Chapter 1: Prologue

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With the book publication, this WEB version has been slightly changed.

To avoid it being treated as a digest version, it seems that more than one-third of the text and similar scenes must not overlap, so the flow is similar but different.

Therefore, the book and the WEB version can be enjoyed separately, so if you like, please pick up both!

And because the theme is veterinary medicine and medicine, the book version is the same, but this WEB version especially is not recommended for those who expect only a light story.

It is for adults who want to carefully think about otherworld creatures, agriculture, medicine, and their improvement, and for people who like dragons and fantasy romance and who love living things.

I would be happy if you could enjoy it like the original Grimm fairy tales versus the ordinary versions, in relation to the book version.

Now then, there is a profession called veterinarian.

The animal doctor, Doctor Dolittle, the disasters of the beloved dog Rosinante, and so on—that thing depicted in various works.

Since this profession is handled in manga, novels, and even movies, there is probably almost no one who does not know of it.

A doctor who deals with animals.

That is the impression most people have of it.

But to tell the truth, that is not all there is to it.

Of the veterinary students who pass the national exam, about a thousand each year, roughly forty to fifty percent find employment at animal hospitals, and the rest are active in places not often shown in dramas.

In easy-to-understand places, such as zoos and aquariums.

In harder-to-understand places, such as agricultural mutual aid associations called Nousai, hygiene departments at public health centers, airport quarantine, research positions at pharmaceutical companies, and so on.

While veterinarians are popular, because they deal with animals, there are many ways in which things are quite different from human doctors—but let us set that aside.

Kazami Shingo, dressed in casual clothes that could just barely be taken for a light suit, was one such person.

To describe him in a word, he was a man of safe choices.

If asked yes or no, he would first worry, hmm, what should I do?

If he went to the cafeteria, for the time being he would choose the recommended or daily special.

If asked about his desires, he would answer without hesitation that his only one was to live for his hobbies.

Since childhood, he had been influenced by anime, games, manga, novels, and other things filled with dreams, romance, and fantasy. Well, in a modern age overflowing with subculture, that is probably not so rare.

It is said that you are the protagonist of your own life, and perhaps the reason he chose the rare profession of veterinarian was because he wanted to play out a part of such dreams and romance himself.

Because the number hired is only one-tenth that of doctors, veterinarians are said in some quarters to be even more difficult to enter than medical doctors. Such veterinarians are, as expected, different from others, and even within the university they are a little unusual.

First, at national and public universities there are only about thirty of them, and because they share the same aspirations, the whole class tends to become very close.

There are those who enter immediately after high school, and those who take one or two gap years are commonplace. Among the six academic years, there are also several people in their thirties or forties who entered after graduating from university or after working in society.

Also, many exchange events are set up with upperclassmen, and it can be said that the characteristic of the veterinary department is that everyone knows each other and is on good terms, including the professors.

Because of the special nature of the veterinary profession, the sense of solidarity is strong, and from the student days there is also a nationwide connection called the Japan Veterinary Student Association (JAVS).

That is not only exchange among veterinary universities nationwide, but also mediation for exchange study abroad with overseas veterinary universities and arranging lectures with veterinarians working in society, so there are movements not bound to a single university.

The math, social studies, Japanese, and English classes that he had attended grudgingly until then disappeared around the end of the second year of university, and he could bury himself in specialized veterinary scholarship and practical training.

Combined with these characteristics and the freedom of the university, if one only has motivation, one can lead a truly fulfilling student life.

Kazami was the type of person who found it a shame to leave such a university and extended his moratorium a little longer by going on to graduate school.

If there were classes, which were his main duty, he stayed at the university; if not, he did research in the laboratory he belonged to. If he had spare time, he earned a certain amount of income through veterinary-related part-time work introduced by the university’s connections—that was his lifestyle.

A laboratory is a place where one performs experiments and routine work under a professor specializing in the academic field one wants to study.

It is broadly divided into three systems. The basic biological system. The infectious disease system. The clinical system—these three.

The basic system is anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, toxicology, and so on—research on the basic functions of living things and the effects of drugs and poisons on living organisms. It is a place to learn the fundamentals of how living things work, and if developed, it can also conduct research on regenerative medicine such as iPS cells.

The infectious disease system is microbiology, parasitology, infectious disease studies, public health studies, and so on—research on microorganisms that cause disease. It is fine to imagine research in laboratories equipped with biosafety measures, or inspections of food poisoning and facility hygiene.

The clinical system is surgery, internal medicine, radiology, and so on—conducting research while doing actual work at an animal hospital in the university’s animal hospital. That research mainly concerns the treatment of animals brought to the hospital.

