The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint - Chapter 71

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Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint ◈

Chapter 71: I Want to Become a Hero (3)

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“That was an informative conversation. Have a good night, Sir Julian.”

The light from the communications device went out.

Prince Edmund stared at the darkened crystal ball for a while.

A half-empty bowl of soup and bread crumbs remained on the table.

His after-dinner tea had gone cold long ago.

The night at the secondary palace was quiet.

It was the brief peace they could enjoy after the baby had finally fallen asleep.

Prince Edmund was used to this kind of silence.

It resembled the silence immediately after the fighting ceased on a battlefield.

The sort of quiet where everyone held their breath, yet no one could let down their guard.

The prince suddenly realized he was comparing childcare to war and gave a bitter smile.

‘Is this my new battlefield?’

It was not such a bad battlefield.

If only he could sleep a little more comfortably, he would want for nothing.

Still, according to Julian, this would only last a few more months.

They said that once a child was past one year old, at least one could sleep properly.

Edmund took a sip of his cold tea.

Then the adjutant standing by the door spoke.

“Your Highness.”

Carlos Richter.

The prince’s adjutant and comrade-in-arms, the man who had watched his back on the battlefield.

He was also the chief staff officer directly under the current Personnel Chief of Staff.

Incidentally, he sometimes doubled as the driver sent to urgently fetch Julian.

“May I say something?”

“Speak freely.”

“Forgive my presumption, but something Lord Nihirit said at the end has been bothering me.”

“Which part?”

“Didn’t he say it himself? That he was only confident in tracking or responding to black magic after an incident had occurred, not defending against or preventing it?”

The prince nodded at his adjutant’s words.

That was true.

Right after Edmund proposed a Black Magic Defense course, Julian had politely declined the offer.

“I’m confident in pursuing or responding to matters after they happen. But defense and prevention are not my specialty. Even so, would you be all right calling it a defense class?”

Richter continued.

“Of course, I do not doubt Lord Nihirit’s abilities. He proved them in this incident. But the class is called defense, while the actual content concerns responding afterward. I worry that it may cause some confusion.”

“Are you suggesting we change the name?”

“Yes, Your Highness. Forgive me.”

Edmund nodded.

“You have a point. Titles matter. They determine the direction we will take from here.”

“Then…”

“That is precisely why I have no intention of changing it.”

Edmund spoke firmly.

Richter fell silent.

The prince smiled at the sight of his adjutant.

“Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“Once Your Highness has made up your mind, there is no way to change it. I learned that during the fortress assault.”

“I’m hurt. Back then, I wanted a spirited, loyal subject who would defy my orders and retreat.”

“…”

His adjutant looked at him as though he had bitten into a bug.

The prince waved a hand at him.

“Still, it seems I must persuade you again if I want you to charge alongside me. So I shall explain, Richter.”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think black mages run rampant?”

The adjutant considered it briefly before answering.

“Because they are difficult to track, and our defensive system against them is inadequate.”

Black magic was impossible to defend against.

A fireball or a sniper’s shot could be blocked with a shield once it came flying in.

But black magic was different.

It was covert, and above all, invisible.

No one knew when, where, or how it would strike, making a response nearly impossible.

And because its path could not be seen, tracking it afterward was difficult as well.

“Furthermore, there are cases where it is not black magic at all, but merely a misunderstanding or simple misfortune.”

There were other reasons.

Fire did not appear in nature without a cause. People did not freeze solid or get cut in half for no reason.

But black magic was indistinguishable from natural events.

Someone could fall ill from a plague curse, but they might simply have had the misfortune of getting sick.

When all those possibilities had to be considered, black magic was often nearly impossible to track.

That was what Richter meant.

“Correct. But that is a technical answer.”

It was not the answer the prince wanted.

Edmund leaned back in his chair.

“What I am asking is something more fundamental. Why is the Empire so helpless before black magic? Is it because we lack the technology? Because the budget is insufficient? Of course, those are issues we must solve someday. But they are not the root of the problem.”

Those were problems, certainly.

But the moment he heard that Julian had tracked down a black mage in a single day and learned how he had done it, the prince had focused on the fundamental cause.

“The most fundamental problem is resignation.”

