The Magic Academy's Physicist-Chapter 67: For The One Who Cares For Me (3)

When I came around, I was lying in bed.

This didn’t look like the ceiling of our dorm.

“Ugh.”

My body felt heavy. No, rather than heavy, it’d be more fitting to say that it was sluggish from not having moved in a while. It was stiff everywhere so I had to put in a lot of effort to move.

Did I get infected, too?

I seemed to have a fever.

It wasn’t that my head was burning or anything.... It could be called a mild fever at best.

I’d experienced this before in my original body as well. It was a body ache.

There was a bit of a chill but nothing that would kill me, and I wasn’t coughing like crazy, either. And as I lay there impassively as one with the bed.

“Ah.”

My cerebrum started to analyze why I was lying here like this.

─ We have the cure!

I definitely remembered until then. Vermel and Dr. Glyston had barged into the room saying they’d finished the cure for the Black Death or something, and that was where my memory stopped.

Yeah, Lotte. Was Lotte okay? I started getting anxious.

I didn’t know how much time had passed.

I had barely slept in two weeks, come to think of it. As I ruminated, my stomach demanded to be fed.

While getting the full Descartes experience from watching the ceiling1, I decided that I couldn’t stay like this and managed to pull my stiff body up. When I did, something cold dropped from my head with a Plop.

It was a damp towel. Why was it on my head?

My vision which had been going in and out of focus started to become clear. It was then that I realized I was wearing something different from what I remembered.

Overall, a top and bottom that were matching in white. It was hospital clothing.

Strange. I’d been going around in a disposable coverall since the spread of the disease. Had someone changed my clothes for me?

Creeak.

As I was humming in contemplation, someone came in.

“Ah....”

Our eyes met.

Neatly combed crimson, shoulder-length hair, and a soft, innocent face. There was only one girl I knew with such external features.

“Y-you’re awa...!”

Lotte, who had been carrying a plastic wash basin, beelined this way without realizing that water was spilling over. She was too fast for me to physically dodge, and I didn’t want to.

Lotte hugged me tight and began crying.

I thought something happened when you fainted, thanks for taking care of me. And most of all, sorry for all the trouble I put you through.

Multiple sentiments continuously fell onto my ears, but that wasn’t what was important right now.

I sighed in relief when I saw that life had returned to the eyes of the roommate who’d been dying. The symptoms of ironization... were gone. She was completely clean.

Her sniffles lasted over ten minutes. As I was patting the back of this Saliere family’s daughter-turned-seven-year-old child, it reminded me of an old memory.

I had once been in an accident. It hadn’t been life-threatening, but I needed to wear a cast for a few months.

And since it hadn’t been life-threatening, there was no one worrying for my well-being.

Except for one person, my older sister.

My sister was different. She was someone whose sensibilities had her sobbing about how she wouldn’t be able to live without me.

Now I understood why I tried to save Lotte without expecting anything.

How long did I pass out for? When I asked Lotte, I’d apparently woken up after three days.

“Are you really fine?”

Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freewebnσvel.cøm.

“It just feels like overwork, so.“

It hadn’t been this bad even during that time with Professor Hasfeldt. The exhaustion must have accumulated like crazy.

I was more concerned about my roommate’s health. Seeing how she was fine, the medicine that the transmigrator brought must have been effective, but there shouldn’t be any bacteria left in the body, so.

I trusted the medical staff to have taken care of that part.

Now I just had to do what I needed to do.

I had to get back on track and study magic as well as build the final weapon that’d defeat the Demon King to repay Miss Heerlein.

Before that though, I needed to pay back the money borrowed to purchase the antibiotics.

“That? You don’t need to pay it back.”

Lotte’s older brother, Lorewell Saliere. I paused at what he said as he came into the room, closing the door behind him. My mind that had been desperately working to come up with a repayment plan came to a halt.

“My sister’s medical fees are going to be covered by our family. Why would you pay for it?”

If I used the conjunction ‘But still....’ at this point, I’d probably get reamed out by Lotte. I chose to keep silent.

There had been a similar situation when I was younger. Back then, the person who was to pay it off for us ran away, which sent debt collection letters and notice of seizure our way. I strongly presume that was why I became reluctant to borrow even a penny from others.

“It’s fine, our family has money. The elders also have businesses.”

Concern must have shown on my face. Lotte patted my shoulder and smiled like I had nothing to worry about.

Yeah. I’d already trusted this person once, so why not a second time?

I replied with a quiet nod.

