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Chapter 2.5: An Unexpected Evolution and Possibility
— Some time after the real song battle ended —
In a clinic in the new city, Venetinova, Hilde stared speechless at her own hands, a beastman woman laid out on the examination table in front of her.
The woman had been deathly pale when she was brought in, but now that the procedure was complete, she was sleeping with a relatively peaceful look on her face. Hilde was the one who was pale now.
“B... Brad... Brad!” Coming back to her senses, she called her husband’s name. Hearing her cries, Brad, who had been in the bedroom with their one-year-old daughter, rushed over.
“Wh-What’s wrong, Hil—”
“Brad!” Hilde jumped at Brad as he arrived. Seizing his white coat, she buried her face in his chest.
Normally Hilde was so good spirited and strong-willed that you might have called her manly. In all of their long time together, Brad had never seen this weak side of her.
“Wh-What?! What in the world is going on?”
“Brad... I may have done something terrible.”
“Terrible?”
Hilde looked up at him, her face still pale. Though she didn’t seem to be crying, she did look frightened of something. Brad gently rubbed Hilde’s back to try to calm her.
“What exactly happened? Did you botch the treatment?” Even as he asked, Brad was sure that couldn’t be it. If she had been about to make an irreversible mistake, she would have called him then, not now.
Brad looked at the beastman woman on the table. Her eyes were closed, but her chest gently rose and fell. Her breathing didn’t seem labored, either. ...As far as I can see, she’s just sleeping.
This wasn’t like surgery, where a botched procedure could directly result in the death of the patient. This woman had come in feeling unwell, and Hilde asked questions, examined her, and then decided whether or not to provide medicine. Brad, who had nothing to do, had been left to take care of Ludia.
Having finally calmed herself, Hilde began to tell him what had transpired, “Brad. I...”
Hilde related the events to Brad in minute detail. As Brad listened, first his eyes widened, then he cocked his head to the side as he failed to understand what Hilde was worried about... then, when he eventually comprehended what it was that she was concerned about, he frowned.
“What should I do, Brad? Should I go into hiding...?”
“Hold on! You’re getting way ahead of yourself!” Brad clapped his hands down on her shoulders. “The first thing we need to do is calm down. Both of us... Also, no matter what happens, I will always be by your side. Ludia will, too.”
“Ah! Ludia!” Hilde brushed off Brad’s arms and took off running. When Brad recovered from his surprise and chased after her, Hilde was looking at their sleeping daughter.
When Brad approached, Hilde leaned against him with tears in her eyes.
“...If it were just me, I might have fled the country and gone into hiding.”
“...Yeah. I would have gone with you, too.”
“But... I don’t want this child to be caught up in it, too. I couldn’t make her suffer like that.”
“I know.” Brad gently embraced Hilde as he came to a decision. “Let’s talk to the king about this.”
“Huh?! But what if...?”
“It’s okay,” Brad said, looking a hesitant Hilde straight in the eye. “If this were any other country, I wouldn’t be saying this. But that king, he wouldn’t mistreat you, no matter what’s happened. That king treasures family. He couldn’t abandon you after you helped his wife to give birth.”
“.........”
Hilde seemed torn, but eventually she accepted.
— Several days later —
Having received a message from Brad and Hilde saying, “We wish to meet with you in secret to discuss something important,” I set aside time to meet with the two of them in a room at the castle.
They had indicated that the fewer people present the better, so only Hakuya and Liscia were in attendance, with Aisha outside the door standing guard and keeping others away.
Incidentally, their daughter, Ludia, was being looked after by Elisha and Carla.
“It’s not everyday you come to the castle, huh, Brad?” The looks on their faces were dark, so I decided to open with some lighthearted banter. “Maybe you don’t want to come to the den of the powerful, hmm?”
I tried teasing him for the way he acted like he had a bad case of middle school syndrome, but...
“...The situation left me with no alternative,” Brad responded with a grim look on his face. ...This was apparently going to be a serious talk. Liscia elbowed me in the ribs, as if to say, “You shouldn’t be teasing him.” It kind of hurt.
Brad stood up, and bowed his head deeply. “Please. Lend us your power for Hilde’s sake.”
“Please.” Hilde stood up as well and bowed her head, and my eyes went wide.
“No, lift your heads, please.” I had them sit back down, then started over by asking them, “Please, tell me. What in the world happened?”
“...There was a woman who visited our clinic the other day.” Hilde slowly began to explain the situation. “I will keep her name a secret, but she was a beastman woman, thirty years old. She complained about stomach pains, and after examining her, I realized it was the work of bugs.”
“By bugs you mean... parasites, huh?”
Anisakis, or the like. Hilde nodded.
“It seems she ate some fish that spoils quickly raw. Because Venetinova is on the sea, it happens on rare occasions. The usual treatment involves using a deworming medicine to kill the bugs, followed by medical supervision. And, in serious cases, I will have Brad perform an abdominal incision and remove them.”
“Hm...”
