Chapter 126: 125. White-Robed Divine Physician, Camilla
1.
The Empire's frontier...
More precisely, a settlement that could only be claimed as Imperial territory because someone had drawn a line around it on a map.
The only thing that passed for a road was a series of rutted wheel tracks in the mud—enough to make you think, Ah, this must be the road.
A village where even a little rain turned everything into a bog, cutting off travel to neighboring villages.
There was no hospital, not even a clinic, and proper treatment required a journey of several days to the nearest city, yet...
"Ow!"
"Eat well and go to bed early, all right?"
Camilla said as she pulled down the child's sleeve.
"You won't scratch it anymore, right?"
"No."
"Good grief."
Pinch.
"Aah!"
Camilla smiled faintly, pinched his cheek, then handed medicine to the child's mother.
The consultations that had begun in the morning continued until the sun began to set.
White-Robed Divine Physician.
It had been quite some time since she, known by that true name, stopped climbing and began traveling through frontier settlements like this.
Once she finished treating a village, she would leave them medicine and move on to the next one.
She traveled from place to place, caring for people.
Here, they simply called her Teacher.
That day, too, she was gathering her medicine case to head to the next village when...
"Divine Physician."
"..."
Camilla stopped at the voice calling to her.
A title she could neither hear nor wanted to hear in a place like this...
As she slowly turned around, she saw a man in a neat suit.
An outfit that naturally did not fit this village, covered in dust and mud as it was.
The man remained some distance away and bowed his head.
"My apologies for coming to see you so suddenly."
Rather than return his greeting, Camilla studied his face.
Perhaps he had rushed all the way here; his heartbeat was fast, and sweat he had not had the chance to wipe away beaded on his brow.
"Lady Cordelia Rosenfeld is in critical condition."
"..."
Her grip tightened sharply around the handle of her medicine case.
"...Handle it yourselves."
Camilla turned away.
The man... instead of coming closer to stop her, remained where he was and continued.
"If, by any chance, Lady Rosenfeld should pass away like this..."
"Watch your mouth."
"...My apologies. However, the support promised to you is also being maintained through her."
"..."
"It is difficult to guarantee that we can continue maintaining the freezing spell that has been sustained until now..."
The man's gaze suddenly dropped.
...Huh?
The dirt ground was right before his eyes.
Camilla's white gown, receding into the distance, came into view.
What is this?
Had he fallen?
No, his body—his body was still standing...
Because the vision that had fallen to the ground was looking up at his own legs.
And then...
A moment later, the sensation of having both his eyes gouged out came crashing in.
"Aaaaaaagh!"
The man dropped to his knees, clutching his face.
Yet the face beneath his palms was intact. There was no blood, and both his eyes remained right where they belonged.
Phantom pain.
While the man shrieked and frantically felt over his face, Camilla stopped walking.
She looked down at the handle of her medicine case...
"Lead the way."
Let's go.
All she had to do was go.
She had to save her.
The reason Cordelia Rosenfeld had begun working under those people.
The reason her younger sister, Adeline Rosenfeld, was frozen solid somewhere.
Ultimately, all of it was because she herself was inadequate.
White-Robed Divine Physician?
A divine physician?
What a joke, when she could not even save one person.
She had not been able to heal Dolores's body, nor had she ultimately been able to cure Adeline.
Was there any guarantee this time would be different?
...White-Robed Divine Physician. It was simply laughable.
2.
Ruby and I were lying side by side in the master bedroom, each doing our own thing.
Ruby was reading a book, while I was reading a book about minerals.
Despite it being dawn, neither of us was asleep.
Normally, Dolores would have personally enforced bedtime, but...
"...Just as I thought."
In the end, the Dawn Apostles had gathered at the estate in the middle of the night.
Seren, Isabella, Yeomhwa, and Dolores still seemed to be talking in the sitting room.
I stopped reading and looked at Ruby.
"Have you ever met Cordelia?"
"...No. She's the only one I haven't met."
"I see."
Wait, there were seven Dawn Apostles in total.
Dolores.
Isabella.
Yeomhwa.
Seren.
Cordelia.
Camilla.
Then who was the last one?
It didn't seem like that person had come either...
And I didn't think I'd seen Camilla, the seaweed seller, today either.
As I was thinking that...
Snooore...
Ruby had fallen asleep before I knew it.
Creak.
The door opened, and Dolores entered in her pajamas.
"Oh, you're here?"
"You were still awake?"
"Yes. Did everyone leave?"
Shake, shake.
"Mm-hm. They've decided to sleep here tonight."
Dolores came over to the bed...
She kissed sleeping Ruby on the forehead.
Then she stretched out her arms toward me and pulled me into a tight embrace.
"...Hngh."
As always, I buried my face in her chest.
I tried to squirm around and breathe through the small gap for air.
"Congratulations on today."
"Thank you, Lionel. It was all thanks to you."
Dolores's hand continued stroking the back of my head, but...
Thump... thump...
Today, Mama's heart was beating much faster than usual.
She was unsettled.
I'll be honest.
There were far too many things I wanted to know.
"Dolores."
"Yes?"
"If I ask about the things I'm curious about, how much can you tell me?"
So I asked her directly.
I was the kind of person who couldn't stand not knowing something.
And I knew this curiosity would never die down until I at least heard that she couldn't tell me.
"Lionel."
"Yes."
...Kiss.
Dolores immediately pressed a light kiss to the bridge of my nose.
"There are no secrets."
"..."
"Especially not from you, Lionel. I don't want to hide anything from you."
