Chapter 207: Dullahan Saving Project (1)

The surgery was scheduled for the next morning.

The location was the Duchy's infirmary.

There, I explained the situation to the surgical team that had been called in early in the morning.

Their reactions were no different from the others.

"What? Lord Saint? I must have misheard."

"Teacher. You're going to reattach a severed neck?"

Lauren, Ayla—both of them.

They all looked unable to believe it.

It had been quite a while since I'd seen reactions like this, so I felt a subtle thrill.

If I had my way, I wanted to give them time to accept the situation.

But the surgery was urgent, so there was no room for that.

"It won't be much different from a normal disc surgery, so keep that in mind."

"A severed neck and a disc are similar...?"

Ayla muttered blankly.

"Saintess. If you only stand there shocked, we cannot begin the surgery. It's not as if this is the first time the Black Saint has done something like this. Come over here and review the pre-op plan again."

Ludwig, having shaken off his shock, picked her up and led her away.

For reference, this Ludwig was the healer I had kidnapped from the capital in the past.

His otolaryngology surgery skills were decent, so I had eventually succeeded in bringing him along.

"Lord Saint. This is our first time performing this kind of surgery, so may we take a moment to review the relevant knowledge?"

"Yes. Take your time, Mr. Ludwig."

While the saint and saintess students could not escape their shock, the healer Ludwig's reaction was different.

He quickly settled his surprise and looked for what he could do.

Seeing that, I inwardly admired how veterans really were different.

— "Aren't you healers surprised?"

— "We are surprised."

— "Then how can you stay so calm?"

— "To the Saintess of the Lamp and the Saint of Radiance, the Black Saint may be a destination they must someday catch up to, but to us, he is like a rainbow we can never reach. To put it simply, we are already resigned—far past the point of being shocked."

...Anyway, I decided to take it that way.

While the healers participating in the surgery took a short strategy meeting.

I sat across from the Valkyries, who had followed me out of boredom.

On the sofa in the waiting room, Charlotte was slowly dying.

Cause of death: dopamine depletion.

She was flailing at the air, searching for something.

"Charlotte. You can't spam magic in the Healing Center like you do in the dormitory."

"Isn't that exactly why I'm like this?"

I called out to her.

"Come to think of it, I haven't greeted you yet, Charlotte."

"A greeting?"

Charlotte, half-melted, raised her head.

"Have I done something to deserve a greeting?"

"Of course. Thanks to Miss Charlotte's kindness, hope came to these people, didn't it?"

"This is the first time this year I've heard anyone call me kind."

Charlotte furrowed her brow.

"There really is no combination as incongruous as Charlotte and the word kindness."

Jenny, sitting beside her, nodded.

Charlotte briefly glaring at her roommate was a bonus.

I smiled at her.

"If your only goal was to satisfy your curiosity, you wouldn't have mentioned the ducal family's secret to me in the middle of the banquet."

If her goal had simply been to relieve boredom, she would have been satisfied the moment she uncovered the secret.

There would have been no reason to reveal it to me in the middle of the banquet.

And yet, there was only one reason she deliberately revealed it at that timing.

"You were watching for a chance to tell me even before the Duke arrived, weren't you? Then, as soon as the opportunity came, you naturally revealed it."

"......"

"You wanted me to solve this case as soon as you learned the truth, didn't you?"

"......It was only ever for my own curiosity."

"I'm sure."

I knew, of course.

Charlotte is fundamentally a person who acts for her own curiosity.

She herself said as much.

But I know what lies at the root of those actions.

"Still, it wouldn't be strange if a little kindness were mixed into the pastime you use to satisfy that curiosity, would it?"

It was kindness.

Whether deduction or medicine.

At its root lies altruism.

Because if you have no interest in others, you cannot obtain clues from them.

You could tell just from the fact that the way she unravels her curiosity happens to be 'solving cases.'

If she were someone who pursued only pure fun, she would also have had the option of becoming a crime consultant rather than a detective.

Yet she chose detective.

That alone was proof that she was a kind person.

"I know of Charlotte's kindness. I simply do not know how to express that kindness gently."

"......What is that supposed to mean?"

Charlotte turned her head.

The tips of her ears were slightly red.

Jenny's eyes went wide when she saw Charlotte like that.

"Good heavens... Charlotte, you can make that kind of expression too?"

"Shut up, Jenny."

Saying that, Charlotte held something out to me.

It was a silver coin.

I did not ask whether she was offering it to mean I had won 'some contest.'

Instead, I politely accepted the silver coin.

"Is this 785 wins?"

