A Flower Blooming in the Plague, Part 3
"Ugh... my head feels all warm..."
After a hectic day, Erika, who had spent the entire day sensing (?) people's bone marrow, melted onto the desk.
"Doctor. I hear a strange sound coming from my body. Do you think I caught their cold too?"
"That's the sound of your stomach, Eri."
The number of infected patients Erika had screened out over the course of the day was about four. Most of them were patients with latent syphilis or latent tuberculosis.
"Still, you should be proud, Eri. Thanks to you, we were able to save eight people."
Normally, latent syphilis is a disease I have no way of diagnosing at this point. Since this is an era with limited equipment and technology, even I cannot diagnose it if there are no symptoms.
But ever since Erika became my assistant, diagnosing asymptomatic latent diseases has become possible. Her ability to detect abnormalities in bone marrow through mana was incredibly useful.
"Eight people?"
"I counted the children too, so it makes eight."
"Ah."
"And your magic proficiency must have improved a lot today as well."
In addition, we could expect an improvement in Erika's magical abilities. After peering into nearly dozens of people, her senses had grown slightly sharper before she knew it. They say even the sense of smell gets keener the more you train it, after all. It seemed to work on a similar principle.
"Buh? This was training?"
"Yes."
"Ah. You should have told me sooner if that was the case."
The moment she realized that what she had been doing wasn't just tedious, repetitive labor but actual training, Erika sat up straight. Perhaps because she was a child with a strong desire for self-improvement, she would instantly perk up as long as she was given the right motivation.
"Aw. If I'd known it was training, I would've looked even harder. Oh, or how about we do night consultations, Doctor?"
"We still have tomorrow and the day after, so don't exhaust yourself just yet."
Calming down Erika, who was belatedly burning with enthusiasm, I packed my things and prepared to head home.
Creak, creak.
Just then, Wangcho came down from the second floor where the pregnant women were resting.
"Doctor. I'll take care of the mothers, so you should head home now."
"Ah, thank you, Wangcho."
"By the way, Doctor. May I ask you one thing?"
"Go ahead."
"What is that white powder you fed the mothers?"
"Ah, that?"
I pointed to the drawer containing the white powder Wangcho mentioned.
"It's a medicine made from seaweed and wood ash."
Its exact name is potassium iodide. It's a drug that suppresses syphilis to some extent. Syphilis should ideally be treated with penicillin, but since I still haven't been able to produce it, I'm using this as a substitute.
I know blue mold is the raw ingredient, but I don't know the steps after that.
Well, that wasn't what was important right now. The moment Wangcho heard the ingredients of the medicine, a highly skeptical look crossed his face.
"Does that actually work? Wouldn't it be better to just expose them to mercury instead?"
"What on earth are you saying when there are babies in their wombs?"
"Well, I mean... isn't being crippled still better than dying?"
"With this white powder, no one has to die, and no child has to be born with a disability, so please don't say such things."
"Tsk... Understood. You've never been wrong before, Doctor."
Sigh. Perhaps because this is a harsh dark fantasy world, the people here occasionally blurt out heart-stopping remarks without batting an eye.
"But Wangcho," Erika, who had been listening quietly, chimed into the conversation. "You're a boss, so why do you care so much about the prostitutes?"
Wangcho's thick eyebrows twitched at Erika's blunt question. With a somewhat uncomfortable expression, he grunted.
"Why are you asking such useless questions, brat? Those mothers belong to my nest, and they're ultimately assets that bring in money for my brothel. Of course I have to manage them."
"Huh? Didn't your previous boss do the opposite? He just used them up and threw them away..."
"That bastard and I are different, kid."
Wangcho cleared his throat awkwardly as he continued his unnatural response. I knew the reason why he reacted that way.
He said he had multiple mothers.
Wangcho didn't have a biological mother. She had passed away while giving birth to him. It was the various prostitutes of this street who had raised him. Beastmen had a culture that practiced communal parenting. That was why Wangcho treated the prostitutes with care. One of them might have nursed him with the same milk he drank.
For the record, the only reason I knew this was because Wangcho was my patient. It was a fact I had naturally learned while taking his family history.
Well, it's not something I should go around telling anyone.
Recalling my duty of patient confidentiality, I kept my mouth shut despite the itch to speak. Wangcho himself didn't seem to want to advertise the reason why he protected the prostitutes either.
I smiled knowingly, pretending to be oblivious, and buckled my briefcase.
"In any case, thank you for your hard work. Please make sure they take that powdered medicine consistently for the time being."
"Understood, Doctor. Oh, right."
Just as he was about to turn around, Wangcho remembered something and pulled a small glass vial from the breast of his thick coat. He handed the vial to me, making no effort to hide a look of disgust as if he were holding a bag of food waste.
