Chapter 216Chapter 216: End-of-term exam (5)

On a busy day treating Lonomia poisoning, Edmund came to visit.

And then he asked strange questions unrelated to the situation.

"A patient whose neck is barely hanging on?"

"If they made it to me alive in that state, it means there's still time. It's worth attempting with heal."

I'd hesitated a little, but it was a patient worth trying.

Isn't trauma treatment what divine magic does best?

The fact that they reached me meant the golden time had been kept.

Which meant I only needed to provide a little support.

'...Why am I answering this, though?'

I'm busy enough to die as it is.

Edmund couldn't even help, and he was bothering me with questions like this.

As I was thinking that,

Aila muttered while clutching the dressing set.

"Ah, so that's why Brother Kal..."

The moment I heard that mutter, I revised my opinion of Edmund.

If Edmund alone were saying strange things, then there was a high probability he was the strange one.

But if that earnest kid was joining in on the nonsense, the story changed.

Then it wasn't that they were strange—it was a signal that I couldn't follow the conversation.

Come to think of it, it wasn't a conversation I'd been part of from the start.

The two of them had walked here together, and I had no way of knowing what they'd discussed on the way.

It was then, as I was organizing my thoughts up to that point.

'Oops.'

I remembered what I'd been doing and what I had to do.

It had been almost an hour since I'd drawn blood from the first bed.

If the antidote ampoule had taken effect, it should have coagulated by now.

I'd joined the conversation because I had a little time left, but

the situation wasn't over yet.

"Aila, take the tray and follow me."

"Huh? Ah, yes!"

Glancing sideways at the instructors surrounding the prince, I returned to the treatment area.

As soon as I entered, I picked up three glass tubes.

Then I remembered I needed to check one more, and belatedly picked up the fourth tube.

In the four tubes, the blood was slowly coagulating and clinging as it slid down the walls.

It meant the antidote had begun to take effect.

'Nice!'

I cheered inwardly.

'So it was Lonomia.'

To be honest, I'd been scared.

I'd acted like I knew everything and even made deductions in front of them, but

honestly, I hadn't been certain either.

The first principle of toxicology is to directly identify the causative organism.

You have to know what they were hit with to administer the right antidote.

It's not for nothing that we ask someone bitten by a viper, 'Did you take a picture of the snake?'

Yet I'd drawn up an ampoule without even confirming the caterpillar myself.

'They don't even know what hit them—when would they have identified it?'

At the time, there was only one thing I could be sure of.

Five hours later.

This student would die of seven orifice bleeding.

Waiting until we found the caterpillar in such an urgent situation was insane.

So I had no choice but to make a gamble.

Fortunately, the gamble paid off well.

'I'm lucky again today—getting through safely.'

In hindsight, what I'd done today would have horrified a toxicology specialist.

In toxicology, there is no 100% until the causative organism is directly identified.

My diagnosis, in terms of probability, was around 90%.

Of course, 90% is high.

But if my license were on the line for the remaining 10%?

Would 90% still seem sufficient then?

'I was crazy.'

Even so, I did it.

Maybe because I'd grown too used to the conventions unique to the misunderstanding genre.

I kept acting as if testing how far my luck would go.

'I need to stop doing this too.'

While thinking that and checking the results in the glass tubes,

the top chamber of the hourglass placed before another glass tube had emptied.

I checked that tube immediately.

Blood so stiffly coagulated it reminded me of blood sausage.

This one was correct too.

It also meant I'd safely protected my career from a 10% probability.

"Lord Saint! Another suspected poisoning patient."

But I had no time to savor the relief of success.

A new patient had immediately come in.

I set down the tube I'd been checking,

and drew fresh blood from the patient.

After writing the bed number and time on the glass tube,

I had to move to the next bed and examine the patient's condition.

'This student had bruises on the ankle and gums. The antidote... ah, I checked it.'

Twelve beds.

Twenty-four test tubes that had to be continuously checked.

And the only person comparing them was me.

For the first time in a long while, I missed my past life's EMR (Electronic Medical Record System), nurses, and resident doctors.

'Did I check that patient? I did, right?'

In this situation, starting to confuse which tubes I'd already checked was by no means a matter of my incompetence.

'Was that one drawn five minutes ago? Ah, it was an hour ago. But why did I leave it here?'

It was when I had finished checking up to the eighth bed.

A commotion came from around bed number one.

"So I'm saying we should try telling him to use mine!"

"Even all of yours combined is only half a Minor Heal."

"If the three of us combine, that's one and a half!"

They were the students who had said they'd add divine power to prolong their poisoned friend's life.

Watching them, I thought for a moment.

'It's about time I can tell them about the antidote, right?'

I had deliberately not informed them of the antidote's existence.

There had been a reason for it at the time.

But now that the goal had been achieved to some extent.

I figured it was probably fine to reveal the antidote's existence.

Holding a glass tube, I walked over to them.

"There may be a need to go back in again. Use it then."

The students shut their mouths and cleared the way.

I squeezed through them and rolled up the patient's sleeve.

Beneath the rolled-up sleeve were marks from blood collection.

I chose another spot and inserted the needle.

"The antidote has already been administered. Right now I'm checking the reaction."

"Does that mean..."

"Heal isn't necessary. Save it."

From a resource standpoint, using heal on someone already responding to the antidote is a waste.

It was better to save such things for patients who had missed the golden time.

"Does that mean I'll live?"

The patient asked again as if he couldn't believe it.

Instead of answering, I tilted the tube I'd drawn blood into earlier.

