292 - Mustaine Medicine 2
Four collaborators came from the Sedovara Church as people who actually compound medicines. According to Barbara, they were experienced pharmacists and young pharmacists, but I was surprised that the young pharmacist did sloppy work. The opposite result from Aurelia's place.
...At Aurelia's place, the amateur Paula learned faster than the experienced Barbara, you know.
Where could this difference come from? I felt like I would need to verify it for future reference.
...But really, where did the sloppy work come from?
What they are handling is something that goes into people's mouths as medicine. There is no way they should handle it carelessly, and having the effects diminish is even worse. If we could solve this mystery, we might understand one of the reasons Saint Yuuta Hiraga's secret arts were lost over the long years.
I could tell at a glance that the grains of Lapis Star Sand were not uniform, so I actually tried processing the raw material into the ingredient based on the transcription. Speaking of lapis, that is the name of a stone called lapis lazuli, but the "lapis" used in Lapis Star Sand is just a color name, not a stone name. Before becoming an ingredient called Lapis Star Sand, the raw material's name is Heavens Sandstone. It is a rock mined in a cave called Heavens Cave in the Virup Desert, and it seems Saint Yuuta Hiraga was the one who named both Heavens Cave and Lapis Star Sand.
He traveled to every place he could reach on foot to recreate the medicines in his memory, and investigated absolutely everything he laid eyes on. Since herbs and medicinal plants exist, I can understand finding medicinal components from plants, but when you look at records of him crushing rocks, sipping spring water, and even opening the guts of unknown fish, you really understand what an eccentric Saint Yuuta Hiraga was. Calling him a saint sounds nice, but I wonder if people at the time kept their distance, calling him a pervert or a maniac. He did not care about his methods at all for the sake of his goals, and even though we are both Japanese, he just seems like a distant person to me.
...Well, it seems that thanks to that mania-level passion, the technology of compounding medicines was born in this world.
All's well that ends well, I thought, reaching for the wire-meshed wicker sieve. By Saint Yuuta Hiraga's standards, grains too large to pass through this sieve are sandstone, not star sand. First, we needed to crush the Heavens Sandstone until it was fine enough to pass through this sieve.
I read aloud from the transcription while giving instructions to the pharmacists doing the actual work. According to the sorting criteria in the research materials, the "Lapis Star Sand" sent by the Sedovara Church was not suitable as an ingredient and was still Heavens Sandstone. When I explained this, they looked dissatisfied but followed my instructions. Complaining about how this brought back memories, an experienced pharmacist put the sandstone in a bag instead of a mortar and pounded it. He must have done this work in his youth, swinging the mallet with practiced hands.
"Once it passes through this sieve, next up is the fine-mesh sieve."
Lapis Star Sand cannot be ground so fine it becomes like powder, even though it is called sand. So we also needed to put it through an incredibly finely woven wire-mesh sieve to sort out the powder that was ground too fine. I heard the overly ground powder that comes out at this stage can be used when making other medicines, so I gratefully stored it away. To me it just looks like dust or powder, but Saint Yuuta Hiraga named this powder, which currently has no use, "Star Origin." I do not know what intention he had, but I think Saint Yuuta Hiraga's naming sense leans a bit toward the romantic side.
...But still, it feels... like an item name, and it reminds me of crafting games, you know.
Just making the required amount of Lapis Star Sand took over a full day, and my thoughts started to drift a little. What I was doing was preparation work for compounding medicine, but with all these cute names for the ingredients, it reminded me of a game where alchemists make cakes in pots.
But it is only the names that are cute. The transcription is filled with katakana that seem to be ingredient names, packed full of words that mean absolutely nothing to me, since I never worked in medicine production in my previous life either. If I had more education, I might have been moved to think, "Extracting this kind of component from something like that? Saint Yuuta Hiraga is amazing!" but I am sorry, I will just focus solely on deciphering the research materials. I will leave the praise of the saint to the Sedovara Church.
