Chapter 5: Weighing Nostalgia Against the Future (part 2)

Many of the homes were shanties. It was unsanitary, and prone to outbreaks of

disease. The people who gathered here were of questionable origin, and the crime

rate was high.

That was the sort of place it had been, anyway.

"That's all in the past now," I said.

"It's changed?" Liscia asked.

"It'd be faster to just show you. I mean, when I was considering what to do about

the future of the slum town..." I made a gesture like I had something like a hose in my

hands as I spoke. "...I met someone who was strangely enthusiastic, going around

saying, 'Filth will be sterilized!'"

As we arrived in the former slum town...

"Huh?" Liscia tilted her head to the side in confusion.

"Hm?" Owen did the same.

When she saw their reaction, Carla did, too. "Is there something strange here,

Liscia?"

Even after she had fallen to become a slave, Liscia had forced Carla to keep

talking to her the way she had before. They were still good friends. It would be an

issue if it happened in public, but I wasn't about to tell Liscia how to behave herself

in private.

Still with a blank look on her face, Liscia responded to Carla, "Huh? ...Oh, yeah.

I've never been to the slums before, but I'm surprised at how different it is from

everything I'd heard."

"What had you heard?" asked Carla.

"That it's a dark, dank, moldy place with poor public order. I've heard the same,"

Owen explained.

He was right. The slums had been like that before.

"It's true that they look sparse, but the place looks pretty clean to me, you know?"

said Carla.

What we saw before us now was a scene of houses that just looked like white

blocks of tofu lined up. To put it in terms that a modern audience will understand,

imagine the sort of temporary houses that are set up in the affected area after an

earthquake. While they were spartan, they got a lot of sun and were bright. They

also were well ventilated, so they weren't dank. Admittedly, they could get a bit too

dry in winter. Even so, when we saw children drawing on the ground and playing, it

was hard to imagine that public order was bad here.

"Is this really the slums?" Liscia asked.

"Yeah. It's gotten a lot better, hasn't it?" I responded, puffing up my chest proudly.

"When I was addressing the sanitation problem in the city, I worked hard to get

everything in shape here."

"The sanitation problem?" asked Liscia. "If I recall, you mentioned that when you

were banning carriages from going down all but the largest roads, and when you set

up the water and sewer system, right? Was reworking these slums a part of that,

too?"

"I'm glad to see you remember," I said. "Yeah. It's easy for pathogenic bacteria to

grow in dark, dank, places that are poorly ventilated. On top of that, this being a

slum town, the residents don't get proper nutrition, so it's easier for them to get sick.

If an epidemic had gotten started, this would have been fertile ground for it to

spread rapidly."

"Pathogenic bacteria... I feel like I may have heard that word before," said Liscia.

She and the others were looking at me with faces that seemed to say "What are

those? Are they tasty?"

"Huh? Didn't I explain last time?" I asked.

Ah, come to think of it, I used the word when talking about the sedimentation

ponds, but I didn't explain it in detail, I thought. In that case... I guess I have to start by

explaining how people get sick.

"Well... In this world, there are little creatures too small for the eye to see, and

they exist in numbers far too great to count in the air, the ground, in our bodies—

everywhere you can imagine. These tiny creatures make things rot and cause

illnesses. On the other hand, they also cause foods to ferment, and there are some

with positive effects, too."

Using my meager knowledge of science (I was a humanities student, remember),

I explained to Liscia and the others about bacteria and microorganisms. I didn't feel

like they were getting it all that well, but for Liscia, who knew that my knowledge

could be far ahead of this country's academia in some places, she seemed satisfied

that "If Souma says they exist, they probably do."

The study of medicine and hygiene wasn't particularly well developed in this

world. One large factor in that was probably the existence of light magic. Light magic

heightened the body's ability to heal, even allowing it to recover from serious

wounds. It could even reattach severed limbs if administered quickly.

It seemed that, because of that, the study of medicine and hygiene hadn't

developed. That was why, in this world, there were very few who knew of the

existence of bacteria and microorganisms.

Light magic only activated the natural ability of the body to heal, so it had the

shortcoming of not being able to heal infectious diseases or the wounds of elderly

people whose natural ability to heal had declined. Because of that, until just recently,

the use of shady drugs and dodgy folk remedies had been rampant when it had come

to the treatment of infectious diseases. When I'd addressed the issue of hygiene, I'd

thought something needed to be done about this situation posthaste.

But before I could do that, I had first needed people to become aware of the

existence of bacteria and microorganisms they couldn't see.

"But how can people be aware of something they can't see?" Liscia asked.

"In this world, there are people who know about bacteria and microorganisms...

or rather, a race that does," I said. "When that race focuses with their 'third eye,' they

can see microorganisms that you wouldn't normally be able to see. I enlisted their

help."

"A third eye... Do you mean the three-eyed race?" Liscia asked, and I nodded.

The three-eyed race. They were a race that, as you would expect from their name,

had three eyes.

They lived in the warm lands in the north of the kingdom. Their defining trait

was that, in addition to the standard left and right eyes, they also had a third eye in a

slightly higher position in the middle of their forehead. It would be fine to imagine

them looking like Tien Shin*** or ***suke Sharaku, but it wasn't really an eyeball like

that. That eye was small and red. At a glance, it looked like a jewel was embedded

there.

Liscia let out a sigh. "I'm amazed they agreed to help. I've heard their race hates

having contact with outsiders."

"The reason for their xenophobia actually stems from that third eye, it seems."

The three-eyed could see things other races couldn't. It seemed that had been the

reason they'd grown to reject outsiders. The three-eyed could tell if someone had

good hygiene or not at a glance. That made them natural neat freaks, and they had

started to avoid contact with other races as much as possible.