I lifted my head and met Dolores's eyes.
"What are you curious about?"
No secrets, huh.
Then I had plenty of questions.
First.
"What is Cordelia's condition right now?"
"To put it plainly, she is at death's door... It would not be strange if she stopped breathing at any moment."
"..."
Dolores's expression darkened for a moment, but...
"Camilla has gone to her... so we must wait."
Ah.
So that was why she had not come.
Camilla...
I was more familiar with her as the seaweed seller, but from what I had learned, she seemed to be an outstanding doctor—to the point of being called a divine physician.
In other words, a healer.
"Then... why did Cordelia leave the Dawn Apostles?"
More precisely, I wanted to know why she had joined the Company.
Seeing how worried everyone was, it didn't seem like she had left because they had fallen out.
Dolores looked down at my face for a moment... then let out a soft breath.
"Cordelia has..."
"Yes."
"...a younger sister named Adeline."
The hand stroking my hair paused for a moment.
"It was to save that child."
3.
Patter...
The workshop at dawn, with rain pouring down.
It was raining so hard that I came out early to dig some drainage channels.
After taking off my raincoat and entering the workshop...
Clang!
I smashed the raw ores.
I melted them down, removed every last impurity, and cast them into ingots.
It was the sort of work that made things easier later if done in advance—a kind of grunt work—but honestly, I didn't like it.
So I usually did it when I needed to organize my thoughts, but...
"Fuck."
I couldn't sort my thoughts out.
What Dolores had told me was even more fucked up than I had expected.
The Rosenfeld family was apparently a fallen noble house.
I looked into this separately afterward, but that was also why Cordelia had first entered the Tower.
She needed a way to restore her declining family.
Anyway, Cordelia had a younger sister named Adeline...
And she suffered from a horrific disease in which all the bones in her body slowly melted away.
A fatal disease, and an incurable one.
"They don't even break? What the hell..."
I had never imagined a disease that horrifying existed.
Cordelia had climbed the Tower to save her, too.
Minerals never seen before, herbs never touched before, techniques never imagined before.
Those were the things people dreamed of before climbing the Tower.
...If it wasn't on this floor, maybe it would be on the next.
But while Cordelia climbed, her sister's illness worsened even faster.
Adeline was deteriorating faster than Cordelia could climb.
"What about Camilla...?"
I'd asked without thinking as I listened.
She was a divine physician.
If she was that incredible, I thought there might have been some way, but...
"...She couldn't cure it."
From that point on, I couldn't easily ask any more questions.
And so the last method Cordelia chose was one thing.
Until they found a cure... or until she could bring back some herb, elixir, or anything at all that could save her sister...
Freeze her completely.
You know, like that.
Cryogenic preservation...
In the world I had lived in, I only knew the rough concept, and I had heard the technology itself wasn't perfect.
But apparently, magic made it possible here.
Freezing magic stopped the body's vital functions completely... and held the disease's progression in place until it was undone.
And crucially, there was only one mage who could do it.
And fucking of course, that person belonged to the Company.
Originally, everyone had intended to put their heads together and somehow find a solution, but...
Cordelia...
"I think Cordelia probably didn't want to burden everyone."
At the time, Mama hadn't been well either.
...Maybe it weighed on her that she was becoming a burden.
There were people like that.
"..."
What happened afterward was very simple.
They demanded that Cordelia join the Company and climb the Tower without rest.
In exchange, the contract promised they would maintain Adeline's frozen state.
Clang!
I brought the hammer down hard.
That was how Cordelia became affiliated with the Company.
And the end result of that affiliation was...
"This is fucking unbearable."
Her younger sister was frozen, and the older sister was dying?
What kind of bullshit was this?
They pressured her never to rest from climbing under the weight of performance demands, and in the end, she broke down.
Why?
Because they were the only ones who could keep her sister frozen.
Throwing their weight around because they were the sole option...
Why did it remind me so much of the Dwarf Company's Enchant Room?
So all I could do now was pray that Camilla saved Cordelia.
And if she barely survived?
"..."
They would tell her to challenge the 200th floor again.
While demanding results.
Patter...
This was the first time the sound of rain had disgusted me.
It was definitely because I felt like shit.
It was fucked up. Completely fucked up.
And then...
Patter...
Step...
"...?"
Footsteps strangely mixed into the rain.
It was raining far too hard for anyone to be out in the garden.
I put down my hammer and turned toward the window.
And there...
"Wh-what?"
Soaked through by the rain.
A woman in a white gown was walking across the garden.
She had neither an umbrella nor a raincoat, so I thought she was a ghost.
Water dripped from the ends of her hair, though the rain was coming down too hard for it to even show.
Her head bowed, she simply staggered along...
"Camilla...?"
She should definitely be treating Cordelia right now...
"Ah."
Fuck.
I quickly threw on the raincoat I had left aside.
Creak.
Tap tap tap...
I opened the door and ran outside.
The sound of rain swirled around my ears.
As soon as I reached her, I took off my raincoat and draped it over her head.
"Camilla."
"..."
Only then did she hear me, turning her head toward me.
I was about to say something else, but closed my mouth.
Camilla showed no reaction for a long while even after looking at me.
Our eyes met, but I wasn't even sure she recognized me.
Ah.
Could that expression truly be called the expression of a living person?
I swallowed and held out my hand.
"Come with me."
I tightly grasped Camilla's hand as she stood there blankly.
There was no answer, but...
"Lionel..."
It seemed she recognized me.
Her hand was so cold.
Thinking that we needed to get out of the rain first, I led her straight to the workshop.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register