Chapter 33 - A Special Potion
The Physicians' Council. Its official name was ‘Physicians Without Borders’.
A potion that existed only within the borders of the West.
It was a divine and bizarre liquid made with certain ingredients and a certain secret formula.
Depending on what went into that ‘certainty’, it could kill or save people, but within this classification, it could do a variety of other things.
It could seal a wound in the blink of an eye.
It could make flames erupt from thin air.
The sight of a normal plant turning gigantic when sprinkled with it was always fascinating.
But the greedy spellcasters of the West, full of nothing but ambition, had turned their backs on this outstanding field of study and were poring over useless old books.
The truly unknown world seemed to be right here.
They were busy defining magic with incomprehensible letters.
The Physicians' Council was a place for those fascinated by these potions.
Though a bit of sacrifice was somewhat demanded.
Revolutions are always followed by blood.
This was the thought of most of the Physicians' Council, and while Meryl had agreed, he couldn't go as far as to understand it.
“Haa…. Cathy. I still don’t know. What meaning is there in this work.”
The green-haired man muttered in front of a family photo.
The hair he swept back with his hand was not originally green.
The continuous potion work, the unique steam and heat it emitted, had completely changed his hair color.
His originally brown hair, which was like a well-dried log in the sunlight, had changed to be like his dead wife’s.
Speaking to the photo that contained his wife, Meryl continued.
“The things you wanted in life. I’ve achieved almost all of them. I co-opted a promising councilor to back us, and I committed many terrible deeds.”
Among them were various things like biological experiments using animals and human experiments on beggars from the slums.
“After visiting the Physicians' Council and coming home, I created branches in places you only dreamed of. Right now, we’re even beating Jubel, you know?”
Meryl laughed, as if sobbing, in front of his dead wife’s photo.
But if he was to shed tears for his wife, doing so in front of this photo was not enough.
Rustle─
A spherical bottle pulled from his bosom.
Inside were a silver slime and a green slime, with bubbles gently rising.
The viscosity was so high.
Even when the bottle was tilted, the liquid did not pour out immediately but slid down the wall.
The two liquids, like oil and water, were in the same bottle but did not mix or interlock.
Meryl looked at it with regret and lament.
“…Cathy. Was this the image you wanted? Was this the future for our child and family.”
He whispered, clutching the bottle.
He asked every day, over and over.
But no one answered, no matter how desperately he asked.
Because that person was already gone.
Thump, thump─!! Thump, thump─!!
Someone was knocking urgently on the door.
“Chairman! Chairman!”
“…That person is here, so calm down and come in.”
He wiped his face with his sleeve, put the bottle in his bosom, and temporarily covered the photo frame.
The physician who burst in, opening the door as if to break it, pointed at the window, stuttering.
“Ou-ou-outside…!! Ou-outside…!!”
“…….”
The Chairman of the Physicians’ Council frowned and turned his chin toward the window.
At the same time, he was relieved.
If he had been holding the photo frame or the bottle, he would have dropped them by now.
“We’re in trouble.”
The Chairman summarized the current situation with a short phrase.
The ink-colored castle visible outside the window right now.
The fact that it looked small from here meant that its size up close was enormous.
So much so that the expression ‘castle’ suited its appearance.
But even that size was only a fraction of its complete form.
“The Fourth Son’s Black Floating Castle… why is it here.”
The Black Citadel was originally the base of the Fourth Son’s maternal line.
Their base was originally floating, but it became the Black Citadel when the Fourth Son came.
But for it to regain its original form meant.
“The Fourth Son has come here. But how…?”
All who knew this location were here, and there was no reason for them to have revealed it.
Because for now, everything was going well.
Business was booming, and the potion recipes were gradually being established.
The technological gap with Wisdom, which was at least several hundred years, had now closed to within a hundred years.
Just a little more. Just a little more and.
“Cathy, I might have understood your thoughts….”
Thud─
He clutched his chest.
It was where the bottle, his family, was.
The Chairman of the Physicians’ Council immediately turned around and ordered.
“Move all the research data to other branches. Issue an evacuation order to the council members and think only of survival for now.”
What are you going to do, Chairman…?
Such words did not come out.
Kwaang─!
The physician who had opened the door closed it and fled in a hurry.
The others were the same.
What was in their heads anyway was the completion of their research.
Having even beaten Jubel with the help of the councilor, as long as they saved their own lives and preserved the data, their dream was not far off.
The dream that Cathy, a physician of the council, also had.
The ultimate potion. A panacea.
The Wisdom of the West called it the ‘Elixir’.
“The mass production of that Elixir might be possible with just one person from Wisdom…. What a waste. A waste.”
He caressed the bottle in his bosom.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I can fulfill your dream. And, even now that I’m close to the Elixir, I still haven’t understood you.”
Why. Why on earth.
Did you put our child in the cauldron?
***
The physicians of the Physicians' Council began to flee in a hurry.
On horseback, in carriages.
Their methods were varied.
But the fact that they all had their spatial artifacts or sacks filled with their data was no different.
Kuuuuuuuuuung─
The floating castle took the place of the sun.
As if an eclipse had o
ccurred, the light vanished from the world.
Instead, as if they were the only light left in the darkness, pure white dots began to fall.
On the outside, they looked like snowflakes.
But it didn’t even take a second for those snowflakes to become larger than people, than trees, than buildings.
Kwaaaaaaaang─!!
Kwaaaang─!! Kwaaaang─!!
Kuaaaaaaaah─!!White giants that fell from the floating castle bombarded the ground.