Among these, the one Kazami belonged to was a pathology laboratory classified under the basic system.

There, routine work included investigating the causes of death of industrial animals rendered unfit for use due to disease or deformity, and of zoo animals that had died of illness, as well as appraising pathological tissues requested by animal hospitals.

“Kazami-kun, sorry, but a farmer is bringing in a cow with pneumonia today. Could you do the dissection for me? I and the university students have classes and no free hands.”

“Yes, that’s fine. I should compile the report as usual and take a few photos during the dissection, right?”

“Sorry about this, I’m counting on you.”

While he had been reading through paper after paper about viruses in the laboratory, the elderly professor came to say that, so he lightly replied, “No, it’s fine.”

It was the usual thing for work passed down to the laboratory to be handled by university students and graduate students under the professor’s instructions.

The professor asks students to assist with his work and research, and the students receive advice from the professor for their own research. It is that kind of give-and-take.

“So when is that one coming?”

“I think it should be here soon—oh, looks like it’s here.”

As they spoke, the rumbling sound of a truck engine came from outside.

The professor patted Kazami’s shoulder to emphasize the point, looked at his watch, and leaving behind the words, “Oops, this won’t do, this won’t do,” hurried away.

“Well then, I guess I’ll get to it.”

It was a bit heavy labor to do alone, but there was no helping it.

Kazami put his arms through his coveralls and quickly changed, and since he could not keep the other party waiting, he ran to meet them.

□

Since ancient times, blood was said to have power.

If there was something abnormal about it, people would fall ill; if it was lost, it would lead to death; and it was even said that drinking the blood of animals would stir vitality, so one could not help but think there must be something to it.

And in fact, blood enhanced the power of Law.

It was even said that if blood were collected from a hundred or a thousand Law-users, one could cause miracles or cataclysms.

Once, that miracle was achieved four times.

It was the miracle of summoning a person from another world.

The first one was summoned by chance on a battlefield soaked in blood, and though at a loss for words, he helped those wounded in battle, and later guided people and quelled the sparks of conflict.

In all of those miracles, many people were saved by the knowledge of the foreign land.

What was brought took various forms—weapons, tactics, culture, technology, food, and so on—but all of them became achievements equal to miracles. People say the foreign land is a world hundreds of years ahead of this one, or perhaps immeasurably further.

The guest who brought such things from another world—the Marebito—was revered as Keika, and was treated with more fanfare than heroes or great heroes.

Monsters ran rampant, and nations fought seeking territory.

This world repeated its history while remaining next to both prosperity and decline.

And long after the fourth summoning of a Marebito. A single lord appeared who tried to bring about that miracle for his own sake.

On the surface, it was to suppress the damage from an epidemic and famine.

For that purpose, he would thin out about five hundred of the territory’s “capital.” And through that sacrifice, summon Keika, and with that knowledge repel invasions from other countries and aim for the prosperity of his domain—.

Of course, that was the public reason, and he was trying to do it for his own profit. If not, there was a danger that he would be driven from his position as lord due to responsibility for his past failures.

But if things continued as they were, decline was certain.

It was surely an irony that if such selfish desire worked well, the sacrifices among the people would be kept to a minimum.

Kill the small to protect the great.

Such words exist in every age and everywhere. There is always a shadow behind the brilliant stage.

The preparation for the miracle was exactly like a slaughter scene.

One after another, blood-filled bags of flesh—the work of simply cutting people apart—was carried out.

The place was an old, storied guardian forest.

It was wrapped in a pure white veil of morning mist, but beneath it red stains were forming steadily and increasing everywhere.

The once-gentle scent of the forest was now mixed with the raw stench of blood.

There were three kinds of people in the forest.

People kneeling and trembling as they waited for the blade to fall, people swinging the blade. And then, though only a very few, people watching it.

Among the kneeling people, gagged and with their hands bound by rope, there were old people, and rugged-faced men who looked as if they had committed some crime, as well as village girls and young children all mixed together.

The knights wrapped in cloaks calmly cut off the heads of such people one after another.

Grab the hair, expose the neck, and simply cut down the person who weeps and tries to recite a death poem. After that, with a thud, they fall face-first to the ground.

This went on endlessly, endlessly—.

A number reaching five hundred was being handled by only about a dozen people. There was nothing in this place but a scene that would surely break the mind of anyone with a normal psyche.

“Honestly, I can’t stand this. This kind of killing is neither interesting nor anything else. I’ll go around the surroundings to check for anything abnormal while reporting to the lord, so leave it to someone with a taste for murder. Stop anyone who hesitates. If it’s half-hearted, both the killer and the killed just suffer needlessly. If you’re short on hands, call me. Understood, Glen?”

