A Powerful Martial Artist Reincarnates as a Nun Knight - Chapter 9

Sophia addressed the Holy Spirit accompanying her, Jibrail:

“Stand up straight, Jibrail. Why didn’t you inform me that you were guiding me to a plague-stricken territory?”
[……? ……!]
“Hmm. What a poor excuse. Haven’t you heard the saying ‘A knight’s hammer for demons, a physician’s medical bag for the sick’? No matter how I think about it, this is not within my area of responsibility, is it? Could the nature of this plague be some curse cast by a demon?”
[……]
“It is true that I possess exceptional insight and knowledge surpassing professionals. My innate genius is unparalleled. But that is separate from having authoritative expertise in specific fields, is it not? Besides, if I were to act on my own, all the physicians would starve to death.”

And if the physicians starved to death, who would treat those suffering from ordinary illnesses unrelated to demons or curses? Sophia was trying to persuade her Holy Spirit Jibrail with that reasoning. But from the beginning, it was impossible for a human to outlogic a Holy Spirit.

[……!]
“What…? There are no physicians, officials, or lords in this territory?!”

Sophia could only gape in astonishment.

+++++

To recount the sequence of events – it was the fourth day after leaving Strasbourg when Sophia, following the guidance of the Holy Spirit Jibrail to a place in need of her strength, arrived at a certain village.

For some reason, her mare Janghwalljang had refused to graze or drink from a stream that day, so Sophia urgently sought out the village. But upon arrival, there was no one to greet her, and the complexions of the few people outside looked utterly ghastly.

Sensing something amiss, Sophia inquired with the villagers and assessed the situation – it seemed the entire village had fallen ill with a plague. Confirming this fact with the Holy Spirit Jibrail, she found that these villagers were bizarrely subscribing to some superstition that the entire village was cursed.

Originally, Sophia, who greatly valued working according to one’s role in this era, had planned to find the appropriate person in charge and leave the matter to them before departing. However, the Holy Spirit Jibrail delivered a bombshell that derailed Sophia’s plans.

“What do you mean there are no physicians or lords? Then who is taking care of these villagers?”
[……?]
“What? You’re saying I should take care of them?”

Sophia could only grab the back of her neck at the naive Holy Spirit’s response. Wait, so you’re telling this nun knight to perform the duties of both a physician and acting lord? To take on excess duties outside her role? After some contemplation, Sophia seemed to give up and accept reality.

“…Hmm, well. If the situation calls for it, I have no choice.”

It didn’t take long for Sophia’s exceptionally resilient mentality to decide to accept the circumstances. She was never one to dwell excessively on dilemmas, and once she determined a course of action, it was her nature not to hesitate further.
…The sight of the villagers writhing from the plague overlapped with her own memory of being the sole survivor of a plague in her childhood.

“Alright. If I must act, I’ll do it definitively.”

Sophia clenched her fist resolutely.

+++++

The first thing Sophia did upon deciding to take action was to diagnose what type of disease was afflicting the villagers and conduct an epidemiological investigation into how it spread. Though she couldn’t employ 21st-century advanced techniques for the epidemiological investigation, she made do with simple diagnostic kits and information gathered by interviewing the villagers.

Thinking it was still better than doing nothing, Sophia pushed through with these tasks.

There was some resistance, of course. Villagers who thought the village was cursed were hardly going to readily follow the instructions of an unfamiliar outsider, let alone a woman’s. The uneducated villagers had no idea what the position of “Paladin” that Sophia claimed was, nor the authority it entailed.

However, those who opposed only faced Sophia’s impartial enforcement and healing through luminous power, regardless of age or gender.

No matter how ignorant, the villagers at least knew that members of the clergy held sacred positions. Naturally, their attitudes changed accordingly. Since they believed the village was cursed, they could not defy a priest’s orders.

…It absolutely was not because they feared Sophia’s impartial enforcement, regardless of age or gender.

Examining the investigation results, Sophia nodded.

“Indeed, this is clearly a waterborne disease.”

From the beginning, Sophia had surmised that the villagers’ affliction was some kind of bacterial dysentery.

Of course, she had no way of knowing if pathogens like the Shigella bacteria that cause bacterial dysentery, or the Entamoeba histolytica amoeba that causes tropical dysentery, existed in this world. But what were the chances of not falling ill after drinking contaminated water? If that were fine, then this world wouldn’t even have diseases related to food poisoning in the first place.

In any case, there were no dedicated medicines for such gastrointestinal diseases. The only treatment was to prevent dehydration by replenishing clean water, carbohydrates, and salts as much as possible. Naturally, sanitizing the contamination source, isolating infectees, and separately disposing of their excretions was necessary.

The problem was:

“But dammit, setting aside clean water for now, where am I supposed to get the carbohydrates and salts to mix in the water?”

This was the immediate stumbling block. In this situation, Sophia had only one source to turn to for aid – the guidance of the Holy Spirit Jibrail.

[……?]
“You mean scavenge the lord’s abandoned castle? Hmm.”

Well then? Sophia raised her thumb at Jibrail. After assigning the isolation and excretion management tasks to the villagers, she decided to simultaneously handle sanitizing the contamination source and raiding the lord’s castle.

Having asked around to locate the village’s water source well, Sophia temporarily purified the well water by emanating luminous power, then used a geomancy technique to detect the aquifer connected to the well and trace it upstream.

Since the village lacked livestock or other sources to generate sewage, if the water source was contaminated, there must have been an issue with the aquifer supplying the groundwater – this was Sophia’s calculation.

The groundwater aquifer stretched quite far, with some branching tributaries along the way. Sophia decided to check those branching points as well. If contaminants had flowed in from upstream, the tributaries would surely have been affected too.

As she continued following the aquifer upstream, when Sophia saw where it led, she gave a wry smile.

“Well, well, what do we have here…”

What Sophia had arrived at by tracing the aquifer’s source was none other than the castle (keep) where the local lord governing the area should have resided.

For some reason, the keep was completely abandoned. There were no guards at the gates, nor any staff to maintain the castle.

“Just what happened here?”

Upon entering and inspecting the keep, it seemed to have been abandoned not too long ago. Despite the lack of people, quite a few supplies still remained inside. Sophia rummaged through the kitchen, gathering whatever usable items she could find like honey, sugar, syrup, rock salt, and sea salt. Stumbling upon stockpiles of charcoal and limestone could be considered a bonus.

Piling up all the necessary items like dishes, wood, and more, the load to be transported eventually amounted to several cartloads. Sophia decided to bring carts from the village to haul away the supplies. As for pulling the carts… well, she sincerely apologized to her mare Janghwalljang, who had carried her all the way to the village, tasking her with that labor.

Janghwalljang vehemently shook her head in displeasure, but had no choice. For now, Sophia was the only one who could provide the intelligent horse with clean feed and water.

Perhaps understanding that disobeying Sophia meant starving, after some initial defiance, Janghwalljang reluctantly submitted to the cart’s harness.

After finishing transporting the supplies, as Sophia surveyed the keep’s surroundings one last time, she suddenly discovered something she could not possibly overlook.