WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint ◈
Chapter 30: A Flower Blooming Amid Plague (5)
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A long time ago.
Back when I was a young man who had just graduated from medical school in twenty-first-century South Korea.
I went camping with a few close classmates for our graduation trip.
During that trip, one of them said this.
“I think this firesteel is defective. It won’t start a fire.”
“Idiot. Who strikes a firesteel against green wood?”
“What are you talking about? We’re camping, so obviously we need to set wood on fire. What else would I set on fire?”
“Kyungjun. Do you think the branch you just snapped off a tree will burn? If it did, why would firebreaks exist?”
“What’s a firebreak?”
“Jesus Christ. Forget it. How did this guy pass the national medical exam?”
The firewood that idiot had brought consisted entirely of branches he had snapped off the trees in his front yard.
Of course, freshly broken green branches would not catch fire easily.
Thanks to that one fool, we had almost failed to eat the meat we had brought.
Fortunately, some kind newlyweds from the neighboring campsite traded us charcoal for meat.
‘What made it even more absurd was that he was the son of a barbecue restaurant owner.’
It had been a ridiculous incident.
And the reason I suddenly remembered it was because the current situation could be compared to it.
Magic was not all that different from science in the end.
The fewer conditions or symbols available, the more mana was needed to activate a spell.
It was like how fire magic consumed more mana in a humid place.
Curses were the same.
The greater the target’s mana, or the more sacred their status, the more mana a curse required, increasing exponentially.
This was closely related to why black mages favored plague curses.
Just as disease did not discriminate between high and low, a plague curse was unaffected by its target’s status.
‘This only happened because the concept of immunity hasn’t been discovered yet.’
Considering their lack of even basic hygiene, it was only natural.
That was likely why Belgian, a Rank 2, had specifically chosen a plague curse.
The title I held, Angel of the Red-Light District, could act as a form of sacred status.
On top of that, using smallpox as the plague catalyst had been an extremely efficient choice.
Smallpox had been such a vicious disease in my previous life that it had even been used as a biological weapon.
The problem was that he had not known we were immune to smallpox.
‘Because I secretly vaccinated everyone.’
The first thing I did after opening the clinic was administer smallpox vaccinations.
Modern medicine needed smallpox prevention as its foundation before anything else could be discussed.
I used cowpox vaccination.
For every patient who came in, I secretly smeared cowpox pus onto their arm to inoculate them.
The reason I did it in secret was simple. If I explained cowpox vaccination honestly in this world, I would be branded a black mage and burned at the stake.
It was easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
I would get permission later, once I was more famous.
Eri and Wangcho had also gained immunity to smallpox through that method.
‘I wondered how a plague curse would affect someone with immunity. I never expected to find out like this.’
I looked at my smooth skin, so unmarred that it was hard to believe I had just been cursed.
To prepare for any possibility, I asked Eri to check me.
“Do I feel strange to you?”
“No? You feel healthy.”
Okay.
So it was not an incubation period, either.
Only after receiving that confirmation did I meet the eyes of the black mage staggering in the distance from mana sickness.
Belgian’s eyes were full of confusion.
“What on earth did you do...?!”
“Who knows.”
“Please, tell me! How did you dispel my magic?!”
Dispel.
It referred to the phenomenon where a spell failed to activate while consuming only mana because its conditions had been entered incorrectly.
Using fire magic as an example, humidity and temperature had to be written accurately into the spell formula for it to activate.
If the error was too large, only mana would be consumed and no fire would start. That was called a dispel.
And in battles between spellcasters, there was a technique that used this phenomenon to neutralize an opponent’s magic.
By disrupting a condition or environment the opponent had overlooked, one could prevent their spell from activating in the first place.
“Tell me, Doctor Schnabel! Do you possess some knowledge of dark magic that I do not?!”
Belgian seemed firmly convinced that I had caused the dispel.
In reality, the condition of immunity had merely been added by chance.
“Please...”
“Wangcho. Shoot him.”
Rather than answer Belgian, I handed the gun to Wangcho.
Wangcho pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Bang!
Blue flames burst from the muzzle of the revolver.
The silver bullet left a blue trail through the night air as it flew toward Belgian.
“Urgh!”
Belgian’s body flew to the far end of the alley.
A red flower bloomed from his shoulder.
“Ah, I missed. Sorry. I’m not used to handguns.”
“It’s fine, Wangcho.”
The reason I had Wangcho shoot instead of Otto was because Belgian was Rank 2.
I did not know what defenses a Rank 2 might have, so I had Wangcho, a Rank 1, pull the trigger.
“I never expected Wangcho to finish him in one shot anyway.”
And Wangcho’s role was not to deal with Belgian.
It was to weaken him severely.
“Otto.”
Bang!
The finishing shot followed immediately.
Another blue trail flew toward Belgian.
But the second bullet did not reach him.
Splash!
Black liquid surged from Belgian’s shadow like a fountain and swallowed the bullet.
The liquid that had swallowed the bullet then swallowed Belgian as well, disappearing into the city’s darkness.
“Damn it!”
Wangcho snapped his fingers in frustration.
“They say you have to catch a lion in a single shot. Letting a Rank 2 escape leaves a bad taste in my mouth...”
“It will probably be fine.”
I spoke as if to reassure Wangcho.
“One shot hit him, so you don’t need to regret it too much.”
“But he’s still alive.”
“Even a Count-class Rank 4 powerhouse would be permanently disabled if they were hit wrong by that bullet. Even if he survives, he will no longer be a threat to us.”
The silver bullet’s ability was not limited to neutralizing magic.
When it struck a spellcaster, it injected divine power into their mana circuit.
