The Immortal Duke’s Physician Is an Internist - Chapter 17

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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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Sizzle—.
The sound of flesh burning where it met the hot metal. I held my breath, staring at the Duke’s hand.
He withdrew his hand from the fireplace slowly.
Charred black like coal, the skin split open in deep fissures, exposing raw red tissue beneath. It was a sight that made the stomach turn.
“He’s, he’s lost his mind…….”
The Baroness got that far before clamping her own mouth shut. Adrian remained frozen, eyes wide open.
Silence filled the room entirely.
The Duke looked once at his hand, now transformed to coal, then let out a contemptuous sound.
“Get up, teacher.”
It took me a long moment to realize he was speaking to me. The sight of his hand had shocked me so thoroughly that I’d simply collapsed where I stood.
I tried to rise as commanded, but my legs had gone limp and my body refused to obey.
Just looking at the Duke’s hand—burned to a crisp, truly roasted—made my knees buckle beneath me.
I opened my mouth, trembling badly.
“H-h-healing…….”
“……Tsk.”
The Duke clicked his tongue once, as if annoyed by my sluggish response.
Then suddenly he bent down toward me.
I thought he was about to help me up, but my shrunken form lifted off the ground entirely.
“……?”
Only when I looked up at his face from just below his jaw did I understand: the Duke was holding me in both his arms.
“Let’s go.”
The Duke strode forward. Adrian stopped him at the doorway from behind.
“Lionel! If you go like this, what am I supposed to…… what am I supposed to do!”
I watched the Duke’s face contort severely at close range. Disdain gave way to something darker—a visceral revulsion that radiated from his entire face.
“Adrian Dorset. You already knew this. The relationship between you and Lionel ended on that day you committed your assault.”
“B-but Your Grace, you’re a man too, so you understand. The desire to have a woman you care for—everyone feels that way, don’t they? That’s why I l-lost weight……. And…….”
“The moment you speak of ‘having’ someone, you forfeit all right to them. People are not objects. They cannot be owned, nor can I give them to you.”
“…….”
“Obsession only destroys both the one who covets and the one who is coveted. So never approach Lionel again. If I see you make a single move in that direction…….”
The Duke lowered his voice in warning. Madness overflowed from his violet eyes and his charred, blackened hand.
“You will become like this hand.”
Adrian finally yielded.
He lowered his gaze to himself, then prostrated on the floor and began to weep.
‘Why are you crying? What did you do right?’
As I thought that, another obstacle appeared before the Duke.
Baron Dorset, who had somehow recovered his composure.
“Your Grace! The farmers you spirited away have caused considerable damage. How do you intend to take responsibility?”
The Duke responded with the very words he’d used with me.
“I merely offered the farmers a choice—the choice to accept higher wages.”
“What nonsense is this? If I gather this as evidence and bring you to trial, not even Your Grace will escape unscathed!”
As the Baron blustered, the Baroness rose as if emboldened. The Duke regarded them both with an unmoved expression.
“So spiriting away farmers is a grave crime, it seems. But Baron Dorset—have you ever once wondered where the borrowed money comes from, the money you take out night after night at those illegal gambling dens?”
At first his expression was blank, but understanding dawned and the Baron’s eyes widened. The Duke spoke loudly and deliberately to Kailen.
“The Baron always borrowed through Revolving Credit. Since you’re a relative of our physician, you should be all the more thorough with the accounts, shouldn’t you? Calculate every last penny of interest and submit the bill.”
“Oh, so much to calculate—it makes my competitive spirit surge.”
Kailen’s eyes gleamed as if he’d found delightful prey. He withdrew an abacus from within his robes—pulled from who knows where.
“You’ve boldly chosen the highest interest rate each time—a full thirty percent annually. And you’ve been borrowing steadily for years now……. I was starting to think I should acquaint myself with slave traders.”
A scream burst from the Baroness. But there was no one left to save them.
The Duke looked at them coldly, then turned his steps toward the door once more.
“Let’s go.”
Cradled in the Duke’s arms, I left the Manor.
The sounds of the Baron and Baroness shrieking, Kailen declaring astronomical sums, and Everaine subduing the flailing Baroness—all of it faded completely away.