“Understood, Commander.”

The demi-human knight, who had watched such a scene with cold eyes, left the place to his aide.

Away from the site of the killings was the aforementioned lord—the knight’s owner and the one carrying out this killing.

He twisted his mouth into a smile welling up from his fat belly. For him, whose expectations were swelling as he imagined what was to come, the scene before his eyes must have been fading away.

Kneeling before such a lord, the knight reported the situation with a cold demeanor.

“Um, Riiru-sama. Is this… truly the right thing to do?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know… When I see a scene like this, I stop understanding.”

Hidden by the white mist, no abnormality could be seen as far as the eye could reach.

But through the nose, one could clearly tell that it was being done.

The hazy, raw stench of living creatures’ insides spilling out had begun to fill the forest.

The shrine maiden frowned at it.

It was a foul odor that seemed likely to cling not to her clothes, but to her heart.

“Hmm. Then let’s say, for example, there’s a drought and it becomes a famine where at least a thousand people will starve to death. If you kill five hundred people first and don’t let a single person starve before the next harvest festival, do you think that’s the right thing to do?”

“…It is cruel, but in terms of results, I think it was better by the number of five hundred people saved.”

“On the numbers, that’s the right answer. It doesn’t match morality, but if you look at the preservation of the human species, that’s probably how it is. Well, looking at it over a longer term, it’s just people doing as they please, so there’s probably neither good nor evil in it.”

The shrine maiden gazed into the depths of the mist with enlightened eyes.

If one looked closely, red stains were visible even from here. Beside them, an old woman in tears was in the very act of being cut down.

The girl tried to look away, but the woman grabbed her head and did not allow it, saying, “Don’t look away.”

With a muffled groan, another bag of flesh was split open and fell.

“That’s someone else’s property, and no matter how it’s handled, it’s not a matter for us to speak on. The owner’s freedom. Besides, it’s been decided that not raising an objection to this act is the consensus of the Hadria faith. Even if we don’t take part in carrying it out, we tacitly approve. Since you have the role of accompanying such a consensus, don’t turn your eyes away from reality.”

“Y-yes…”

“Reality is just like this. Even if you clap in the council chamber and say this will save many lives, it turns out like this. It’s no different from war. No matter what kind of saint or gentleman, they build peace on top of sacrifices like this. We just happen to be seeing it right in front of us. Don’t become a hypocrite who can look away from it.”

As the girl shrank, the woman put an arm around her shoulder and spoke to her.

She seemed depressed, but the woman seemed to be trying to teach her that this too was a fragment of this world.

“But depending on how you look at it, this might have been the wise decision of a lord trying to deal with things before his territory fell into ruin and was trampled by another country. Well, that’s if you think about it incredibly positively. If you think badly of it, it’s just a mad lord clinging to a pipe dream.”

The woman could not even smile bitterly, and let out a breath.

Certainly, if many were supposed to die and the few were sacrificed, and as a result many could live, then politically speaking it might be the right act.

Burning villages to prevent the spread of plague, thinning out residents, or at best forcing them into the outbreak area—such things were everyday decisions in old politics.

People who can declare this evil should probably think about whether they could say the same thing in front of the people who survived.

But the girl shook her head.

That alone was not enough—she put that into action and words.

“It is not a pipe dream…”

“Hmm?”

“It must not be allowed to end as a pipe dream. There is no way it can be acceptable for lives to be killed meaninglessly at the end of such madness! Then at the very least, so that this can be called the right act, I will change it and show you! Guiding Keika down such a path is the role of me, who was ordered to accompany him!”

“Even if he’s someone who wouldn’t appear in the first place without sacrifices?”

“It is not for me to decide that good or evil. I will do everything I can, and if even then it is called evil, I will be the first to receive punishment.”

“I see. That’s a grand cause.”

The girl, who had seemed about to be crushed by reality after falling into depression, instead pushed it aside and stood up.

For the woman, that was unexpected, and for a moment she looked blankly surprised, but she laughed pleasantly, as if finding that too-straightforward will interesting.

“Isn’t that fine? Whether immature or green, I think people who can do such things without holding back are precious. You’re a good girl. Almost too straightforward. You can just devote yourself to what you believe is right. I’ll push your back for you. So, what kind of Keika would you like? In a domain that will surely collapse someday. In a world where conflict with neighboring countries never ends, what kind of hero do you want to seek?”

“I would like someone who can save everyone. Someone who does not kill anyone, and can save people from hunger, disease, and conflict—from all of it. Someone who can make a pipe dream into reality.”

