Following that intense clash of wills, the Doctor, who had spent the last few days filled with a rare, almost childlike radiance, suddenly crumbled into an absolute, brooding silence. Even as Jeanne guided her wheelchair back to the safety of her private quarters, the brilliant tactician kept her chin tucked tightly against her chest, refusing to utter a single word.
She desperately resisted the thought of abandoning this theater of operations right now. Theresa had shattered all expectations to reclaim her sovereign crown, and the Doctor felt a fierce, burning obligation to remain at her side until the initial hardships subsided before she finally surrendered to that medical coffin to lose this segment of her existence—a journey woven with both agonizing trauma and profound happiness.
Yet the relentless, agonizing tremors coursing through her physical vessel delivered a brutal reality check: her strength was spent. In truth, even the solitary month Kal'tsit had so fiercely guaranteed felt like a reckless gamble. The Doctor's remaining vitality resembled a flickering candle dancing on the edge of a violent gale; the slightest gust of wind would snuff out her existence forever.
Her psyche was firing constant, frantic alarms, whispering that she stood a solitary step away from complete madness. Outside of the Holy Water Jeanne supplied to dull the neurological decay, she possessed absolutely zero methods to slow her impending collapse.
Even for a strategist known across Terra as a heartless specter, facing the absolute expiration of her clock was a bitter pill to swallow. She simply couldn't accept a departure at this critical juncture—not until she had guaranteed Theresa a nation that could march forward on a stable path.
But what leverage did she truly hold? For a shattered body to survive this month, let alone the next or the one after that, it would require nothing short of an absolute miracle. And to gamble everything on the sudden appearance of a miracle was just so... wait.
A miracle. It was a concept her scientific mind historically dismissed, yet didn't she currently share quarters with an entity who was the absolute manifestation of miraculous phenomena? How on earth had she managed to overlook the silver-haired maiden resting right beside her?
With a sudden, violent twist of her torso, she whipped around to face her companion. The sheer, burning intensity blazing within her eyes caught Jeanne entirely off guard, making the young woman wonder if the invalid was suffering another terrifying neurological seizure and what she needed to do to restore her focus.
"Jeanne, I need your help!" the Doctor cried out. She forced her upper body around with such desperate momentum that her wheelchair spun along with her, completing a sharp turn before she seized Jeanne's hands in a fierce, trembling grip, her voice thick with absolute sincerity.
It wasn't that she was blind to the ruinous state of her own anatomy. She simply refused to be absent during the most critical hour of Kazdel's rebirth, terrified that by the time she finally awoke from her slumber, the entire landscape would have fractured into the worst imaginable reality.
An individual who has crawled out of the absolute depths of despair can never truly shake the trauma of those dark days. She was genuinely terrified that this beautiful, miraculous present would fracture into dust the moment her guidance was removed, even if her position within Babel remained technically secure during her absence.
But that was the burden of being Babel's Doctor. She had already commanded the sacrifice of countless souls to sustain this campaign—so many meaningless deaths just to buy enough time for Jeanne's arrival, which had ultimately secured this dreamlike, beautiful conclusion.
The weight of those fallen soldiers rested squarely upon her shoulders. Though the outside world viewed her as a cold, unfeeling demon who managed warfare like a mathematical equation, her inner heart remained forever haunted by their ghosts. That was the exact reason she believed her responsibility to this realm was far from finished.
Jeanne gazed down at the pathetic, pleading display, a soft sigh escaping her lips. She possessed a strong feeling that if she dared to voice a direct refusal right now, the desperate tactician would literally drag herself out of the chair to beg on her knees. This was absolutely not the type of person who would quietly back down after a gentle rejection.
"Will you please stop squeezing my hands so tightly first? I will definitely try to brainstorm a solution for you, but I can't offer an absolute guarantee that it will succeed! I am far from a trained medical professional, you know. Pulling off a miracle relies entirely on luck and whether the Almighty looks upon you with favor."
Seeing that her desperate gamble had yielded a sliver of hope, the Doctor immediately released her fierce grip. She became completely cooperative, allowing Jeanne to guide her back into the room where she quietly submitted to a battery of medical treatments, consuming various exotic pharmaceuticals whose complex chemical titles Jeanne couldn't even begin to decipher.
Jeanne couldn't help but marvel at Kal'tsit's extraordinary medical brilliance. If this broken patient had been left in the hands of any ordinary physician on Terra, the solitary remnant of the great Doctor today would be a decorative urn resting on a shelf.
Yet, despite her earnest desire to assist the fragile strategist, Jeanne found herself thoroughly stuck without a solid plan. "Should I simply offer up a desperate prayer to see if it moves the heavens?" she pondered.
They already knew the Holy Water could dull the physical degradation. In theory, Utilizing a vastly superior purity of Holy Water might stretch her remaining window a bit further, but such a superficial remedy was akin to scooping boiling water out of a pot to cool it down; it wouldn't grant her the massive extension she required.
What other methodology could she employ to sustain this woman's physical vessel for three full months? Jeanne was stubborn; she fiercely desired to solve this dilemma through her own resourcefulness rather than simply dumping the crisis onto her deity's lap and washing her hands of the matter.
