Fairy Tale Survival with Ability Copying

Levi had made an assumption based on first impressions. He had mistaken the doctor from the fairy tale Doctor Know-All for the Wonder Doctor from The Genie in the Bottle.

Doctor Know-All was a rather obscure tale, and it didn't contain any magical treasures. As a child, Levi had only skimmed through it and never paid much attention to it. It was only now, after using Detection, that he realized his mistake.

This Doctor Crabb hadn't become famous because of his medical skills. In fact, he had originally been a farmer. He bought a beginner's medical textbook and immediately started practicing bloodletting. How could someone like that know any real medicine?

His fame was entirely the result of blind luck and a series of misunderstandings.

Back then, a wealthy man had his money stolen and hired this Doctor Know-All to find the missing fortune.

Crabb brought his wife along with him. As each dish was served during the meal, he would remind her:

"This is the first one. This is the second one..."

What he meant was, "This is the first course. This is the second course..."

Unfortunately, the servants bringing out the dishes happened to be the very thieves who had stolen the rich man's money.

The guilty servants immediately assumed that Doctor Know-All was referring to them.

Later, a dish containing a crab was served.

The wealthy man wanted to test Doctor Know-All and asked him to identify the food inside the covered plate.

Doctor Know-All wasn't omniscient at all. He couldn't figure it out.

In despair, he sighed, "Poor Crabb that I am!"

The problem was that in the local dialect, Crabb also carried the meaning of crab.

The wealthy man was astonished.

The guilty servants were even more astonished—and terrified.

They immediately confessed the location where the stolen money had been hidden.

Afterward, Doctor Know-All simply told the wealthy man where the money was without revealing who had stolen it, pleasing both sides at once.

As a result, his reputation spread throughout the region.

But as the story was retold again and again, it gradually transformed into a legend claiming that Crabb was an all-knowing physician capable of anything. Anyone hearing the tale would naturally assume that his medical skills were extraordinary.

Some people even hired this Doctor Know-All to treat illnesses.

He relied on the same old bloodletting method.

If the patient survived, it proved his medical expertise.

If the patient died, then God hadn't chosen to protect them—or they had sought treatment too late.

Well...

Since relatively few people actually died at Doctor Know-All's hands, his reputation only continued to grow.

Even the leaders of the two merchant guilds had heard of him, which eventually led to his introduction to Levi.

At that moment, the so-called Doctor Know-All looked at Levi with hopeful eyes, radiating complete sincerity.

Levi's expression was about the same as someone who had just swallowed a mouthful of liquid manure.

He understood exactly what Doctor Crabb wanted.

The man was simply trying to curry favor with him in hopes of receiving a reward. If he could somehow earn a noble title in the process, even better.

But now that Levi knew what kind of person he really was, how could he possibly entrust all the sick and wounded people in the territory to him?

At this rate, the casualty rate would probably exceed the death toll from warfare.

Levi secretly shook his head and dismissed the man with a single sentence.

When the leaders of the two merchant guilds realized that this Doctor Know-All had failed to meet Levi's standards, they left with him, somewhat disappointed.

Privately, they felt Levi's requirements were simply too demanding. In their eyes, only a devil or a saint could satisfy such standards, because he was asking doctors to snatch people away from Death itself.

Of course, they didn't dare say such things to Levi's face.

They merely grumbled about it internally.

The three men left.

However, the girl who had accompanied Doctor Know-All did not.

At that moment, Doctor Know-All was still reeling from the blow of being rejected and completely failed to notice her.

The two merchant guild leaders paid her even less attention.

As a result, she was forgotten entirely and remained where she stood, quietly gazing toward the room where Levi was.

Inside the room.

Levi had already given up on the idea of finding a reliable doctor in this era.

Unless Detection uncovered information about the Wonder Doctor who possessed the magical eraser treasure, there was no point.

Any doctor who came afterward might just as easily be a former butcher or barber who had switched professions.

'In the end, I can only rely on myself.'

Levi racked his brain, searching through every fragment of medical knowledge he could remember from his previous life.

He planned to compile it all into a handbook and personally train a group of relatively reliable barefoot doctors.

Unfortunately, the only medical knowledge he possessed came from random short videos he had watched online.

Among them was an ancient method for producing penicillin—

First, cultivate Penicillium mold.

Place citrus peels or other suitable materials in a damp environment for three to five days until blue-green mold patches appear on the surface.

Scrape off the mold and inoculate it into a cooled corn-porridge culture medium.

Cover the mouth of the clay jar with breathable paper and allow it to ferment in darkness at 25°C for seven days.

The next step was preliminary extraction.

Filter the culture liquid through gauze to obtain a yellowish-brown solution.

Then add an equal amount of rapeseed oil and stir thoroughly.

Allow it to settle into separate layers before discarding the upper oil layer.

What remained was crude penicillin solution.

The next step was deeper purification.