The work of creating ingredients from raw materials showed clear differences from what the Sedovara Church currently managed, and it seemed to ignite the pharmacists' research spirit. The liquid that Saint Yuuta Hiraga named "Sedovara Blue Water" looked just as described in the transcription, but the pharmacists started saying they wanted to try making this from raw materials too.
...It looked just like the description, so I thought it would be fine, you know?
The pharmacists said "Let's do it, let's do it," so I read the transcription aloud, and the results were hard to judge. When you boil mashed Rubermon herb roots and Yutta fruit seeds in Alm spring water, and once the water turns blue, strain the contents, Sedovara Blue Water is complete. But a problem arose at the boiling stage.
"It is blue, is it not..."
"Yes, it is blue."
Including my pot and Barbara's, there were six pots lined up making Sedovara Blue Water, and they were all blue. To put it a bit more precisely, each of them was a different blue.
"The reason for the difference seems to be... the temperature and time when boiling. The colors being inconsistent is not a failure, the problem might be the heat intensity."
In the diary section of the research materials, there were notes about precautions and subtle changes when making ingredients. The blue in my pot was pale because I was boiling at a low temperature, afraid of failure, while conversely, Barbara's pot with its dark color had the fire too strong.
...Come to think of it, at Aurelia's place it was different from this, but she kept the pot temperature constant using the temperature of the steam...
It is difficult for someone who has only read the research materials to reproduce what Aurelia had learned through intuition. This would require many attempts and errors.
"Even the same blue has many varieties. Which color is the 'blue' the saint speaks of?"
It was summed up as simply as "put the ingredients in, boil them, and Sedovara Blue Water is done," but the results were different colors for each pot. Considering this becomes a medicine ingredient, having differences in the finished product would be bad.
...Good thing we had the manpower.
Since the results were not stable, I devoted manpower to verifying. For amateurs, adjusting the heat intensity was difficult, so I decided to borrow a cook from Siegwald. The cook kept the pot temperature constant while boiling for the described time. With the cook handling the heat intensity, that problem was solved, so I transferred small amounts of the pot's contents to other containers every few minutes as samples. Transferring them to separate containers made it easier to see, but the depth of blue depended on boiling time. The longer you boiled, the deeper the blue became, and the pot that was boiled for twice the time described in the research materials was not blue but a deep navy color.
"In terms of boiling time, the one in the middle should be the one Saint Yuuta Hiraga called 'Sedovara Blue Water,' but..."
"The color is different from what the Sedovara Church has."
"That is right. It seems the color gets even deeper when it cools, so visually it might as well be a different thing."
I compared the Sedovara Blue Water obtained from the Sedovara Church with the freshly made Sedovara Blue Water in the containers, at a loss. Even though it was still at the ingredient stage, this was something that would affect the human body. I could not just casually taste-test it.
...Which meant animal testing.
Saint Yuuta Hiraga's research materials also contain descriptions of animal testing. I understood it was necessary before putting something into a human mouth, but I still felt some resistance.
"For the effects of Sedovara Blue Water, there is no need to use animals."
Though my heart was heavy, I proposed animal testing to Barbara, but she dismissed it surprisingly easily. The research materials seemed to describe experiments using animals, but apparently Saint Yuuta Hiraga later created tools that could easily investigate effects and properties without using animals. Barbara took out a bundle of sticky-note-like sheets resembling the nostalgic litmus test paper from a box and put a sheet into each container. A clear difference appeared between the paper whose area touched the Sedovara Blue Water turned blue and the one that turned pitch black.
"The ones in the containers that turned black can no longer be used."
"The Yutta fruit released poison from over-boiling, then."
"When we line them up and compare them like this... what the Sedovara Church currently prepares falls in the usable middle range for Sedovara Blue Water."
She put the Sedovara Blue Water brought from the Sedovara Church into a container, compared the colors, and placed it near the container with a similar color. The ones where the test paper turned black were set aside, but what was brought from the Sedovara Church was the same color as the one roughly in the middle of those that turned the paper blue, while the one boiled for the time described in the transcription was placed second from the end.
