Chapter 13
#013
1.
Doctors are ultra-rare in Necropolis.
Think about it—does this heaven-and-earth, lone-orphan city really have the kind of structure that churns out highly educated people?
Here, the bigger problem is that the entrenched, exploitative megacorp Overnus Pharmaceuticals snaps up even the few doctors it can find and hires them as researchers.
If you had enough money, you could hire one as your personal physician and get treated, but for most citizens that kind of luxury was impossible.
Supply was nowhere near keeping up with demand.
Filling the gap were all kinds of folk remedies, painkillers, and quack doctors.
Quack.
Just hearing the word didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but there was no choice.
A proper service center is always more expensive than an independent shop.
With Arbel about to be half-dead and sprawled out in the house in just a week, I had no time to save up money.
“Sis, these days even private repair shops are supposed to be pretty good. I had my car bumper replaced at one of them.”
With Arbel bundled in cloth on my back, I stepped into C-sector.
As soon as I entered, the smells of oil, spices, and a sweet opium scent hit me.
C-sector is a place with an especially strong Chinese-style feel even in this city.
It’s because it’s a sector where Overnus Pharmaceuticals has a strong grip, and the three families that rule Overnus all have a distinctly Eastern bent.
Their symbols alone say it all: a red dragon (赤龍), a black tortoise (玄龜), and a golden carp (金鯉).
Red lanterns hang everywhere, opium is the most commonly consumed drug, and you can hear mahjong tiles shuffling all over the place.
“Riichi! The showdown starts now!”
“Bwahaha! Let’s see... riichi, pinfu, dora... that’s a mangan! Wahaha, wahahaha!”
“Damn! I knew I’d get hit if I discarded that!”
Ah, I want to play mahjong too.
The feel of slapping those tiles is seriously amazing.
“Hey, buddy, if you’re going to play with that woman, let me join too. I’ll pay—kgh!”
“Hands off.”
I moved forward, smashing the noses of the guys who kept leering at Arbel now and then.
Our destination was “Aquarium Street” in C-19 District, the area where quack doctors’ clinics were clustered.
When we arrived at Aquarium Street, which was much neater than the rest of C-sector, thick iron doors greeted us on both sides.
“What are these doors, bunkers?”
Faint lights flickered above the nondescript iron doors.
Signs reading things like “Tangping Bone-Setting Clinic,” “Artificial Circuit Specialty Hospital,” “Incense Burner Acupuncture Clinic,” and “No. 1 Herbal Medicine Shop” belonged to the various quack doctors working here.
It had this ominous atmosphere that made it feel like if you had an appendectomy and woke up, they’d say, “We threw in your cornea and kidney for free~”
I couldn’t just let Arbel’s body be shown carelessly in a place like this.
Especially if the doctor was a man.
“A quack? There’s an Isis Clinic you should check out.”
“It’s several times more expensive than other places, but when my wrist got chopped off before, I went there and it healed up spotless.”
“And above all, the doctor there is a woman, and her looks are... heh heh.”
Akit must have recommended a place around here somewhere.
“Isis, Isis, Isis...”
Found it. Isis Clinic.
-thump thump thump
“Customer! Customer!”
After knocking on the iron door several times, a while later, I heard a voice from the other side along with signs of life.
“Closed for the day.”
“I’ve got an emergency patient. She’s one step from death.”
After a brief silence,
-click
A peephole opened between the thick iron doors.
Through the bars, green eyes with heavy double eyelids peeked out.
“Show me the patient.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My place is a bit pricey.”
“I brought plenty.”
“Show me.”
“Here.”
I lifted Arbel’s hood on my back to show her condition, then jingled the coin purse full of gold coins.
“Take one step back from the door.”
-click
-clack-clack click click
With the sound of countless locks being disengaged, the door opened.
“Come in.”
After the simple screening procedure and stepping inside, the room looked less like a treatment room and more like an antique shop piled high with odds and ends.
The faint smell of disinfectant drifting through the dim lighting made it feel at least somewhat like a medical facility.
Still, a place like this was top 1% in Necropolis.
Even the fixtures that looked like junk were new, and the dim lighting gave off a strangely cozy feeling.
The quack doctor locked the door as soon as I entered.
The moment she turned around.
“Hello...?”
I gave a brief bow in greeting.
Dark green semi-curly hair, sleepy eyes half-lidded as if everything in the world was a pain.
A turtleneck sweater beneath a wrinkled white lab coat.