On top of that, with that third eye, the three-eyed had learned of the existence of

bacteria. They knew them to be the cause of illnesses that couldn't be treated with

light magic. However, no matter how much the three-eyed insisted on this, the other

races who couldn't see the bacteria wouldn't believe them. In a world filled with

superstitions, even if they spoke the truth, it might seem like they were trying to

throw the world into chaos with some dubious new theory.

Because of that, the three-eyed had come to hate contact with other races, and

they'd developed their own independent system of medical knowledge and practice

only for their own race. When it came to the study of infectious diseases in

particular, their medical science was centuries ahead of this world. In this world

where humans and beastmen were thought to have lived long lives if they made it to

sixty, the three-eyed who originally had the same life expectancy now lived to eighty

on average.

"That's how I, as someone who knew what they were saying is the truth, was able

to arrange talks and request their assistance," I said. "With that done, in order to

demonstrate their abilities, I created a system that would let other races see bacteria

and microorganisms."

In other words, an optical microscope. This world already had lenses. (They had

glasses, after all.) For the rest, I'd drawn out a diagram of how I vaguely

remembered a microscope working, and the academics and craftsmen had created

one for me. That optical microscope had proved that the three-eyed were telling the

truth.

"But, man, the three-eyed really are incredible," I said. "I'd never have imagined

they'd already developed antibiotics."

"Auntie-buy-ought-ex?"

"Substances that prevent bacteria from multiplying like I was telling you about."

The famous example would be penicillin, I suppose. I mean, even a humanities

student like me had heard of it. (Though it was knowledge I'd picked up from

manga.) It was extracted from a blue-green colored mold, I think?

In the case of the three-eyed, they were extracting theirs from a special sort of

slime creature that could live in unsanitary conditions. They were a subspecies of

gelin, and they had the same sort of shape as Liquid Metal *limes. They had no name,

but I'd taken this chance to christen them "gelmedics." From what I had heard of its

effects, there was no questioning it was an antibiotic, but while it was similar to

penicillin, it might also be very different.

Incidentally, the three-eyed just called this drug "the drug."

That felt like it was just going to get confusing in the future, so I'd used my

authority as king to give it the name "three-eyedine." It was the three-eyed race's

medicine, so I'd shortened that to three-eyedine. I mean, it would have been fine

calling it "the drug," or "the pill"... but, as a former Japanese person, I'd always have

been thinking of completely different drugs.

"This... three-eyedine, was it?" Liscia asked. "It prevents the bacteria from

multiplying, but what good does that do?"

"It's a cure for infectious diseases," I said. "Basically, you can think of it as a

wonder drug that treats epidemic diseases and will prevent wounds from festering, I

guess."

"Treat epidemic diseases?! It can do that?!"

I couldn't blame Liscia for being surprised. While this country's medical

treatments (in particular, regenerative treatments) could be, in some limited ways,

ahead of modern science, on the whole, they were at the same level as Japan in the

Edo Period. When it came to infectious diseases, they would drink medicinal teas,

trying to ease the symptoms. However, with antibiotics, it was possible to treat the

underlying cause of illnesses to some degree.

Liscia looked taken aback. "That's terrible... We've been overlooking an incredible

drug like that all this time..."

"Well, the other races didn't recognize the existence of bacteria and

microorganisms, so even if the three-eyed had told you that antibiotics could fight

them, you probably weren't going to believe them. If you turn it around, the threeeyed were only able to find this way of fighting bacteria because they could see

them."

"So, can we mass produce this three-eyedine?!" Liscia asked, looking desperate to

hear more.

Yeah, I could understand how she felt. I'd had a similar response myself during

talks with the three-eyed elder. However, Carla and Owen, who were watching us,

were wide-eyed with surprise at the way Liscia was acting.

I nodded to Liscia. "We don't have the capacity for it yet, but we're slowly

increasing production. I had already distributed it to the military when the war with

Amidonia broke out, actually. Didn't you notice?"

"Fortunately, I never needed to take any... Ah! Now that you mention it, I did

think the number of fatalities was low given the number of wounded in that battle.

Was that thanks to three-eyedine?"

"Could be," I said. "Bacteria getting into a wound and making it worse is one of

the things it can help to prevent, after all."

"Incredible..." she whispered.

"Anyway, the three-eyed are giving their full cooperation, and the country has no

intention of being stingy when it comes to medical care. The biggest bottleneck will

be the number of gelmedics that they can extract three-eyedine from, but thanks to

Tomoe, we easily solved that problem."

Slime creatures like gelins were actually categorized as plants, and she couldn't

communicate with them as well as animals; but from their thoughts, she had still

been able to learn their preferred environment and the conditions needed for them

to multiply. Now we had the gelmedics actively multiplying in their breeding

grounds.

"Our little sister is way too convenient, isn't she?" I added.

"She sure is," said Liscia.

The public had started calling Tomoe the Wise Wolf Princess. Given the

rhinosauruses, the orangutan army of Van, and now the gelmedics... there was no

doubt she was living up to that name.

"And, well, on that note, our country is in the middle of a medical and hygienic

revolution, and one part of that was fixing up these slums," I said. "We tore down the

old houses to improve the sunlight and air flow. While we were at it, we stamped out

the criminals and illegal drugs, which was cleaning up the area in a different way.

We had all the residents move to new, prefabricated huts. The huts are small and

cramped, but they're free. On top of that, by having them work at cleaning up the

city, we're able to both support them financially and manage the city's hygiene."

"You're doing all sorts of stuff, huh. ...You're not pushing yourself too hard, are

you?" Liscia asked, looking concerned.