"Is this what you asked for, Doctor?"
"What's that?"
Erika's eyes gleamed with curiosity at the sight of the vial. She naturally reached her hand out toward it, but Wangcho pulled it away from her grasp in disgust.
"Don't touch it, brat. What's inside isn't exactly clean."
"Saying it like that only makes me more curious. Is it a dangerous secret?"
Wangcho glanced at me, signaling to ask if it was alright to tell Erika. I nodded my head... or rather, my beak. It wasn't exactly a secret.
Having received my permission, Wangcho revealed the identity of the vial's contents.
"It's pus from a cow's udder."
"...Huh?"
"The doctor asked me to get it for him ever since he first came down here. Whenever a diseased cow gets discarded at the slaughterhouse, I bring some to him."
Hearing this, Erika looked at me in sheer horror.
"Why pus?"
"Because I need it."
"Don't tell me..." Erika trailed off for a moment, then continued. "...Doctor, were you a dark mage all along?"
Smack!
It wasn't me this time.
"Hey! What kind of blasphemy is that to the angel of our red-light district, you brat!"
"Ow! The doctor said that if I keep getting hit on the head, my brain will go bad! What are you doing to a precious head destined to become a magic caster!"
"If your brain goes bad from a light tap like this, it was already bad to begin with."
"Hmph..."
Erika rubbed her head and turned toward me. Wangcho's hand must have been heavy, as tears were welling up in her eyes.
"But seriously, what are you going to use that for, Doctor?"
I carefully placed the glass vial into my bag as I replied.
"I have a use for it."
"So where exactly is that?"
"Do you think I would use something like this for anything other than medicine?"
At those words, Erika's eyes narrowed. She seemed to ponder deeply for a moment, then lowered her gaze to her own arm. At the end of her gaze were needle marks.
"...Doctor."
"Yes?"
"By any chance, does the medicine I get injected with contain stuff like that too?"
"..."
"...Right?"
I chuckled and nodded.
"You watched the process of making heparin right beside me."
"Ah, right."
Erika let out a sigh of relief. I subtly averted my eyes from her.
I didn't use it for injections. Not for injections...
Though I did secretly scratch it onto her skin for a vaccination in the past. In any case, I didn't lie.
With all our luggage packed, we finally set off on our way home.
"Good work today, Eri."
"You too, Doctor."
Erika, Otto, and I stepped out of the clinic side by side.
"Ah, and you too, Mr. Otto."
Bow.
Otto, wearing his coat like a cape, silently bowed his head.
"Aren't you going to greet me?"
Wangcho joined in as well. The reason he accompanied us on our way home wasn't because his house was in the upper district, but because of the recent incident.
After Otto had been left to guard me alone last time and got completely bypassed, Wangcho had taken it upon himself to escort us home every day since.
— "If even a single scratch gets on your body, Doctor, my head might roll."
Judging by his demeanor, it seemed he had received an additional request from the head butler. It appeared that Otto's reliability had plummeted in Wilhelm's eyes after the last incident.
But since Tier 1 superhumans weren't exactly easy to find just anywhere, the head butler seemed to have singled out Wangcho.
Tsk, tsk. How did Otto's reputation end up like this? At any rate, that was why Wangcho accompanied us on our commute.
"Ah, I'm hungry. I want to eat dinner quickly."
"Is there anything you want to eat?"
"Anything you make is delicious, Doctor."
"Thank you for liking it."
We chatted amiably as we walked toward the upper district where the car was parked. Because the roads were slightly frozen right after the heavy snow melted, it was difficult for Otto to drive the car all the way to the front of the clinic.
Limbus Pit was exceptionally desolate when night fell. In this district, which was completely abandoned by welfare and administration, magic gas lamps were nowhere to be found. Instead, the red lanterns hanging from every eave usually served as substitutes for those gas lamps.
"But Doctor. Don't the lanterns seem to be out more than usual today?"
"..."
"Is it because of the heavy snow that they won't light properly?"
Erika tilted her head. Her gaze was fixed on the end of the dark alleyway.
It was then.
Bzzzt.
One of the red lanterns ahead flickered to life. Flicker. Soon, the light of the red lantern went out once and turned back on.
"...?"
Something emerged from the end of the alley.
"What is that?"
Though it was hard to see due to the distance and the dim lighting, it was a human silhouette.
Flicker.
As the light flickered once, the figure was suddenly ten steps closer. Only then did its attire come into view.
A clown?
A worn, tattered robe. A scepter adorned with bells. A belly bulging beneath the robe. A massive clown, easily over two meters tall, was striking a ballet pose.
What the actual fuck.
Flicker.
The obese clown tilted his body sideways, crossing his front feet as he advanced ten steps.
Flicker.
He extended one leg straight out, tapping the ground with his toe as he advanced another ten steps.
