Ch.367Resurrection of the Dead. Precursor (1)

April 3, 1204.

The Sky Warden finally arrived at the Precursor Hospital.

As the Sun reached the Precursor, an immense radiance suddenly enveloped the hospital. Unconscious patients regained consciousness, severed limbs began to regenerate, and in an instant, miracles occurred as new flesh grew and blood was replenished.

“The Sun has arrived!”

“The Lord of Ecstasy has healed us!”

As miracles unfolded, surgeons were astonished to find their hands moving with scalpels as if possessed, precisely excising cancer cells, while sutures and needles worked like sewing machines, stitching wounds with rapid precision.

The expressions of doctors watching diseases heal in real-time during MRI scans were beyond description. They could only shield their eyes from the overwhelming radiance filling the windows.

-Bow down, you who are sick! The Sun bestows upon you the light of healing, and now your suffering has perished before its radiance! Kneel in gratitude for His infinite mercy! We bring you glad tidings that God walks among us in this world.-

Terminally ill patients, who had been backing up their memories, recording voice samples, and inputting their living patterns to preserve their souls until their final day, shed tears of gratitude upon hearing these words.

If the disappearance of terrible diseases ravaging their bodies and the return of vitality wasn’t a miracle, then what was?

Soon the radiance faded, and from beneath the massive battleship filling the sky, a magnificently decorated shuttle descended.

“It’s the Sun…”

Even the blind could sense that the Sun was inside it.

As the Sun slowly descended, the blind regained sight, the paralyzed began to move, the brain cells of schizophrenic patients realigned properly, and the neural pathways of autistic patients reconstructed themselves.

This grace and these miracles accomplished merely by his presence were proof and evidence that Viktor was divine. Those who survived by his grace unanimously knelt before him in reverence.

Around the Sun stood the honor guard, the elite of the Sun’s army in white uniforms, following behind with solemn expressions. Their uniforms emanated a subtle radiance, bright enough to make those who had just regained their sight close their eyes again.

“My lord.”

When the most elaborately decorated member of the honor guard carefully addressed the Sun, he quietly nodded.

He then carefully pushed aside the patients crowding around him and entered the hospital. Shortly after, he emerged with the director of the Precursor Hospital and the doctors under his command.

*

“How did you do it?”

The hospital director did not kneel.

Instead, his lips parted to ask, “How did you do this?”

At this impiety—not kneeling before a god, standing with head held high, and even looking directly into his eyes while questioning—the honor guard commander who had escorted the director frowned and shouted.

“You insolent fool! How dare you show such disrespect before this noble being! Kneel and beg forgiveness at once!”

“Please tell us. Can we replicate your power?”

“Such blasphemy…!”

When the director paid no heed to the commander’s words, the latter was instantly consumed by rage and placed his hand on the scabbard at his waist.

A soft scraping sound emerged as the blade began to slide out. He intended to cut down the old man who had committed the sacrilege of looking directly at the Sun’s divine countenance.

But at that moment, Viktor personally stopped his hand. The sword, only halfway drawn, halted and then slid back into its scabbard.

“That’s enough. They do not disrespect me. These people have been bound to technology their entire lives. It’s not unreasonable that they wish to reproduce this miracle.”

“…If the Lord of Ecstasy says so…”

As the commander’s anger subsided, the dazed hospital director and doctors finally fell to their knees.

Having witnessed the miracle of a dying patient suddenly rising before their eyes, their reason was understandably numbed. Nevertheless, the mere act of challenging the rightful ruler of all humanity with a direct gaze was blasphemy enough to warrant execution.

“Rise, doctors of the Precursor. Today, I have come to free you from your heavy burden.”

“Y-Your Majesty…”

“I shall overlook your recent impropriety and disrespect. For I am a merciful god.”

“W-We are deeply sorry.”

“Enough. I didn’t come here to hear your apologies. Here, take this.”

Making them straighten their instinctively bowed backs, Viktor placed a data chip in the director’s hand.

Perfectly compatible with modern technology, this data chip contained a staggering 456 exabytes of information. Though impossible to create with current technology, the production facilities remaining in orbit could still manufacture such high-tech artifacts.

“What is this…?”

“This contains medical data used during the Imperial era. Causes and treatments for rare diseases, intractable conditions… and illnesses considered incurable in the current age. From drug development methods to surgical procedures and techniques. Someone like you would know how to use this, wouldn’t you?”

“….!!!”

Joy filled the eyes of the hospital director and doctors. This Precursor Hospital was the first in human history to revive the brain-dead. But conversely, this meant that even in the Imperial era, they couldn’t treat diseases or injuries that led to brain death.

And if that was the case then, in the current era where technology had regressed by thousands of generations, conditions that could have been cured with a single dose of medicine in Imperial times now required invasive procedures with uncertain outcomes. I’ll leave it to your imagination how many “savable people” the Precursor Hospital had to send to the morgue since the Age of Eclipse.

“Thank you… truly… thank you so much… How can we ever repay this kindness…”

“You are doctors, are you not? There is only one way for doctors to repay.”

With those words, Viktor patted the sobbing director’s back.

The Precursor Hospital was the world’s leading medical institution. By providing ancient Imperial medical data to such a place, it was clear that this information would spread to the millions of students who came to study there each year.

Eventually, this data would spread throughout all 13 continents, and patients who had suffered from previously intractable or incurable conditions would have the opportunity to live again through the Sun’s grace.

“I hear the Imperial royal families frequently visited this hospital. People with the finest minds humanity could possess. And among them, those who were prepared to shoulder the mission of fighting the curse of disease to save humanity… that is what this place, the Precursor Hospital, is. The dark age of technological regression and the tearing apart of continents and seas is now over. I will reunite the thirteen continents, and people will stand firmly united under one government.”

Speaking thus, Viktor ordered his honor guard to move chests filled with gold coins into the hospital.

This was a kind of war chest. In these 13 continents, it was common sense that a single powerful individual taking action was more effective than the weak joining forces.

Therefore, the strong must always be righteous, and the righteous must always acquire power.

“My support for you is not meant to line your pockets, as you well know. Use this to upgrade your facilities, establish more wards and clinics, and employ more personnel.”

“Why are you helping us like this? We have not yet sworn anything to you.”

When the director asked this, Viktor smiled faintly and replied:

“Have you not sworn to yourselves? To dedicate everything you have to saving the patients who come into your care? I have visited Isabella Hospital—the opposite of this place—where I saw the living dead with only their brains functioning. Just barely alive. Compared to that hospital, where patients endure terrible suffering under cold mechanical logic and treatments steeped in madness, aren’t you much more humane? The obsession to revive the dead by gathering fragmented souls and mimicking their living appearance is a fixation only humans can show.”

Viktor looked around as he spoke.

Everyone was looking at him, and he was looking at everyone.

“So continue your calling. Death is the way of the world, but refusing that death is the way of humanity.”