The Black Death (8)
The Black Death (8)
To be honest, I didn't think much of it when I first heard that Teacher Alex had taken sick leave.
Isn't human life just a matter of never knowing when or where something might happen to you? If I might exaggerate a little, a person can just up and drop dead while walking down the street.
There's no point in interrogating why someone suddenly got sick or had an accident. Trying to find cause and effect in matters of life and death only makes your head spin.
If the teacher was unwell, I figured I could just accept that the teacher was unwell and move on.
Yeah... I definitely thought that way. Right up until I saw the possessor's face.
The moment Professor Herlein announced Teacher Alex's sick leave, Vermel, his face ashen, came straight to me without asking or hesitating. While I was tilting my head in confusion, he thrust out a sheet of paper. The attention of the entire class swiveled toward the two of us.
What he handed me was a patent license agreement.
"Sorry, but could you fill this out right now?"
Rote and Frey, who were sitting right nearby, didn't seem to understand why a possessor was handing me this kind of paper. Even I had a similar reaction at first, but unlike my friends, I grasped immediately how the situation was unfolding.
And I wasn't the only one. Any Earth person who'd lived through a similar situation in their original world was bound to have one hypothesis leap unbidden into their mind.
This was a pandemic.
A pandemic — or, to use a looser expression, a "plague apocalypse." Literally, the failure to properly contain a spreading infectious disease, causing people to drop like flies and ultimately shaking the nation itself.
The possessor was clearly worried about a pandemic. The evidence for that conclusion was more than sufficient. First of all, the patent application Vermel had asked me for was an EMP to kill mosquitoes.
What, after all, is a mosquito? It is the breeding ground for all manner of infectious diseases.
Starting with malaria and going through yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, and so on. I remembered seeing a statistic long ago that mosquitoes were the animal responsible for the most human deaths.
This world would be no different. If there was a difference, it was that mosquitoes were mechanical magic beasts. Creatures that required an EMP to neutralize, not insecticide.
I had been a physics student, so I didn't know how to formulate insecticide by working out chemical structures. But the otherworld version of mosquitoes were not living organisms; they were magic beasts. To kill these things, you needed electromagnetic waves, not insecticide.
I might not know how to make insecticide, but I'd built a few EMPs for fun since my school days. That was my field of expertise.
"Of course."
Without asking any questions, I filled out the patent application according to the form the possessor provided. At the sight of me doing this, Vermel's expression went blank. He must have found my reaction unexpected.
And that was understandable. If I hadn't already figured out that Vermel was a possessor, this scene could never have played out the way it did. We were wary of each other, but at the same time, we might have been thinking along similar lines and using each other. If either of us revealed our identity, this delicate balance would probably shatter.
Well, I decided to set that aside for now. I signed the covenant granting permission for mass production of the EMP Scroll and handed it over to Vermel.
In the end, this turned out to be a good move.
"Everyone. Don't come to school for the time being, and avoid leaving the dorms if you can. If anything happens, I'll have the students majoring in Air Magic set up a hotline, so contact your teachers. Understood?"
The prediction was dead on. What was unfolding was an epidemic.
Exactly three days after Teacher Alex collapsed, a closure order was issued across the entire academy. Multi-use facilities that draw large crowds, like restaurants and theaters, all shut their doors en masse. Just in case, I poured all the tutoring fees I'd received from Rote into buying droplet masks.
And before long, Rote and I, who shared a double room, found ourselves utterly and completely trapped in the dormitory.
"Shouldn't we be going out to provide public aid...?"
"What is there that you could do out there?"
"I have to do something. It's a noble's duty."
"Right. I've got something I have to do, too."
My duty was to keep Rote, who still hadn't grasped the situation, tied down in the dormitory. Rote, her ankles bound for the first time in her life, screamed for me to untie her this instant, loud enough to bring the dormitory down.
"Didn't you hear the teacher say not to go outside?"
"Ugh..."
Still, I supposed Rote was easy to handle because she was a model student. Persuading her only took one noble word from the teacher.
Even so, Rote clearly wanted to do something. In one sense, that directness was admirable; in another, her stubbornness was exhausting. She was oddly similar to Professor Haspelt.
Dealing with someone like this was easier than it looked.
"If you go outside recklessly right now, we could all die. Staying put is how you help the health authorities."
"I know that, but...!"
"Okay. If you're that worried about everyone, then help me out right here."
All I had to do was give her an alternative task.
What I handed Rote was a blueprint. A blueprint for a mosquito-killing scroll.
"It looks like mosquitoes or some kind of flying insects are the source of this whole mess."
Rote hadn't been there when I built the EMP Scroll. So I had to explain the details of the circumstances to her thoroughly. As soon as she heard my full explanation, color returned to Rote's face.
No sooner had my personal briefing ended than Rote brought Magic Paper, leftover Magic Stones, coils, and other materials and began assembling an EMP Scroll. Watching her, I felt both proud and, on the other hand, like my head was buzzing. I lay down on my bed and rested for a while.
