38. I Am A Saint (2)

“Business partner. How’s your gut holding up?”
“Is there any reason it wouldn’t be?”
“You looked so puffed up with nerve, I worried your belly might burst.”

Shin Junseok wore his tension openly. While the two men talked, he’d been too frightened to breathe properly, and his face had gone deathly pale.

“The chairman’s flying into a rage because he’s afraid of being disappointed.”
“I suppose so. Every treatment’s failed, after all.”
“I’m confident I can pull off the cure, so there’s no reason to be scared, is there?”

At Yujin’s easygoing manner, Shin Junseok clicked his tongue in disbelief.

“I’ve hardly ever seen the chairman lose his temper like that myself. And you just stand there and take it.”
“Well, a 7th-Rank mage’s pressure really is something.”

With only 2nd-Rank spirit-power behind him, not bowing his body was the most he could manage.

Tch.

Before the regression, I couldn’t so much as lift my head before a 7th-Rank.

Put it that way, and I almost want to bow just once.

Pipe down, you incompetent Constellation.

“The patient is in here.”

Jin Seonghyeon stopped before a door dressed in old-fashioned ornamentation.

“May I go in?”
“Of course.”

— Click.

The instant the door opened, a thick mana washed over them.

“You set these magic circles yourself, Chairman.”
“That’s right. To pour vigor into my daughter.”
“I’m sorry, but please take down all of these magic circles.”
“Why such an instruction?”
“In the short term your daughter may seem to improve, but over time it will only advance the Mummification Disease further.”

The Mummification Disease’s formal name was Muscular Contraction Sclerosis, an illness in which mana stimulated the muscles and forced them to contract. Filling her with vitality through mana and easing the strain on her body would no doubt look effective in the short run.

The chairman’s high level of attainment turned into poison instead.

Jin Seonghyeon glanced at the Madam and Yujin, then dispelled every magic circle he’d installed in the room, his look sour.

“So this is her.”

A woman lay there, bone-dry and gasping for breath, perhaps in her early twenties. Through faintly trembling eyelids, her bared eyes flickered with strain and despair.

“D-Dad.”
“Seryeong. Don’t strain yourself talking, just wait a little.”
“Th-these, people.”
“They’re the ones who’ll cure you. People Hyeonjeong vouched for herself.”

At the sound of the Madam’s real name, the woman turned her head with effort.

“S-Sis.”
“Stay still. You’ll be all right soon.”

He’d expected as much; the two of them did know each other. Given that the chairman of Seongcheon Enterprise knew her as well, that was nothing strange.

She didn’t call me here over the commission reward alone, then.

One more thing to wring out of the Madam.

“Ah. Now that I think of it, there’s an important thing I failed to ask.”
“Go ahead.”
“Healer. I gather you’re a Hunter, but may I ask what your class group is?”

Jin Seonghyeon had pegged Yujin for a magic-line or Priest class. The man had come to cure a disease, so he could hardly be martial-line.

“I’m a Saint.”

Yujin named his class as though it were nothing. In that instant the room sank into stillness, as if a bomb had gone off inside it.

“A Saint?!”
“B-Business partner. You were a Saint?!”

Jin Seonghyeon and Shin Junseok all but screamed it. Even the Madam, though she kept her mouth from falling open, couldn’t hide her astonishment.

“Of which stellar field— no. Whose Constellation are you the proxy of?”
“His starlight is faint, so you wouldn’t know him.”

He ignored Kronos’s protest.

It’s true, though. A backwater goblin spirit.

From now on I’ll have to call him a backwater goblin spirit instead of an incompetent Constellation.

Having dreamed up something that would scandalize Kronos if he ever heard it, Yujin went on.

“By the Constellation I serve, I swear I’ll cure Miss Seryeong.”
“I’m counting on you.”

Jin Seonghyeon, who only a moment ago hadn’t been able to shake his half-doubting look, gripped Yujin’s hand tight.

Say “I’m a Saint” with my own mouth and it’d carry real weight, sure.

Hunters who hold the class of Saint are exceedingly few. Going beyond a mere blessing to choose someone as a proxy drains an immense amount of a Constellation’s karma and existence-force, so plenty of Constellations kept no Saint at all.

