Treatment
Four more days pass, Rose doesn’t seem to be improving or getting worse. Rayla and John are sitting at the table mindlessly staring at the ceiling.
Knock Knock
“It’s me Sher Aka.”
“Sher Aka!?”
“Sherry!?”
John quickly runs to the door and opens it. Behind it are Sher Aka, a Goat-Beastkin woman with green hair and a bald, muscular Turtle-Beastkin man.
After giving John a hug Sher Aka asks, “Is Thoma…?”
“He’s still alive.”
“Thank the six…”
The Goat-Beastkin says, “Heyo, I’m the Blooming Goat, I’m here to see the patient. Where are they?”
“Over here!”
John yells, as he leads her inside Rose’s room while Rayla and the Turtle-Beastkin follow in tow.
She puts on a joking face, “Yikes, that patient sure looks bad and they look pretty sick as well, haha.”
Scarlet fledges her teeth and angrily growls, “You dare mock my dying sister in front of me!?”
“I sure do! Now get out of the way ‘your Highness’ I’ve got a patient to treat.”
Scarlet seems like she’s thinking of attacking the Blooming Goat but John gives her a reassuring look that makes her go to the other side of the room, leaving space for the healer to do her work.
Getting serious, she gets close to Rose, “Who’s the one that was treating this person?”
“Me.”
“Well, you seem to have been able to do the bare minimum, congrats.”
“Coming from an S-Rank like yourself I take it as a compliment.”
“You shouldn’t. Strife for more. What diagnosis did you come to and what treatment did you use so far?”
“Smithy Lung. The patient rejects light magic so I was using Life Transfer in regular intervals together with comatose care.”
“What symptoms did the patient present with?”
“Unconsciousness, coughing up blood and bleeding out of the nose after three days of 12-hour shifts shoveling iron ore into an oven. The patient started coughing from the first day on, it got worse on the second and a nosebleed happened.”
“How did that change during treatment?”
“There were no more nosebleeds but the coughing fits increased over the first few days then subsided again.”
“How long has the patient been working around furnaces before the symptoms started.”
“Never.”
“What?”
“He has never worked or lived around furnaces before.”
“Hmm…I invoke thee Gaia, King of the Earth, let life flow back into this vessel. Greater Regeneration.”
Transparent green roots spring forth from the bed and enter into Rose’s body, slowly returning some color to her face.
“Let’s test if that theory of Smithy Lung is true or not. I invoke thee, Gaia King of the Earth, bring forth a flower grown from the toxins in this body. Greater Cure.”
After touching Rose’s chest, a pulsating translucent green flower slowly grows out of it. After about a minute, it begins to bloom and inside is what looks like a mix of fine coal powder and iron powder that could barely fill half of a bottle cap. Almost instantly after it has finished blooming, Rose takes a deep breath and her breathing returns to normal.
“Hmm…This shouldn’t be enough to cause this much trouble…”
After collecting the powder in a small vial, the Blooming Goat carefully sits up the unconscious Rose and presses down between her shoulder blades causing her to shortly turn into her draconic form before transforming back.
“Ah…That explains it,” she turns around with a smile on her face, “So who’s idea was it to let the infant work in the factory?”
Sher Aka answers, “It was me who convinced the others to allow it.”
“Oh? And your reasoning?”
“Thoma Ahad wanted to help and I thought it was a relatively low risk job. I also thought the physical aspect of it would be no problem for him.”
“And why exactly did you have them work at all? They are not allowed to work.”
“Because he insisted on it. He wanted to be of use to us and I didn’t believe there was a chance of him getting hurt. It was also a way to see what his body is capable of now after he reincarnated.”
“Reincarnated?”
“Yes, Ifrit, the Spirit King of Fire, reincarnated him about a month ago. The appearance of him you see now is from his curse and stayed that way through reincarnation but he most likely was not a dragon before it happened.”
“Hmm…It didn’t say anything about reincarnation in the file, why is that?”
“Because we didn’t think anyone would believe us.”
“I see…So this was a way to test their limit. I can’t say your actions were unreasonable so I won’t report you.”
“Thank you.”
“But-”
“But?”
“You still need to be punished for what you did.”
She then punches Sher Aka in the face knocking her to the ground then jumps on top of her hitting her four more times while the Turtle-Beastkin holds off anyone trying to intervene, “Children Bam Are not Bam To be Bam Experimented on Bam,” She then spits on Sher Aka’s bloodied and swollen face, “Remember that. Children are off limits.”
“I will…”
She smiles, “Good. Now then~ I recommend you get out of town, this place will turn into a battlefield soon. The kid should be stable enough to travel now. She should wake up in a couple of days. Also as for the results of your experiment, my guess is that if the kid managed to work that long in that job then their strength, endurance and such is of an adult in this form but it doesn’t change their resistance to toxins, my guess is that the same counts for disease. If they get sick, treat them as if they’re an infant. From the description of them coughing up that much blood I presume that the blood in this form is of an adult amount so a wound, while you should be more careful of infection, should probably be able to be treated the same as with an adult. But to be sure…”
She takes out a scalpel and makes a cut on Rose’s right hand causing it to bleed, she then presses down on Rose’s back and in the short time before Rose transforms back inspects her right front paw, “It seems wounds are proportional not identical. If the same amount of blood from their cursed form would have left their draconic form it would have been a problem but it was just a drop. Make of that what you will Mr. John.”
“Alright, may we leave now?”
“Of course, you’re not under arrest or anything, haha. Ah! Before I forget though, the Clown Carnival send their regards. It seems they had some sort of personal connection to Thoma Ahad.”