The Secret of the Lymph Nodes
The routine continues, as always. The tedious translation work drags on. Wow, at this rate, I might actually become fluent in Icelandic. As I continue translating, I’ve picked up a lot of vocabulary. I’ve even got a rough idea of how to read and speak it now. Truly, people learn fast when they have motivation, don't they? The will to learn just appears automatically.
For now, I plan to translate every single post on the site I’m currently looking at. I want to know exactly what happened in Iceland, how they responded in such a cold country, and what successes and failures they encountered. This is invaluable data. Plus, since these are 100 percent firsthand accounts, the accuracy is high. Of course, I shouldn't take everything at face value and will need to organize it myself, but still.
I scrape the posts one by one, translate them, and store them away systematically. It’s actually quite fun. There’s the drawback that the events are flowing in reverse, but that has its own charm. Looking at the results, inferring the causes, and then uncovering them. In doing so, I feel like my own cognitive abilities are improving. Do I feel a bit smarter?
I couldn't do that much each day. I worked while sticking to my routine. This is important, but my daily life comes first. So, I don't push myself by pulling all-nighters. After about a month of working like this, posts containing the content I wanted began to appear. It was around the time the mutation inhibitors came out in Iceland. To be precise, they were likely spore concentration reducers.
When the medicine first came out, the people of Iceland didn't just take it blindly. Honestly, anyone would be the same. You can't just go around eating unverified medicine. It’s not like developing a new drug doesn't require countless clinical trials and approvals for no reason. Making medicine isn't child's play.
However, those who had directly encountered zombies and lost family or friends took the medicine immediately. And those who took it actually took the lead in strongly urging others to take it as well. They argued, "If you don't take it, you'll become a zombie anyway, so why wouldn't you?" Their logic was that even if there were side effects, it was better than becoming a zombie.
Back then, there were a lot of posts on this bulletin board, too. The post regeneration rate was fast, and there were quite a few people writing. It must have been a fairly popular site. It’s not common for a private website to have this much activity. Thanks to that, I learned a lot. And among those, the content that caught my eye the most was the suspicion regarding the drug's ingredients.
The people of Iceland had questioned whether the drug contained the corpses of dead zombies. It’s a story bordering on a conspiracy theory, but it didn't sound like that to me. Zombie corpses? It sounds plausible, doesn't it? I’m the one who already pulls out lymph nodes and walks around among zombies as much as I want. So, I don't have much aversion to the idea of using zombie corpses. I’m just curious about why such a story came out. And what kind of logic led them to think that way.
Most conspiracy theories are truly absurd, but they circulate because there’s a reason they do. Even if they’re barking up the wrong tree, there must be a plausible cause for people to have agreed with it. People have their foolish sides, but not everyone is a fool. So, unless it’s a conspiracy theory incited by someone, there must be some plausible reason.
And as a result of translating so diligently, I was able to roughly understand why such a conspiracy theory emerged. The Icelandic authorities immediately collected the zombies of the dead. It didn't matter what the bereaved families said. They just left behind words that it was dangerous and took the bodies away mercilessly. That’s why such rumors circulated. Because the medicine came out a long time after they took the bodies.
Can you take the bodies and make them into medicine? If you make medicine from corpses, what principle would it be made on? It’s a pity I’m not an expert. I can't infer the intermediate process with just these causes and results. However, I have a method. I have the only certain method, don't I? The method of elimination. I’ll know if I feed it to them.
I can make medicine from zombies and feed it to them. Then the results will come out. What if it goes wrong? Well... I’ll just have to find new test subjects. It’s unfortunate, though.
I don't know if Iceland really made medicine from the corpses of mutated zombies. They might have taken them for research. Or for safety. In fact, that’s the right judgment. Just being with a zombie sends the spore concentration skyrocketing. If so, medicine based on corpses would clearly have a negative impact on spore concentration. So, I’ll have to conduct the experiment a bit cautiously. So I don't lose test subjects in vain.
As expected, the most suspicious thing is the lymph node. The lymph node. A cheat item that makes zombies not recognize me even if I just wear it around my neck. What if I grind up such lymph nodes and eat them? Will the mutation accelerate? Will I turn immediately? I don't know, but the probability is higher. It’s not like anything would change just because it enters the stomach instead of the respiratory tract.
