114 – 114. Preliminary Preparation (3)
“So, Charlotte…? May I first ask why you want me to wear this…?”
“That’s because you touch dirty things!”
“Yeah…Thank you for thinking of that. The professor also has all kinds of lab clothes.”
Of course, if you conduct dangerous experiments in a laboratory, you should pay attention to safety, but in most cases, latex and lab coats are sufficient.
In other words, it means that you don’t have to be heavily armed with the safety equipment Charlotte prepared.
In addition, how many years have you had research experience? In terms of years, she was less than ten of her fingers.
“And then. What if you bring it to me? Do you think I’ll accept a personal favor from one of your students?”
There is a procedure in research, and how to determine the facility and location.
The authority given to her at her academy is a professorship teaching research classes, not her researcher.
If it was her own research, she could do it occasionally with the equipment she brought, but she couldn’t accept a request from a single student.
Think about it. If a professor takes on a request from an individual student, it can be a favoritism, and it can be suspected that a personal connection has been taken.
Moreover, fairness should not be shaken as he is a professor who even gives the exam himself.
But she doesn’t back down from Charlotte.
“This is not a request from one student, but a request from a guild. Professor.”
“…What?”
What do you mean by that?
Dahlia tilted her head at the words of a request from the guild. But the question didn’t last long.
This child in front of me,
“Charlotte Ashrelt. That’s my name.”
She was a high-ranking lord of the Ashrelt ranks, making a name for herself in the principality.
‘Certainly, if it’s a request from an individual student, I can’t accept it…’
If it is a request from the top in relation to a certain business, then there is a worthy title.
“Okay. By the way, the terms of the contract I’m proposing might be a bit tricky. Are you okay?”
“One-sided contracts can be toxic to each other. So, I want to find something to negotiate with the professor, how is it?”
What kind of boldness is this? There was a big wall on her face that had only looked young until now.
It is a story that has tasted the world quite a lot for a 17-year-old female student.
The opponent is a merchant. You should not belittle or prejudice just by looking at the cute appearance and cute body.
“First, I want to check what kind of work you’re entrusted with.”
“Yes. Instead, you have to wear safety equipment carefully.”
I heard from her husband that she cried out loud in someone’s hospital room while causing a mana runaway, so I thought she was a child… I thought she was hiding her face like this.
Dahlia chuckled and kicked off her safety gear.
***
A few days later.
People with blue spots spread throughout the state of Sheet, and the number of reported cases multiplied.
Others also tried to get rid of it by applying commercially available drugs at first, asking what it was, but it didn’t work, so they just covered it up.
But now things are starting to change.
『Question! A mass outbreak of blue spot symptoms?』
Newspapers have not been able to grasp the identity of the disease at all. At the same time, other institutions are not even interested.
However, the number of symptomatic patients is increasing rapidly.
It may be less than Rumia, but since the initial symptoms of the infected are being confirmed rapidly, it is safe to say that the entire state of Sheet, including Lemtert Village, has faced these rats.
It would be impossible to ascertain the reason why the Lemtert Plague ate the sheet wine in the past.
In the beginning, spots appear, but from the middle period, these spots noticeably grow, and the function of the magic circuits located in various parts of the body deteriorates.
As a large disease directly related to the patient’s magical power suddenly appeared through dormancy, he must have lost his way.
To make matters worse, the study was conducted belatedly, but due to patients entering the late and terminal stages, Sheetju is covered with human corpses.
Soon, when the symptoms are reported from the person who first reported suffering from the symptoms, it will be noticed only then.
I met Charlotte and took the best possible measures for that… But it is unclear whether this will be of great help.
I don’t know how long it will take Professor Dahlia to figure it out.
So I tried to prepare in a different way…
Neither of them made much progress.
-‘Uh, ah! How can you make this more perfect here man!! You’re almost an instructor at this point!!’
-‘Please save me. Instructor Junon… I will never cross the line in learning again. Yes?’
If Jon and Noel don’t master it, no matter who else in the academy challenges it, they’ll face similar results.
And the moment this was confirmed, the option to reduce the amount of damage in the Sheet Great Subjugation was gone.
If countermeasures are not taken, disasters will repeat themselves.
Like a small snow rolls and becomes a large snowball, if the first obstacle, the sheet subjugation, collapses, only a more brutal reality remains behind.
I tried my hand at choosing the side with no damage as much as possible, but… All that remains is one uncertain piece of information.
“The name… I guess that doesn’t matter.”
A blue flower of unknown shape that Professor Dahlia found in sh*tju.
There is no choice but to discover it and speed up the progress of research and production of the cure.
I was crossing the forest that was humid in the summer, clearing the dense bushes, but my head was already pounding.
“It’s crazy. Can you figure out what’s going on here?”
Even if you’ve learned herbal medicine, it’s not easy to tell them all apart.
Blue? If you say that, anyone will be embarrassed.
I can’t tell if it’s literally blue, bluish, clear like sky blue, or deep indigo blue, or purple mixed with purple.
Unfortunately, this is all I have left.
I know very well that it would be foolish for me to search this vast forest with only uncertain information. However, other than this, I can’t think of any other way.
I couldn’t prepare for the sheet battle, and I knew how to annihilate the enemy, but it was impossible to put it into practice.
So now the goal has been changed to reducing damage.
