Chapter 210: Erunt Ducal Family's Youngest Duke's Daughter (1)

After the business discussion with the Duke was over.

I returned to the waiting room where the Valkyries were waiting.

Everyone looked curious about the result, so I skipped the details and told them only the outcome.

“It went well. The patient has woken up as well.”

As soon as she heard the result, Freya prodded Jenny in the side.

“What did I tell you, Senior? I said it would be fine if it was our Older Brother. There's no need to worry over something like this.”

“No, that's something you can say only because you don't know Healing Arts, Junior Freya. Do you have any idea how absurd it is to reattach a severed neck?”

“But he's our Older Brother, isn't he?”

“......I'm getting more and more curious about what kind of person you think the Professor is.”

The two bickered playfully.

Watching them, I remembered that it had already been over half a year since the Valkyries were formed.

Perhaps they had grown quite close in that time; they now looked close enough that the senior-junior age gap was no longer noticeable.

It was good in many ways for party members to get along.

I watched the two with a warm smile.

Just then, Charlotte quietly came up beside me.

“Miss Erika was called by the Duke. Someone came and took her just before you arrived, Yulian.”

“I suppose he's going to give her a reward.”

“It seems so. Miss Erika's persuasion must have struck quite a chord with the Duke.”

Some might wonder if it makes sense to give a reward for merely exchanging a few words.

But there's a reason people say a single word can repay a thousand nyang of debt.

In noble society, a single misspoken word can send you to ruin.

Conversely, a few words could just as easily change someone's life, couldn't they?

Above all, I hadn't said Eri's contribution was great as empty flattery.

If Eri hadn't persuaded the Duke.

If she hadn't given the Duke courage.

The miracle could not have happened.

To someone, it might have been just a few minutes of conversation.

To someone else, those few minutes were a turning point in life.

In that sense, it was not strange at all for the Duke to call Eri aside and give her a reward.

“Let's wait until Eri comes.”

We chatted in the Waiting Room for a while.

Our protagonist, Erika, arrived.

“Did you wait long, Teacher?”

“No. There wasn't anything urgent anyway.”

“The exam is tomorrow; don't you have anything to prepare, Teacher?”

“No. I just need to show up.”

Tomorrow was the Main Exam, but there wasn't really anything for me to prepare.

Emergency medicine isn't a field where you can get the questions in advance and prepare for them.

Patients don't come announcing in advance where they're going to get hurt.

Eri seemed to realize it sounded strange only after she said it.

“Now that I say it, preparing in advance would be more suspicious.”

“Right?”

That kind of sinister thing should be sought in a character like Moriarty.

A good-natured, ordinary citizen doctor.

Not in me, a Watson.

“So, did your talk with the Duke go well? You didn't make a slip of the tongue, did you?”

At that, Freya, who had been quietly listening, cut into the conversation.

At Freya's questioning, Eri's lips jutted out like a duck's.

It was a protest aimed at the younger sister who doubted her out of nowhere.

“Hey, you. Do I look like that kind of person?”

“But Unnie. Did you forget what you said when you saw the bird's beak at the Preliminary Exam?”

At Freya's words, Jenny chimed in.

“Yeah, yeah. That's the first time in my life I've ever heard a metaphor like that.”

Charlotte nodded in agreement.

Seeing those reactions, I became curious about what exactly she had said at the time.

“Eri. What did you say to make Freya react like this?”

“No...... That is......”

Eri hesitated, then reluctantly opened her mouth.

“There was just a bird with a kind of blunt beak...... I said if it was processed well, it could be placed in a D-Sector brothel......”

“......”

Well now.

I thought I understood what she meant.

She must have been referring to an item indispensable in D-Sector—the Red-Light District.

Perhaps because this was a world where silicone had not yet been commercialized.

Tools for Private Time were usually made from demonic beasts.

And the bird's beak Eri saw was probably used in brothels in the South as well.

“......”

Of course, I never said that fact out loud.

“Unnie, sometimes when you let your guard down, things like that suddenly pop out, so when I'm next to you, my heart drops.”

“It can't be helped...... The unnies who taught me how to speak when I was young were people from that side.”

“Ah.”

Freya sighed.

She must have forgotten.

Eri's background.

“Still, compared to before, I'm much tamer now, right? Teacher said so too.”

That was true, too.

Compared to when I first met her, she was every bit the graceful lady.

I still remember what she said to me back then.

— “If you've got an ulterior motive, tell me quickly. I'd rather give you one round......”

Good heavens.

Even now, remembering it gives me a fright.

I shook my head and returned to the conversation.

“So, what did you get?”

“It's nothing much, Teacher.”

“Where in a ducal family is there anything that's nothing much, Unnie?”

“I'm telling you, it's really nothing much.”

Eri shrugged and threw herself onto the Waiting Room sofa.

Her hand, naturally groping along the table, grabbed a piece of bread.

“He said to come eat with them often from now on. And while I attend the Academy, they'll support things like tuition, and, uh...... what was it? Right. He said he'd write me a recommendation letter when I graduate.”