"I still have 5,147 wins, so I'm ahead by more than 4,000."

"I see. I still have a long way to go."

I don't know why she is so obsessed with winning, though.

I gave a bitter smile and slipped the silver coin into my pocket.

Then I turned my head and spoke to the other Valkyries as well.

"And Eri. You did really well too."

"Huh?"

Eri, who had been inhaling a scone left in the waiting room, looked up.

"Me? What did I do?"

"You were the lead in solving this case. Thanks to you persuading the Duke, everything worked out so well."

"What did I do? I just went and asked."

"That was the hardest part."

Do you know what is as difficult as the surgery itself in a surgery like this?

It is persuading the patient and their family.

"By the way."

Freya, who had been listening, carefully raised her hand.

"Older Sister. About the story you told the Duke then. The story of the girl who turned back at the clinic door every time... wasn't that about you?""

"Yeah, that's right."

"But it's a little different from the story I heard?"

I nodded in agreement.

The story she had told the Duke.

It was a little different from the first meeting with Eri that I remembered.

My and Freya's gazes gathered on Eri.

Smack.

Eri, receiving everyone's attention, sucked the cream off her fingers first.

Only after neatly cleaning her fingers did she open her mouth.

"It's no big deal. Teacher thinks he first met me at the slaughterhouse, but actually, I had gone to the clinic several times before that."

"Was Older Brother too busy to see you before then?"

"No way. If anything, I ran away."

"Why?"

"I was scared. What if it turned out I really was a Bloodfiend's child? What if he said it was an incurable disease?"

Freya closed her mouth.

Eri was trying to speak brightly, but.

It must have been because she understood those feelings.

Though the person in question just shrugged as if it were nothing.

"So I kept circling around the area over and over, and then Teacher picked me up and treated me while I had my head dunked in a bucket at Wangcho's slaughterhouse. Pretty funny, right?"

"......Older Sister, you're surprisingly thoughtful."

"What do you mean, surprisingly?"

Eri finished her explanation.

The atmosphere sank for a moment.

I patted her shoulder a few times and lifted the mood again.

"Either way, your role was huge. If the surgery goes well and it comes to you receiving a reward from the Duke, think about what reward you'd want."

"A reward...? I hadn't thought about something like that?"

Eri froze in place with a dazed face.

Meanwhile, a healer approached me, saying the strategy meeting was over.

"Lord Saint. The surgery is ready."

"Understood. Then I'll head in for the surgery."

"Do well, Yulian."

"Have a safe trip, Teacher."

And so, with the Valkyries seeing me off, I left the waiting room.

*

While preparing for the surgery,

I repeatedly emphasized several precautions to the healers.

"First, we'll lay the patient down, turn him prone, then lay him down again. Set the instruments with that in mind."

This was the most important point in this surgery.

This surgery required changing the patient's position during the procedure.

If an instrument or the respirator got caught, it would be a problem, so I had to be careful about the arrangement from the start.

While we were arranging the instruments like that,

Ayla, who was preparing beside me, spoke up worriedly.

"Teacher. You kept performing follow-up surgeries on the train until you arrived. Tomorrow is the Academy's main exam, too. If you do a major surgery like this today, won't you be tired tomorrow?"

"Thank you for worrying, Ayla. But don't worry. We've even performed surgeries for a week without rest before."

Physical stamina was not something to worry about.

The tragedy that once struck the capital—during the 'Spring of Those Who Could Not Return' incident.

I had to perform surgery continuously for a week without even resting.

But even then, there had never been a problem due to fatigue.

"Ayla knows my stamina too. And if worse comes to worst, I can receive Refresh."

"Even so, it seems like you have too little rest time... If you were to collapse like this..."

Ayla trailed off, muttering something to herself.

At some point, the hands that had been organizing instruments had also stopped.

"In that case, I could nurse you..."

"......Ayla?"

Ayla looked up and smiled.

It was the same sunflower-like smile as usual.

But perhaps it was because the lamp's shadow had passed over her face.

I felt as if the light had been drawn from her eyes.

But that thought lasted only a moment.

As soon as I saw her sparkling eyes, I realized it had just been my imagination.

"Now, Teacher. I'll put the traction instrument here."

"Please do."

Thinking about it, it was funny.

How could a person's face look shadowed in an operating room equipped with a Shadowless Lamp?

I shook off the chill that had briefly run down my spine.

Then I gathered the surgical team and reviewed the surgical plan we had prepared yesterday from the beginning again.

The approach route, each person's position, the order of instruments.