The earth shattered from sheer weight alone, and waves of soil rose.
Dozens of them fell like that.
The vast forest where the Physicians’ Council’s main headquarters was located became a mess.
If it had ended there, it would have been first-rate.
But it would not have been worthy of being called a kinsman of Millesdusk.
Kwaaaaaaaaaah─
The giant bodies, which looked more like rocks or even balls, rose.
They grew limbs, revealed abyssal glints in their eyes, and stood up on two legs.
The Fourth Son’s colossi.
The White Bone Giants, towering at 20 meters, tore through the forest.
In the process, something was stepped on.
Was it a rock? A river? Debris? Or a person?
It was impossible to distinguish, but it was the same that everything was finely crushed and pulverized.
The colossi marched in formation towards one place, leaving no gaps.
The largest and most majestic military parade in the world.
They lifted their feet and pressed down on everything, eventually returning it to the earth.
The process was forceful and violent.
For a time, unorganized things would turn into nutrients in the soil.
But this march went past the most stomp-worthy thing, the Physicians’ Council.
It went past that and began to chase the ants that had fled their home.
Something else fell from the Black Floating Castle.
This time, it was neither white nor a giant.
A griffin with wide-spread crimson wings descended to the ground and landed at the Physicians' Council building.
A place pervaded by a chill, as if not a single bug was left.
“…….”
The one who dismounted the griffin entered through the main door.
I opened the door and looked inside.
This place, vibrating with the scent of grass, even the air tasted bitter.
The square rooms in the crude square building were all laboratories.
Cauldrons for boiling decoctions, drying racks for ingredients, and even freezers to maintain the freshness of the ingredients.
Among the items crammed into every room, there wasn't even a common bed.
On some of the drying racks were experimental ingredients, or by-products, that they had failed to take with them.
It was something one could know without any particular knowledge of potion-making.
“This is….”
“The index finger of a 9-year-old boy. Smaller than a woman’s, isn’t it?”
A voice from behind.
The owner of the voice and the building leaned against the outer wall of the laboratory and gestured with his index finger.
“It’s one of the ingredients for the Plague Demon cure we make at our Physicians’ Council.”
“…So this was the principle behind your cure.”
“Oho. You understand right away?”
The Youngest Son put down the finger, which had dried without a trace of moisture and hardened.
“You cure the disease by injecting a person with a misfortune so potent that even a Plague Demon would be terrified and flee. What meaning is there in that.”
If a human is at a point where even a ghost is afraid to possess them, they will surely die.
Because a misfortune so great that even the dead would worry about dying again will storm their future life.
The Chairman of the Physicians’ Council quietly swept back his green hair.
“Well. I’d like to hear the answer too. What meaning there is in this act, and if such a paradise lies at the end of it.”
The Youngest Son frowned.
The paradise the Physicians’ Council spoke of.
He knew very well what that was.
“The Elixir. The thing you guys are dying for. Am I wrong?”
“That’s right. Our goal is the mass production of the Elixir, which is treated as holy blood in the West. If that is realized, there will be no more sick people.”
He spoke like a machine.
A machine that was not speaking for itself but was reciting what had been inputted.
The one who had inputted it was no longer in this world.
Only in that bottle.
“I recommend you don’t.”
“What.”
The Chairman, while speaking, slowly lifted the bottle.
He opened the lid.
The smell of a corpse fished out of a swamp spread thickly through the laboratory.
“If you eat that, you will only end up in the same state.”
The Chairman let out a mad laugh.
“You speak as if you know what this is.”
“I do.”
“Hehehehet…. Lies….”
Meryl’s green hair cascaded down as he bowed his head.
His eyes, glowing gloomily from within, were fixed only on the bottle.
“No one but me can know.”
The contents poured over his head.
There was no time to wait for the sticky liquid to touch his lips.
Plop, plop, plop─
The unclean green hair was thoroughly soaked.
So was the skin beneath it.
The face, smeared with the solution, and the tongue beneath it, stuttered out words.
“I still… don’t, understand….”
Even after becoming one with Cathy, and the child Cathy had made with the potion solution, nothing changed.
“…Why did you put that little one in the pot…. Was that Elixir, more important than the child whose name we couldn’t even decide….”
The experiment, the reason and desire for which were unknown, failed.
She threw herself into the pot without a word.
Silver and green.
The two were put in the same pot and boiled down endlessly.
By the time they were discovered late, they had become small enough to fit in a bottle smaller than a fist.
It was nothing short of a catalyst.
One that, upon contact with the stimulus of life, would swell without end.
One that, by touching the skin, would absorb the warmth of the living and detonate.
It was a biological time bomb.
Puwaaaaaaaaak─!!
The human named Meryl exploded into pieces.
It was as if a young bird was breaking out of its egg.
A faceless human of mixed green, silver, and brown slime looked at the Youngest Son.
It was just like a slime.
But it was fundamentally different from the slime everyone knew.
If there was any good news.
“So you have a heart too.”
I could tell because his body was translucent with slime.
In the exact location where a heart should be, a similarly translucent heart was beating.
It was proof that the Chairman of the Physicians' Council was still alive, trapped in his wife’s obsession and his child’s resentment, still suffering.
And with that suffering, an eerie yin energy was being emitted.
A condensation of misfortune, completed by putting three people into it alive.
The family, connected by blood, became each other’s curses and transformed a person into a monster.
It was a relationship that ought to be burned away.
“I’ll get you out soon.”
From his red pupils, a bright yellow Hellfire blazed.