“Shall we begin, then. My good business partner.”
“Understood.”

Shin Junseok set four C-rank mana stones at the corner points of the room.

After carving the mana circuits that linked each stone to the next, he activated the alchemical formula, one that gathered the mana scattered through the air into a single place. Normally it served to raise the efficiency of alchemy, but this time its purpose was different.

“Business partner. I send it outside, right?”
“Yeah. Set it up toward the door.”

Finally, Shin Junseok placed one more mana stone at the room’s entrance, carved an additional circuit, and breathed mana into it.

— Whoooosh!

Blue particles surged wildly up from the mana stone laid across the doorsill.

“Mana so dense it’s visible to the naked eye….”
“That’s how enormous a mana the magic circles the chairman set had gathered up.”
“But why are you discharging the mana from the room?”
“We’re going to make it a vacuum, with no mana in it at all.”

Before the regression, simply placing her in a capsule had kept the vacuum intact. With the treatment machine yet to be developed, though, he was using alchemy to recreate the right environment. He could only attempt it because his business partner was so capable; alone, Yujin would never have stepped forward to cure the Mummification Disease at all.

Ten minutes passed and the mana stone lost its light.

“Let me swap one out.”
“We’ll need to go up to three. The mana concentration isn’t dropping as much as I’d thought.”

The magic circles in the room had worked all too well. Even dismantled, the mana that had fueled them didn’t vanish at once. With the treatment suddenly stalled, Jin Seonghyeon wore a fretful, restless look.

“That should do it. Bear with me a bit longer.”
“Understood, business partner.”

A mana-vacuum, now. The fine hairs on his skin rose one by one, as though he’d stepped into some parched waste. Linger too long in a place like this and the mana dwelling in a Hunter’s body would bleed out into the air.

There. Now it’s time to work as a Saint, not a Necromancer.

The holy power gathered at his fingertips swelled greatly.

The first stage of curing the Mummification Disease had been cleared with Shin Junseok’s cooperation.

Now I have to replenish her lacking vitality.

In a mana-vacuum, curing it came down to one thing: working a special elixir into every pore of the body, and that was that. Even Yujin, a regressor, hadn’t kept the recipe for the cure stored in his head.

If you’ve no teeth, you make do with your gums.

Yujin laid his hand on Jin Seryeong’s forehead.

A forty-percent increase. A respectable figure, that. Ironic that the first time I use it should be to cure the Mummification Disease. But healing the sick is a Priest’s work.

I really can’t get used to this.

As a wry smile crossed Yujin’s face, Jin Seryeong’s body heaved violently. Her life force, already on the verge of bottoming out, was draining away even as her strength surged, and she thrashed as if loosing a death cry.

“Saint! What is happening?!”
“Wait just a moment.”

Explaining all of it would take too long, and if he admitted he’d used a holy spell that lowered her life force, he’d have been hauled up by the collar.

Good thing I revealed I was a Saint. If I hadn’t, there’s no telling what the chairman might have done once he lost his head.

This time he channeled the vitality stored in his dantian into Jin Seryeong’s body. As the drained vitality was replenished, the heaving woman’s face eased.

It’s by giving her this jolt that the stiffened body comes back to life. The one being treated must feel like death, but if she wants to live, she’ll have to endure it.

Yujin alternated between the two spells.

The vitality I’d gathered up is all spent.

— Pop!

He clamped one of the mid-grade potions Shin Junseok had made between his lips and gulped the contents down his throat.

Of course.

The moment the potion restored his vitality and stamina, he passed them straight on. As vitality welled up in the woman’s body, he called on Giant’s Strength to flood her with vigor and burn it off in the same breath.

— Clatter.

Empty potion bottles rolled across the floor one after another. Wringing out so much vitality in so short a time had left Yujin’s eyes sunken and hollow, but he didn’t stop, tipping one potion after another down his throat.

How much time had passed?

“Ah, ahhhhh.”

Jin Seryeong let out a gasp of wonder instead of a dry scream.

Now’s the moment.

