Possession (1)

I left the consultation room, leaving the patient's mother's expressions of gratitude behind. I felt as if every single drop of energy had been drained from my body. On my way back to the station, I leaned against the hallway wall and closed my eyes for a moment. My head spun. It felt like my brain was about to burn out from overload.

Well, after causing such a massive scene... I should at least check my reward.

The only reward granted to me in this hellish life. My sole indicator of growth.

Barely holding onto my tattered sanity, I opened the blue interface in my mind. I had earned quite a bit from the myocardial infarction case, and since I had just successfully intubated the patient... surely I had accumulated at least a few hundred points. With a mix of anticipation and resignation, I tapped the shop icon to check my current points. The moment the numbers appeared on the screen, my brain ground to a halt.

...?

I blinked. Did I see that wrong? Was I hallucinating from exhaustion? I rubbed my eyes and stared at the screen again. The numbers didn't change. They were glowing, sharp and clear. Five thousand and twenty-one.

"...I actually hit 5,000?"

It was a relief no one was around. Otherwise, I would have looked like a lunatic talking to thin air. Well, maybe I already looked like one anyway.

"When did I gather this much?"

My mind was filled with confusion. What did I even do? The tonsillar hemorrhage patient from earlier. Intubating them right before their airway completely obstructed and saving their life—that must have been a massive payout. On top of that, all the spare change I had scraped together acting as a human UpToDate had piled up...

"Let's check the shop."

I opened the shop list. I scrolled all the way to the bottom. The final destination of all my suffering, radiating an overwhelming aura that couldn't even be compared to the other items.

I pressed the purchase button. Immediately, a warning window popped up in the center of my vision.

Y and N. Y. It had to be Y.

...

"It's done."

Standing alone in the empty hallway, I shuddered ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as I looked at the list laid out before my eyes. This was my new weapon. A legion of ghosts from all sorts of medical fields. Now, no matter what kind of patient came in, I wouldn't be afraid.

If a patient was rushed in with ruptured organs from a car accident, I could just call upon Mes-ui Sin. If a worst-case scenario occurred where securing an airway was impossible, like just now, I could simply summon Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine to descend into my body.

My hands are trash? My clinical skills are garbage? It didn't matter. Because from now on, my hands wouldn't be my hands anymore! Mwahaha.

I slowly scrolled down the list, engraving each name and specialty into my brain. The fact that Descendant of Hippocrates's specialty was listed as 'Unclear, Miscellaneous' was a bit unsettling, but whatever. He'd probably serve as a wild card.

With a swelling chest, I closed the skill window. I was no longer a half-baked doctor. I was...

Ah, right. The penalty.

At that moment, the final line of the skill description flashed in my mind.

'After using the skill, you will enter a state of extreme whole-body muscle pain for 12 hours.'

The excitement that had been boiling up just a second ago cooled instantly. Right, nothing in this world comes free. This didn't mean I had gotten stronger. I had merely acquired a powerful weapon. If I had to compare it to a game, it was like a bazooka with a single rocket.

I stared into space. Mes-ui Sin, Cardiology Ghost, Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine... A legion of crazy ghosts whose names alone were reassuring—or rather, whose very thoughts raised my blood pressure.

Will the day ever come when I actually have to use this?

Just thinking about it made me dizzy. One of those lunatics entering my body? Horrifying. But at the same time, a strange sense of stability washed over me, one I had never felt before. It felt like I had secured a last resort, a final emergency escape hatch.

...Come to think of it, shouldn't I let those folks know? Of course, it was my skill purchased with my own points, so it was my right to use it as I pleased. But if I said nothing and suddenly went, "Hey, you're being possessed now," and forcibly summoned a ghost who was chilling in the afterlife back to the mortal realm, how absurd would that be for them?

Showing basic courtesy—no, giving them a heads-up was definitely my duty as the leader of this crazy study group. This was purely out of politeness. It was absolutely not because I was curious about their reactions, or because I wanted to brag about obtaining such an overpowered skill. Definitely not.

Rationalizing it to myself like that, I opened the familiar blue interface.

A brief silence. And then, the gallery exploded far more violently than I had anticipated.

The first comment was concise and powerful.

I sighed and left a reply to explain further.

At my detailed explanation, the atmosphere of the gallery began to shift subtly.

The mockery and ridicule cleared, replaced by intellectual curiosity and confusion.

As expected of Mes-ui Sin. That guy is incredibly quick to grasp the situation.

The ghosts put their heads together and began debating the nature of this bizarre system.

I watched the ghosts' debate as if eating popcorn. Some complained, some got excited, and some were curious about their own price tags. Though their reactions varied wildly, they were all converging toward a single conclusion. The ghosts had accepted the situation.

Thus, under the conclusion that it was the privilege of the living, the ghosts accepted the fact that they ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had become my skills. While some grumbled, most of them actually seemed to enjoy the situation.

Watching the noisy debate wind down, I quietly closed the gallery window. My mind was a tangled mess. It felt like I had gained reliable allies, but at the same time, it felt like I was carrying a bunch of ticking time bombs that could go off at any moment.

I stared up at the ceiling and muttered softly, "Well, it's not like I'll ever have to use the Possession skill under normal circumstances anyway."

This was a last resort. How many moments requiring such a desperate measure could there possibly be in my medical career?