“I had this woman drink the deworming medicine and stay in the clinic so I could watch her, but... she was quite weak-willed. She begged me, ‘Please, use recovery magic on me.’”
“Recovery magic? But I heard light magic like that can only heal external wounds?”
The story I’d heard was, indeed, that light magic was not effective in treating illness. That was why I had worked to increase the number of people like Brad and Hilde, who could treat people with the power of medicine, in our country.
“Yes, that’s right.” Hilde nodded. “The symptoms brought on by parasites are an infection, and magic has no effect on it, just like with bacteria. I explained that to the patient, but she wouldn’t accept it.”
“When you’re suffering from illness, you’ll cling to any straw, after all...”
“I think so, too. It was only going to make her feel better about it emotionally, but if it satisfied the patient, I didn’t see the harm. I cast the spell on her, and when I did...”
Hilde paused for a moment, then, seeming to resolve herself, she confessed.
“Her illness... got better.”
“...Come again?” I muttered in disbelief.
It got better? With recovery magic? Huh? Didn’t that contradict her statement from, like, ten seconds ago?
“Was it really a parasitic infection?”
“From everything in my diagnosis, I have no doubt of that.”
“I confirmed it myself later. Hilde was undoubtedly correct,” Brad cosigned her statement.
If the two great doctors were in agreement, I had to believe them.
“You gave her medicine, right? Could that have had an effect?” I asked.
“It wasn’t so potent it could have an instant effect on the bugs like that.”
“Well, how about a placebo effect?”
“Plasiiibow? What’s that?”
“Erm... In the world I came from, there’s a saying, ‘Sickness is in the mind.’ The way you think about things can apparently help ameliorate your symptoms. If you drink spring water that claims to be a panacea, you might feel like your symptoms are getting better... That’s sort of how it works.”
“That’s fascinating, but she didn’t just feel she was getting better, she was fully recovered.”
Hilde had a point. You couldn’t make parasites vanish by changing how you felt.
“Your Majesty, this may be huge,” Hakuya, who had remained quiet up until this point, interjected. “I haven’t heard of a single instance of a disease being healed with magic before this. Because light magic is believed to be a sign of God’s grace, powerful light mages have been integrated into the church. If they learn Madam Hilde can heal sickness with her light magic, she will have religious power greater than any mere saint.”
That figures... The Lunarian Orthodox Papal State was going to want her more than anything. If she was a saint they couldn’t have for themselves, they would have to publicly condemn her. The same way they had criticized Maria and others.
“Me, a saint? Spare me.” Hilde hugged herself and went pale.
Oh, I saw what this was about now. Was this why they had come to me? To have the country protect her, so she wasn’t caught up in the machinations of some religion?
“...Who was the patient? Does she know it was Hilde’s light magic that cured her?”
“When she realized something was wrong, Hilde put her under with drugs immediately. When she awoke, we explained the medicine had run its course, so I don’t think she realizes... Lying to a patient may disqualify us as doctors, though,” Brad said as he held Hilde’s shoulders.
“So the only ones who know are the five of us here, then. Well...”
As I was pondering what to do about this, Liscia tugged on my sleeve.
“Hm? What?”
“...I know, normally, I shouldn’t let personal feelings come into this. But, please, Souma. Help Dr. Hilde. She looked after me the whole time I was pregnant. I don’t even know if Cian and Kazuya would have been born safely without her.”
“Liscia...”
“So, please. Lend the two of them your strength.”
“...I know.” I gently stroked the back of Liscia’s head. “It’s already decided that I’m going to help them. If anything happened to Hilde, Brad wouldn’t stay quiet about it. It would be to the country’s detriment if we were to lose their rare gifts. More than that, do you think I could abandon the people who did so much for our family? I don’t want to see such a sad look on my wife’s face.”
I looked to everyone present.
“For that reason, I first want to organize the information we have. The foremost question is, ‘Why did her magic cure the infection?’ Hilde, have you ever tested something like this before?”
“A number of times. When I’ve had a patient in a condition so serious it was beyond my ability to do anything, I’ve used recovery magic and prayed for a miracle... It never worked, though.”
“There must be countless times that people have tried to use recovery magic to treat an illness before now. But if it’s never had an effect... is there something special about Hilde?”
I presented my suspicion to Brad who replied, “But if that’s the case, why was Hilde never able to cure them before now? This was the first time it was successful.”
“Did her magic evolve? It grows a little each time you use it. I mean, the number of things I can control with my Living Poltergeists has gradually grown.”
“No, I think this has jumped too many stages to be from simple growth. In terms of your ability, sire, it would be like you suddenly being able to control a suit of armor in the Empire that you’ve never even touched.”
If I had that power, I could go on an assassination bonanza. Er, I wouldn’t, of course, but that’s how big of a change it would be. That made this harder and harder to understand.
“Why do you suppose she was suddenly able to cure it with magic?”
“Oh! Maybe it’s like the song battle, and there was something in the situation amplifying her magic?” Liscia said, clapping her hands as she came up with the idea.
“The effect’s too big for that, though.”
“There was no music playing when I was treating her anyway.”
