Beyond Modern Medicine
The moment I stepped into the sterile operating room, the first thing that hit me was the metallic stench of blood, incomparably thicker and more suffocating than out in the corridor.
"Who the hell barged in during an active procedure?!"
Right on cue came the expected backlash from the surgical team.
"...Commissioner? Hunter Lee Sehwa, too?"
The lead surgeon's gaze flicked sharply toward me.
"And who is this...?"
"I brought him," Kim Han-soo answered firmly.
The surgeon raised his voice in protest. "With all due respect, Commissioner, every second counts right now! Even if it's you—"
"Which is precisely why we need him."
"What does that even mean...?"
Sensing this dispute would drag on indefinitely if left alone, I took a step forward.
"I apologize for the sudden intrusion. But as you said, time is of the essence. We don't have a single second to waste. Let me examine his condition first."
"What? Who the hell do you think you are?!" the doctor snapped, his eyes flashing with fury. "Are you an MD? What right do you have to barge in here and disrupt my operating theater?!"
Commissioner Kim Han-soo stepped between us. "Doctor Baek Kang-hyun. Please, just trust me this once. If anyone can find a way, it's him."
"He's an unverified civilian! How can you possibly—"
"Then are you prepared to simply let Hunter Kim Suho die where he lies?"
"That's...!"
The surgeon blocking my path gritted his teeth, trapped by the commissioner's blunt question, before finally giving an exasperated nod. He turned his glare onto me.
"...Fine. Understood. But you are not to touch a single thing. If anything goes wrong, this patient dies on the table."
"...Understood."
Death.
The sheer weight of that single word hit me unfiltered.
I pushed every distraction aside and focused entirely on the task at hand. The doctor, watching me with clear disdain, spoke up again.
"I don't know what you're planning, but you report every single move to me before you make it. Down to the slightest twitch."
I met his sharp tone with a calm nod. "Don't worry."
Did I harbor any ill will toward him? Of course not. From his perspective, an unqualified stranger barging into an emergency resuscitation and demanding to inspect the patient was practically criminal.
To be fair, it defies all common sense.
What kind of trauma surgeon on earth would react kindly to someone crashing an active procedure?
The best I could do was make the most of the window he had granted me.
I channeled my full concentration onto Kim Suho lying on the gurney.
How in the world did he fight to end up like this...?
It went far beyond "critically injured." Seeing him up close, the reality was horrifying.
At this rate, hypovolemic shock will kill him long before the poison does.
Gouged, punctured, and torn, the mangled flesh had turned a sickening blackish-purple and was pumping out blood ceaselessly. It wasn't just in one or two places—it would have been far quicker to search for skin that wasn't torn to shreds.
"The bleeding isn't stopping," I murmured.
Baek Kang-hyun answered tautly, "The poisoning is a secondary concern. Right now, stabilizing his plummeting blood pressure takes absolute priority, but..."
"Nothing you do is stabilizing it."
"Which is why every second is critical. If you're done looking, get out—"
His words cut off abruptly.
I had reached into my inventory and pulled out a potion, holding the glass vial before his eyes.
"...What is that? Are you an Awakened?"
"It's a potion. We need to pour this over his wounds immediately."
The doctor's face contorted as if I had spoken in absolute gibberish.
"Do you have any idea what you're saying?! The patient is on the brink of multiple organ failure! Administering an alchemical potion to someone who hasn't even regained consciousness?! He will go into immediate shock and die on the spot!"
It was not me who answered.
"No, he won't," Lee Sehwa interjected. "I've used it myself, Doctor. Unlike standard potions, his concoctions carry zero side effects."
"Hunter Lee Sehwa?"
Commissioner Kim Han-soo threw his weight behind her testimony. "I vouch for it as well. I'm a non-awakened civilian, yet I drank it myself without issue. What you fear will not come to pass."
Baek Kang-hyun let out a heavy, frustrated sigh, remaining unyielding. "It's still out of the question. Even if what you say is true, introducing an unverified liquid of unknown composition could trigger catastrophic anaphylaxis."
He gestured frantically toward the dying hunter. "We cannot arrest the hemorrhaging, and he is teetering on systemic organ failure! Do you comprehend the gravity of this situation?! The venom has already infiltrated his internal organs—even the slightest biological variable will prove fatal!"