Mix wood ash with water, stir it thoroughly, let it settle, and collect the clear liquid from the top—

This was an alkaline solution.

Slowly add the alkaline solution to the crude penicillin extract, adjusting the pH until it reaches neutral. Then pour it into a shallow dish and allow it to evaporate naturally. The thick residue left behind would be crude penicillin.

Although this primitive penicillin had low purity and could cause allergic reactions or simply fail to work, and although it couldn't be injected and could only be used externally, it was still far more reliable than bloodletting therapy.

Levi made up his mind.

He would select trustworthy people from his territory, teach them this method of extracting penicillin, and establish a dedicated pharmaceutical workshop to produce this ancient penicillin and other medicines that could be manufactured relatively easily.

Combined with the simplified medical handbook he planned to compile, he would use the Enlightenment Aura to rapidly train a group of makeshift doctors.

Those doctors would then handle the medical needs of the territory's residents whenever they fell ill or suffered injuries.

As for the local doctors...

Levi had completely given up on them.

While thinking about this, he suddenly sensed something and looked up.

He discovered that the silent girl who had not uttered a single word all this time had quietly entered the room.

Levi's gaze sharpened.

A faint blue light flashed subtly within his eyes.

As he looked at the girl, surprise immediately appeared in the depths of his eyes.

This girl's identity turned out to be that of the daughter of the King of the neighboring Kingdom of Valeria.

More precisely, she was the daughter of the former queen.

The former queen had been the daughter of the old King of Valeria.

The current King of Valeria had merely been the old king's son-in-law.

The old king had originally had both a son and a daughter.

Now, however, only the son-in-law remained.

The son was dead.

The daughter was dead as well.

Only this granddaughter remained, forced to hide and flee for her life while avoiding assassination attempts from her own biological father.

Because this granddaughter of the old King of Valeria—the girl standing before Levi—was the person with the strongest legitimate claim to the throne of Valeria.

If she returned, she should be the one ascending the throne and becoming one of the rare queens in Valerian history.

Of course, that was assuming she could return safely.

The father who had spent years trying to kill her certainly had no desire to see her come back.

Nor did she dare reveal herself casually.

Over the years, many people around her had died.

Those deaths were lessons written in blood and tears.

Her father's influence within the Kingdom of Valeria was simply too great.

There had even been times when she fell into despair, believing she would never have the chance to avenge her mother.

Yet during those hopeless days, she heard news of the crushing defeat suffered by Valeria's army.

In Levi, the victorious Count of Silverclaw, she saw a glimmer of hope.

She even felt that this might be the only hope she would ever have in her lifetime.

And so she came.

After bribing Doctor Know-All, Crabb, she obtained an opportunity to meet Levi...

All of this was information Levi had learned through Detection.

But that wasn't all he saw.

He had uncovered even more information about her—

information so surprising that it left him genuinely stunned.

The middle-aged King of Valeria was not merely a supporting character from the fairy tale The White Snake.

He was also the male protagonist of The Three Snake-Leaves.

He was the man who married the old king's daughter.

After the princess died from illness, he was forced to be buried alongside her.

Inside the tomb, he killed a snake and then witnessed another snake revive its companion using Three Snake-Leaves.

Inspired by what he had seen, he used the Three Snake-Leaves to revive his wife—the princess.

Unexpectedly, although his wife returned to life, her heart changed.

She conspired with a ship captain and murdered him.

Fortunately, his loyal servant used the Three Snake-Leaves to bring him back to life.

He then raced back to the royal capital and sought justice from the old king.

The old king executed his own daughter and handed the entire kingdom over to his son-in-law.

At first glance, the story seemed extremely... fairy-tale-like.

But when viewed through the eyes of an adult, there was something undeniably strange about it.

It was much like the story of Candy House.

The fairy tale described how evil the old witch was, how she wanted to eat Gretel's brother, and how cruelly she mistreated the children.

Yet that did nothing to explain the various miraculous witchcraft techniques Gretel displayed later in the story.

The truth was hidden in the parts that had never been recorded.

From the granddaughter of the old King of Valeria, Levi detected information that greatly surprised him.

It turned out that when the old king's son-in-law—the current middle-aged King of Valeria—killed that White Snake, it wasn't because the snake was about to crawl across his wife's corpse.

He was simply starving after going too long without food.

Driven by hunger, he chopped the White Snake into three pieces.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, he drank its blood and ate some of its flesh.

It was at that moment that he discovered he had gained the ability to understand the thoughts of animals.

Afterward, another White Snake arrived carrying the Three Snake-Leaves.

It revived its companion and departed, leaving the Three Snake-Leaves behind.

Inspired by what he had witnessed, the old king's son-in-law used the Three Snake-Leaves to bring his wife back to life.

However, he told no one about either the Three Snake-Leaves or the effects of the White Snake's flesh.

The experience of being forced into a burial sacrifice had deeply traumatized him.

He realized that only by seizing power could he truly control his own fate.