Explosion
Explosion
Rumors were truly terrifying.
Around the time I finished treating nearly all the injured vagrants along the river, a chaotic throng of sick and wounded had already gathered around me.
"Saint!! P-please, heal me!!"
"I cannot see!"
"Please help me!!"
By now, I had done this so many times that I was getting a rough sense of it.
"Those who have been treated, help me! Form a line! Bring the critically injured and the children to the front first! Confusion only increases the number of people who get hurt!!"
"Yes! We will!!"
"Peter!! Anna!!"
As I frantically healed people and shouted, the first family I had treated approached me.
I stroked Jim and Amy's heads, then gave orders to the couple.
"You know my house, right? Here's the key. Go inside and bring me the pouch I left under the bed. There's gold in it."
"G-Gold?"
"Use it to buy food and distribute it to the people."
If it was gold, I could always ask for more.
I had already gone and done it.
It wouldn't be long before the Imperial Household and the Pantheon heard about me and came flying here.
When they did, I could just demand more gold and then run, so I intended to give away the gold I had already received without reservation.
"Understood."
I smiled at the couple who stood there dazed, taking the key from me.
"And use some of that gold so your family can have a proper meal, and put Amy and Jim to bed. You've suffered through a lot, so you need to eat well and sleep well. Understood?"
At my words, the couple seemed choked up. They clenched their fists and trembled.
I wished they wouldn't tremble like that.
Rather, I was the one who was sorry.
I could have saved them a little sooner, but my own circumstances had prevented me from doing so.
"W-We'll do that."
"For now, you two go and get some rest as well. It hasn't been long since you recovered, so don't overdo it. Understood?"
"Thank you. Saint. We will never forget this."
Even after Peter's family disappeared with my key, I continued to pour my effort into healing people.
"Those who've been treated, sort the surging patients and bring the urgent cases and children to me first!!"
"Order! Get in line! We can treat you more efficiently if you get in line!!"
One week.
I would treat them for exactly one week and then leave.
I would absolutely not treat anyone beyond that.
The authority inside my soul couldn't be allowed to devour more faith and grow any further.
So I had to treat as many people as possible in a short time.
I treated them day and night.
When my body grew unbearably tired, I used Body Modification on myself to erase the fatigue, and when my mind, not my body, grew too exhausted, I would lie down briefly for a quick nap.
But no matter how much I did that, for some reason I felt myself growing more and more haggard.
"Saint! Please heal my daughter!!"
"My son is sick!!"
"My seven-year-old daughter is sick! Saint! Saint!!"
Children.
I couldn't fathom how there could be so many children.
Children with severed legs.
Children with burst eyes.
Children without arms.
Children whose muscles had atrophied so they couldn't even walk properly.
The reasons their parents tearfully told me were equally outrageous, every single one.
"He was working sixteen hours a day and, overcome with exhaustion, got pulled into a machine..."
"She was cleaning chimneys and inhaled toxic gas, and her eyes went blind."
"Even though the child was injured, the factory didn't pay a single penny in compensation. Saint."
I healed the children like a madman, over and over.
An era where even three-year-old children were put to labor.
And an era where those children, working sixteen-hour shifts, got pulled into machines and injured because they couldn't fight off their exhaustion.
Simply losing an arm or a leg was practically a best-case scenario.
Because children were small, I heard it was common for them to be entirely sucked into a machine, leaving not a trace behind.
Some children who worked in textile mills endured such grueling labor that their bones warped and grew deformed, leaving them to walk with a limp. Others, denied proper sleep and worked to the bone, were exposed to chemicals, their eyesight deteriorating until they went completely blind.
The more I treated, the more sorrow and fury slowly began to sprout inside my chest.
Making money?
It was important.
I knew that well.
But no matter what, a line existed.
This situation had clearly crossed that line, and by an outrageous margin.
What saddened me even further was the attitude of the laborers; they couldn't even feel pure joy after being healed.
"Will you be staying here long, Saint?"
