066

It was a familiar ceiling.

I had woken up here several times over the past few months.

This was the infirmary.

Which meant I must have collapsed for a long time again, hovering between life and death.

Through my blurry vision, as if looking from underwater, I saw a familiar figure.

It was Rozalin.

"...How many days has it been since I woke up this time?"

"Two days."

Two days, not that long of a time.

"A bit faster than usual."

"Teacher, that's not what's important, so please snap out of it and get up."

?

This was the first time Rozalin had spoken to me so coldly.

What could have happened while I was unconscious?

I barely gathered my wits and sat up.

And I was faced with two figures, young and old, lying in the beds.

"Is Yuria here because of me again?"

"No. This time, Yuria just collapsed from overexertion. It has nothing to do with you, teacher."

"Then... this person?"

I moved the finger that was pointing at Yuria to the side.

Lying there was a woman with orange hair.

She was a woman with impressive, large, round glasses, and even though she was unconscious, her eyes and the corners of her mouth looked rather strict.

She was wearing the same attire as Yuria when she first came here.

A white that was even whiter than Akarind's uniform, with golden tassels, and a holy symbol drawn on the cuffs and near her navel.

"So you called a High Priestess for treatment."

I felt like I could grasp the context to some extent.

Looking at her, I vaguely remembered my condition before I fainted.

I couldn't even use one arm properly and was carried on Yeni's shoulder.

I think I lost consciousness then.

"No, she's a Saintess."

I nodded at Rozalin's answer.

My feeling of grasping the context was an illusion.

"When you say Saintess, you mean the current Saintess, right?"

"Yes. That Saintess."

"Why is that Saintess at Akarind Academy?"

No, a Saintess could be here.

Since we have the Saintess-in-training.

But a Saintess lying unconscious next to the Saintess-in-training, isn't that impossible?

Why on earth is this person... I was thinking, and then I realized the reason.

Ah, this person. She healed me.

"But wait, not just Yuria, but a real Saintess also collapses from healing me?"

"Exactly. What on earth are you, teacher?"

Even if you ask me, I don't know.

According to Berlis, the reason my body hurts so much is because nine, no, now eight, of my Mana Roads are blocked by a cold energy.

Ignoring that and forcefully swinging a sword caused mana to infiltrate my body, and in that process, I felt various kinds of pain.

The reason the pain is different each time is probably because the swordsmanship pursues a different sword intent.

As I was thinking that, one of the people lying down let out a groan.

And with just the strength of her upper body's core, she sat up without any rebound.

"...Oh my? Did I faint?"

As if she had been sitting from the beginning, her body was fixed without any resistance.

Didn't they say she was a Saintess?

Just from that one movement, it was believable even if she were a highly trained knight, not a Saintess.

She looked around and our eyes met.

"Ah!"

She pointed at me with a surprised expression.

"No way!"

"Pardon?"

"To think I'd meet someone with a constitution like yours here."

My ears perked up.

Not just me, but the people with me, especially Rozalin, approached the Saintess with sparkling eyes.

"What do you know about my constitution?"

"Of course I know! It's a constitution I've only seen in records, and the last time it appeared in this world was probably 300 years ago."

I had such a constitution?

"I'm sorry, I was so excited I only talked about what I wanted without introducing myself."

The Saintess got up.

She looked perfectly fine, to the point that it was hard to believe she had been lying down with a pale face just a moment ago.

A faint purple glow emanated from her entire body, about 1/100th of the energy that flashed from Yuria's eyes? A faint color, almost invisible, scattered from her body into the air.

It added to her mystique.

Moreover, this glow wasn't just a glow.

The air where the glow reached became refreshing.

Just looking at it made my eyes feel refreshed and my body calm.

"I am Ganemia, the Saintess of the Holy Kingdom. I hear you are in charge of our Yuria."

"Yes. I am in charge of student Yuria, though I may be lacking. Student Yuria's academic achievements have always been outstanding, and her responsible attitude has been a pleasure to see, and now seeing you, Saintess Ganemia, I think I understand why."

"Oh my, you flatter me. I haven't done anything special for Yuria; it must be because the voice and teachings of God were right. Yuria is a good child who listens to our words well."

Ahaha.

Ohoho.

The usual back-and-forth of a home visit or a parent-teacher conference continued.

Beside me, Rozalin looked at me with a slightly dumbfounded expression.

What? This is what it's like to be a working adult.

"...So, what is my condition?"

"Hmm, how should I explain this? There are paths in a person's body through which mana flows."

"I already know the basics."

I relayed the information I had heard from Berlis.

Ganemia nodded as if that was good.

"It's a rare disease, but you've studied well. That's right. We call it the Path of the Genius."

"Path of the Genius?"

"A disaster sent by the heavens. It's a disease that's that hard to cure. Your life expectancy is... a year at most?"

Ganemia very calmly stated my remaining lifespan.

What is this.

I looked to the side with a dumbfounded expression.

Rozalin and Hati's expressions turned dark.

"W-wait a minute, Saintess ma'am! What do you mean, our professor, is terminally ill!? I'm going through so much trouble trying to save this person!"

"Oh my, who did you say this person was?"

"A security guard at this school!"