For the last time, he invoked Giant’s Strength. Lifting his hand away, he watched the change unfold inside Jin Seryeong’s body. The stimulated muscles repeated their contraction and relaxation, and the vitality he’d poured in all this while seeped through like a pump, working loose every stiffened part.

“Chairman. Would you use Recovery?”
“Y-yes, of course.”

Recovery restored stamina with nature’s mana. Jin Seryeong, who’d shown no improvement even with it running constantly through the magic circles, was different this time. Vitality suffused her face. A ruddy flush rose over her once-pale cheeks, and her dry lips turned moist, as though she’d just smoothed on lip balm.

“D-Dad.”
“Seryeong!”

Jin Seonghyeon swept his daughter into his arms. Yujin backed slowly out of the room.

“Business partner. Do I have to step out too?”
“If you mean to interrupt a father and daughter’s reunion, then stay right there.”
“Ah, no. That’s not what I meant.”

Shin Junseok hurried out, and Yujin shut the door at once.

Yujin’s party returned to the drawing room.

“Ugh, I’m worn out.”

Dark shadows hung beneath Yujin’s eyes. Sinking into the sofa, he kneaded his right arm.

That’s the first time I’ve handed my own life force over to someone else.

He’d used Life Drain far more often to raise stats than to heal. The vitality stolen from monsters had always brimmed in his dantian, but curing the Mummification Disease had run that store dry, leaving him to substitute his own life force.

It’s doable, at least.

The conversion of life force into stats and the healing itself both worked beautifully.

Still, what a bizarre holy spell.

— Thud, thud.

Firm footsteps approached the drawing room. Jin Seonghyeon flung the door open, eyes red, and dropped into the seat across from Yujin.

“Thank you.”
“It’s that your daughter held on well. Her strength must be much depleted, so feed her plenty of nourishing food.”

“If you hadn’t been here, Seryeong would have….”

Jin Seonghyeon’s eyes grew moist.

“I only carried out the commission.”
“My wife passed away not long after this child was born. If anything had happened to my daughter, I’d have had no face to show my wife.”

Jin Seonghyeon had begun addressing Yujin in honorifics. This was the man who had saved his daughter’s life. Perhaps because he hadn’t let himself hope, the ripple that stirred in his heart ran all the deeper.

I’m not used to this sort of thing.

Yujin scratched his cheek.

“The reward. Can I receive it right away?”
“Of course.”

Jin Seonghyeon held out a bag made of black leather casing.

A mountain ginseng faintly laced with frost.

“It’s the genuine article.”
“No one would pull a swindle with his daughter’s life on the line.”

Jin Seonghyeon closed the bag and turned the handle toward Yujin to hand it over.

“There’s one thing I’d like to propose.”
“You mean the method for curing the Mummification Disease?”
“Yes.”
“I understand there are a fair number of patients in the country. It’d be difficult for me to visit each of them one by one, though.”

It wasn’t an empty excuse. Maintaining the mana-vacuum meant dragging Shin Junseok along, and he could only hold out until the cure took by pouring down potion after potion. High-grade elixirs like Human-Shaped Snow Ginseng weren’t exactly easy to come by, either.

Securing what I need by making treatment the condition is one method, but….

That would leave the Necropolis empty for too long. It would set back Shin Junseok’s research, too. Sink any more time into this and the means might end up swallowing the end.

“I understand. It wouldn’t be courteous to press you further, either.”
“Instead, make the treatment equipment at Seongcheon.”
“Would that really be all right?”
“Mummification Disease is a kind of mana poisoning. The principle is to forcibly stimulate the body by infusing it with excessive vitality.”

Shin Junseok’s eyes went round. His gaze asked why Yujin would spill a secret like that so freely.

“Saint. If we complete the development and commercialization of the treatment equipment, I’ll give you 10% in royalties.”

Ten percent. Once production cost and distribution were all tallied, a sizable share of the net income from every unit sold would flow to Yujin.

“That’ll be quite a hemorrhage from the company’s side, won’t it?”
“I’m not so small-minded that I can’t do even that much for the man who saved her.”

Kekeke.

The Human-Shaped Snow Ginseng is fine and good, but forging a tie with a mid-sized company’s chairman, no less.

At this unexpected stroke of fortune, Yujin’s mouth split into a wide grin.