“Urkh. Yeah, that’s right...” With Hilde and me both stepping all over her idea, Liscia backed down.
“Wait— The song battle... Hold on.” Hakuya interjected.
“Did you figure something out, Hakuya?”
“Sire, please, try to remember the goal of that experiment.”
“The goal? ‘To observe the effect that songs have on magic’... right?”
“Yes. And the premise was that, like Madam Merula said, the strength or weakness of a person’s mental image would make that magic stronger or weaker.” As he said that, Hakuya turned to look at Hilde. “I’ve been thinking all this time about the difference between Madam Hilde and other light mages. If Madam Hilde is the one light mage who, unlike the others, can cure illnesses, where does that difference lie?”
“The difference... That she’s a member of the three-eyed race, maybe?”
When I said that, Hakuya shook his head.
“I considered that, too, but the three-eyed race are some of the foremost experts in medicine on this continent. I can’t imagine they haven’t tried to cure illnesses with magic before now.”
“Well, what’s different then?”
This time, Hakuya looked to Brad. “Madam Hilde has Sir Brad at her side.”
“...Me?”
“Yes. Brad the surgeon, to be precise. Madam Hilde, even before the two of you were married, you have been watching Sir Brad’s surgical procedures, correct?”
“Huh? ...Well, yes.” Hilde nodded. “When it comes to stitching the patient up after the procedure, the wounds heal faster with light magic. With all the times I helped out, I learned to perform surgery myself before I knew it.”
“I thought as much... In other words, Madam Hilde is deeply familiar with the structure of the human body, the same as a surgeon like Sir Brad, correct? And she knows about the parasites that harm the body, too.”
“What are you getting at, Hakuya?”
“I am suggesting that Madam Hilde knew all about the parasites, where in the body they were, and what they were doing to harm it.”
Hakuya spoke with confidence.
“Please, remember that people’s mental images influence magic. If she was able to imagine the parasites, their location within the body, and what harm they were doing, she forms an image of removing those parasites, and healing the damage. Turning that around, the reason no other light mage has been able to cure illness may be because they lack that mental image.”
When we heard Hakuya’s guess, we all looked to Hilde, and she nodded.
“...It’s true that I’ve been with Brad several times when he opened a patient’s stomach and removed the parasites. I could imagine what was going on inside that woman’s body, if only vaguely.”
“Basically, if you understand the mechanism behind a disease, it can be cured with light magic, huh...” I trailed off.
It might be possible to cure any illness she understood the mechanism of with light magic. Even diseases that would have been untreatable in the world I came from. Eliminating all those parasites in an instant without surgically opening the patient’s stomach would have been impossible in my old world. Because it was overtechnology, the possibilities were endless.
“To sum things up, if we pound medical knowledge into our light mages’ heads, we can increase the number of them who can cure disease like Hilde did, huh?”
“It is only a hypothesis for the time being... but that seems likely.” Hakuya nodded.
True enough, we couldn’t say for certain until we had tested it, but I was convinced.
“...Thank goodness.” Liscia let out a sigh of relief. “That means Dr. Hilde’s not special, right? If we can increase the number of mages who can do the same thing, Dr. Hilde won’t be seen as anything unique, and countries like the Orthodox Papal State won’t come after her.”
At her words, Hakuya and I felt a little embarrassed.
In our positions as king and prime minister, our minds had been solely focused on the potential of magic and how it could be used. Meanwhile, Liscia was thinking about Hilde the whole time. This is embarrassing, I thought, and Hakuya and I looked at one another with wry smiles.
“...Yeah.” I smiled to reassure Liscia. “It’s an issue that powerful light mages are being taken in by the church, but some of them must have the desire to save people. I could speak to Bishop Souji and have him find us some promising individuals. I’d like to have more people like Hilde a few years from now.”
I then looked to Hilde and Brad.
“Until then, it would be best to keep this secret for both of your safety.”
“But... if I have the means to save someone, not using it is not an option.”
I looked to Hilde, who spoke as a doctor, and nodded. “I know. In that case, you can put the patient under with drugs, and pretend that the medicine worked like this time. You’ll have to accept that much of a lie.”
“...I suppose so. It’s easier than being told not to use it at all.”
“I’ll also post guards for the two of you. Their job will be less to monitor you, and more to gather information, and prevent leaks. They’ll watch to ensure this doesn’t get out, and to deal with the situation if it looks like it might, so they’ll do what they can not to interfere with your lives.”
“I know that can’t be helped, but... let me say one thing,” Brad said, raising his hand.
“I’m sure you’re not entirely satisfied, but you’ll have to put up with some inconvenience...”
“No, that’s not it. What I want to say is that I want you to protect Ludia, too, not just us. That girl’s more important than our own lives.”
Hilde nodded in agreement. This was an issue with the way I had explained it.
“I promise the country will guarantee your family’s safety.”
“...Ahaha! Sorry to trouble you, Your Majesty.”
Hilde finally smiled at that point, making my heart feel lighter.
On this day, the history of medical science in our kingdom broke into a new stage.