The Black Death (Part 2)

That post had gone up just a few days ago.

Treasure hunters, explorers, adventurers—whatever title they went by, these wanderers scoured the kingdoms wiped out during the Great War, looting relics and artifacts from the rubble. Then they would make their way back to the Adrian Empire, auctioning off their salvage in the central bazaar to earn their livelihood.

The real issue, however, was that very same user's subsequent post.

True to an otherworldly populace where only the physically absurd had survived the apocalypse, people rarely whined over mundane aches and pains. And considering the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fellow had zoomed in obscenely on his crotch, I had initially assumed it was just some repulsive new tactical nuke meme being tested on the board.

Except it wasn't a joke. It was a textbook prodrome.

The early onset of the bubonic plague.

And that single forum user had served as an immaculate biological vector, unwittingly unleashing the far deadlier, airborne pneumonic plague across the entirety of Adrian.

To make matters infinitely worse, the impoverished populace of Adrian routinely ate sewer rodents. Whenever they lacked the coin to purchase grain at the market or felt their stomachs growling, skewered rat was the go-to street snack. The city was overrun with vermin, and ever since the supply lines shattered in the wake of the Great War, rats had been a dependable source of animal protein.

Because of that delightful culinary habit, the pathogen didn't even need rat fleas or airborne aerosol dispersion to find hosts. People were taking direct oral delivery of the Black Death on the spot.

And to put the cherry on top, mass religious congregations.

"This is driving me completely insane."

The environment couldn't have been more meticulously designed for an apocalyptic pandemic if an evil mastermind had plotted it out in a laboratory.

"When I think of the Black Death, the only thing I even know is those creepy beak-faced plague doctors."

Fortunately, the system held all the answers. Dredging up fragmented internet trivia from my past life, I clicked directly into the antibiotics tab in the administrative marketplace. While my medical expertise was basically zero, I remembered the general narrative: penicillin showed up, and suddenly fatal diseases stopped wiping out humanity. I figured searching for modern antibiotics was bound to yield something, but when the catalog loaded...

"What in the world are these?"

Utterly foreign names greeted my vision. Gentamicin? Sounded more like a high-tier spell an archmage in an RPG would cast to obliterate a dungeon floor. Fortunately, the system shop featured a search engine.

"Hell yeah. Never doubted you for a second."

Even if I was medically illiterate, the system was omniscient. The system was god, and I was invincible.

Following the system's itemized instructions to the letter, I ordered a stockpile ranging from disposable syringes to broad-spectrum antibiotics. Judging by the bloody sputum the little girl I'd salvaged had coughed up, she was in the throes of pneumonic plague. In short: critical condition, moments away from total respiratory failure.

Armed with a prepared syringe, I stepped into the room.

"...I knew it."

The emaciated, pale girl caught sight of the needle in my grip, offered a faint, hollow glance, and promptly shut her eyes. Her entire posture reeked of defeated resignation, as though waiting for the executioner's blade.

"Just a tiny pinch, that's all."

Uttering the timeless white lie every nurse on modern Earth relied upon, I took her fragile arm in hand.

"Eek!"

Her frail frame flinched instinctively as the sharp steel pierced her vein, but the tremor lasted only a heartbeat. I steadily depressed the plunger, finished administering the antibiotic, and smoothly extracted the needle. Then, for the sake of future sanitary treatments, I carefully sanitized the syringe for reuse...

Just kidding. I tossed the biohazard straight into a dimensional rift, annihilating it from existence.

Slowly—excruciatingly slowly—the girl slit her eyes open. Finding her limbs intact and feeling no surge of lethal poison tearing through her vitals, she tilted her head in sheer bewilderment.

"Weren't you... trying to kill me?"

"What kind of morbid nonsense are you babbling about?"

Did I look like some medieval lunatic who cracked skulls open with a hammer to cure a common headache? I pressed down lightly on the crown of her head. With a tiny squeak, she sank back into the bed, pulling the covers all the way up to her nose.

"Strange. Normally, humans drive away anyone sick with the pestilence, or just slaughter them outright..."

Leaving the girl to mumble in baffled awe, I rose from my chair. That was only a single patient handled. While I certainly had no intention of roaming the filthy gutters playing street medic myself, there were more than enough ways to eradicate this plague remotely.

Just as I pulled up the Gallery interface and prepared to step out into the corridor, I paused and glanced back toward the bundle of blankets.

"Come to think of it, what's your name?"

"Name? I... don't have one..."

She seemed to search her memories for quite a while, her brows knitting together before she spoke up as if recalling an ancient fragment.

"Lust?"

"...What?"

What on earth was this squirt on about? She'd been carrying around an edgy concept so aggressively cursed that even the most shameless fixed-nick trolls on the forum couldn't hold a candle to it. Just as I contemplated flicking her forehead to knock some sense into her, she read the atmosphere with terrifying instinct and vanished beneath the duvet entirely.

I stared quietly at the shivering lump of cloth, then clicked my tongue.

"How about Penny?"

"...Penny?"

"Just throwing it out there if you don't have a proper name."