"Now that my body is better, I have to go back to the factory to work again. I could have my hand cut off or go blind once more."
"I think I'll have to come back for treatment again. Can you please stay here long? I would honestly beat myself to death but I have no money, but I'll work and help you like today."
It was disgusting.
So disgusting it made me want to retch.
The greed of the humans who had mass-produced—not just one or two, but on a city-wide scale—so many injured, suffering people was utterly disgusting.
The attitude of throwing young children, who should be playing and growing up well, into backbreaking labor—the likes of which wouldn't even be seen in Korean day-labor loading docks—without proper pay and exploiting them was absolutely sickening.
I understood why there was an endless supply of people carrying around little red books.
I also understood why the police were trying to beat them down and arrest them.
It was an insane era.
And the monsters more crazed with greed than anyone else were the upper class of this city.
The people called factory owners.
I did everything I could.
Cutting even my time for eating and sleeping, I desperately treated, and treated again, the people who had been hurt by the greed of those monsters.
But no matter how hard I struggled, a limit existed.
"Saint!! My daughter!! My daughter!!"
A mother came running before me, clutching her young daughter.
"She was injured at the factory and the fever won't go down!! Please, save her!!"
A young child, one arm crushed, was held out in front of me.
I hurriedly placed my hand on her.
[Skills including Body Modification can only be used on living creatures!!]
[Can only be used on living creatures!!]
She was dead.
Another life had slipped away before I could save it.
Unable to bear looking at the devastated face of the mother, I turned my head away.
"It's too late."
"Ah!... ...Aaaah!!"
"Please give her a proper burial. She has passed from this world."
"P-Please!! Please, work a miracle! Perform a miracle!! Just this morning, she was still alive!! Saint! Please, a miracle!!"
There was no method to resurrect an already dead body.
Looking at the mother's desperate face as she thrust her child's body before me, unable to abandon hope to the very end and choking back tears, I felt like I might crumble apart as well.
"I'm sorry."
When I declared in a trembling voice that there was nothing more I could do, a sound like an animal's sob burst out.
They called it the grief of losing a child, I recalled.
The heartbroken wail of a parent who had lost a child was so harrowing that it was hard to bear listening to it.
"If only... ...if only you had come just a little sooner. Why..."
At the mother's words, delivered in a quavering, choked voice, something swelled inside me as if it were about to burst.
Even after the mother, having sobbed herself unconscious, was supported by those around her and disappeared, I stared at the spot where she had stood for a long while.
"Why on earth... ...are there no hospitals? In this city?"
At my question, the people I had treated let out hollow laughs.
"There are. The finest doctors in the empire are probably here. It's a district where many people inherently dislike religion, so medical science has developed significantly."
"Then why..."
"It's expensive. The medicine is expensive, and the doctors are even more so. It's absolutely not a place laborers like us can afford to visit."
Right.
Of course they were.
Why wouldn't they be.
No, when you tormented people and made their lives impossible to this degree, it made them change in strange ways—wasn't that why they looked to those red books?
I knew all too well what the conclusion of this current would be.
I knew too well how a society that rejected magic, faith, and religion would ultimately end when it rotted away through endless greed.
They would split into a Red Faction and a Blue Faction and fight to the death, and as a result, both the Red Faction and the Blue Faction would become places where the socially vulnerable could barely survive.
In the end, the Blue Faction would win. But the moment I considered the colossal amount of blood that would be spilled in that process, I felt momentarily light-headed.
What, in the end, was I saving people for?
A solution at a more fundamental level was needed.
If not, my healing was nothing more than a meaningless, futile flailing.
These people would be injured again, and then, at last, the festering, suppurating social conflict would explode. They would struggle for a paradise, but only an ending in which they tumbled down into hell awaited them.
What was I supposed to do?
With nothing but eroge skills to my name, what could I possibly do so that these people's lives might improve even a little?
The thought of treating them for just a week and then running had already half-vanished from my mind.