“What?”

Freya was flabbergasted.

“Unnie. How can that be nothing much?”

Freya grabbed Eri's hand just as it was bringing the bread to her mouth.

Eri tried to protest, asking what she was doing, but quickly tucked her tail in at Freya's fierce look.

The bread wasn't important right now, though.

“He's Duke Erunt. The master of the South! The future Railway King! Do you have any idea how huge a reward the right to dine often with someone like that is?!”

That was true.

I'd heard in my past life that on Wall Street, even mealtime was sold.

Time to converse with the rich is itself worth that much, or something like that.

But Eri still didn't seem to grasp that value.

“Hmm...... Is it that great?”

“It's exactly that much!”

It was that much.

I mean, I tried to think of what Eri could do at a meal table right away.

If she brought a Guild Master to the meal, that Guild Master could talk about the railway project.

Or if she said at the table that she didn't like someone, she could make that person mysteriously disappear in the South.

Even I, who am insensitive to power, could think of that much potential.

To Freya, a true noble, the rights Eri received must look like a reward beyond compare.

“Unnie, how can you be so indifferent to things like this? Normally, if someone received the Duke's patronage, wouldn't it be normal to cry and call it an honor to the family?”

“For something like that, my sponsor is already the Lord Saint.”

“Ah.”

Eri pointed at me with her chin.

Freya's gaze also turned toward me.

Then Jenny, too.

“......That's true.”

Freya's protest lost its strength.

Charlotte, who had been quietly watching, propped up her chin and summarized the situation.

“In other words, in the end, nothing much changes.”

“......I......suppose so?”

Freya nodded.

The others seemed convinced as well.

In the end, the talk about Eri's reward concluded like that.

*

Morning came again the day after the Dullahan's neck was reattached.

The Academy moved to a certain fortress for the scheduled Main Exam.

The fortress we arrived at was close to ruins.

The outer wall had collapsed in entire sections here and there, but even the remaining parts towered dizzyingly above our heads.

A single fallen stone beneath it looked large enough for several students to sit side by side.

At the top of the broad stairs, only an archway remained, standing alone.

Thick moss was eating away at the weathered relief sculptures.

Roots that had burrowed into the cracks of the stone had been slowly prizing the walls apart over generations.

The map labeled this fortress, swallowed by the tropical rainforest, the Old Duchy.

But don't misunderstand.

This is a fortress managed by the Erunt Ducal Family, but it was not formerly Erunt territory.

It was the territory of the ducal family that guarded the South before Duke Erunt.

We gathered in a place in that territory where corridors and barracks had once stood.

I looked around.

'Archaeologists would be drooling if they saw this.'

The atmosphere was exactly like that.

It was the kind of place that made you feel you should take a whip as your main weapon and go searching for hidden overtechnology ruins.

It felt as if I had come sightseeing at a Maya civilization ruin.

'In my past life, I wondered why anyone would pay to tour a place like this.'

Back then, I hadn't understood that sentiment.

Why would anyone deliberately pay money to visit a hot, humid, dangerous place?

If you were curious about ruins, you could just watch them on YouTube.

But now I felt I understood why.

Clink.

The ice shifted inside the glass.

I took a sip of my drink and leaned back a little more comfortably in my chair.

'So paying to suffer was because I didn't have enough money.'

If you have a lot of money, you can enjoy comfortable and safe tourism even in a tropical rainforest.

Inside the cool barrier the Duke had prepared, I gained a new realization.

However, I was the only one here who could gain such a realization.

When I raised my eyes, I saw Academy students lined up outside the barrier.

Unlike inside the barrier, where a dry, cool fan wind flowed, out there it was so hot and humid the air felt like it could be chewed.

(I know because I briefly went outside the barrier to give a speech.)

And the students who had waited in such a place for hours were, naturally, soaked in sweat.

The Valkyries were gathered near the Observation Gallery as well.

I could see Jenny subtly lifting her hair away from her nape.

'Ah, this brings back memories.'

Standing in line.

Soaked in sweat from head to toe.

Waiting for someone on the podium who is allowed to be late.

Any man from the Republic of Korea would know where that is.

'Fuck. Even after reincarnating, it's the military.'

In my past life, I was a Military doctor, but still.

The military is just like that.

A place that feels like shit just for breathing.

Fuck.

It was a real gem, all right.

'Military doctors hate the military too.'

Of course, whether in my past life or my current one, I was living the sweet life under a tent like a Military doctor.

Still, the military's particular unpleasantness had a way of getting across even just by watching.

Sip.

I took another sip of my drink to soothe that disgust.

Only after quite some time had passed did the instructor climb onto the podium.

“Attention.”

The students straightened their posture.

The instructor scanned the gathered parties, then opened his mouth.

“Before the exam, I will explain to you what kind of place this is.”

“......”

Damn.

My Guerrilla Training PTSD is acting up.

I had to take another sip of my drink to calm myself.