The Plague Begins!
Year 3801, and everyone was busy preparing to head south.
Then some astonishing news arrived. The Ilkhanate — you know, the Middle Eastern nation that had split off and declared independence from our close partner Qajar — had just collapsed.
"Wh-what did you say?"
"The Ilkhanate has fallen."
"No, not that part. What comes after?"
"You mean the sickness that turns people black before it kills them?"
So that era had arrived. The Black Death. The terrifying plague that, in another history, was said to have cut Europe's population in half.
It spread across the entire world, but it ran especially rampant through Europe, didn't it? No sewers to speak of, garbage tossed willy-nilly into the streets, and religious customs that frowned on bathing — with all that, what did anyone expect?
But wait — the animals in Daehan had all been strengthened. Wouldn't the fleas have been strengthened too? What do we do then? It's not our fault, right? Yeah, it's definitely not….
"Hmm… and there's really no medicine for it, you know."
"Is it a dangerous disease?"
"Very. Rats and fleas spread it, but they're invisible to the eye, so nobody can figure out why it keeps spreading."
Come to think of it, it seems to spread along trade routes. Not over land — by sea, most likely.
"There aren't many rats in Daehan, are there?"
"The weasels tear them apart the moment they spot one. Not that the rats could hold out long no matter how well they hid."
Right, that's true. We don't have cats, but our weasels are absolute monsters — bigger than the ones those Westerners carry around on their ships.
So the disease couldn't cross our land borders, and some ships don't carry weasels at all — that's how it slipped in from the sea!
"But Daehan doesn't suffer from plagues like that, does it?"
Not exactly none. I'd asked the Chancellor about it once, ages ago.
"Strictly speaking, we do have them — they just never turn into epidemics. Holy Water cures them…."
When we catch something, we just run a little fever, take a swig of Holy Water, and shake it off. But what about the Westerners?
Medicine at a medieval level has no cure for this. And the Holy Water? How many foreigners do they think I can support? There's no way to treat the whole world.
"It could break out among us too, so tell everyone to keep themselves clean."
I should also stockpile more Holy Water.
I'd been collecting it about an hour a day, but I suppose I'd have to skip sleep at night and gather it then too.
Turns out you produce less saliva than you'd think? An hour of diligent collecting barely fills one small palm-sized vial.
"A lot of people are going to die."
"Is it truly that terrifying a disease?"
It's not just the dying. The victims turn pitch black before they go — it plays on people's primal fear, you know…. That's why all kinds of superstitions will start spreading too.
"Yes. Keep investigating. In the end, it all comes down to living in filth."
"Huh? It's really something that simple?"
Kids these days wash up every day so they'd never understand — I watched primitives back in the day fall ill from preventable diseases constantly. They can't even imagine how much proper toilets contributed to extending the human lifespan.
Well, that includes more than just handling waste — clean water and a place to bathe count too. Oh! I should add soap to the list as well.
"You'll understand once you've reviewed the findings later — where the most people died, and how it spread."
They couldn't do a proper epidemiological investigation, but gathering rumors would have to do. Even that much was something. Ideally the fear would push someone into studying medicine.
"Yes…."
"This is exactly why we need medicine. One day, the Holy Water won't be enough."
"Gah! Why ever not?"
You blockhead, why do you think? How big is the population now? Frankly, it's a miracle the supply has stretched this far.
My real worry is that one day someone will decide the Holy Water is running short and lock me in a room, making me drool into a vial twenty-four hours a day.
"Your numbers keep growing, but the amount of Holy Water I can produce doesn't."
"Ah…!"
A sense of urgency, people! For everyone's sake!
The day will come when there simply isn't enough Holy Water to go around! The children needed to learn to think ahead, to take responsibility for their own lives before that day arrived….
While Haneul worried over the Black Death and drew up countermeasures in Daehan, the plague was already sweeping through the Middle East in a full, terrible wave.
Even as the Ilkhanate shattered into no fewer than thirteen petty states, the disease spread on in silence….
And the turmoil was creeping toward the Suez Concession — Daehan's fortified enclave in Mamluk territory.
"What on earth is this?"
"Director, the merchants we were trading with — every last one of them appears to be dead. What do we do?"
The man in charge of the fortress, a director-rank official, gazed anxiously down at the city below, where smoke was rising from a dozen points along with that unmistakable smell of burning corpses.
In this land's culture, where burial was the norm, cremating bodies meant only one thing: the situation had become truly desperate.
"It's an epidemic. Seal the main gate and cut off all contact with the outside!"
"Sir, we may already be infected ourselves?"
"What did you say?!"
The man in charge recoiled in shock. It might already be too late.
"Please don't panic, sir. They say the Holy Water cures it."
"Whew…. Thank goodness."
He gave silent thanks that he'd been born in Daehan, and offered a prayer of gratitude to Haneul-nim.
"How much Holy Water do we have left?"
"Not much. Even if we request resupply from the homeland, it'll take a long time."
From the Suez Concession to Daedo — effectively their supply depot — was three to six months. The sea's weather was too fickle to count on anything faster.
"Then we ration it to the last drop. We have to survive ourselves, don't we?"
His voice was firm, as if to say the fortress had no strength to spare for the dying city around it. But he felt the regret all the same. Still — he refused to die saving strangers when he had a family waiting for him at home.
"Then I'll inform the others. If there are unavoidable circumstances, I'll have them report before using it."
Those posted far from home for years sometimes fell in love with local women and started families of their own. Those people, at least, had to be looked after.
Abandon a wife taken in a foreign land, and you risked getting dragged off by Haneul-nim himself.
"Fine. There are cases where nothing can be done. Use your own judgment on that."
piiiiiiieeee— bwooooong
"What now?!"
The shrill of emergency whistles and the blare of horns came all at once.