She had an oddly sensual aura, intellectual and decadent at the same time.
But the reason I was studying her closely wasn't because of the bosom swaying beneath the sweater.
While recommending this quack doctor, Akit had said this:
“Oh, and just so you know, big bro, let me warn you. In Necropolis, you absolutely must not mess with quacks.”
“They’ve got their own quack doctors’ association, and if you touch them, a kill order goes out immediately.”
“Assassins will just keep coming until you’re dead.”
But even without some separate association, this woman probably wouldn't have to worry about getting roughed up.
This atmosphere and that overwhelming presence.
This quack doctor was probably a wizard.
Suddenly, last loop’s nightmare came back to me.
Back then, too, I’d been betrayed by the wizard Ceres.
Why the hell are there so many of those supposedly rare wizards?
“Give me the consultation fee first. 20,000 Vios. Treatment and medicine will be billed separately.”
This is getting unsettling.
2.
The woman, who introduced herself as Isis, placed Arbel on the examination table in the treatment room.
The exam room didn't match any image of a “hospital” or a clinic that I could think of.
Around Arbel’s exam table were several fish tanks stacked like blocks, and in each tank, colorful goldfish and tropical fish floated around, gulping at the water.
As Isis kneaded Arbel’s body, she said:
“She’s a wizard. A first-rank one at that. Her mana circuits are completely trashed—how did she end up like this?”
If I looked at it coldly, the chance that Isis was a dangerous variable was low.
What are the odds of that many coincidences happening?
But maybe because I’d already been betrayed by a wizard in the previous loop, showing Arbel to a wizard felt oddly unpleasant.
Should I look for another skilled female doctor right now?
When I hesitated to answer, Isis prodded me with barely concealed irritation.
“Speak. I’ve got a ‘do not divulge patient information’ precept anyway.”
“A precept...?”
“You brought a wizard here as a patient and you don’t know about precepts?”
“Ah.”
I remembered.
Precepts, one of the “deals” a Rank 1 or higher wizard can strike with the world.
A wizard binds themselves with taboos, rules, vows, and the like.
And the world grants power in proportion to their value and weight... or something like that?
“If you can’t trust me, then get lost.”
Isis looked annoyed, with an expression that said, “what a pain.”
“Then, give me a second.”
This is exactly what this thing is for.
I’m not the type to have leftover potions after a boss fight.
I reached into the inside of my coat and pulled “Coin Toss of Truth” from my inventory.
‘Quack doctor Isis has a precept not to divulge patient information.’
I asked, then flicked the coin with my thumb.
Heads is TRUE, tails is FALSE.
-ting!
I caught it in my palm and checked.
TRUE
This is how you use it, right?
[The statement made by ‘Isis Yozora’ is true]
[Coin Toss of Truth remaining uses (2/3)]
It works perfectly!
This is pretty damn useful.
“I am the eldest son of the Count Monttraven family, and this is my older sister. We were suddenly attacked, and I think she was injured in the process. And...”
I gave Isis the general outline.
This is a good opportunity.
If I can be sure the information won’t be leaked, I can lay things out and dig up more details.
I still don’t know who attacked the manor or why they’re after me.
“Do you have any idea who or why they attacked our family?”
“Count Monttraven’s family? Never heard of them.”
Our family is really fucking bottom-tier.
“Then maybe... do you know a crazy woman who walks around in clogs, carrying a katana, dressed in Eastern-style clothes, and wearing a flashy hat the sort courtesans would use? Judging by the situation, our manor was attacked by that woman.”
Isis, who had been palpating Arbel’s body all over, stopped moving.
Then, with an expressionless face that was impossible to read, she stared at me.
Why are you looking at me like that?
Did I ask something I shouldn’t have?
“I won’t answer questions like that.”
“I’ll pay, if it’s a fee.”
“I won’t do it even if you pay. If I’m careless, I could violate the precept.”
“What do you mean?”
“The person you’re asking about could be a former patient of mine. Even if I don’t realize it.”
Ah, so that’s how it works?
The scope of the precept’s restraint seems pretty strict.
“Then... what happens if the precept is broken?”
“......”
Isis raised her thumb.
“Why are you suddenly giving me a thumbs-up...?”
Then she pointed sharply at the door behind her.
That meant get lost.
3.
A while later.
“You can come in.”
Whatever she’d done, Arbel’s complexion looked much better than before.
Though she was still unconscious, of course.
