novellhall Chapter 31: A Bountiful Harvest from the Drug Trial
Chapter 31: A Bountiful Harvest from the Drug Trial
Ivan stared at those lines of text, his heart skipping a beat.
This extraordinary ability is far too dangerous and far too ruthless.
Control viruses, control bacteria.
If this thing is not used properly, it can cause widespread infection and death in any public place or water source.
He subconsciously looked at his fingernails and then touched his teeth.
"Fortunately, this thing isn't transmitted through respiration, but rather through biting and scratching."
"And since it's a supernatural ability, I should be able to control the switch."
He connected this discovery with his previous speculations, and a larger picture gradually became clear.
Neither the Healing Church nor the Red King Laboratory likely knew that their drugs could be fused into something called "Copper Plague".
Even if an ordinary person is simultaneously subjected to these two beastly institutions in turn, they still won't survive until the day when 30% of them exhibit extraordinary characteristics.
Otherwise, given the effectiveness of this thing, it would have been monopolized by any one party long ago.
This was a product of a series of unexpected events.
It was a byproduct that leaked out from the cracks when two forces were secretly fighting in the same building.
I might be the only one who knows!
Ivan remained calm and put the panel away.
The pain returned, and he poured out three pills from the bottle of "painkillers" Yuri had thrown at him and swallowed them.
Your digestive function has improved, and your constitution has been permanently increased by 0.001.
Your hearing has improved, and your physical constitution has been permanently increased by 0.001.
"...It's still aspirin."
It's just a different bottle.
Time passed by little by little.
Near the end of the first day, Yuri brought in the freckled nurse for a check-up.
Take the pulse, take the blood pressure, press the abdomen, and examine the rash.
He didn't say a word throughout the entire process, and left after the examination without saying anything.
The first night was peaceful.
He touched his stomach.
The digestion of the Demon Hunter traits is progressing slowly; the colic is less severe than before, but it is still ongoing.
The second day was no different from the first day.
Continue taking the medication for Virus B; the reversal effect will continue to accumulate.
After four meals, my physical condition increased by 0.08 and my mental condition increased by 0.08.
The progress of the copper epidemic has climbed to 0.09%.
Checkups, meals, reading, taking medicine, sleeping.
It felt like spending two days in prison, except the guards provided meals.
Then, the next evening, as the setting sun shone through the hospital room window, casting an orange-red patch of light on the opposite wall, the door was pushed open.
Yuri walked in, followed by the freckled nurse.
His expression was colder than ever before.
"Mr. Arkham, I regret to inform you that you do not meet the requirements for the Phase 2 trial."
He threw a package onto the bed.
It was Ivan's clothes, folded crookedly.
Three medicine bottles were thrown over from the side: copper pills, aspirin, and mercury pills.
"Please leave now."
The freckled nurse next to him took two coins out of her apron pocket and put them into Evan's hand.
Two dollars.
The first thing Evan did was quickly grab the three medicine bottles and stuff them under the bed sheet to prevent them from being taken away again.
Then he looked up, a perfectly measured hint of displeasure on his face.
"So, what about dinner tonight...?"
Yuri's eyes were cold.
"Unqualified people don't deserve to eat. It's written in the contract."
Evan pursed his lips and muttered, "Stingy."
Then he began to take off his hospital gown.
After he was completely naked, Yuri's gaze lingered for a moment.
That gaze fell between his legs, sweeping back and forth twice.
They didn't find what they were looking for.
A slight hint of regret and doubt flashed across Yuri's expression.
While changing his clothes, Evan casually stuffed the half-finished bottle of aspirin into his jacket pocket.
Yuri saw it, but he said nothing.
For him, a dozen or so aspirin tablets were less valuable than a single cigarette.
After getting ready, Ivan slung his jacket over his shoulder and gave Yuri a completely unreserved smile.
"Dr. Yuri, remember to let me know if there are any other drug trials in the future."
Yuri's lips twitched violently beneath his mask.
In that instant, only one thought crossed his mind: This guy has been completely driven mad by the drugs.
Other people who signed the contract always came to take their medicine with reluctance and trepidation, and after taking the medicine, they would stare at the medicine bottle and tremble for a long time.
Only this guy.
What others see as a monstrous threat, something they would avoid at all costs, he sees as nothing more than delicious candies.
He put all sorts of medicine into his mouth.
Just then, he watched as Ivan unscrewed the copper pill bottle in his hand, poured out a pill, and put it into his mouth.
"The medicine from the Healing Church is really effective," Evan sighed, shaking his head, and then made a crooked cross on his chest.