Like a blood clot lodged in a vein, that divine power remained in the spellcaster’s mana furnace for life and interfered with spellcasting.
It could not even be naturally expelled. The only way to remove it was to join the Church and learn divine magic.
The problem was that the Church would never teach divine magic to a black mage.
In other words, Belgian had effectively become someone who would struggle to cast magic for the rest of his life.
“As a mage, he is practically dead.”
He might still be able to study magic in some back room, but he would no longer be able to fight in real battles or back alleys.
That was why I did not think Belgian, who had fled into the darkness, would threaten us again.
“That’s a relief, then.”
Even so, Wangcho smacked his lips as though he still regretted it.
He handed the empty handgun back to me.
After putting it away, I walked over to where Belgian had been standing moments earlier.
On the muddy ground where the black liquid had swallowed him and disappeared, there was a thick, worn leather notebook.
I crouched down and picked up the notebook, stained with mud and blood.
“Huh? What’s that?”
Eri, who had been trailing after me, tilted her head at the notebook.
“A grimoire.”
“What’s that?”
“A mage’s notebook for memorizing spells. You have one too.”
“This?”
Eri pulled a crumpled scrap of paper from her pocket.
It was the sheet she had filled with writing to memorize exception handling.
I nodded as I looked at it.
“I suppose that could count as a grimoire too.”
“Then what’s written in that man’s grimoire? Forbidden knowledge or something?”
“Nothing like that.”
Just because it belonged to a black mage did not mean a grimoire contained anything more blasphemous than those of other spellcasters.
It simply contained tricks for memorizing chants.
Like the mnemonics used to memorize the periodic table.
“And it will probably contain Belgian’s research findings as well.”
“Huh? Then why did he carry something that valuable around with him? Wouldn’t it be safer to keep it at home?”
It was Wangcho, not me, who answered Eri’s question.
“You want to study magic, and you say something that carefree?”
“What did I say?”
“Hey, even a Rank 2 mage can’t cram all those complicated conditions and chants into their head. A single formula can have dozens of variables.”
Wangcho pointed at Eri’s grimoire.
“You can’t memorize it either.”
“Uh... That is true.”
“Tch. How lightly does this kid take magic?”
Wangcho pulled out his pipe and put it in his mouth.
He did not light it. He only held it between his teeth as though chewing on it.
“Most spellcasters memorize only one or two spells they’re best at. For the rest, they carry a book under their arm and read from it whenever they need to recall them. That’s why people who can cast all kinds of spells without a book are called archmages. You want to become a mage, and you didn’t even know that?”
Eri tilted her head at Wangcho’s explanation.
Then she abruptly turned toward me and pointed.
“Huh? Our teacher wrote things all over the blackboard without looking at a book.”
“Come on. A genius could manage maybe five...”
“Thirty! You said I had to memorize at least that many too!”
At Eri’s revelation, Wangcho’s gaze slowly turned toward me.
I shrugged and nodded.
Who was I?
Something about finishing a three-year curriculum in three months...
Anyway, a genius.
Once Wangcho remembered that, his expression soured.
“Damn it. Isn’t it unfair to have that face and that brain? Please let it be three centimeters.”
“...?”
“It’s nothing.”
What was that? It felt like I had just been severely insulted.
Wangcho awkwardly looked away from me.
Instead, he lightly rapped Eri on the head with his thick knuckles to end the matter.
“Ow!”
“Kid. A genius is called a genius for a reason.”
Wangcho cleared his throat and finished explaining.
I turned my attention back to the notebook in my hand.
It was the precious research journal of a Rank 2 black mage.
It would be a lie to say I was not curious.
But I could check its contents later.
“Let’s go home first.”
Lately, it felt as if I kept getting off work later and later.
I stopped Wangcho and Eri, who were still bickering, and hurried us along our way home.
“Otto, you should get ready to go as well...”
That was when it happened.
Cough!
Otto suddenly began coughing repeatedly.
Cough! Cough!
His body shook like an aspen tree.
As soon as he started coughing, Eri and Wangcho slowly backed away.
“Could it be...”
“The curse...”
I immediately put an end to their unease.
“That can’t be...”
Otto had certainly been vaccinated by me.
There was no way he could have been cursed...
Ah.
“Otto.”
“Yes, cough.”
“Take sick leave for a while.”
“What?”
“Go home and rest.”
Come to think of it, Otto had received his vaccination later than everyone else.
He kept putting off seeing me because he was supposedly my guard. I remembered finally vaccinating him only a few days ago.
After he returned with his torn face healed, I barely managed to inoculate him in secret under the excuse of a checkup.
That had been around four days ago.
That meant he was the only one in our group whose immunity to smallpox had not yet fully developed.
“Could it be... the curse...”
“It’s not that. It’s probably just a rather severe cold.”
Because he encountered the curse before his immunity had settled in, some symptoms seemed to be appearing.
It would be much milder than for someone who had not been vaccinated.
It probably would not be life-threatening.
Still, he would suffer as badly as if he had influenza.
Considering it was a curse from a Rank 2 spellcaster, perhaps it would be slightly worse than that.
Of course, in such a case, there was no answer but natural recovery.
That was why I prescribed sick leave for Otto.
But Otto did not seem pleased with my prescription.
“I’m fi...ne...”
Thud.
He collapsed before he could finish speaking.
I looked at my guard and driver lying on the cold stone ground and let out a sigh.
“Wangcho.”
“Yes. I’ll lend you a communication magical tool. Please rest at the restaurant until then.”
This really made me wonder whether he was a guard at all.
A few hours later.
After contacting the head butler, who came down to meet us, we were finally able to return home.
Footnotes:
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