Flicker.
This time, he balanced on one leg while raising the other high behind him, bending his upper body deeply forward.
"I know that! That's an arabesque!"
You don't need to narrate it for me, Eri. I was already busy wondering if someone raised as delicately as me should even be allowed to lay eyes on such a monstrosity.
Even after that, the fat clown continued to flaunt his pointlessly flexible body, drawing closer every time the light flickered out. By the time the clown's face, which looked like a patchwork of rags, came into view, I had a vague idea of its identity.
The King of Fools?
I recalled the photograph in the report submitted by the Ironclad special task force on the day they returned from their mission. Although it was hard to recognize him because his face was a mangled mess, his attire and the scepter in his hand served as clues.
I heard his head was blown to pieces, though?
Or did they fail to detonate the bomb properly? No, that couldn't be. I wasn't some third-rate villain who would feel relieved just by throwing someone off a cliff; I had explicitly ordered them to confirm the corpse.
The clown let out a frothy laugh.
"Oho— ho— ho—."
Black liquid dripped from between his torn lips as the clown's mouth gaped open. Only upon seeing that did it click.
"Doctor. That..."
"It's a ghoul."
The ghoulified King of Fools continued to dance like a ballerina as he approached. However, his gaze was fixed entirely on one person.
"Ah, shit. We made eye contact."
Wangcho spat on the ground. The King of Fools' gaze was locked onto Wangcho's face.
"Doctor. Just to be sure, that bastard came for me, right?"
I nodded in affirmation. Here is a quick trivia fact: for naturally occurring undead, the cause of their death heavily influences their behavioral patterns. Undead who drowned try to drag the living into the water, those who starved try to devour the living, and those who froze to death crave warm blood. And vengeful spirits usually seek out the target of their grudge first.
"Tao Che—"
The King of Fools approached, transforming his scepter into a flail. But before the ghoul could even finish his lament, Wangcho vanished into the darkness.
Flicker.
As the red lantern wavered once, Wangcho materialized right above the King of Fools' head.
"Huh?"
Wangcho's hand axe slammed into the clown's neck. The axe, shimmering with a blue aura, embedded itself halfway into the King of Fools' neck.
"Gurgle?!"
Wangcho twisted the embedded hand axe. Crack! With a sickening sound, Narenkönig's neck snapped completely around.
Severing the clown's head from his massive torso, Wangcho landed on the ground and spat,
"Hey, did you really think you and I were on the same level, you piece of shit?"
It was a natural outcome. His opponent was merely the boss of one of the many small, fragmented organizations in the H-Sector. In contrast, Wangcho was a superhuman who had unified the D-Sector. Considering that the H-Sector was feared not because they were strong, but because they were insane, such a disparity in power was only to be expected.
"But this guy is persistent. Did he walk all the way here from over there?"
Wangcho poked the headless corpse. However, the massive body, which should have been dead, convulsed bizarrely, its stiff arms flailing as it tried to grab Wangcho's ankles. The head, face-down in the mud, was no different.
The two eyes visible beneath the clown's thick makeup were rolled back white, completely devoid of reason. His unfocused eyes were directed solely at Wangcho.
"Kaaaaah! Hehehe... Meat...!"
With his jaw dislocated, vomiting blackish blood, the head gnashed its teeth like a wild beast.
"What the hell. Is a ghoul that used to be a Tier 1 superhuman just built different?"
"Kyah!"
"This is an eyesore in front of the doctor. Let's end our ill fate here."
Just as Wangcho clicked his tongue and raised his hand axe to completely smash the noisy head to pieces, a calm voice cut through Narenkönig's screeching from behind the alleyway.
"I intended to send a knight of fitting caliber to welcome my guest, but indeed, the vulgar cannot comprehend nobility even in death."
"Huh? Who's that?"
Our gazes turned toward the darkness. The voice came from a part of the alley where not even the light of the red lanterns could reach.
Tap, tap. Clack.
The sound of leather shoes tapping against the wet stone floor drew closer. Interspersed between the footsteps was the sound of a cane striking the stone. Soon, the figure slowly revealed itself beneath the red lantern.
"I used him because a Tier 1 ingredient is hard to come by, but it seems it was indeed an inappropriate choice for entertaining a guest."
The man who stepped out of the darkness wore a worn frock coat and a battered top hat. He looked like the textbook stereotype of a ruined aristocrat. The man slightly lifted his top hat and spoke toward me.
"My apologies, Mr. Schnabel. This was not my original intention."
The man in the top hat placed his hat against his chest and bowed politely.
"I am Belgian. I have come to make a truly intriguing proposal to you, who, like me, deals in death."
Looking at the man, I thought to myself: Being misunderstood is all well and good, but having creeps like this latch onto me is definitely a major downside.