The Prince of Fireflies
A few days after completing the vaccine. The clinic.
"Teacher. You are taking your supplements properly, aren't you?"
The air in the clinic was sweltering from the heater, as always. My daily life hadn't undergone any cataclysmic shifts yet. No matter how brilliant an invention might be, it takes time for the world to recognize it. Even Quinine and Insulin, which had shaken the Empire to its core, took a full year to permeate the masses. And a vaccine? It wasn't even a medicine with immediate, visible curative effects; it was a preventative measure that simply "keeps you from getting sick." It would take at least two years to prove its true worth.
'I suppose I'll be repeating the same routine until then.'
However, I knew better than anyone that this peaceful daily life wouldn't last forever. Even more so than my teacher, who had made such a fuss the day the vaccine was completed.
'It’s a vaccine, for heaven's sake.'
If one were to pick the GOAT of medical history, this invention would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with antibiotics as a miracle of human history. The moment the existence and value of this vaccine were properly revealed to the world, I would no longer be able to remain a small-time physician tucked away in a corner of the Limbus Pit. Whether it be the Imperial Court, the Magic Towers, or the high nobility—I could clearly see them rushing forward, competing to put a leash around my neck.
'Even if the world changes, my life as a wage slave remains the same….'
Still, until that day comes, I would continue to treat as many people as I could in the Limbus Pit. I would build up as many case studies as possible, hand over what I could, and if possible, show my face here from time to time. I made that vow to myself and focused on today's patient.
"Teacher. I’m administering the Dimercaprol for you periodically. I’m asking if you’re taking the two supplements I gave you without skipping them."
At my persistent interrogation, the Great Sage Louis Adelhart narrowed his brows.
"Yes. I am taking those medicines properly."
"No. Why do you think I asked if you were taking the 'two' of them properly? You haven't been skipping the others, have you?"
"Ugh! Of course I took them! Why are you such a nag!"
My teacher raised his voice.
"How many times do I have to hear this question? You check on me once a week every single time. I haven't gone senile yet!"
"It’s important, so I’m going to keep asking."
"My ears are so calloused that mushrooms are about to sprout from them. Stop asking."
"I can't do that."
Of course, I thought I might be being excessive. But this was something I couldn't compromise on.
"In the treatment of chronic lead poisoning, if you only take the Dimercaprol, something terrible could happen."
Medicine and poison are separated by a razor-thin margin. Even a slight error in usage or dosage can kill a person in an instant. That was especially true for Dimercaprol, the lead poisoning treatment.
"Teacher, you have had lead accumulating in your bones for a staggering 1,000 years. This isn't a condition that can be cured by taking medicine for a mere month or two."
Dimercaprol. The treatment I gave my teacher, synthesized from eggs and garlic. This drug, made from the sulfur abundant in eggs and garlic, is very "friendly" with lead. So, when Dimercaprol enters the body, it drags the lead accumulated in the bones out into the bloodstream. Once the lead is extracted, the Dimercaprol binds to it and exits through the urine. That is the principle behind how Dimercaprol treats lead poisoning.
The problem is that this drug doesn't only exit through the urine while carrying the lead.
"Unlike other drugs, Dimercaprol is a substance that can flow into the brain."
Dimercaprol is also "friendly" with the brain. So, there are cases where the substance that should be exiting through the urine instead carries the lead and heads straight for the brain. The result can be a fatal situation where all the lead stored in the bones flows into the brain.
That is why I prescribed two additional medicines to prevent this.
"That is why I’m telling you that if you don't take this sour medicine and the pill together, something terrible could happen."
Specifically, Citric Acid and Bear Bile. These two medicines help Dimercaprol go straight to the urine and liver, preventing it from heading to the brain. Because these two exist, Dimercaprol can act as a medicine rather than a poison.
"So please, make sure to take them. I’d rather you not receive the Dimercaprol treatment at all than skip these two."
"Ugh…. But I’ve already heard this story 30 times."
"Even so, I will keep saying it."
I gave a firm answer to my teacher, who was attempting to negotiate. This was because this was the most dangerous timing. Just as one's attitude changes when entering and leaving a restroom, patients are the same. They take their medicine well right after they are sick or right after they are treated. But the moment their condition improves slightly or they think they know better, they start taking their medicine carelessly. Then, when their condition worsens beyond what it was before, the medicine stops working, and they reach a point of no return.
That is why I torment my teacher like this. Chronic lead poisoning can cause irreversible side effects if one is not careful.
"This is my medical philosophy. Please respect it."
"Ugh. I ended up with a stubborn youngest disciple in my twilight years…."