"A security guard... interrupting?"

A strange sense of contempt crossed Ganemia's face.

Just as I was wondering if this was her original personality.

"And Yuria's senior!"

"Oh my, you were a student at the academy with our Yuria. It's nice to meet you."

At Rozalin's additional remark, Ganemia's expression changed back to a business-like one.

"Terminally ill!"

"Ah, right? Hmm, how should I put it. Humans use mana in more ways than you think. Not just for physical exertion, but in every aspect of breathing and using energy. But if that line is broken, you'll eventually die when you cross a certain threshold. In fact, people usually die in their 20s, so it's a miracle you've lived this long."

Her eyes scanned my entire body.

"It must be because of exercise."

"By exercise, do you mean swordsmanship?"

"Yes. The reason the Path of the Genius is called the Path of the Genius is because people with this talent become exceptionally intelligent."

Ganemia tapped her head with her finger.

"And it's tremendous. A part of their brain becomes so unique that others can't even come close. It's a side effect of the mana that has spread throughout the body eventually filling the brain."

Her words made me guess something.

Since I was young, my body temperature was generally low.

And I was smarter and quicker-witted than my peers.

I didn't easily forget things I saw once, and I could logically deduce the situation by observing the subtle expressions and actions of adults.

I often predicted what the other person would say and answered first, and it wasn't difficult to learn new knowledge.

All without knowing that it was all leading me to my death.

"By swinging a sword and using your body, you made the mana spread throughout your body instead of going to your brain. The pain must have been considerable, right? Thanks to that, you lived a long life."

But the biggest irony was that the crisis that nearly killed me was what saved me.

What if I had been satisfied with being appointed as an administrator for a high-ranking noble?

Then I would have died young while trying to realize my dreams there.

To think that one choice brought me here.

"But that mana has torn your entire body to shreds. So there's nothing to be done."

"I recently ate a good elixir and gained some enlightenment, and I restored one of the nine lines..."

"Yes, that's the cure."

Ganemia said with a bright smile.

Huh?

"You've literally poured elixirs into yourself, right? There are nine places in a person's body where a huge amount of energy, enough to be called a genius, is blocked. That has been accumulating for over 20, no, 30 years. So to break through that, you have to eat ten times that amount of elixir. Nine times."

"...That much more in the future?"

I don't know the value of the elixir I ate.

So I looked at Rozalin.

Rozalin and Hati's eyes were trembling uncontrollably.

The Saintess had a knack for silencing Rozalin and Hati every time she spoke today.

"No way. We fed him a thousand-year-old polygonum, magma snakes, and elixirs like crazy!"

"Pardon me? This person ate all of that by himself?"

And Ganemia also looked at me with a surprised expression at Rozalin's words.

But her eyes looked like she was looking at a shopaholic who had burned through thousands of gold in one night.

"Didn't you say that was the cure?"

"That's right. That's why no one has ever been fully cured, and everyone has died. There's a limit to the amount of money an individual can afford, and the limit for medicinal ingredients is even clearer than money. The person who treated the most in history was three lines? Even that made the world weep."

"When you say 'made the world weep'..."

"When the blocked line is cleared, the mana that has been stagnant in the body begins to flow. And using that talent, one can boast of an even more genius brain, or display talent in magic and swordsmanship."

But Ganemia's eyes as she said that were strangely cold.

"And they die. Clearing one line gives you about a year? At most, two years of life."

"The reason Yuria and you, Saintess, collapse while treating me is...?"

"Even if we are Saintesses, there's a limit to the amount of holy power a single person can hold. If we try to heal a body that has been festering with accumulated mana for 20, 30 years, instead of just recovering from a momentary injury, our holy power evaporates in an instant and causes a shock."

Ganemia shook her head, saying that she didn't know the exact mechanism.

Not everything was cleanly and perfectly understood, but I still got about 99% of the information.

It was a better harvest than just having my body healed for now.

And a more desperate, and a story with a set end.

"Thank you."

I slowly bowed my head.

Did she guess something from my voice and feelings?

"May your remaining life be blessed."

The Saintess gave me a small blessing.

"...Fuck, who the hell says our teacher is going to die."

Rozalin ground her teeth and came to my side.

"My teacher is not going to die. I'm not going to let him die. The medicinal ingredients, I'll find them myself. I'll search this whole world, and if this world is not enough, I'll search for things from other worlds and bring them."

"Rozalin."

I calmed down the somewhat agitated Rozalin.

Ganemia, as if accustomed to such resentment, approached Yuria's side.

How many lives and deaths must she have witnessed in her 30 years as a Saintess?

The death of one person creates dozens of people left behind.

If she had bid farewell to thousands of people in 30 years, it meant she had faced hundreds of thousands of people left behind.

"Let's find a way."

"Yes. Seeing that you've reached information that ordinary people don't know, you might be able to find information that I don't know either."

"Fortunately, the mage at our academy is competent, so I was able to find out."

Ah, wait.

Berlis is not a normal mage, but a necromancer, so would it be a problem to bring it up at a time like this?

I tried my best to hide my feelings and smiled awkwardly.

It seems like if it's just a simple parent-teacher conference, she'll leave soon... it won't be a problem, right?

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