I gazed back over the Duke’s shoulder as the Manor receded into the distance.
This was the moment I finally bid farewell to the stalker who had tormented me so.
* * *
The deepening night sky was unusually clear. Blasion walked in silence through the lingering winter air.
Though we’d walked for some time since leaving the Manor, he showed no sign of setting Lionel down.
It felt so comfortable that I wanted to drift off to sleep right there…… but still, Lionel quickly recovered her wits.
“You can put me down now.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s heavy…….”
“It’s not heavy.”
There seemed no prospect of the conversation continuing. Lionel closed her mouth and lowered her gaze.
In her field of vision lay a blackened hand. Lionel touched it with her fingertips.
“……Why did you do that?”
The hand, stiffened as it gripped the Pocket Watch, was hard as stone. It looked severe enough to constitute a Fourth-Degree Burn.
Blasion did not stop Lionel from touching his hand.
She found herself wondering whether the burns were so severe that he’d lost all sensation, or whether he simply let her.
“I told you it was the Price of Madness.”
“But what kind of Price of Madness is this absurd?”
“You’ve now seen with your own eyes just how mad I am. Because of that, they won’t dare lay a hand on you again. That’s what I mean by the ‘Price of Madness.'”
The Duke answered while keeping his gaze fixed ahead. His tone was neither particularly emotional nor cold.
“And.”
“……?”
“I wanted to apologize on behalf of all adults for your childhood.”
Lionel lost her words for a moment. She had no idea what to say in response.
Yet it was also true that her heart felt considerably lighter at those words.
“……It’s all right.”
When she answered in a small voice, Blasion responded lightly in turn.
“I’m fine too. No matter how badly I’m hurt, I don’t die.”
Lionel recalled the day she had examined Blasion, and what he had said then.
“When my arm was severed. When my leg was severed. My heart beat hard as I regenerated. When my head was severed I don’t remember, but surely it beat then too.”
She had simply let that pass at the time.
And certainly, until just a moment ago, she had regarded him only as a doctor would—as a patient afflicted with an unusual condition.
But witnessing him actually take damage was unbearably agonizing for her to watch.
She felt a sadness that bordered on irrational, and it cut her to the bone.
Lionel said nothing in response and merely caressed his hand.
‘What do I do for Fourth-Degree Burns? Dressing? ……No. Skin grafting would be necessary. Does this world even have such techniques?’
Lionel recalled an old memory—a patient she had known who worked on ships and had suffered a severe burn, requiring hospitalization.
When she had forcibly scraped away the scabs to treat it, the man had wept so profusely from the pain.
The anguish was so vivid to Lionel as she treated him that she couldn’t begin to imagine how much torment he himself must have endured.
“Even if you don’t die, the pain is just as real.”
He had said with his own mouth that even an Immortal feels pain.
How could he have plunged his hand into the flames so unhesitatingly?
Perhaps over more than seven centuries, he had sacrificed his own body at every moment of danger, pushing through each crisis.
Brainwashing himself—telling himself that because he couldn’t die, pain didn’t matter.
The moment that thought crystallized, she could bear it no longer.
Tears that had exceeded the maximum threshold of endurance streamed down her cheeks. Blasion, seeing this, stopped abruptly in his tracks.
Once the tears began, they seemed determined not to stop.
Beyond her blurred vision, she could see Blasion’s bewildered expression.
“Why are you crying?”
“Your hand, your hand…….”
I need to treat your hand. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t even fathom how much it must have hurt.
The words that had risen to her throat could not become sound, instead flowing down alongside her tears.
Blasion sighed lightly. He answered as if it were nothing at all.
“Have you already forgotten? I don’t die. Even if my throat is cut, even if my hand burns. Eventually I return to my former state…….”
“No matter how many times you say you don’t die……!”
Lionel gripped the Duke’s hand tightly. From among countless words, she managed to pull out a few.
“……There’s no law that says you have to suffer like this.”
At words he had not anticipated, Blasion’s movements froze.
And then, with such overwhelming intensity……
—Thump!
His heart beat.

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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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