Still, I’ll try it. I’ll know if I try. Why worry? First, I kill one of the caged zombies and take out its lymph node. Having obtained a fresh lymph node like that, I pondered for a moment. Should I dry it and turn it into powder? Then the performance of the lymph node would disappear, wouldn't it? The performance must be different between a lymph node that has lost its effect and one that still has it, right?
It’s a pity I can't experiment on one person. I have to administer different drugs under the same conditions. There are five subjects trapped in the lab. Four of them are under the same conditions. Two men and two women. Since they’ve been together since the world turned this way, eating the same things and being in the same places, I can consider the conditions equal. Well... individual characteristics or immunity might differ, but anyway, the spore infection levels of all four were similar. So, I can assume there are no such variables.
I waited until the effect of the lymph node wore off. And after that time passed, I caught another zombie and took out its lymph node. A lymph node with no effect and a fresh, lively lymph node. I put those two aside and made them into medicine. Usually, when making medicine, you have to use excipients. You have to use them to increase the size and maintain the dissolution rate. And such excipients usually use a lot of things like starch.
Well... I have plenty of starch. Since I prepared a lot from the beginning because powder products are easy to store. I ground the lymph node that had lost its effect after time and the brand-new lymph node into powder. And I mixed in starch to make the medicine. The problem is that I don't know the dosage of this medicine. I don't know what will happen after taking it either. Still, it’s done. I made it, so I have to give it to them.
I go to the men's room. And I hand the medicine to the guys one by one. Since they were guys who ate this kind of medicine one by one every day, they eat the medicine I give them this time too, with expressions that say they don't like it. I check to make sure they’ve eaten it all so they can't put it under their tongues and pretend to eat it, and then I close the door. Now, I just have to wait and watch.
It’s good if there are results. If not... I just have to clean up the zombies. For the day after giving them the medicine, my heart was pounding so hard I almost couldn't keep up with my routine. Every time I finished one thing, I rushed to my room to check the camera in the room where they were. Did one of them turn into a zombie and attack the other? I thought.
However, that didn't happen. They were still human. Hmm. They didn't turn into zombies immediately even though they ate the lymph node? This is an interesting development. A day has passed. Now it’s time to check their condition. When I go to the room where they are in the lab and open the door, I see them not looking very well. What. They looked fine when I saw them on camera. I guess that wasn't it?
The guy who ate the one with the worn-out lymph node performance is crouched in the corner of the room, looking at me with half-dilated eyes. The guy who ate the mixture of the freshly caught lymph node was lying on the bed, asleep even though I had arrived. Did he die? I went to check, thinking that, but that wasn't it. Instead, his body was running a high fever. When I measured the fever, it was 38.5 degrees. Wow. He must be out of it, right? It’s probably because of the medicine I fed him, right?
But does having a fever mean something is reacting? First, I draw blood from both of them. Now they don't even resist. They look like they’ve given up, as if to say do whatever you want. I take the blood and check the spore concentration. And as a result of checking with a pounding heart, I was able to confirm that the spore concentration had decreased in both of them.
Wow. Really? The lymph node was the answer? Those Icelandic bastards. Did they really take the corpses and make medicine? Of course, that wouldn't be it. Even if that were the case, they wouldn't have ground up lymph nodes to make medicine like I did. They probably extracted the components, checked what effects they had and how they acted, and then cultured and used them. They wouldn't have used them ignorantly like I did.
Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. I’ve confirmed that the spore concentration has decreased, haven't I? The guy who ate the one with the worn-out lymph node effect had his spore concentration level drop by about 2 percent. The guy who ate the freshly extracted lymph node had his spore concentration level drop by about 5 percent. It’s okay. It’s excellent. It’s a huge deal.
Yes. It’s just a bunch of spores. Even if they are accumulated in the body, it’s not that there’s no way to get rid of them. Everyone just didn't know that spores were accumulating, so they couldn't prepare. The world collapsed before a cure came out.
Anyway, that’s it. I don't know what effect the lymph node lowers the spore concentration with. I don't need to know the mechanism or chemical reactions. There’s no way to know either. I just need to look at the results, add this and that one by one, and create a stable medicine. Ah. I wish there were more test subjects. For now, let’s keep experimenting on those guys. They’re still alive, so I should use them thoroughly until they die.