To quickly develop a cure by finding the flower that Professor Dahlia used.
“I can’t do it. I have to take them one by one. What can I do?”
In this way, the absurd heavy labor of searching the forest to find a flower that you do not even know properly began.
Meanwhile, on the shore of a lake, a mother is shouting at her daughter as she holds her pet lizard.
“No, Nella. How many times has Mama told you! There’s nowhere to run around here anyway!”
“But, it’s so boring here… You too…”
“If it doesn’t work, I know it won’t work! Aren’t you going to listen to mom?!”
A child knows nothing. The only story I heard was that I moved here after hearing that I liked this place better than the one I was in.
However, I couldn’t play around like I used to in my new place to live.
Since the move, he appeared every time I wanted to go out and shook his head, and I couldn’t even use my one and only friend’s lizard walk as an excuse.
Unlike before, at the voice of her mother, who only scolds and controls her behavior, the child bursts out in anger.
“It’s frustrating!! I hate mom!!”
“Wait a minute! Nella! Where are you going!!”
The frustration of a child whose freedom is controlled naturally aroused a sense of rebellion.
“What’s going on?”
“My, my child has gone out of town. Help!”
“Oops…! Let’s free the man…!”
However, this rebellious spirit was tantamount to threatening everyone living quietly here.
They had to go on a search not only for the sake of the child, but also to keep their existence undetected.
When the voices of the villagers stop looking for her, the child who has gone out of the village sticks her head out from the grass where she was hiding, checks her surroundings, and pulls out her body.
“Let’s go play as much as we want now, Chire!”
The child smirked and began to enjoy the freedom she had been restrained from.
However, you will realize later that this was a risky move.
***
“…Is it the same as before?”
From noble mtl dot com
Junon uproots two plants and compares them alternately with her hands. She has to avoid poisonous plants, so she looked for a plant encyclopedia, but she couldn’t even include all of them.
“I’m going to turn around. You can’t tell the difference, right?”
The canton of sh*t itself has a fairly complex ecology, not to mention the northernmost village above Lemtert.
For this reason, it was impossible to tell them apart even when looking at the plant encyclopedia.
In the meantime, I heard the sound of something approaching from the forest.
-Sssss!
The sound of him cutting through the grass and rushing at him immediately raised his nerves and finished his combat readiness.
Since a place is a place, there is no way that there are no demons, and even beasts of prey can come out. However, any individual running through the grass like this must be a quadrupedal animal.
It must be the plague rat, Junon thought.
‘Location is in the northwest direction. There is only one number.’
Immune to infections.
However, if it explodes, people walking around the area may come in contact with it without knowing it and get infected, and it is not very good in terms of appearance or post-processing.
In order to subdue more cleanly, Junon waits for the target to come closer in the future.
I couldn’t see it, but the sound of breaking through the grass got closer and arrived right in front of me.
Now, when it jumps in like an instinct, the way it always did—
-Cheereureuk!
“What…?!”
I was going to take care of it… What baby lizard?
Contrary to what I had guessed, it wasn’t the rat carrying the plague that approached me.
With the intention of taking it down in one blow, he hurriedly withdrew his mana from his outstretched hand.
-Chireuk! Chireuk!
The lizard caught in his hand flutters. I would think it would be a monster if I rushed at it, but this lizard is not that kind.
‘Isn’t this the lizard that Senia used to raise?’
Even then, he remembered that he would run at him whenever he saw him. Other than that, I’m sure it’s obvious when I see her rubbing her hair in her hands as if she’s feeling good like now…
As I stare blankly at the lizard, I hear a different sound from the forest.
‘One more…?’
No. No. Not one, but this was the sound of running on two feet.
“Chir! What if you suddenly run like that…? Huh…!”
What appeared before my eyes was a young child with webbed feet instead of the ears on a human head.
What I just heard was the sound of walking on two legs, so I thought it was a person, but it was half right and half wrong.
‘Is this a different race…?’
Heterogeneous. Unlike witches, who only have instincts, they have intelligence, and they are beings that are not much different except for the extent to which there are peculiarities in their human appearance.
However, what was in front of them was a race distinctly different from the elves and dwarves that were common in the principality.
As I was thinking about giving it back, guessing that the owner of this lizard might be that girl, this time, familiar voices ring in my ears.
-Ah, that’s right! Even if I saw it around here!
-Oh, it must be difficult. I mean, you’re a freak who really wants to get a bounty. How can a siren be in a place like this?
‘Siren…?’
A girl with webbed ears trembles as she sees herself in front of her eyes.
An obvious human voice coming from afar.
And, a story I heard from Rumia a while ago.
-‘The sirens denied any charges… But we lost the case. It was because of that that the Penarive family took on the blame.’
All the calculations were done in Junon’s head.
“Look. If you look here, the sirens occasionally pull out the skin… Huh?”
“Oh my God. In your eyes, are these weeds the fault of the sirens? I was in vain.”
“No, it’s real! There’s really nothing wrong with this!”
“Next time you take away my time like this or else I’ll tell the town that you’re a shepherd boy. Okay?”
It wasn’t long before the voices of the two men faded away, and even the footsteps stopped, leaving only silence in the forest.
What broke the silence was the panicked breathing of a girl whose mouth had been held in someone’s hand.