“Puhaha! That’s a luxurious wish. Hmm, then even if I don’t know whether such a person exists, shall we try to find one like that?”

The woman burst out laughing, finding the honor student’s opinion of idealism funny.

But the girl seemed utterly serious. She seemed deeply burdened by the thought that making that real was her job.

While the two shrine maidens were having such an exchange, the lord and the demi-human knight came over.

They had come with the report that preparations for the summoning catalyst had been completed without delay.

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“Thank you for your work.”

Kazami, having received the diseased animal, saw off the truck.

Beside him, a calf only about as tall as Kazami’s waist was coughing with a muffled kofu kofu. It was exactly the typical sign of pneumonia.

A cow that would not heal even with antibiotic treatment was decided to be culled before it could infect other cows, and so was handed over to the university like this, or euthanized and turned directly into industrial waste, or else rendered—meaning recycled down to every piece of bone and fat as feed or powdered fertilizer.

Besides that, animals with no prospect of profit due to poor growth, deformity, or fractures were decided to be culled before feed costs piled up further.

It was a sad story, but livestock farming was also a business, so this side of reality was merciless.

“Sorry. I’ll make it as painless as possible.”

When he stroked its head and soothed it, the cow seemed hungry and sucked at his finger. It seemed it had not yet completely left the nursing period.

When he pulled his finger out, it even grabbed the edge of his coveralls in its mouth and sucked on them.

It was quite accustomed to people. It had probably been raised with a great deal of affection on the farm.

“Good, good. Well then, shall I make you some milk?”

He pulled the rope tied to the halter and entered the dissection room.

The floor there was water-repellent and sloped like a bathroom. In the center ran a gutter fitted with a grating like a side ditch.

Kazami tied the rope to a nearby dissection table and prepared powdered milk and a baby bottle that could hold as much as two liters. For a cow, this was a normal size.

He dissolved the powdered milk in lukewarm water, and when he approached to give it, the cow kept stretching out its tongue toward the bottle. It must have been quite hungry.

“Whoa, don’t rush.”

When he gave it before being pushed over, the milk disappeared in no time.

While being urged on by its face pushing up at him when it came out too slowly, the two liters vanished like a stream.

“…”

He felt guilty, but he could not hesitate. At times like this, it was very painful.

While the cow was satisfied and quiet, Kazami prepared two medicine bottles and two syringes.

Once he quickly filled the syringes with the drugs, he returned at once.

If he looked at it for too long, he would grow attached and become unable to do anything, so his movements at times like this were quick.

When he pressed the heart side of the jugular vein with his finger and administered a sedative called xylazine, the cow became unsteady and fell within ten seconds. Then, once it had fallen without strength, he administered anesthesia this time to cloud its consciousness.

After that, he tied its legs with rope, attached electrodes to its mouth and anus, caused cardiac arrest with an electric shock, confirmed death by absence of pupillary reflex, and then cut its neck and let it bleed out—that was the end.

Simply put, it was relaxing the muscles, stopping pain with anesthesia, taking away consciousness, and then killing it quickly. Among euthanasia methods, it was one of the most careful.

“…I don’t want to think of it as an unavoidable sacrifice. If it’s a life that was born at all, I wish at least all of them could go through more enjoyable experiences.”

He stroked the cow, which had become a silent corpse and was staring into empty space.

Developing methods to detect disease early in order to reduce animals culled like this, or finding better treatments, is one of the important issues in research conducted by veterinarians.

It was only that the absolute number was too large; it was not that there had been no progress compared with the past. Compared with ten or twenty years ago, there was certainly a clear difference.

Just like that, Kazami closed his eyes and prayed for its repose for a dozen or so seconds—and then, at such a time.

“—Found you.”

“…?”

He suddenly thought he heard a woman’s voice.

But there should have been no one in the dissection room. Wondering if one of the university students had come looking for him, he looked around, but there was still no one in the room.

“Was it my imagination?”

He had never experienced such a clear auditory hallucination before, but Kazami could think of it as nothing else, so he took his dissection knife from the shelf and, pulling himself together, began the pathological dissection.

Checking for swelling of the lymph nodes and other abnormalities, he opened a hole from the last rib into the abdominal cavity.

Passing his fingers through the still-warm belly and grasping, he cut the costal cartilage nodule, the cartilage formation site around the middle of the ribs, and cut through to the clavicle, separating it. Even if one cannot cut bone, by cutting the cartilage connecting bone to bone like this, a living creature can be taken apart even with a single knife.

Once the lungs through the intestines were all exposed that way, the rest was to record their abnormal findings with photographs and notes.