“I put out the urgent fire. I also gave her a blood transfusion. If I’d left her as she was, she would’ve died within three days.”
Uncanny.
In the previous loop, Arbel had died before even reaching the third day.
She really does have skills.
“Now pay up.”
With a cigarette in her mouth, she handed over an invoice scribbled on with a pen.
After the blood packs and a list of drugs with names so difficult I couldn’t even pronounce them, an amount I didn’t want to believe was written at the end.
“Gah, 200,000 Vios? Isn’t this a rip-off?”
“I told you. I’m expensive. That includes a week’s worth of medicine.”
I at least needed to know market prices, in any case.
This was a lemon market worse than used cars or computer parts.
With trembling hands, I handed over the gold coins.
200,000 Vios, plus a 20,000 Vios consultation fee.
The money I’d saved over a week of shitting blood was gone in one shot, all but 10,000 Vios.
I was going to play some mahjong if I had money left!
No, it’s fine.
This money was made for exactly this.
As long as I collect every last cent in interest from Arbel once she’s healthy, it’ll all work out.
“So that settles it?”
“I said I put out the urgent fire. The root cause is still the same.”
That’s an ominous answer.
“There’s a break in her mana circuits. In simple terms, a short circuit happened. To fully heal her, we need a reconstruction procedure. For a wizard, circuits are as important as blood vessels.”
Isis kept rattling off explanations after that.
I didn’t understand even half of it, but I could tell one thing for sure.
Arbel’s current condition was...
similar to being bitten by a rattlesnake in the U.S. without health insurance.
I’m so! fucking! screwed!
“Could you please answer honestly? This is a rip-off, right?”
“Why don’t you go somewhere else? There are only a few people around here who can properly fix a trashed circuit, but they’d all say the same thing. To heal an injury this bad, you need a universalizer.”
“No, I mean a universalizer isn’t something some alley bastard just walks around carrying....”
Arbel, you damn deadweight.
And because she had somehow half-died and then come back to life, dumping her somewhere had gotten even more awkward.
Phew. Looks like I have no choice but to use my trump card.
“How about this instead of treatment fees?”
I unbuttoned my shirt with a serious expression.
“Human experimentation? Sounds good to me.”
“I changed my mind.”
I buttoned my shirt back up.
Tilting her head, Isis frowned only after a beat.
“Don’t tell me you tried to hit on me with that ridiculous makeup on your face?”
“If I take it off, I’m handsome.”
“......”
Disdain crept into Isis’s eyes.
Not buying it at all.
“How much would it take to cure her?”
“Let’s see... bring me one universalizer. I’ll do the surgery for 500,000. If you can’t bring a universalizer, I’ll prepare one myself, but that’ll be 12.5 million Vios.”
“What? A universalizer costs 10 million Vios.”
“That’s in Aden. Try buying one in this city for that price. You probably can’t.”
I’m seriously losing my mind.
What, does Necropolis have a premium too? Like a kimchi premium?
And by 20% too?
“And if you want to maintain her condition, she’ll need tuning once a week. If you’re late, she’ll die.”
“Pardon?”
“Next time you come, I’ll take 200,000 without the consultation fee.”
“......”
“The medicine just needs to be given every morning. Now take her and go. I need to sleep.”
Before I even had a chance to crawl at her feet, I was shoved out, half as if I were being chased off.
The thick iron door slammed shut behind me.
“So, to summarize.”
Surgery costs at least 10.5 million, and up to 12.5 million.
Until then, 200,000 Vios every week?
My vision went dark.
I barely managed to suppress the urge to go back to Isis right now and ask, “Hey, are you, by any chance, a half-dead wizard?”
If I hadn’t still been carrying that leftover debt of conscience from the previous loop, I would’ve dumped her there at fire-sale prices.
“Arbel, just what kind of insanely awesome forbidden service are you planning to give your little brother to charge this much?”
“......”
No answer came back.
“Fine. Whatever. Let’s do this.”
At the current rate, just scraping together money by suffering like shit leaves me with only around 200,000 Vios.
That’s barely enough to keep the status quo.
At best, the ending is likely to be either dying from overwork or getting stabbed to death by Akit Arong when she stages a rebellion.
A straightforward approach is meaningless.
There’s only one way to break this situation.
Either pull an insane item from the “Old World Shopping Mall” or get my hands on a “joker” that can turn things around.
[Held Points: 132pt]
It’s gacha time.