From today on, it seemed I would have to be temporarily cut off from society. To get information during this time, I would need to subscribe to newspapers or listen to the radio.
The method I chose was the latter.
As it happened, someone at the Imperial Disaster Response Headquarters was saying things along the lines of what I had predicted. I tuned my ears to that voice.
**
"...So, in conclusion, there is a high likelihood that small magic beasts such as mosquitoes are serving as intermediate hosts in this outbreak."
"Has this been proven in terms of Magic Arts?"
"Yes. Following the collection of over five hundred specimens of the Black Forest Mosquito near the academy, we determined that roughly half of them carry the pathogen that mediates the Black Death."
Listening to Professor Gliston's briefing, Vermel let out a sigh of relief. He felt grateful that the Philiut Empire's medical system and health insurance framework were well-established compared to neighboring countries.
─ SYSTEM : To reach the Happy Ending, there must be zero deaths within the academy.
The Empire's technological era was somewhere between the early and mid-20th century. If the period had been any earlier than that, a happy ending would have been a distant prospect. With antibiotics and a modern medical system introduced, the Empire operated in a truly orderly fashion. Looking at it this way alone, you'd never suspect that the political establishment had fallen into the hands of magic beasts.
"In fact, we elves long ago suffered greatly from a plague similar to the Black Death. At that time, our ancestors produced a treatment for it."
"May we know what it is?"
At another doctor's question, Professor Gliston readily held out a booklet.
"Using extracts from plants such as limes or mandarin oranges as medicinal ingredients..."
Certain fruits and tree barks, like those of citrus trees, provided groundbreaking help in treating the Black Death. This information was a fact that only a possessor who had played the game set in this world could know.
'What is this, scurvy?'
One had to allow for the fact that this was a fictional disease from a game. Most importantly, the Black Death here had a completely different meaning from the Black Death on Earth.
"Is it truly effective?"
"Yes. It is known to be an excellent means of alleviating 'Ironblight,' one of the primary symptoms of the Black Death."
"Still, isn't this coming from elves, who have an affinity for spirits? It's certainly worth testing."
"Let us trial it for the time being. It can hardly do any harm."
The place where Vermel and Professor Gliston, the two elves, now stood was the Disaster Response Headquarters within the Imperial Palace. Here, a heated discussion was underway on how to halt the spread of the Black Death.
There was only one reason why Vermel, who was neither a doctor nor more than an undergraduate, had been permitted entry. It was because Sepia Gliston, the academy's health teacher, had helped him gain access.
Thanks to that, Vermel, as a possessor, was now able to witness scenes that had been difficult to see in the game. In an era with no television, and no national disaster briefings, observing government responses directly was no simple feat. Even though radio existed, it alone could not convey this sort of detailed, on-the-ground realism. And there was plenty of static.
Anyway.
'Now I can see how things are going to play out.'
"I will now deliver the final briefing. Combining the epidemiological survey data that has just come in, the pathogen appears to occur frequently around lakes, reservoirs, and other areas of standing water. This aligns precisely with the fact that the primary habitats of mosquitoes and their larvae are bodies of water."
"What are the numbers of infected and critically ill patients?"
"Accurate diagnosis is still difficult. However, the infected number thirty thousand... and those categorized as critically ill are estimated to be around twelve thousand... More are expected... to increase."
"And the deaths?"
"......The death toll has not yet been tallied... thanks to the aid of antibiotics."
The death toll. Vermel at least knew the death toll within the academy.
─ SYSTEM : Current Trial Progress (30%)
─ SYSTEM : The conditions for reaching the Happy Ending have not yet been closed off.
Among the academy's members, no one had died yet. The fact that most students and faculty were high-ranking individuals who benefited from medical insurance contributed to the low fatality rate. Above all, thanks to advances in medical science, not many people were dying within the capital.
'The entity behind this trial wants to stall for time anyway. There's also a possibility they're deliberately modulating the virulence.'
The First Trial. There were broadly two ways to clear the Black Death Episode.
First, endure it stubbornly until the plague recedes on its own.
Second, find the main culprit spreading the Black Death — one of the Great Machines of the Nine Heavens — and expel them from the capital.
'The second method isn't bad either... but there's a bit of a gamble involved.'
He had to make a choice. Vermel was sitting in the back, chin resting on his hand, lost in thought.
"First... given the gravity of the matter, let us establish quarantine guidelines following Professor Gliston's advice. We shall leave the finer details to the official residence and His Majesty, while we..."
Thud.
The doctor giving the briefing collapsed on the spot, complaining of dizziness.
"Sir, what's wrong?"
"Weren't all of you gathered here given a temperature check?"
"They said the Black Death's incubation period is a full day! This man has been perfectly fine for nearly a week!"
The headquarters instantly dissolved into chaos.
'Right.'
Drunk on realism, I had overlooked one of the greatest abilities of the Extinction-class magic beast controlling this disease.
On the hardest game difficulty, Nightmare Mode...
...the incubation period of this disease could change at will according to that magic beast's intentions.