NOVEL NEXT Chapter 9: The Saint (2)
Ray had managed to calm down somewhat.
Once he got home, Ray immediately took a seat at his desk.
This was because something had been nagging at him for a while.
“The tumor is incredibly potent. It appears to be a recently formed tumor, but oddly enough, it’s unusually powerful.”
Usually, tumors, even those that develop in the chest, don’t multiply quickly enough to infect the lungs.
Although tumors inherently multiply without end, this one seemed excessively fast.
“If this is the tumor, the moment it develops, death is inevitable. Especially if even the High Priests, renowned for their healing abilities, couldn’t cure it.”
High Priests are reputed to have divine powers that can heal any disease.
This is what everyone says in books and stories, and everyone admires their extraordinary powers.
Ancient texts state that High Priests have divine powers second only to saints, holy women, and the Pope, underscoring the unimaginable power of High Priests.
Ray, who had gleaned information about divine powers from the archives, had been quite taken by the tales of High Priests reviving people whose hearts had stopped beating.
However, after the tumor incident, he couldn’t even force a laugh when remembering those stories.
“Hmph. What use is a High Priest if they can’t even cure a tumor patient?”
Ray’s opinion of the High Priests in his homeland had diminished, considering them even less valuable than his neighbor’s dog, Baekgu.
Ray shook his head and mumbled to himself.
“Sigh… A single surgery wasn’t enough to understand.”
If this had been the modern world, he could have made some educated guesses. Unfortunately, this was a different world.
The difference between diseases here and those in the modern world, and how these diseases varied, was unknown to him. Making rash assumptions could lead to confusion later on.
“If it’s contagious, that would be a major issue… Oh, if only I had a microscope! And while we’re at it, some soju too…”
“Ugh…”
A soft groan echoed from the bedroom.
The man, examining his two hands, murmured quietly.
“I’m… still alive…”
He had undoubtedly experienced death.
The sensation of his breath ceasing, his consciousness fading, and the sounds around him growing silent, even if just for an instant.
He had heard the shaman’s proclamation of his death and his family’s weeping.
But how was he still alive?
Then, Chloe, Viscount Gaid’s wife who had been dozing off next to him, spoke through her tears.
“You’re back, my dear… Sob sob…”
Watching Chloe break down into tears made him feel like crying as well.
His nose prickled and, as a Viscount, he tried to uphold his dignity, but eventually, tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Sob… I’m back, my dear…”
“You had to return. The saint healed you, so you had to rise.”
The Viscount asked his wife, who was dabbing her tears with a handkerchief.
“A saint? What do you mean, my dear?”
“It was a saint, Gaid. He entered this bedroom and revived you.”
Upon hearing his wife’s words, Viscount Gaid felt as if an orc had struck the back of his head with a club.
“No, no… Resurrecting the dead… That’s not the work of a saint, that’s a god!”
“Could it be… Even a god…”
Chloe paused, a scene flashing in her mind.
‘Do you understand what you’ve done! Pay for your sins!’
‘Hold!’
Remembering that moment, Chloe felt chills all over her body.
Reflecting on it, the boy didn’t appear to be older than ten.
Could a boy of that age resurrect the dead and overpower the captain of a noble family’s knight order with just a glance?
Even a saint couldn’t accomplish that.
Furthermore, even though he was a saint, he didn’t use mana!
“Reflecting on it, he really could be a god… What should we do…”
Seeing the worried expression on the pale-faced lady, the Viscount’s face also turned pale.
“Did we possibly make a mistake? Please tell me we didn’t.”
“……”
Seeing Chloe remain silent, Viscount Gaid asked again.
“How grave was our mistake? Was it a mistake for which we didn’t pay the price? Or was it merely a slight rudeness?”
Upon hearing the Viscount’s words, she collapsed into her seat and spoke.
“…I told him to die… To just die somewhere…”
Hearing her words sent a chill down Viscount Gaid’s spine.
The wrath of a god was terrifying.
No matter how gentle the god, he wouldn’t spare a glance for humans who repaid kindness with hostility.
And what about the followers of that god?
If this truth came to light, the temple would be stormed, and Viscount Gaid’s family would be reduced to ashes overnight.
“Why, why would you say such things! Why would you utter such nonsense to someone whom even devout service wouldn’t suffice! Who told you to say such things! Tell me now!”
“…It was Ilyssia.”
At Chloe’s words, Viscount Gaid was once again left speechless.
“I, Ilyssia?”
“Sob sob sob… What should we do now!”
Viscount Gaid left the sobbing lady and shouted towards the outside.
“Bring Ilyssia here right now!”
Upon his command, the butler waiting outside responded without a moment’s hesitation.
“Yes, I will bring her immediately.”
At that moment, the person who was being revered as a god by someone else was in great shock.
“Why can you do everything else but not this?”
Saein said while resting her hand on her cheek.
“I, I will try again! I will try again!”