“…”

“When people are harmed by a black mage, they always say the same things. You cannot catch them anyway. By the time you trace them, they have already fled. There is no way to stop them. And what happens after that?”

Edmund’s fingers slowly tapped the table.

“They give up, or they approach the case halfheartedly because they have already decided to give up.”

Richter listened without speaking.

“The Academy incident was the same. Do you think the principal and vice principal responded carelessly because they were lazy?”

“…Wasn’t the conclusion that it was negligence of duty?”

“It was negligence. But we must understand where that negligence came from.”

Edmund turned to look at his adjutant.

They were eyes Richter knew.

They were the eyes of the passionate man who, on the Southern Front when everyone else had given up, had alone declared that they had to retake the strategic stronghold their ancestors had lost two hundred years ago.

The apprentice knight who had demanded to know why they could not cast off that helplessness now that the fever holding them back was gone.

That was the first image Richter had of the prince.

“What if demonkin had infiltrated the Academy? What if magical beasts had devoured the students? Would the principal still have responded so carelessly?”

“Never.”

Richter shook his head.

“He would have immediately prepared for battle and urgently requested support from the knightly orders.”

“Exactly. No one responds carelessly to demonkin or magical beasts. Because there are ways to deal with them. Everyone knows they can be tracked, caught, and killed. And because there is hope.”

Methods for dealing with demonkin and magical beasts had been established over a thousand years.

Even so, security was sometimes breached.

But whenever that happened, people responded quickly.

Partly because they knew what to do, but also because they knew there was hope if they acted quickly.

Edmund pushed the empty soup bowl aside.

“But black magic is different. It cannot be traced, the caster has already fled by the time you try to catch them, and there is no reliable way to stop it. Sometimes, once the truth comes out, it was not black magic at all, only bad luck. It has been that way for decades, for centuries.”

The prince let out a deep sigh.

“And over that long time, people learned something. That no matter what they did, it would not work.”

“Your Highness. Are you saying the principal’s negligence was not entirely his fault?”

“Ah, do not misunderstand. I am not defending that man.”

The prince waved a hand.

“It was his personal negligence. Even if the world made him that way, that does not justify his irresponsibility.

“What I mean is that if we continue to treat the reasons people become irresponsible as nothing more than individual failings, this will keep happening.”

Richter nodded.

It was a nod of understanding.

Edmund saw his reaction and fell silent for a moment.

When he spoke again, Richter noticed that the prince’s voice had changed.

“…It has not been long since I began to think this way.”

Edmund suddenly placed a hand on the table, then covered his face with his palm.

“When my wife lost our first child, I traveled across the Empire searching for the cause, even if only on my own.”

Richter caught his breath.

The Princess Consort’s miscarriages.

It was a subject even the court could not speak of carelessly.

Richter was no different.

Even though they had trusted each other with their lives on the battlefield, he had never brought it up first.

But tonight, the prince opened that door himself.

“When we lost the second, I called in healers. Even before we conceived the third child, I kept healers by our side.”

Edmund’s voice was low and even.

But that calmness only made the weight pressed beneath it more apparent.

“After we lost the third child, rumors began to spread. That my wife and I had fallen under a curse of infertility.”

Richter lowered his head, unable to meet the prince’s eyes.

But Edmund continued.

“Do you remember how the Imperial Family responded then?”

“…They assembled an investigation team.”

“And the result?”

“…”

“As you know, the team was dissolved after a month without finding anything.”

It concerned the Southern war hero, a prince whose influence was among the greatest in the Imperial Family.

“Do you know what was even more absurd? I half believed the rumor myself, and investigated with all my heart.”

Edmund gave a bitter smile.

“Think about it, Richter. The other imperial family members shut themselves away inside the palace. I alone went to the front lines, stood before the people as Personnel Chief of Staff, and held a position that decided the appointments of countless nobles. I must have made no small number of enemies.”

Edmund looked down at his empty teacup.

“What better target could there be?”

Richter could not answer.

“I thought I was being rational. But if no one had cast a curse, how could I possibly find them?”

In the end, the investigation team had been dissolved after a month without finding a single clue.

That was when the prince began to fall into apathy.