My teacher grumbled, but he took the medicines.
"I got it. So, you're saying I should never skip these two, right?"
"Yes. You must never take just the smelly medicine alone."
"I understand. It’s as if my mother, who passed away a thousand years ago, has come back to life."
My teacher chuckled and packed the medicine away. Only after confirming that the medicines were properly tucked into his pocket did I speak again.
"And regarding your lifestyle habits, not just the medicine…."
"When using lead, it seeps into the skin, so you must wear gloves and a mask. And try not to inhale lead fumes."
"And?"
"If your hands tremble, your speech becomes slurred, or you feel your strength draining away, call a healer first or come to me."
"You know well."
I smiled brightly. It was worth nagging him every time we met. Since you can't spit on a smiling face, my teacher just shook his head with a hearty laugh, as if he had no choice. My teacher slowly rose from his seat.
I quickly checked my teacher's hand tremors. 'He’s fine when he picks things up.'
His grip on his cane was natural. It was proof that his lead poisoning had improved significantly.
"I’ll be going now. So please, don't appear in my dreams to nag me."
"I will try."
My teacher opened the clinic door and stepped out. I watched the door through which he had departed for a moment before I began to organize the charts on the table.
The highest spire of Sanctum Hill. Having returned to his laboratory, Louis placed the medicine bottles on his desk.
"Let's see…."
— "You must take the other two as well."
He remembered his disciple's nagging and picked up one of the bottles. He mixed the sour powder from the bottle into water and drank it, then swallowed the bitter Bear Bile pill without leaving a trace. He washed the empty bottles roughly. It was to reuse the glass bottles. Of course, considering Julian's wealth, there was no need to be so frugal. But the Great Sage, who was always strapped for research funds, had developed the habit of cherishing even a single glass bottle.
Clack.
The washed glass bottle was placed on the desk. Next to the bottle, the experimental mask and gloves Julian had made for him were laid out neatly. Louis looked at the items his disciple had provided for a moment, then left the workshop with a satisfied smile. The soft light of the magical tools faded one by one, and deep darkness settled over the workshop. The place he headed after leaving the laboratory was his bedroom, located right next door.
"Yawn."
The Great Sage let out a light yawn and laid his body on the bed. He removed his eyepatch, closed his remaining eye, and his consciousness gradually sank into the darkness.
"It's been a while."
When the Great Sage Louis opened his eyes again, he realized he was swimming through a dream. Dreams are like mirages; once you return to reality, they are bound to scatter to the other side of the subconscious. But after hearing that prophets who track the trajectories of stars catch glimpses of the future in these scattering fragments of dreams, the Great Sage began to study dreams. As a result, he learned how to capture the moment when the soul touches the world's causality while human reason sleeps. In short, he learned how to glimpse the future or parallel worlds through dreams.
And for the first time in decades, that opportunity had come to Louis.
"Qudo oculus vadent, moria tenet."
Louis muttered with lips that barely moved. No sooner had the incantation ended than the blurry sea of his subconscious began to churn. Soon, the hazy dreamscape took on a vivid form.
"Hmm."
Louis nodded in satisfaction. By nature, this kind of dream did not come just because he wished for it. Therefore, the Great Sage had researched not how to have a prophetic dream, but how to remember it. The result was this magic.
Before long, the scenery began to flow little by little. To glimpse the future, Louis naturally entrusted his body to the flow guided by the dream.
His vision gradually cleared, and a familiar yet unfamiliar landscape unfolded. The magnificent reception room of the Imperial Palace appeared before his eyes. Louis was sitting on a sofa in that reception room. And standing opposite him was a young man.
"Great Sage. It is time for your treatment."
A calm and polite voice. Louis's eye turned toward the face of the young man standing opposite him.
'Ho-ho.'
Louis could not help but admire him inwardly. The young man was Julian. Not the young, fifteen-year-old boy of reality, but a grown-up Julian in his mid-twenties. His neatly swept-back hair and the high-end alchemist's uniform that fit without a single wrinkle. Above all, those handsome and mature features that strangely captured one's gaze.
'So that boy grows up to have a face like that. Tsk tsk, he’ll be breaking the hearts of many noble ladies in the Empire. Perhaps he’ll even be sneaking into the Princess's bedchamber.'
As a teacher, he felt sorry, but he was relieved once again that he had no talent for hypnosis. The Julian in the dream was very polite and devoted. He was no different from the Julian of reality. Julian approached Louis, checked his pulse, and offered a magnificent silver tray with a gentle touch.
