The Genius Doctor Who Lives Twice - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 1
Regieum Empire, Imperial Capital, Kalden.
Hearing Hall of the Imperial Medical Academy.
Beneath a soaring ceiling, in a somber conference room paneled in mahogany, professors in black robes sat arrayed in a semicircle on an elevated platform.
The professors whispered among themselves in consultation, then nodded as if a decision had been reached.
The eldest among them, the Elder Professor, adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles and cleared his throat before beginning to read the verdict.
“…Having considered all the foregoing facts, we find that the defendant rashly attempted to treat Her Highness the Princess but failed, thereby bringing shame upon the Academy’s honor….”
Murmurs rippled through the spectators’ gallery.
Medical students in dark frock coats and gentlemen in wigs leaned toward one another, whispering urgently.
The Elder Professor continued.
“…Having violated Medical Ethics through submission of false papers, having broken the sworn oath to regard fellow practitioners as brothers through machination and calumny against colleagues….”
The murmuring grew louder.
The Elder Professor paid the gallery no mind and read on.
“…the defendant, having proven unable to fulfill his duties as a member of this Academy, the sacred temple of learning itself, is hereby dismissed from his position as professor at the Imperial Medical Academy.”
Dismissal!
The word settled heavily into the Hearing Hall, and in that moment, a portly middle-aged man with a flushed face sitting in the professor’s section allowed himself a satisfied smile.
At the same time, the young man seated in the defendant’s dock went rigid, his face hardening like stone.
“This is political retaliation!”
Alexander Rosenbaum, the young defendant, slammed his fist on the desk and surged to his feet, shouting.
“Every charge leveled against me is fabricated! I am innocent! I have been the victim of political conspiracy!”
Rage flushed the handsome young man’s face crimson. His brown hair, gathered in a long braid down his back, swayed with each vehement word.
The Elder Professor flinched, then cast a glance toward the portly gentleman seated among the professors.
At that pleading look, the middle-aged gentleman rose slowly to his feet.
“Gentlemen of the Academy.”
He turned gracefully toward the spectators’ gallery with an elegant bow—deliberately ignoring the defendant’s section—and continued speaking.
“I, Archibald Holloway, president of the Imperial Capital Physicians Association, must express my profound admiration for the wisdom and rectitude of the Imperial Medical Academy’s esteemed professors. I wish to add one further remark.”
A cold smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“Following an emergency session of the Physicians Association held yesterday, we have resolved to permanently expel Alexander Rosenbaum from the Association, as he has brought grave dishonor upon the dignity of our profession.”
A storm of reaction erupted, far surpassing what had come before.
The students’ faces in particular registered shock and horror.
For if dismissal from the professorate was a death sentence to a scholar, expulsion from the Association was a death sentence to a physician.
“Henceforth, the defendant shall no longer be permitted to practice medicine….”
“Archibald! Do not hide behind others and disguise your petty vendetta as official duty!”
At Alexander’s words, Archibald’s expression darkened.
“Do you believe it proper to apply political standards to medicine? If you truly stand on principle, then engage in scholarly debate here and now! I shall dismantle your shoddy, baseless papers point by point!”
Suppressed laughter bubbled up among the young students seated in the gallery.
By contrast, the professors’ faces turned to stone.
“Such vulgar conduct. What manner of speech is that?”
“Blood will tell. A noble title changes nothing—common blood remains common blood.”
“In any case, a lowborn dog’s whelp….”
Archibald’s already flushed face deepened to crimson, taking on the hue of sunset.
He dabbed his brow with a lace handkerchief, gathered himself, and pressed on with his pronouncement.
“…shall not be permitted to practice medicine! This man is no longer a physician!”
“Archibald! You resort to retaliation because I offered counterargument to your flimsy papers? Have you no shame, calling yourself a scholar?”
“Imperial Guards! Where are the Imperial Guards? Seize this man and remove him at once!”
The Elder Professor muttered something about “the sanctity of this Hearing Hall,” but dignity had long since hit the floor.
Bang!
Imperial Guards burst through the doors and rushed toward the defendant’s section.
They seized Alexander’s velvet sleeve roughly, and the fine fabric crumpled in their grip.