"Looking at these results, the Sedovara Church's version would be 'something with reduced medicinal effects but safe enough not to be poisonous,' would it not?"
Conversely, Saint Yuuta Hiraga's method seemed to draw out the maximum efficacy, but if you mistimed when to take it off the fire by even a little, what should have been a medicine ingredient turned into poison at that point.
"For Sedovara Blue Water, perhaps they prioritized safety over efficacy."
I consulted Barbara about whether we should also prioritize safety and use what was brought from the Sedovara Church, but Barbara slowly shook her head. Since there was someone who could read the research materials left by Saint Yuuta Hiraga, she wanted to accurately restore the lost secret arts. Even if it took more than a little effort, that way would be better, she said.
"...I understand. I can only read the research materials, but please, Barbara-san and everyone, do your best to revive the secret arts."
"The very fact that someone can read those research materials is something the Sedovara Church has sought for many years. Christina-sama only needs to read the research materials for us, so please leave the actual work and accumulation of research to us."
First, two of them learned heat control from the cook so they could consistently produce the correct Sedovara Blue Water. The remaining two and Barbara began recreating ingredients from raw materials to check if there were any differences from the saint's descriptions.
There were eight types of ingredients total for the Mustaine Medicine, and Barbara and the others remade all eight. Some of them were still being made according to the prescriptions left by Saint Yuuta Hiraga even now, but there was a certain sense of wanting the mysterious satisfaction of making everything now that they had come this far. Perhaps it was something like an occupational disease for pharmacists.
"...Can it really be completed this easily?"
The revival of the Mustaine Medicine with the remade ingredients ended anticlimactically. Since it was originally just a matter of compounding according to the prescription, there was nothing strange about it being easy to make, but it was completed so easily that I felt more anxiety. However, it seemed I was the only one feeling anxious, as Barbara and the other pharmacists from the Sedovara Church began offering thanks and prayers to Sedovara, the god of medicine arts, right there. I had vaguely thought it was a less religious faith, but it seemed they did have customs like offering prayers.
...I heard that before Saint Yuuta Hiraga appeared, they used to pray at the Sedovara Church until illnesses were cured. I wonder if that is the prayer pose from those days?
Since only those belonging to the Sedovara Church were praying, the number of people should have been small, but I wondered why it somehow felt like me and the guarding Silver-White Knights, who were not praying, were the heretics. I started thinking that as a former Japanese person who could read the room, I should probably pray too, but then reconsidered. Sedovara, the god of medicine arts, probably would not want prayers offered thoughtlessly and without understanding the reason.
"I have heard that Saint Yuuta Hiraga tested the effects by giving the completed medicine to animals that carry sources of infection..."
We had made the medicine according to the prescription left in the research materials, but without confirming its effects, it could not be called complete. Even if we were going to do animal testing, where would we get those animals, I wondered, and consulted Siegwald while the pharmacists were in prayer mode. Since I had said we were reviving the secret arts, I could not very well say "We made it according to the prescription. We do not know how effective it is."
"The best course would be to report to Alfred-sama and arrange for animal testing. We will need to borrow one pharmacist for the administration..."
"We will decide who goes after Barbara-san and the others finish their prayers."
The Mustaine Medicine, submitted through Alfred, would undergo animal testing jointly with the Sedovara Church. I heard this from Alfred's own mouth when he came to check on me while I was reading the transcription in the detached palace, having left the pharmacists continuing their practice of compounding and ingredient preparation in the annex of Siegwald's residence to ensure stable production of the Mustaine Medicine. As a reward for reviving one secret art first, what Alfred brought was an invitation from Ethelbert.
...This is the kind of thing where it is hard to tell if it is a reward or a penalty game, you know.
My rather conflicted feelings must have shown plainly on my face. Alfred lightly pinched my cheek.
First, one completed easily.
Will fix typos and errors at a later date.