When that was done, putting the diseased parts into a Ziplock-like pack filled with formalin meant it was finished.

After washing his hands, which were covered in blood, Kazami looked around the shelves.

“Let’s see. The container and plastic bags are, where…”

The specimens dissected in this way had to be handed over to a contractor and either burned or reused through rendering, but calling the contractor over and over was a great hassle for both sides.

Therefore, joints and such were cut, each made into chunks of about ten kilograms, put into plastic bags, placed in containers, and stored in a giant freezer.

Having finished the work, Kazami returned to the laboratory and began observing tissue sections made from materials collected in the same way in the past.

From low magnification to high magnification.

He was trying to get an idea of the pathogenic bacteria from the state of the cells and so on—when at such a time, the microscope’s electricity suddenly cut out with a pop.

“Hm, what’s wrong?”

This was a microscope he had just recently repurchased, so it breaking was strange.

Thinking that and looking away, he noticed a further abnormality.

Even the room lights that should have been on were out. No, not only that—though it should still have been bright at this hour, the outside of the laboratory was dark.

“Eh… Huh?”

Kazami, doubting his eyes, checked his wristwatch.

The time was just before three. At this time of year, when warmth remained and it could not yet be called autumn, it should not be dark. Finding it strange, he approached the window and checked the state outside.

Pitch dark—no. Pitch black.

The scenery that usually could be seen from the window was painted over with a black that had no luster at all, and not a single shape could be confirmed.

Everything from nearby to far away had vanished, and the ground had opened a great mouth to the abyss.

“W-what is this…”

At the same time as he backed away, drip, drip.

“Blood” trickled down the window, and like raindrops it slid smoothly downward.

He blinked and checked again, but it was unmistakably red. It was not rainwater.

He was a man who had seen the blood of many animals until now. There was no way he could mistake this red for anything else. If it was blood, had he not just seen it moments ago?

Moreover, this blood seemed to have been left for a little while after bleeding.

It was a deep red, and when it slid down it created uneven color, and the blood gel that was half-coagulating like halfway-set jelly slid down the glass. Both were familiar things.

Blood that had been squeezed out and left for a while became like this and pooled somewhere. That was why the gutters of meat processing plants and dissection rooms were kept constantly running with water during use, so as not to clog the drains.

Wondering if it might be a daydream, he pinched his face hard. A tingling pain spread, but the scene before his eyes did not change.

After all, something was wrong.

The thought of opening the window to check crossed his mind for a moment, but he could not put his hand on the window. He would not want to touch blood like that.

“That’s right, the others—!?”

He should first join up with the other people in the school building. Thinking that, Kazami ran to the door.

Fortunately, this was one room in the school building. He could head to other laboratories and classrooms without being exposed to that blood.

So he thought—but.

“What—!?”

The moment he tried to dash out of the room, from just beyond that step to straight ahead, black continued endlessly.

Kazami, who had stepped out and nearly fallen into the abyss, instantly reached out and grabbed the doorknob.

It was truly a miraculous thing. It was only because his outstretched arm happened to touch the doorknob that he was saved; otherwise, he would have fallen headlong into the abyss.

“No way, you’re kidding…!?”

Supported by a single doorknob and hanging in midair, Kazami had gone pale.

His legs swayed unstably, doing nothing but clawing at the air. His lower body had passed through the height that should originally have been the floor, but there was nothing at all to touch.

The door’s metal fittings creaked and screamed, and his fingers nearly slipped from the metal doorknob. His overstrained shoulder throbbed with pain, but that was not the issue for Kazami, who was desperately putting strength into his fingers.

As far as he could see, everything was a single color of black.

He could not understand what was what, but it seemed that only this one laboratory room was safe.

Setting aside understanding the situation, Kazami, grasping only that much, gripped the doorknob with both hands and struggled somehow to return to the room.

But the “beginning” did not wait for Kazami in the slightest, and only intensified further.

“Eh…”

To his surprise, cracks suddenly ran across even the outer wall of the laboratory.

“W-wait, eh. No way, you’re kidding…!?”

Furthermore, the cracks ignored even the walls and ran through space, spreading more and more.

It was as if a character inside a screen was being cracked apart along with the liquid crystal.

And it seemed the places where the cracks ran had nothing to do with the space where people were. Without any resistance, they pierced through Kazami’s body as well and continued to spread.

But the body that should have been cracked felt no pain and had no bleeding.

Threatened by the sound of cracks spreading with a bishi bishi and by the incomprehensible phenomenon, even Kazami’s heart beat faster.

“What on earth is happening!?”

A world collapsing in chain after chain.

The words he let out amid that became his last words in his homeland.

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