Then again, the Almighty had extended His hand to rescue her so many times during her journey across Terra that the poor Creator must be thoroughly exhausted. She really ought to manifest some genuine appreciation for His grace, even if a heavenly entity lacked for absolutely nothing.
Jeanne made a firm resolution: the moment she returned to her home base, she would gather some unique local specialties from Terra to place upon the sacrificial altar! But what exact tribute would suffice? "Perhaps I should venture into the wilderness and personally hunt down a swarm of Originium slugs? Those entities definitely qualify as a local specialty!"
While Jeanne was lost in these ridiculous, wandering thoughts—mechanically tossing one apple slice after another into her mouth—her elbow inadvertently struck the frame of the wheelchair. The movement jarred the platter, causing a stray apple to slip off the edge and roll straight beneath the heavy bedframe.
"Ah! It escaped!"
Spitting out a startled cry, Fafnir watched the fruit vanish into the shadows beneath the mattress. The dragon child scrambled off the sheets without a moment's hesitation, diving headfirst into the dusty dark to retrieve her fallen prize.
Though Fafnir could technically be considered a spectacularly wealthy dragon given her hoard, the child maintained an absolute, unyielding reverence for food, even if a stray piece of fruit did nothing to satisfy her bottomless draconic appetite. Every single morsel required safe passage into her stomach before she would display absolute satisfaction.
When the dragon finally crawled back into the light, Jeanne was greeted by the sight of a tiny entity thoroughly coated in a layer of gray soot. It was a stroke of absolute fortune that the child was wearing black fabric; had it been a white dress, Jeanne would have lost her temper on the spot, hauling the rascal up to deliver a swift reprimand to her backside!
That particular outfit had been meticulously washed and pressed just yesterday! She had never imagined the little terror could reduce it to a filthy rag within a single day.
For the very first time, Jeanne felt a burning urge to discipline a child. Yet, looking at the tiny face staring back at her, her resolve crumbled; after all, by a dragon's chronological standards, this was an infant who had emerged from her shell a mere handful of months ago.
With a helpless groan, Jeanne rose to search the luggage for a fresh change of clothes. Fafnir's entire wardrobe consisted of a mere handful of items, the vast majority of which Jeanne had stitched together by hand. "I really need to find an opportunity to purchase a few quality outfits for her," she murmured.
As her fingers rummaged through the absolute bottom of her travel sack, they brushed against a piece of fabric with an extraordinarily smooth, sublime texture. Jeanne's hand froze instantly, her entire posture locking up as a sudden flash of inspiration struck her mind.
She wasn't staggered by the silken elegance of the cloth—it was an article of her own design, so there was zero reason for surprise. Rather, the tactile contact had suddenly unlocked the perfect resolution to their medical crisis!
Jeanne hastily extracted the garment from the depths of the bag. It was a tunic rendered in a deep, crimson hue, appearing as though the threads themselves had been saturated in rich blood. This was a piece she had personally tailored using the absolute finest grade of Holy Shroud she had ever manufactured.
Originally, her grand design had been to craft a magnificent full-length dress or a sweeping gown, but the intricate weaving process proved to be a spectacular drain on her time and focus. By the time her patience had worn thin, she possessed only enough material to complete this solitary tunic.
The primary culprit behind the fabric shortage had been Alina and Talulah; crafting garments for those two had devoured an immense volume of her woven material. "Now that I think about it, I should probably alter their wardrobes when I return. A massive window of time has passed, and those two have undoubtedly experienced a significant shift in their physical growths!"
"Ah, that is the solitary downside to dealing with youths who are still in their prime growth phases; they constantly require entirely new patterns. If only they were more like me... my physical size haven't shifted a single millimeter in all these centuries." It was a slightly depressing reality, but she brushed it aside.
None of that mattered right now! The crucial breakthrough was that Jeanne finally possessed a reliable methodology to sustain the Doctor for three full months. By utilizing this Holy Shroud, they could easily lock the tactician's physical vessel into a stable, suspended state, arresting the internal decay completely.
This was a masterpiece crafted from her own Holy Shroud! The sacred artifact harbored a concentration of celestial energy that defied human comprehension—an item fully capable of manifesting a genuine, undeniable miracle.
Fired up by the discovery, Jeanne abandoned the soot-covered Fafnir and sprinted into the adjoining chamber where the Doctor was currently hooked up to an intravenous line. The moment Jeanne unveiled her hypothesis, the ecstatic strategist literally ripped the needles clean out of her flesh, entirely ignoring the blood trickling down her knuckles as she snatched the crimson tunic into her hands.
It was an undeniably miraculous textile. The Doctor felt that even if she exhausted her entire repository of scientific knowledge, she could never formulate praise grand enough to do justice to this cloth. It radiated an undeniable, supernatural aura.
As her fingers traced the flawless weave, her logical mind found it difficult to grasp that she was cradling a garment fashioned from the legendary Holy Shroud of myth. To think that an artifact of such profound, sacred value would be casually tailored into a routine tunic... the Doctor felt her entire scientific worldview fracturing under the sheer absurdity of it.