Afterwards, I’d received multiple visits that weren’t really visits. Starting with Miss Meriga Heerlein, familiar faces dropped by the room one after another. Freyr, Iluka, Dr. Sephia Glyston and Mr. Alex Noelheim, Chairman Robespierre, leader Shadiel, and other classmates who I was acquainted with. And lastly, the transmigrator who’d only visited briefly because he had some urgent matters to wrap up.

Shouldn’t this all be for Lotte? I asked her this and she replied that she’d had the same experience a couple days ago.

I looked down at my ill-fitting hospital clothes and tsked. Wasn’t this patient cosplay?

It was my first time having this many visitors, and I wasn’t that sick, either.

“By the way, has the lockdown been lifted?”

I asked Lorewell once I had some water.

The lockdown which had been imposed upon most cities including the capital of the Philiut Empire. As such, we weren’t able to leave the state and neither could anyone enter from the outside.

“It seems like it will gradually. A mouse couldn’t even get out before with how tight it was.”

“That’s good news. Have you contacted the Count?”

The main house of Count Saliere was located in the far border areas southwest of the capital. The distance from here to there was even farther than the distance to the northern front.

The hotline was to be used only for emergencies and more importantly, it wasn’t a device for making calls across wide areas. For long-distance communication in a time where the telephone wasn’t advanced, one had to conveniently teleport like a certain someone or go through the post office.

The former was something only a few Air Mages were able to do, and the latter had been unavailable due to the plague.

“I did. We’ve been exchanging letters since four days ago. Once this situation settles completely, they will send a servant to check on us.”

It seemed that the southwestern territory run by Count Saliere had also been exposed to the Black Death, meaning this had been a nationwide epidemic.

The beast’s hand had spread throughout the entire Empire, not only the capital. And simultaneously at that.

Normally, plagues spread slowly but gradually like how typhoons formed at the equator and quickly moved northward.

It was an unscientific pattern of transmission, even considering how Lotte had been infected despite the thorough quarantine. It didn’t take an expert to realize this. So wouldn’t the higher-ups have noticed that this was the work of a beast as well?

“Anyway, we’ll be going now. The infirmary teacher said you can be released tomorrow, so get some rest.”

“... Ah, I appreciate your consideration.”

Once Lotte and Lorewell left, I sat on the edge of the bed and organized my thoughts.

Anyway, this ordeal made it clear that a Cataclysm was no ordinary existence.

Take that gangly plague doctor, for example. His appearance couldn’t be described with any other word in existence besides ‘monster’.

‘The Great Nine Mechas of the Heavens’, that meant there were at least eight more of these bastards.

One was capable of this much, but for there to be nine of them? Who even needed the Demon King for an apocalypse?

And actually, this wasn’t the first time I’d come in contact with a Cataclysm.

The entrance ceremony.

The master of those mecha T-Rexes that had stopped me for no good reason had definitely been one of the Great Mechas. That is, if what I learned during Mr. Alex’s ‘Understanding Magic Beasts’ was true.

It had been dangerous then, too. Several buildings including the amphitheater north of the Academy and people’s homes had been destroyed, and that voice giggling how it was simply a greeting still rang in my ears. Why else would I have begun nuclear weapon development after that incident when it hadn’t been planned.

Yet it couldn’t compare to this situation.

There hadn’t been any casualties at the entrance ceremony, but thousands died from the Black Death.

I had only needed to take care of myself during the ceremony, but now there were many people to protect.

The devastation of the Empire wrought by a single Great Mecha was truly ‘cataclysmic’. In order to keep overcoming these crises, I needed massive amounts of knowledge.

It wasn’t knowledge related to physics or magic. Medicine, economics? Even less so.

The future.

I had to know what was going to happen in the future.

I searched nearby for paper. The hardcover flew over from somewhere and asked if I was looking for it which I ignored. Sorry, I just needed regular paper right now.

“Found it.”

I found a pile in the drawer right in front of me–medical record sheets that were blank on the back. It shouldn’t be a problem to use these as scrap paper. Probably.

Pulling the special quill from the hardcover, I dipped it in ink. This was quite a convenient magic tool. Although it was a pen that only appeared with the hardcover, it wrote easily on other papers, too.

After a moment’s contemplation, I drew a circle in the middle of the A4-size paper and extended branches around it. It was similar to creating a mind map but slightly different.

[What are you trying to do?]

“I’m going to draw a picture.”

[A picture...?]

“Yeah, a picture.”

A big fucking picture.

1. Likely referencing the legend of how Descartes developed the Cartesian Plane from watching a fly on the ceiling