’ll leave it at this much. I-if the m-merchandise gets damaged, the King of Fools will scold me again.”
Kaski turned away from Eri and met my eyes.
The revolver spinning through the air slid, coincidentally, to a stop at my feet.
I bent down and snatched it up.
I opened the cylinder, shook out the empty casings, slid a fresh round into a chamber, and raised my head.
The center of his forehead...
No, that would be hard to hit.
I would aim for the torso.
“Hehe. I-it’s useless, Doctor. G-guns won’t work anyway...”
“This will be a little different.”
I answered with my finger on the trigger.
Footnotes:
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