Two round eyes peeked out over the edge of the blanket, blinking several times before the girl gave a small, hesitant nod.

There was no profound, poetic symbolism behind the choice. She was simply the very first Black Death patient to receive an antibiotic injection under my care.

Penny—short for penicillin.

To the extent that "medieval" was virtually synonymous with "the Black Death," the pandemic was an undeniable apocalypse. Fortunately, I held its hard counter in the form of modern antibiotics, but an immediate roadblock stood in my way.

"We have zero manpower."

There were no doctors available to administer intravenous injections. Leaving the task to existing medieval physicians was completely off the table; those quacks were closer to occult mad scientists dissecting the esoteric mysteries of flesh than actual healers. Nor could I simply dump loaded syringes onto the public market stalls and expect peasants to figure it out.

"Would these people even know what a vein looks like?"

Most commoners probably had no concept of circulatory physiology. After all, medical history from just a few centuries back was cluttered with barbaric practices like bloodletting and balancing the four bodily humors. Or at least, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that was my modern assumption, until I ran a quick query on the forum board.

Come to think of it, these people were battle-hardened survivors of the continental Great War. Those who had seen butchered corpses vastly outnumbered those who had never seen one. In a grim, pragmatic sense, they were all seasoned masters of the human form; every one of them possessed a rough, accurate map of where major vessels, muscles, and organs resided.

That simplified the entire logistical equation. Without wasting another second, I drafted an official recruitment notice and pinned it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to the very top of the Gallery.

The reception was distinctly unenthusiastic. Only then did I realize I had neglected to mention the wages and the existence of a definitive cure. I opened the thread, made some hasty revisions, and hit publish once more.

"That did it."

Priority access to guaranteed medicine plus 2,500 Dango a month? Nobody could resist that combination.

Truth be told, by the metrics of my past life on Earth, 2,500 Dango amounted to roughly 2.5 million won. It was decent money, sure, but hardly a fortune. When you considered the actual job description—marching out into a lethal, uncharted epidemic as a front-line plague doctor—it wasn't the kind of salary that warranted people throwing both hands in the air and weeping with joy.

In a ruined medieval society, however, the economic perspective was entirely different.

Most commoners barely scraped together 500 Dango, or were compensated entirely in raw grain rations rather than currency. In the worst cases, vast swathes of capable laborers were desperate for any work at all, yet found nothing. In a world like that, 2,500 Dango represented an unfathomable fortune.

Genuinely curious, I threw out a reply...

"Well, damn."

They trusted me to this degree? Or perhaps it wasn't me they placed their faith in, but the miraculous efficacy of modern medicine and modern manufactured goods. After pondering for a brief moment, I began drafting the formal recruitment application.

The slums on the outer rim of Adrian.

Wailing, agonized screams, and dark trails of coughed-up blood painted the muddy thoroughfares. Every family had bolted their doors from within, burying themselves in their squalor, not a single soul daring to step into the open air. And inside one particular ramshackle home, the atmosphere was suffocating.

"The fever won't go down!"

"He's only burning hotter! How much longer are we just supposed to stand here and watch him die?!"

Two trembling voices, laced with raw hysteria, grated against his ears. Edmond ran a frantic hand through his damp hair, his chest heaving with shuddering sighs. His young son, who had ventured out into the market districts a couple of days prior, was now writhing on the straw mattress, vomiting dark phlegm and choking beneath a raging inferno of fever.

This was undeniably the dread affliction the Head Moderator had publicly proclaimed across the network: the Black Death, which stained the body black before dragging the soul into the abyss.

"God dammit..."

Edmond wanted nothing more than to act. If the gods allowed it, he would have gladly traded his own life to spare his boy, but the cold reality offered no such bargains. Watching his son steadily lose the light in his eyes, withering away by the hour, Edmond felt as if his very organs had been drying into dust over the past two days.

"Edmond, what about the doctor?"

"They said... they said they'd be delayed. There are just too many patients..."

Yet deep within his gut, Edmond already knew the bitter truth. No physician was coming. Unable to voice that despair, he sat frozen upon a wooden stool, his heels drumming an erratic, terrified rhythm against the floorboards.

Knock, knock.

An impossible sound echoed from the front door.

Edmond's eyes snapped wide. On pure adrenaline, he launched himself toward the entryway and tore the wooden door open. A lethal pestilence was running rampant through the streets, but self-preservation didn't even cross his mind. Anyone brazenly knocking on doors amidst this living hell had to be—

"Greetings, sir."

"The Gallery Doctors...!"

"That is correct. We received reports that an afflicted patient was present at this address and came to administer treatment."

Towering nearly a head taller than an average grown man, possessing broad, imposing frames hardened by survival. And radiating a terrifying, unshakable serenity that held not an ounce of dread toward the pestilence.

"Ah... thank heavens! Thank you, thank you so much...!"

"Do not thank us. Direct your gratitude to the Head Moderator."

They were the vanguard deployed under the supreme command of the Head Moderator, leaving miracles of healing in every alleyway they crossed.

The ones known as the Gallery Doctors had begun their operation in earnest.