The sorrow and rage of these people, whom I had witnessed for only a short time, were far too vast and terrible for me to treat them briefly without taking responsibility and then flee.
I had to do something.
Around the time I was seized by such thoughts.
To be more precise, when exactly two days had passed since I had started my treatments.
"Move aside!! Move aside, you bastards! You worm-like scum!!"
The city police arrived before me, shoving the patients away.
After roughly pushing aside and removing the young girl I was treating, the police, armed with pistols and clubs, surrounded me.
"Jericho Amael. Are you indeed the one called the Healing Saint in the capital?"
With my hair disheveled from not having slept or eaten properly for two days, I slowly looked up at the police.
"Yes. That is me."
"Let me ask you one thing. Do you hold a medical license?"
"I do not."
"Then you are effectively practicing medicine illegally and free of charge? This is strictly illegal, Mr. Amael. And more than that, your actions constitute an infringement on the profits of the city's pharmaceutical companies and the physicians' association."
"......"
"This is a serious violation of Imperial law. If unlicensed acts cause severe harm to businesses, it is punishable under Imperial law, and the imperial code clearly states that the severity of such punishment is delegated to the head of the local jurisdiction."
"So what do you intend to do about it?"
"Please leave the city. If you do not, we will have no choice but to interrogate you on the charge of inflicting serious harm on businesses. You are currently suspected of being a Labor Theorist. I, too, have no desire to investigate someone beloved by the Pantheon and the Imperial Household as a Labor Theorist."
A hollow laugh escaped me.
So I was a Labor Theorist now?
Were the very scum who mass-produced this endless horde of sick and wounded now going to pin the blame on me and drive me out?
"Will you submit to questioning? Or will you quietly leave the city?"
At the policeman's words, the patients around us began to murmur.
"M-My daughter hasn't been treated yet!!"
"Please heal me!! I'm blind and can't see ahead! Saint!!"
"Please heal my son!! Please don't leave!!"
At the patients' voices, the corners of the policeman's eyes twisted up sharply.
"Do you all want to be arrested on suspicion of being Labor Theorists and dragged away? Want to live in a detention camp?"
As if a deeply ingrained fear had surfaced at the menacing roar, the patients flinched and began to fall back.
"Free treatment and welfare guaranteed by the state!! Aren't those the exact words the Labor Theorists go around spouting?! Your mental state, trying to get treatment for free, is seriously suspect. Fall back, all of you, unless you want to live in a detention camp!!"
After subduing the patients that easily, the police turned their gazes toward me.
"Please leave quietly, Mr. Amael. Do not stir up this city's trash without reason and cause detriment to its businesses and factories. This is a strict violation of Imperial law."
At their irritated expressions, demanding I disappear quickly, laughter burst out of me.
My rage had crossed its critical threshold.
The pharmaceutical companies and physicians' association bastards, who had mass-produced these sick people by failing to treat them properly in the first place—were they now trying to expel me because they had suffered a piddling loss of profit?
Fine, they could do that.
That sneering tone they were taking with me?
Sure, they could do that.
That attitude of forgiving not even an ant's tear's worth of loss to those who have everything, while not caring whether those with nothing live or die?
They could do that too.
But, I mean, 'trash'?
Calling those people over there, those desperate people, trash.
"You're telling me not to incite the city's trash and cause chaos?"
That, I couldn't stand.
That, I truly, absolutely could not stand.
I cast Time Stop around the neck of the man who appeared to be their leader and had been running his mouth.
And as I slowly lifted the frozen space upward, the bastard began to float up into the air as if caught by psychokinesis.
"Gak! Wh-What is the meaning of this...!"
Toward the bastard floundering in midair, I finally erupted with the fury I had held back and suppressed all this time.
'Trash?'
No.
You bastards were the trash.
"These are people I have treated. These are the people I will treat, and the people I have resolved to take care of!!"
"Do not call those I hold in compassion filthy!!!!!!"
The rage that had accumulated and built up inside me over these two days burst forth in a tremendous roar.