"Let's move!"
"Yes, sir!"
The two men hurried down from the fortress wall toward the sound rising from the harbor.
Skeeeetch
Thankfully, the wall had a slope built into it. Riding the incline down let them reach the ground in seconds.
It was a fairly tall wall with a steep grade — an ordinary person would have broken both legs.
Rumble-rumble
The two men rolled expertly across the ground to kill their momentum. Clearly not their first time doing this.
Dashing to the harbor, they were greeted by a shocking sight.
"What is that?"
"Ghost ships, sir?"
Three vessels — practically indistinguishable from ships of the dead — were drifting into port. They weren't Daehan's, but whose could they be?
"Could they be Mamluk ships?"
"But is there anyone alive aboard?"
Ships coming in to dock with not a single sailor visible on deck. Far too suspicious.
Crash — groooan
"Careful!"
The merchantmen glided straight in and rammed the harbor itself. They were moving slowly, at least — had they come in at speed, the pier might have shattered.
"What kind of lunatics—!"
"Hey! Come out of there!"
Furious Daehan Company employees bellowed at the hulls, but not a soul emerged.
"What do we do?"
"We're going up!"
Boarding an unclaimed vessel without authorization was against the rules — but after this, how could they possibly not look?
Thwip-thwip-thwip — whoosh
The clerks hooked their grappling lines with practiced ease and swarmed up the sides. What waited at the top was gruesome.
"What the—? What is this?"
"Ugh, that stench!"
The half-rotted corpses were the ones in better condition. One clerk stood gripping the tiller, though he was already dead — he didn't so much as twitch. A true ghost ship had sailed into their harbor.
"Something's very wrong here! Get back down, now!"
"Ugh, that gives me chills…."
The two clambered down and reported straight to the director, who was just sprinting up — along with their warning that the ships could not be left where they were.
"Drag those ships out and sink them!"
"What about the cargo?"
"I don't think that's what matters right now…."
Watching the director's stone-set face, the men realized just how grave he thought this was — sons of Daehan turning down free cargo.
"Tow them out!"
"Nobody boards — just pull them away!"
The sailors aboard the Horned Whale moored at the harbor hauled all three vessels out at once. The ghost ships were small, and apparently nobody wanted to make multiple trips.
The ships of the dead were dragged far out to sea. Then the Horned Whale dropped a single anchor into the water and cast it overboard — the ships would need to hold still for a moment.
"Commence bombardment!"
Piiiiiiieeee
The employees stationed in advance on the fortress battery, targets already laid, began firing.
BOOM! KRAKA-BOOM! BOOM!
Concentrating their shells on the waterlines of the ghost ships, they watched the merchantmen begin to sink almost immediately.
"This is bad. Where exactly is this thing spreading from — and how?"
"We'll need to be careful with every ship that comes in from now on."
"And tell the clerks who boarded those vessels — the moment anything feels off, they take Holy Water immediately."
"Yes, sir!"
So Daehan sealed its fortress — but outside its walls, countless people were dying by the hour.
Rats scurried through the streets, and the fleas clinging to them carried the disease onward, and onward, and onward.
The cruel truth was that no one knew the cause. The plague simply spread while the people died.
"Nooo! Why… why our son too…."
A middle-aged couple clutched the blackened corpse of their boy and wailed. They had no other children left. And yet the epidemic showed no sign of sparing even them.
All across the city, people who had lost beloved families this way needed somewhere to pour out their fury.
"Why is it only those fortress people who stay untouched?!"
"Maybe they're the ones spreading the sickness!"
"Why would they do that?"
"Huh? No idea…."
And so a strange rumor began to spread: only the people of Daehan, and those with ties to them, remained healthy.
"That house's daughter works at the fortress — they say she caught the sickness and recovered!"
"How? Almost nobody survives once they catch it, do they?"
Listening quietly, the woman realized that if this talk kept going, something terrible was going to happen. So she began gathering the crowd to herself — and before that, she had already poured out her troubles to the Daehan man she loved.
He told me not to worry, just to speak up, didn't he?
Trusting him, she opened her mouth.
"They have an elixir."
"What did you say?!"
"It's true — I caught the sickness myself, and he saved my life with it."
The woman had gone to work at the Daehan fortress, locked eyes with a clerk there, and become his wife. Unable to bear the crowd's suspicious stares any longer, she let the truth slip out.
"Then can we get some too?"
"A medicine that precious? It can't be easy to share with so many people."
"Ah… right, of course…."
In truth, Holy Water was far more common in Daehan than anyone here could imagine. The undiluted essence was used sparingly, yes — but the dilution ratio was extraordinary. The sailors' drinking casks needed only a drop or two each.
But these people had no way of knowing that. To them, a miracle cure of that caliber simply had to be rare, difficult to make, and ruinously expensive.
"Agh…."
"Then where in the world is this plague coming from?!"
It flared up, quieted, flared up again, quieted again — and nobody could fathom the reason.
Even people who shut themselves indoors out of fear were falling ill. No wonder they all felt cornered.
"While everything burns, they hide behind their walls eating well and living well, the damned…."
"How did Daehan even come by an elixir like that?"
Daehan had good reason to maintain friendly relations with the surrounding region, and had been selling small quantities of Holy Water to the local nobility — which was why the nearby lords had suffered so little from the plague.
But commoners could hardly rise up against nobles, and nobody among them had the standing to spark a rebellion.
"Then someone must be spreading the disease on purpose!"
"That's what I keep saying — but who? And why?"
"Anyone we've got a grudge against?"
People desperate for somewhere to direct their rage began to think long and hard. Who could possibly have earned the hatred of everyone?
"Hey… isn't it them?"
Every eye turned toward the well — at the figures drawing water there, wearing sharp, horn-shaped turbans.