And the rule that divine magic would be used only according to the exact conditions I instructed.

I explained once, took questions, and made them review again.

We repeated that process several times.

That was how difficult and dangerous the surgery was.

During the third review, Lauren raised his hand.

"Lord Saint. Listening to the plan, I have one question."

"Tell me."

"Is there really a need to use a leg bone to reconstruct it? If you remove the twisted neck bone and align the spine properly, couldn't I restore the missing bone with Regeneration?"

Regeneration.

The highest-grade miracle that can even restore a severed arm.

"Fortunately, I received enough sunlight while coming down to the south, so it should be possible now."

It was a proposal only possible because Lauren had been the Holy City's Regeneration Continuous Casting System.

Hearing that proposal, I nodded.

"I did consider it too."

It was a reasonable proposal.

In fact, I had also thought of a plan using Regeneration.

But after examining the patient's condition, I had no choice but to change my mind.

"However, there is a high chance it won't work."

"It won't work? You mean Regeneration?"

"I'll show you why once we're in surgery. Seeing is believing. Depending on the situation, I might ask you to do it."

"......Understood."

Lauren stepped back with a face half-convinced, half-doubtful.

Leaving that ambiguous part as it was.

The long-awaited 'Severed Neck Reattachment Surgery' began.

First, as always, we laid the patient flat and disinfected his neck.

"Sir Darian. The anesthetic is going in now. If you think about what you'll do after the surgery, it will all be over by the time you know it."

"What I want to do... after it's over, one more time in the garden with Isolde..."

"Yes. The patient is asleep."

Just before anesthesia.

The patient tried to spit out something like a death flag, so I just put him to sleep.

Honestly, even I was a little scared of this surgery.

Isn't it better not to raise flags like that if possible?

After putting the patient under like that.

"Scalpel."

Matching tempo with Ludwig, the otolaryngology specialist healer, I opened the neck.

The approach direction was the front of the neck.

The incision direction was diagonal.

Ludwig followed my tempo quite well.

It had been worth kidnapping him from the capital after all.

"Skin incision complete."

When I opened the skin, the first thing revealed was a thick muscle bundle.

The sternocleidomastoid muscle—the area also called the sternocleidomastoid.

"This muscle is the landmark. I will carefully dissect inward from here."

"Understood, Lord Saint."

I spread the layers along the inner fibers of that muscle.

The esophagus and trachea were exposed.

I gently pushed them aside so they would not be injured.

"Right carotid artery found. I'll mark it."

"I found it too, Lord Saint. I'll mark it."

To avoid confusion, the carotid artery was marked by looping vermilion thread around it like a ring, then retracted outward.

After that, Ludwig continued organizing the neck structures in time with my pace.

He was slightly slower than me, but not enough to hinder the surgery, so I was quite satisfied.

'I knew bringing him was the right call.'

This was exactly why I had specifically included Ludwig, an otolaryngology specialist healer, in the surgery.

Because when it came to clearing the neck structures from the front, he was outstanding.

And so, marking the artery with vermilion thread, the vein with sky-blue thread, and the nerves with yellow thread took several minutes.

At last, we reached our destination.

It was the anterior surface of the spine.

"......This is."

The ducal family healer in the observation gallery groaned.

The healers in the operating room each let out sighs as well.

I nearly let out a sigh along with them.

Even when I saw it through the clairvoyance image, it had been a bit absurd.

Seeing the real thing, it took my breath away.

But now there was no turning back.

I calmly instructed the next step.

"As discussed, shave down the discs above and below first."

Above and below the fused sixth cervical vertebra.

We shaved down the discs caught between the fifth and seventh.

The hardened cartilage was peeled away piece by piece.

Before long, the connection between C6 (the sixth cervical vertebra) and the vertebral bodies above and below was severed.

Then the assistant healer quickly held out the next instrument.

It was the scalpel.

Since the bone was separated, they thought it was time to remove it whole.

It was a textbook judgment.

It was also something we had discussed before surgery.

But I shook my head.

Because when I opened it directly, the situation was a little different from what we had discussed before surgery.

"Chisel and hammer, please."

"Yes? Ah, chisel and hammer."

The assistant healer held out the surgical tools, flustered.

"But why these...?"

They looked flustered that the order had suddenly changed from what had been agreed.

But without explaining, I immediately brought the chisel to the neck bone.

Because I could not explain every single thing while the patient's neck was open.

"U-Um, Lord Saint? Why are you taking the hammer...?"

And then,

"Whaaat?!"

Clang!

I brought the hammer down on the neck bone.