Kim Han-soo raised his voice in return. "Then do you have an alternative?! You said it yourself, Doctor—modern medicine has exhausted every single option!"
"Even so, I cannot permit an unidentified chemical to be poured into a dying patient!"
The conflict reached an impasse, their convictions clashing fiercely.
Yet reality refused to wait.
Beep— beep— beep—!
A sharp, frantic screech broke from the vital monitor.
"D-DIC onset! Disseminated intravascular coagulation!" a surgical nurse cried out in panic. "The clotting cascade is completely shot! The blood won't coagulate!"
"Keep pushing platelets! Hang fresh frozen plasma right now!"
"It's no use! Everything we transfuse is pouring straight out through the lacerations!"
"B-Blood pressure is plummeting! Maxing out vasopressors!"
Desperate shouts echoed through the room.
Kim Han-soo roared over the chaos, "Baek Kang-hyun! We have to save his life first, damn it!"
"Doctor, please, I swear by my name!" Lee Sehwa pleaded. "I've experienced it firsthand!"
"...Dammit!!"
To Baek Kang-hyun, this was nothing short of Russian roulette.
I can't really blame him.
A complete stranger barges into an active resuscitation, pulls out an unlabelled bottle of liquid, and calls it a potion. And not just any medicine—a hunter's potion. Every piece of medical training and clinical data Baek Kang-hyun possessed told him that conventional potions were toxic cocktails in critical trauma.
To the man fighting for this patient's life, we must look like lunatic cultists.
That was why he was paralyzed with indecision.
But we don't have time for debate.
The arterial pressure was crashing in real time. A few more seconds, and irreversible hypovolemic shock would claim Kim Suho's life.
When every second meant the difference between life and death, and when I held the definitive cure in my hand, hesitating was criminal negligence.
I understand his perspective, but survival comes first.
A pang of regret hit me. I shouldn't have wasted breath arguing. I should have just uncapped it and poured it the moment I walked through the door.
No matter. It's not too late.
My mind made up, I popped the stopper off the potion vial and strode straight toward Kim Suho's bed.
"W-Wait! What the hell are you doing?!"
"We're out of time," I said evenly. "Let's stop the bleeding first."
"Fuck, stop right now—!"
Baek Kang-hyun lunged forward, but the golden liquid was already cascading from the tilted flask, soaking over Kim Suho's mangled torso.
Smack!
Baek Kang-hyun grabbed a fistful of my collar, veins bulging in his neck.
"You psychotic bastard!! Have you lost your goddamn mind?!"
"Please, calm down."
"Calm down?! What the fuck do you mean, calm down?! If Hunter Kim Suho dies because of this—!"
"He won't."
"How can you possibly be sure?! Administering an alchemical potion in his condition guarantees fatal shock—!"
"Which is why you need to take a breath and—"
Before I could finish, a panicked shout cut through the room. One of the assisting doctors who had rushed over froze in his tracks, staring wide-eyed at the gurney.
"T-The wounds...! The wounds are closing! The bleeding is stopping!"
The flesh was knitting itself back together.
In real time.
The catastrophic hemorrhage that nothing could stem had ceased. Despite pumping units of fresh frozen plasma and platelets while maxing out vasopressors, the blood that had gushed uncontrollably was suddenly gone.
A young surgical fellow staring at the vitals display shrieked in disbelief.
"Dear god... his blood pressure! Blood pressure is rising! 80 over 50... 90 over 60...! Entering the safe zone!"
And that was not all.
"SpO2 has rebounded to 98%!"
As the tears and punctures seamlessly reconnected before their eyes, the digital monitors updated his biological metrics at blinding speed.
"...What?"
Baek Kang-hyun stood frozen, staring blankly at Kim Suho's healing body as if his eyes were deceiving him.
"...No anaphylactic shock?"
There wasn't a trace of tremors, bronchospasm, or systemic collapse. The bleeding simply halted, and the lacerations closed up clean.
Faced with this impossible sight, Baek Kang-hyun muttered dizzily, "This is impossible... How can this...?"
It violated every law of medicine and biological science. Even if modern medical theory were torn down and rebuilt from scratch, it could never explain this.
How could it?
Gouged flesh, torn muscle, and shattered capillaries all over the hunter's body were visibly sprouting fresh, healthy tissue right before their eyes.
