Chapter 103: Shifters
When Valens was about to open the clinic door, he caught a subtle shift in the Resonance. It was early in the morning, the sun's first lights barely flashing from beyond the thick swarm of clouds, the air foggy and the paved roads slick with dew. He’d left Selin in the house since it was still early, and told William on the way that she’d be coming in their usual hours.
He rushed to the clinic at this hour because the penicillin would be ready soon. He wanted to prepare the first batch before they opened the clinic.
This change in the Resonance, though, prickled his skin with unease. He paused as the clinic door creaked gently open, peered back into the street with eyebrows arched, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. It was silent—too silent, perhaps, for his taste.
Shaking his head, he stepped in and locked the door after him. His newly established reputation had turned this clinic into a haven of sorts for the poor ring of Belgrave, so while there were gangs who wanted to take a piece from him, or take him in for a variety of reasons, Valens found that there was an equally large group of people willing to support him so long as he kept the clinic active.
Of course, these gangs and the rest of the public weren’t aware that there would always be a Templar in disguise working in the clinic just in case. A single Dain could take a bunch of gang members without sweating a drop, not to mention Valens’s skills, which were greatly suited to dealing with crowded enemies, unlike the Templars.
Inside the simple laboratory, he checked the state of the fermentation. The crude penicillin was taking shape as a broth and would be ready for extraction in a few hours. After that, Valens would have to purify it.
It’s coming along quite well. This will change things.
He wanted to give the formula to the Church, even if that meant lending them another tool to control the public. He wasn’t all too bothered by that notion since the Church was losing ground quite fast under His Majesty King Edmund's new rule.
If all the things written about him are true, then the moment he catches the whiff of this medication, he will do his best to spread it widely to the people. The Church will have no choice but to comply.
Valens nodded as he returned to the main hall and poured himself into Selin’s chair behind the desk. The rush of the work was getting to him as of late, so having a silent moment before the work started felt nice.
We’re not making much progress on the other fronts, though. Other than marking hundreds of people as ‘soulless’ and sending information about them to the Church, I’m not sure what we have accomplished here.
It was as though he was thrown inside a giant pot of a city in which everybody lied, cheated, or tried to deceive each other for reasons that eluded him. When they weren’t busy doing those things, they were out searching for ways to make life uncomfortable for certain communities here.