"Your complexion looks good today as well. Now, it is time for your medicine."
"Oh, yes. You must be busy, yet you go to the trouble of coming all the way to the Imperial Palace every time, Physician."
The Louis in the dream laughed heartily and accepted the medicine the young man handed him. It seemed that in this world, there was no strong bond of teacher and disciple. Even so, Julian was sincere toward his patient.
'Then….'
However. Something was strange. His intuition, honed over a thousand years of life, was sounding an alarm. The young man before him was definitely Julian. His appearance, his voice, his tone. Everything was the same as his beloved disciple. But the Great Sage could not feel any resonance from the young man before him. However, the Great Sage suppressed the rising sense of unease and decided to naturally entrust his body to the flow of the dream. He intended to watch until the end to see where the causality of this strange parallel world would flow.
"Ha-ha, no matter how much I drink this foul smell, I can't seem to get used to it."
"Isn't it said that good medicine is bitter to the mouth?"
"Yes. The Physician's words are a hundred times correct."
The Louis in the dream laughed heartily and downed the brown medicine—Dimercaprol—placed on the silver tray in one gulp. And not long after the medicine had slid down his esophagus.
"Umm…."
Strength began to drain from the limbs of the Louis in the dream. It was a strange sensation. The reason of the Louis who was 'observing' was clear, but the self in the dream was in a strange state.
It was at that very moment.
"…."
The atmosphere of the young man, who had been affectionate and devoted just a moment ago, changed completely. The pleasant physician from a moment ago was nowhere to be found, and something devoid of human emotion looked down at the Great Sage. The young man slowly placed his hand on the head of the Great Sage, who was shaking his head in a daze. From his fingertips, a low and sinister black magic flowed out. The magic began to carve a bizarre spell into the Great Sage's brain.
The 'real Louis,' who had been watching from a step back, was filled with horror.
'Is he using necromancy to manipulate the mind of the living…!'
Lead is a catalyst commonly used to control naturally occurring undead. Because of its symbolism of trapping souls, it allows the caster to hold onto their souls. And the Julian in the dream was using this on the Great Sage.
'How is such a thing possible?'
By nature, the Great Sage's mental barrier is more solid than anything else in the world. No matter how brilliant a dark mage might be, it is nearly impossible to cast hypnosis or domination magic directly onto the Great Sage's brain. But the Julian in the dream was doing it all too easily.
Louis was able to find the principle quickly.
'…It’s the lead.'
The Julian in the dream was using the years the Great Sage had lived. The lead that had accumulated in his body for a thousand years. He was pickling the Great Sage's brain with that lead and then casting dark magic. The side effect Julian had warned about so much in reality. This was the result of the worst-case scenario that occurs when one only takes the main drug, Dimercaprol, and skips the supplements.
'Is this why Julian told me to take the supplements together?'
Louis once again clicked his tongue at the endless knowledge of the Julian in both reality and the dream. The Louis in the dream muttered in his fading consciousness.
"Physician… Teacher."
"Yes, Great Sage. Please speak."
The Great Sage in the dream, his brain pickled in lead, muttered like an old man suffering from delirium.
"How long… has it been since we met?"
A question close to a lament. To that question from Louis, the young Julian replied without withdrawing the dark magic flowing from his hand. In a voice that was extremely calm and emotionless, without the slightest agitation.
"It has been about 10 years."
10 years. The time it took for a 13-year-old child in reality to become a young man in his mid-twenties. This young man had been steadily encroaching upon the Great Sage's brain throughout that long period. While applying the knowledge he already possessed.
'So this child's talent for dark magic was to this extent.'
However, there was one question. The Julian and Louis of this side did not seem to have a teacher-disciple relationship. Even so, the dark magic displayed by the young man before him was no less precise than that of the real Julian—or perhaps even more so. If so, where on earth could this Julian in the dream have learned such precise dark magic?
As if to mock Louis's question, the young Julian whispered in a low voice.
"Thanks to you, it was a very fruitful time, Great Sage."
Louis's eye widened in horror. Could it be… this Julian in the dream had been steadily stealing the Great Sage's knowledge for the long period of 10 years. Using the connection formed by lead, very naturally and secretly.
'My goodness… no, that’s not it. Perhaps it is only natural if it is this child.'
He had seen the miracle that occurs when talent is directed in the right direction. If so, he should have thought that the opposite was also naturally possible. At the disciple's chillingly overwhelming talent, Louis felt a cold thrill rather than disgust.
As if reading Louis's emotions, the Julian in the dream whispered.