The blood stopped sliding down the glass wall and plopped down in a lump like pudding.

Still, for a Hero Department student, there was no need to explain what that meant.

"..."

The student's mouth corner twitched.

His colleague, who had been ghostwriting his will, quietly held out the letter.

"So what are you going to do with this?"

"Burn it."

"You already wrote it all—why burn it? I'll deliver it to her."

"You crazy bastard! There's no way I can show her that! I just blurted it out because I thought I was going to die anyway!"

"That's exactly why you should show her!"

Correction.

It seemed it wasn't a will, but a love letter.

While the students were bickering like that,

the curtain of the treatment area was lifted.

Edmund and the instructors had finished their talk and entered the tent.

"Forget what I said earlier."

"Uh, Your Highness! Ah, no, it's nothing!"

The student tried to bolt upright. The prince pressed his shoulder and laid him back down.

"Patients don't get up."

After laying the student back down,

Edmund turned his head toward me.

"Lord Yulian. Do you know what the students were thinking just now?"

"Of course I know."

They were putting on a melodrama in the corner of the treatment area—how could I not?

Deep wrinkles formed between his brows at my answer.

"If there was an antidote, couldn't you have told them in advance and reassured them?"

"If I had, there wouldn't have been enough time."

"It doesn't seem so urgent that a few words would decide life or death."

"It wasn't that this student's time was short."

With those words, I pointed to the group of students hurriedly entering the tent.

"It was that those students' time was short."

"... Explain in detail."

"When I found the first student, the time left to us was already not very much."

Let's think.

When I found the first poisoning patient, quite a lot of time had passed since the practical exam began.

Considering that the effects of a typical biotoxin begin to appear from the fifth hour and lead to death within twelve hours,

the student had about five hours left.

The problem was that the student I had to screen wasn't just this one.

"Your Highness. Do you know how many students participated in this exam?"

"About eight hundred."

"Then how many hours do you think it would take to screen the poisoned students among them?"

"Even if done as fast as possible, it would have taken two hours."

"And that's assuming the students return as quickly as possible."

Honestly, I figured it would take four hours.

Why?

"If I had said there was an antidote, would the students have returned that quickly?"

"... Honestly, it's hard to say yes."

It was because I was wary of the students' safety complacency.

That's how human psychology works.

When safety is guaranteed, people tend to grow complacent.

'If I'd said there was an antidote, there would definitely have been kids who returned late trying to score higher.'

There probably would have been quite a few.

How can I be sure?

No matter which world you go to, examinees are desperate.

I've even seen a high school student and parent who said they'd hold out on medication until the exam, even if they had a stroke.

So I used shock therapy.

By not mentioning the antidote's existence to the first patients.

"If they hear there's no medicine, the students will hurry back too."

If they think they can just get treated if poisoned, they compromise.

So to deny them the chance to compromise, I deliberately staged this situation.

The effect was certain.

As you can see, the students who had left the fortress were all returning quickly without exception.

"It was already an agreement with the instructors."

When I told the instructors as well, praise for doing well came back immediately.

Especially the instructors who had experienced last year's graduation exam incident reacted most vehemently.

The moment they heard it was a poison that prevented blood from clotting, they threw a fit.

Perhaps that was why.

The instructors also agreed my method was absolutely right and joined me.

"We can clear up misunderstandings later."

I felt sorry for the students acting out a melodrama in the treatment area, but it was necessary for the greater cause.

Of course, that doesn't justify the method I chose.

"I see. So you had such circumstances, Lord Yulian."

Fortunately, Edmund seemed to agree with my method.

It was probably because he had once commanded an army.

Sometimes, for the greater cause, one must not be picky about means.

But there was someone who showed slight dissatisfaction with this method.

"Still... there might be a better way..."

It was none other than the victim of this large-scale hidden camera prank, the poison ivy allergy student (I hadn't asked his name yet, so I didn't know it).

The student glanced between the prince and me, then spoke while gripping his blanket.

"We're also Hero Department students, Lord Saint. We're not so complacent as to underestimate poison just because an antidote exists. Even if you'd told us the truth, everyone would have returned in time."

The colleagues beside him nodded.

It wasn't wrong.

Maybe this student himself really would have.

So while I was choosing how to answer,

just then a conversation came from beyond the tent fabric.

— "No, so what I mean is. We've confirmed there's an antidote."

It was a familiar voice.

— "That means we can hold out for half a day."

— "...Hey, what did you hear from the instructor just now?"

— "I heard them. So I thought about it, and if it really comes down to it, couldn't I just cut off my left arm?"

— "Throw it away?"

— "Not throw it away—detach it temporarily and store it. My right arm remains, so I can still hold a sword. If I just get to Director, he'll reattach it."

I didn't even need to check who it was.

It was Kal.

Come to think of it, directly opposite this Red Zone was the Green Zone where Kal was resting.

— "You can just be careful not to touch trees."

— "Obviously I'll try not to touch them too. But we should talk about what happens if I get hit."

— "If you get hit, come back immediately!"

— "That's what I mean—if I run into another demonic beast then, we do this. You guys pull out first, and I can hold out long enough to make it back."

— "Why are you talking like you're going to hold out alone?"

— "You always have to posit the worst-case scenario so you don't panic when it happens."

The poison ivy allergy student was quietly staring at the tent fabric.

The mouth that had been about to protest slowly closed.

"...Never mind. As expected, Lord Saint's words seem to be correct."

The student nodded with a look of acceptance.

But I wasn't pleased with this situation