"Praise be to God the Father."
Yuri barely managed to suppress his disgust and not raise his leather shoe to kick the guy's butt.
Ivan walked out of the ward with the medicine bottle in his hand.
Walk forward along the corridor.
The corridor was quiet, with only the sound of his own footsteps thumping on the floor.
As he passed by the other four rooms, his powerful physique and the enhanced hearing brought about by the aspirin reversal allowed him to catch some sounds.
The sounds drifted out through the wooden door, intermittent, almost as if they came from another world.
"Please, please stop growing..."
The voice came from the first room on the left. It was a woman's, weak and trembling, with a sob in her voice.
"Who am I? Where am I?"
The second room on the right, occupied by a man, had a flat tone, as if he were reciting a poem that he himself did not understand.
"Ah...ah..."
In the farthest ward, the voice was so soft that its gender was indistinguishable.
It was just a low, rhythmic groan, like the sound of some injured animal.
Ivan didn't stop walking, but a chill ran down his spine.
These sounds are like those heard in a mental hospital.
A decline in self-awareness. He heard firsthand the specific manifestations of this side effect.
"Don't let it grow any longer," Evan repeated to himself.
"Does this mean that after the B virus engulfs syphilis, it causes something to grow on the body?"
He recalled that during each of Yuri's examinations over the past two days, his gaze would linger for a while between his legs.
That wasn't a doctor examining a rash; it was a lab technician looking for some kind of expected mutation feature.
A real chill crept up my spine.
"Once I've grown up, I'm going to kill you all!!" Evan couldn't help but feel a surge of anger.
Pushing open the clinic door, a gust of cold wind mixed with the smell of coal smoke and horse manure hit me.
Ivan squinted, gazing at the setting sun that seemed to sink into the gaps between the buildings at the end of the street.
The blood-red halo dyed half of the western sky bronze.
The sunlight shone on the brick walls of the building opposite, on the roof of the horse-drawn carts, and on the dark faces of the day laborers waiting for work at the street corner.
That's just how humans are; no matter how difficult things get, they never give up hope of surviving.
He took a deep breath.
Then I coughed a few times because of the smog suspended in the air, and my throat felt itchy.
In the twilight of mid-November, the cold wind felt like a knife scraping against my neck.
Ivan turned up the collar of his jacket, put his hands in his pockets, and his fingertips touched the hard shells of the three medicine bottles inside.
In two days, I earned two dollars. I ate three decent meals.
But these are all minor accounts.
The real rewards are on the panel.
He brought up the attribute panel as he walked.
Occupation: None
[None]
【Characteristics: Base Vampire 8%; Witcher (in progress); Copper Plague 0.09%】
[Constitution: 1.915→2.013]
[Spirit: 1.025→1.107]
[Vision: 0]
[Talent: Power of Nine Dragons]
Self-healing ability: 124%
Blood quality: 116.1%
Syphilis: 48% → 31%
Liver damage: 41% → 39%
[Brain nerve damage: 13%]
"My pneumonia and peptic ulcers are completely gone."
Ivan slowed his pace, his gaze sweeping back and forth over the lines of numbers.
"The syphilis positivity rate has been reduced from 48 to 31."
"Physical fitness has broken through to level two."
He raised his right hand and looked at his forearm in the light of a newly lit street lamp.
Those patches of copper-red rashes that once covered him, those shameful marks that made him a laughingstock in PE class and that made him the target of people's stares in the cafeteria, have completely disappeared.
His skin was so clean it looked like he had never been sick.
A belated sense of joy welled up from the bottom of my heart.
He pursed his lips, preventing the smile from fully blooming, and simply put his hands back into his pockets.
Just then, the panel moved again.
Syphilis: 31% → 11%
The numbers jumped a lot, and Evan stopped in his tracks.
Immediately afterwards, another value also changed.
[Copper epidemic: 0.09% → 0.1%]
He paused for a second, then realized what was happening.
"I see. The copper virus inherited the characteristics of the B virus, and can grow by engulfing pathogens."
An old horse pulling a cart by the roadside snorted and exhaled a puff of white vapor.
The coachman, grumbling and cursing, turned the corner, pulling on the reins.
Ivan stood there, his mind racing.
"So, besides taking medication, the only way to accelerate the progress of the copper epidemic is to intentionally contract the disease?"
"And the most efficient way to spread the disease is..."
His mind went blank for half a second.
"Selling hooks?"
Ivan's legs instinctively squeezed together by half an inch.
"Damn, that's insane."