Ray gathered mana as he spoke.
The mana that had flowed along the mana road transformed into an immense power.
“Heal!”
……
Despite his confident shout, there was no response.
Ray clutched his head and screamed.
“Fire! Light!”
Before he even felt the mana move, a small flame and light combined next to him, creating a spectacular scene.
“Why can I use all the other spells but not healing magic!”
“Ca, calm down and try again. Just let the mana seep in. Think of overlaying the original mana onto the other person.”
“Huff… Huff… Alright.”
He inhaled deeply, regained his composure, and started to amass the mana that he could now manipulate more naturally than his physical body.
A radiant light began to invade his surroundings.
This was the mana that he had summoned with resolve.
In terms of purity, there were hardly any others whose mana could rival his.
As the incredibly dense mana filled the room, Saein trembled.
‘This is truly extraordinary mana… Even I wouldn’t be able to repel such potent mana…’
She fretted internally about being overwhelmed by the power of the mana. However, she didn’t know what kind of mana road and mental strength her son possessed, but it seemed that he was coping well with such a large quantity of mana within his body.
If Saein discovered that Ray’s mana road differed from ordinary mana roads, then she would comprehend everything.
From the start, Ray didn’t draw mana from within his body.
He extracted the mana from the atmosphere, allowing it to permeate his body.
During this process, he merely transformed it, without retaining the originally free nature of mana within himself.
Therefore, naturally, the pure essence of mana existed entirely within him.
Such an astounding quantity of mana accumulated.
Naturally, everything around him should have been drawn into the aftermath of the mana.
However, the mana raised by Ray didn’t cause any damage and simply gathered.
The control he exhibited over mana could indeed be described as monstrous.
“Huuuuaaaah! Heal!”
It wasn’t some grand, wide-range interpersonal magic, but his kihapsound was as if he was casting Meteor.
His immense mana flowed onto the injured deer, beginning to radiate a brilliant light.
The blue light of mana enveloped the deer, starting to assume a soothing healing color.
Ray, with eyes full of expectation, observed the deer, not blinking even for a moment.
“Kkeeeeeeek!”
The deer died instantly.
Saein commented while observing the scene.
“My God… An instant death… Could this be a new type of interpersonal magic? I was certain I taught healing.”
“It should have definitely healed…”
Saein and Ray had ventured into the forest to practice magic.
There, they discovered an injured deer, and Ray started learning the healing spell as part of his magic training.
Since Ray had recently performed surgery, he needed to gather more knowledge, so he concentrated on learning the magic.
His mother believed there would be no issues as he had been a smart son who never asked twice about anything she had taught him before.
However, in the process of teaching healing, Ray conjured a dreadful instant-death magic.
He didn’t sense the flow of mana that was terrifying enough to frighten Saein, and she couldn’t imagine anyone who could resist the high-density mana her son possessed.
Ray, whether aware of Saein’s thoughts or not, scratched the back of his head and murmured.
“A doctor who can’t heal, what kind of nonsense is this…”
He comprehended what his mother had told him.
If he simply enhanced the target’s recovery ability with mana, it should have worked.
But his mana was somewhat unique, and it didn’t reach the recipient.
The excessively pure mana was nothing more than poison to others.
The extremely pure mana that the body couldn’t accept halted the vital organs that required healing, ultimately causing death.
Thus, in the end, Ray became a wizard and doctor who ended up killing the opponent with healing.
For a moment, Ray envisioned himself smiling at injured children and using healing magic.
‘Heal!’
‘Wow, pretty light… Kehack. Cough!’
‘……’
Just the thought sent shivers down his spine as he imagined the malevolent image of a demon king.
“From now on, healing magic is sealed.”
Ray’s thinking was not without reason.
To receive his healing, one needed to have a mana path that could accept Ray’s mana as it was.
However, there was no way that young children or the nobles who remained in their mansions could do so.
If they possessed such a mana road, there would be almost no need to get injured in the first place.
Upon their arrival home, they found Eil splitting firewood.
Upon seeing Saein and Ray, he paused for a moment, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and spoke.
“You’re a bit late.”
“Ray spent a lot of time learning magic. In the end, he couldn’t do it. Hohoho.”
Eil was surprisingly shocked by her words.
“Not even this kid? What kind of magic were you teaching him?”
Saein laughed happily at Eil’s reaction and replied.
“Heal.”
“Heal?”
Eil tilted his head at her words.
It was strange for the kid who usually learned a spell after hearing it once to fail at learning a 1-circle spell.
But Saein just smiled as if it didn’t matter.
She teased Ray all the way home, but he tried to remain calm, though his slight sulking was noticeable.
It was almost the first time he had shown such a childlike side.
“Hohoho. Oh, how cute.”
Saein said as she pinched Ray’s cheek.
Even while his cheek was being pinched, Ray vowed never to learn healing magic again.
Because if he went to learn another healing spell, Saein would surely be just as happy as she was now.