“Sir. You will come with us now.”
“Unhand me! What crime have I committed?”
“Creating a disturbance in this chamber is a crime. Come at once!”
The guards grabbed both his arms and dragged him bodily from the room.
Even as he was hauled away, he bellowed at the top of his lungs.
“Archibald! I shall never forget this wrong! I will return!”
And then he cried out further:
“You bloated drunkard! Spend less time swilling wine and more time writing papers!”
His voice echoed off the high ceiling, resonating through the chamber.
Archibald watched him vanish, a bitter smile crossing his face.
“Knowing this is that gilded fraud’s last day, his insults are almost worth bearing.”
He turned away.
“Gentlemen, do take your leave.”
The professors filed out after Archibald Holloway, now the unchallenged absolute authority, their black robes sweeping behind them.
The students in the gallery murmured among themselves, witnessing the Academy’s youngest-ever admittee and youngest professor reduced to ruin.
“He was remarkable, wasn’t he…”
“Too confident in his own skill. Now look at him—pathetic.”
“Like a comet. Arrived like one, left like one too.”
Some felt pity. Others, contempt.
But not a soul believed he would ever return.
Alexander Rosenbaum. Twenty-eight years old.
As of the twentieth day of May, year 754, stripped of his professorship at the Imperial Medical Academy.
Simultaneously, permanently expelled from the Imperial Capital Physicians Association.
All Medical Practice henceforth prohibited within the Imperial Capital.
A merciless death sentence upon an ambitious young physician.
* * *
Five days later.
A forest in the central provinces of the Regieum Empire.
The hour when sunset bleeds through the branches into dusk.
Along the gravel-strewn Imperial Road, a black-lacquered Four-wheeled Carriage galloped swiftly.
The Coachman’s voice urging the horses onward, hoofbeats splitting the evening air.
“Archibald. You damnable bastard.”
Inside the carriage, cushioned in leather, a young man muttered through bloodshot eyes.
He was Alexander Rosenbaum.
Once hailed as the Academy’s youngest professor and a prodigy of medicine.
Now, stripped of every achievement and honor he had built as a physician, a fallen man reduced to wandering.
“You felt triumphant casting me out, no doubt. But don’t deceive yourself. You have no idea who I am. You underestimated me far too much.”
Alexander clasped his hands together, staring down at the carpet beneath the carriage floor, grinding his teeth.
He had fled Kalden like a man driven from his home.
His career as a physician lay in ruins, yet his fortune and estate remained—but he found them unbearable, and so he had torn himself away from the capital.
Trapped beneath the scorn of every eye.
“I’ll rebuild elsewhere. I am a physician. I graduated from the Imperial Medical Academy, served as imperial physician in Kalden. There will be academies willing to take me… plenty of them.”
The carriage rolled onward toward a great southern city.
Yet even as Alexander whispered these words, his own conviction wavered.
‘I’m young, and now I’ve fallen in disgrace. Why would they gain anything by taking me? I have no connections, no influence…’
The thought sent despair crashing over him, and he tore at his own hair.
“Blast it all! Blast it! Damn this infernal—”
He spat curses, hexing Archibald, Kalden’s medical establishment, even the Emperor himself.
“I’ve lost everything. Everyone.”
Hollow words of despair escaped his lips.
But he did not know.
That he had not yet lost all.
And that those who would take what little remained were even now riding through the darkness beyond his window, pursuing him.
* * *
Exactly thirty minutes later.
Alexander knelt trembling in the dirt.
“Take the money, take the clothes—take everything. Just spare my life, I beg you.”
Beside the carriage he had been riding in moments before.
The Coachman’s corpse hung limp in the driver’s seat, cold.
And the men who had killed him rifled through the carriage without emotion, searching for plunder.
“Hmm? What was that you muttered? Couldn’t quite hear you.”
One of the men, still rummaging through the Coachman’s body, turned and spoke.
Alexander begged with a voice on the edge of breaking.
“Please, I’m asking for my life—”
“Can’t do that. The dead man here deserves better than letting you walk.”
The man shrugged.
Leather Coat, Hat, Mask, Pistol in hand—the typical garb of a Gentleman Bandit.