"See? Just as I told you."
I lightly brushed his hand away from my collar.
"The disaster you were worried about won't happen."
"W-Who on earth are you...?"
Baek Kang-hyun.
Who was he?
Top graduate of Hankuk University College of Medicine.
Published two papers as the first author in leading SCI-indexed journals while still an undergraduate.
Completed his surgical residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States while pursuing concurrent research.
And upon completing his residency, accomplished the unprecedented feat of finishing dual clinical fellowships in trauma surgery and critical care medicine at the Mayo Clinic, the world's premier hospital.
He was an elite among elites, universally hailed as the future pillar of South Korean medicine. The Mayo Clinic had even tried to retain him with lucrative faculty offers rather than let him return to Korea.
Yet even a prodigy of his caliber had never witnessed anything like this.
What this young man had just performed right before his eyes was nothing short of an outright miracle.
"That liquid just now... you said it was a potion...?"
He had clearly said "potion."
To Baek Kang-hyun, potions were undeniably miraculous artifacts that emerged alongside the Tower, but their biological toxicity and side effects were devastating. As a man dedicated to rigorous, evidence-based clinical medicine, he had always held a deeply critical view of them.
Yet this concoction...!
A potion that possessed not a single trace of adverse reaction.
Only now did Baek Kang-hyun truly understand why Commissioner Kim Han-soo had insisted on bringing this man inside.
A fierce flush of heat rushed to his face as intense shame washed over him.
And right behind the embarrassment came an overwhelming realization.
I have to hold onto him.
He needed to understand the science behind that potion. If synthesized and paired with advanced modern medicine, it could save countless patients currently left to die from untreatable trauma.
At the very least, he needed the man's contact information.
Just as Baek Kang-hyun parted his lips to speak, Yu Jisoo's calm voice cut in.
"Rather than staring at me, wouldn't it be better to reexamine your patient?"
"...Pardon?"
"All we've done is buy him time out of immediate cardiac arrest."
The remark snapped Baek Kang-hyun back to reality.
"Ah!"
The poisoning.
The potion had closed the physical trauma, but the lethal neurotoxin and necrotic agents coursing through Kim Suho's vascular system remained untouched.
How could I make such an amateur mistake?!
He had been so thoroughly transfixed by the miraculous alchemy that his medical instincts had momentarily lapsed.
Spinning on his heels, he rushed back to Kim Suho.
The gaping flesh that had tortured the hunter was gone, sealed cleanly as though it had never been torn. Yet his skin remained a ghastly, venomous dark green, and the veins across his body bulged erratically like tangled vines.
Watching from his side, Yu Jisoo asked, "What is his status?"
"...The poisoning is still fully active," Baek Kang-hyun replied grimly. "The toxin has already disseminated through the bloodstream into every major organ."
He pointed to Kim Suho's blackened-green forearm.
"From here on, we're fighting cellular necrosis. With modern medicine... all we can do is slow the spread."
It was the harsh, unvarnished truth.
Every contemporary countermeasure and chelating agent they tried only exacerbated the violent immunological rejection. Worse still, this was a supernatural venom never before recorded on Earth.
They were utterly helpless against it.
Lee Sehwa's voice trembled. "D-Does that mean there's no way to cure him?"
"It's a completely unprecedented biological toxin. We haven't even isolated its molecular structure or mechanism of action. Even if we launch full-scale research this very instant, synthesizing a viable antivenom will take... at least three years."
"Ah... no..." Lee Sehwa gasped, covering her mouth.
As despair threatened to drown her, Commissioner Kim Han-soo pressed, "Can't it be done faster?"
The doctor shook his head grimly. "...Three years is the most optimistic estimate possible."
"Sigh..."
A suffocating gloom descended upon the sterile room.
Amidst the crushing silence, Yu Jisoo—who had been staring down intently at Kim Suho without a word—finally spoke.
"Could you harvest a tissue biopsy and a blood sample from the area where the necrosis is most advanced?"
Every eye in the room snapped to him.
"We have to try something," Jisoo said evenly.
At those calm, grounded words, Baek Kang-hyun gave an immediate, resolute nod.
"Please wait a moment. I'll prepare the instruments right away."
Deep in the surgeon's chest, a tiny spark of impossible hope had already begun to flicker.