“After that, I only sought alcohol. What did it matter whether it was a curse or not?”

And the people around him fell into apathy with him.

“Everyone became helpless. Since it could not be explained, they blamed black magic, yet never tried to find the black mage. No one had the will to solve it.”

At the time, the prince had nearly given himself over to despair.

After separating from his wife, he had planned to spend the rest of his life simply guarding the Southern Front.

Then a miracle came to him.

“Then I met Lord Julian. With a single pill, he solved every problem we had.”

But Julian was different from those people.

He had not given up, nor had he ignored what he did not know.

He had not ruled out the possibility of black magic. He first confirmed that it was not black magic, then solved the problem.

“He alone was free. He was not trapped by helplessness. While everyone else had decided that the answer was a curse and only asked questions that fit that answer, he was charging ahead alone. Just as I once did.”

Edmund spoke.

“That was when I realized it. Our greatest enemy is not black mages. It is stopping our thoughts in the face of black magic. It is giving up on finding the cause. That resignation and helplessness are the weapons black mages exploit.”

Edmund looked at Richter.

“That is why I have no intention of changing the course’s name.”

Richter’s eyes trembled.

“Knowing how to respond leads directly to defense. Simply knowing that they can be tracked will intimidate black mages, and people will no longer bow their heads.”

Edmund declared.

“That is why Black Magic Defense is the correct name.”

Richter stood there without speaking.

The prince’s gaze shifted toward the hall leading to the baby’s room.

“It is all right if we cannot eliminate every black mage right away. It is all right if it does not end in my generation.”

Edmund spoke.

“If I can leave Aster, and Aster’s child, a world that does not bow its head before black magic, that will be enough for me.”

For a while, the prince stared toward the room where his baby slept.

A long silence settled over them.

Only the crackling of candlelight could be heard.

At last, Edmund drew his gaze away from the hall and spoke.

“…Of course, it will not be easy.”

The fervor in his voice had faded considerably.

“The Noble Council will resist fiercely. As if spending the budget to establish a new course were not enough, we intend to teach black magic as an official subject. Ever since the Great Sage destroyed the Black Magic Tower, black magic has been taboo in this Empire. What will people say when we try to bring it into the light?”

Edmund counted on his fingers.

He could anticipate more than a few objections.

To teach how to respond, they would naturally have to teach its principles.

And once people understood those principles?

Some would become capable of using black magic as well.

Among them, some would abuse it.

Certain nobles would likely raise concerns over that.

Not every noble would oppose it, but there would be no shortage of opposition.

“We must consider resistance from the religious establishment as well. Will they accuse us of encouraging heresy?”

Richter continued listening in silence.

“There will be those who mock it as meaningless. They will say that a single course cannot change a problem unsolved for hundreds of years. That this kind of grandstanding will ruin the Empire. At best, cynicism. At worst, ridicule. There were voices like that before we retook the Southern Fortress as well.”

Edmund gave a bitter smile.

“And.”

He inhaled and paused for a beat.

“Black mages will not simply sit still.”

The prince’s eyes narrowed.

“They have operated comfortably in the dark until now. If someone says they will shine a torch into that darkness... they will try to cut off the hand holding it first. Mine included.”

Edmund spoke calmly.

It was the same expression he had worn when told that he needed to stand at the very front on the battlefield.

He knew he might die, yet remained composed as though it did not matter.

Edmund shrugged.

“Still, I am a man who knows no way but to charge.”

Richter could not speak for a while.

The candle on the table flickered.

In the silence of the secondary palace, Richter recalled a distant memory.

On the Southern Front, as they were being driven back, this man had constantly spoken of the fortress their ancestors had supposedly lost beyond that horizon two hundred years ago.

In the end, they retook that strategic stronghold, and Richter had not left this man’s side since.

And now.

The prince was saying he would charge again.

“What will you do, Richter? If you truly wish, I will let you withdraw from this matter.”

His adjutant gave a bitter smile.

“Your Highness.”

“Speak.”

“I should have died once already in that battle for the fortress.”

For a moment, Edmund’s lips slowly curved upward.

“…Good.”

The prince held out his empty teacup.

“Then bring me another cup of tea before we charge. I was honestly very thirsty back then.”