They had forced the carriage to a halt with threats of gunfire, shot the Coachman in the head, and dragged Alexander out in terror.
“The Imperial Capital—I still have wealth there. Spare me, and I swear I’ll give you everything.”
“We’re not greedy. We only take what we can see.”
The man approached Alexander.
“And there’s no way to let you live either.”
He stepped before Alexander and began loading the pistol.
He tore open the paper-wrapped ammunition pouch, poured powder down the barrel, pushed the lead bullet wrapped in paper straight in, and sprinkled priming powder into the flash pan of the firing mechanism.
Unhurried, he worked with deliberate slowness.
Alexander could not accept his death.
“Who—who are you?”
“What do you mean, who?”
“Who hired you to assassinate me? Is it Archibald Holloway? Or someone else?”
The man stared at him fixedly.
“What’s your profession?”
“I’m a physician.”
“Do you hold some position at court?”
“I was a professor at the Imperial Medical Academy….”
“Are you some high-ranking nobleman?”
“No, that’s not it….”
The man let out a hollow laugh.
“Listen. You’ve got an inflated sense of self-importance.”
He tapped Alexander’s head with the gun barrel. Tap. Tap.
“Who’d pay good money to assassinate some ordinary physician like you?”
……
“Professor or whatever… to those high-and-mighty folk, men like you are just disposable tools they summon when they need them. That’s all you are. Who goes to this trouble to assassinate such a man?”
“But—”
“I know. I know. There’s probably some story. That’s why you were carrying all those things. But listen, there’s no conspiracy here.”
The man leveled the pistol.
“It’s just. Bad luck meeting me. That’s all there is to it.”
Alexander clenched his eyes shut.
He ground his teeth together.
‘Am I really dying? Like this… so meaninglessly?’
If only he’d been sent by a political enemy. If only he were a pawn sacrificed to some grand conspiracy.
Then at least his death would have carried some weight.
A man like you is just a disposable tool those high-and-mighty folk summon when they need you. That’s all you are.
The man’s words circled in his mind.
They were true. And that made it all the more wretched.
‘I want to live.’
For the first time, an honest emotion surged up from the depths of his chest.
A raw hunger he’d buried beneath pride and arrogance his whole life.
It wasn’t about honor, or station, or vengeance. None of that mattered now.
He simply didn’t want to die.
Not like this. Not as nothing. Not without meaning.
For twenty-eight years he’d been running toward something.
Youngest. Best. Genius. Chasing those names, grasping for them.
But now, crouched on this dirt, looking back—nothing felt solid in his hands.
He couldn’t even say what he’d truly lived for.
‘If I could only live….’
If he could only live.
What would he want to do? What would he want to become?
He didn’t know.
It was a question he’d never once asked himself.
But one thing was certain.
Differently than before.
Though he didn’t know what that difference would be.
He simply wanted to live.
Click.
“Huh? A misfire?”
The man tilted his head.
He examined the pistol carefully, then pulled the flint striker again and tried to fire.
After a moment’s thought, he lowered the gun.
“Well. Fine. Since you say you’re a physician… I won’t kill you.”
Alexander’s eyes snapped open.
“Th—thank you!”
“What?”
“You’re going to spare me…?”
“No, I said I wouldn’t kill you—I never said I’d spare your life.”
The man tilted his head to one side.
Had he not been wearing the mask, his twisted grin would surely have been visible.
“This forest here. It’s famous for wolves.”
The man rolled the misfired pistol over in his palm as he spoke.
“When the moon rises, the wolves come prowling through to feast on the corpses we leave behind. It’s mutually beneficial, you see. We handle the disposal, and they get a meal.”
Alexander’s face drained of all color.
He had already grasped what the man meant—to be left alive in the midst of a wolf pack.
The man reversed his grip on the pistol, holding it by the barrel.
“Try begging for your life from the wolves. Let’s see if that works.”
Then he brought the pistol grip down hard against Alexander’s skull.
Thud.
A dull crack echoed through the night.
Alexander crumpled to the ground.
Cold earth scraped against his cheek.
Beyond the retreating edges of consciousness, he heard wolves howling.
And in that very moment as he sank into endless darkness—
A world far removed suddenly opened its eyes.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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