"Even the wisdom of a thousand years is so powerless once it is trapped in a rotting body. The years you spent accumulating wisdom have ultimately become your own leash."
"…."
If he had laughed arrogantly like a third-rate villain, it might have felt pathetic. But that Julian was merely calmly announcing the Great Sage's future. As if this, too, were part of his grand blueprint.
"I will make good use of the Great Sage's body. The body of an 8th-circle Mage who has lived for a thousand years. Where could there be a better vessel than this?"
It was the moment the black magic was finally about to swallow even the Great Sage's remaining ego.
"…."
The gaze of Louis, who had been quietly watching the situation as an observer, turned cold. The madness and talent shown by the disciple of the parallel world were certainly interesting. However, that was no reason to insult the spirit of a Great Mage who had reigned for 1,000 years. Above all, he felt the intention of this 'dream' to be so offensive that he could not endure it.
The dream ended here.
"———!"
A single, short incantation. At that moment, cracks began to appear in the reception room scenery that had been maintaining its solid form.
"Foolish mirage."
Louis's voice echoed throughout the collapsing dream world.
"The possibilities you have shown are truly amazing and terrifying. But did you think you could dare to deceive me with such a paltry variable?"
In the past, the young and arrogant Louis had craved wisdom and the future. He had obsessed over the shallow future in order to grasp all the causality of the world, and the price was his right eye. And in exchange for losing his sight, he gained insight.
"One cannot discuss the end of the sea just because one has seen a single undulating wave."
"…."
"Arrogant being. The end of the world will never remain on that shallow page you have read."
Crack!
With a sound like a giant glass window breaking, the spacetime of the false parallel world began to shatter into pieces. Just before his consciousness rose back to reality, the Great Sage spoke toward the man who was looking at him calmly.
"It’s a creature of a dream, so you won't hear it, but I will say it anyway."
"…."
"You are, at best, nothing more than a prince of fireflies."
And, the Great Sage thought of a boy and said.
"You will never become a star."
Crack!
With those words as the final note, the Great Sage's dream shattered into pieces.
"Whew…."
Louis rose slowly and let out a dry laugh. It was because the face of the truly fascinating and terrifying monster was vivid in his mind. Louis turned his head to look at the desk. There, the three empty medicine bottles Julian had provided, the crude but sincere mask, and the leather gloves remained exactly as they were.
— "You must never take just the smelly medicine alone."
— "If your hands tremble, your speech becomes slurred, or you feel your strength draining away, call a healer first or come to me."
Under the crude magic light of the Limbus Pit. The young face of his disciple, who had been wearing an awkward smile there, came to mind. Thinking of that face, the Great Sage shook off the thoughts of the monster in the dream. Vowing that he would never again have the arrogant thought that he could gauge the sea with a river stream.
The following week, the clinic.
"Teacher. You skipped your supplements three times this week."
At Julian's voice, asking quietly while flipping through the chart, the Great Sage of the Empire sitting opposite him cleared his throat and avoided his gaze.
At his disciple's gentle interrogation, the Great Mage's face turned noticeably red.
"Well… I’ve been so busy lately…."
"Ah, you forgot."
As soon as he heard that line, Julian felt the back of his neck grow hot. He put down his pen and smiled brightly.
"I’ve been staying up for nights on end in that pile of smelly, rotten eggs and garlic to extract the medicine to fix your hand tremors, and I’ve been working hard processing bear liver as well. It seems my efforts were quite trivial to you, Teacher."
"Umm, no, that’s not what I meant…."
"Well, it doesn't matter if you don't take them."
He added indifferently as he picked up the chart again.
"If you don't take your medicine and can't get the lead poison out, it’s you who will be trembling for the rest of your life, not me. I have nothing to be sorry about. It’s not my body, anyway. If you really don't want to take them, you can just live the rest of your life trembling with your cane."
"Ahem! I am sorry. I will not forget and will take them consistently. So please, forgive me."
The Great Sage of the Empire bowed his head, showing his crown to his disciple. It was a scene that other mages would have frothed at the mouth over, calling it a disgrace to the Father of Magic. But Julian felt no guilt and accepted his teacher's apology.
"Understood. Then I will prescribe them again, so please make sure to take your supplements accordingly."
"Ugh… I am clearly the teacher…."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing, it’s nothing."
Julian reorganized his teacher's overdue medication schedule.
A fantasy world where magic ships fly and great mages exist.
However, no matter how much the world changes, one truth remains unchanged. The fact that in front of a doctor, even a Great Sage who has lived for a thousand years is nothing more than an ordinary patient who has to listen to nagging.