Playing Doctor

About an hour after the secret meeting began, our group's "party roles" were decided.

Yours truly was going to be the only Spirit Cook, but my focus was going to be spread out to Alchemy and developing as a Mage as well. Jin received some Skill Manuals for Artifacing — like Blacksmithing, but with Magic and all sorts of other ridiculous nonsense — as well as some combat arts on spear play.

Aila decided to take up Formations as well as Elemental Magic. Ily decided to completely abandon taking up any Combat Skills to focus on Alchemy with me as well as take up Spirit Weaving. Lastly, Kombu defaulted on becoming our Inscriptionist and asked for rather obscure Combat Skills for the Sentinel-type of physical fighters.

I followed through with my words and gave them all what they asked for.

How?

Well, it would have taken forever and a half to write down everything they had asked for, so I made up something of a reverse [Plant Identification] Skill to instantly reproduce any piece of text I'd already learned. It still took a few minutes to get enough paper to copy over the tens of millions of words that made up the dozen or so books I ended up printing, but that was infinitely better than the alternative.

When all of that was said and done, I handed out some starter materials for everyone to build a foundation of their craftsman role before finally retreating back to my workstation.

My first order of business for the day… I turned to the quiet cat girl that followed behind me. "Yeah, treating your curse is the first thing we're going to do," I muttered. I ignored her looks of confusion and later shock as I withdrew a few ingredients from my Plant Pocket Dimension and instead focused on refining a pill medicine for her.

Now, I wasn't a doctor per se… But, what was a doctor really? Were they not just walking encyclopedias of medical knowledge with a bit — a lot, let's be honest — of diagnostic experience?

Sure, I was probably overgeneralizing the medical profession, but I was confident I was more right than wrong. Obviously, doctors back on Earth did a lot more than just tell you what was wrong with your health and how to fix it — there was surgery, and research, and… whatever else — But my point still stood: I "should" be able to act as a doctor with all the knowledge I've acquired.

So, I considered my patient.

Ily was a Demi-human Cat Girl… No, no, no, that was entirely wrong. She was a Type 4 Human with a maladapted Bloodline of the Blank Tiger Clan. Her Vitality was suppressed by her bloodline as it was overrun with spiritually dense Yin energy. The cure to her affliction, thus, she should elevate the amount of Yang energy in her body.

Of course, knowing as much about medicine as I currently did, usually, problems as serious as Ily's weren't that cut and dry to solve or someone like Deanon would have cured her by now. So, as I prepared a batch of Yang Supplementing Pills, I considered contingencies for all the ways my attempts at helping her get better could backfire spectacularly in my face.

About half an hour later, I sat surrounded by several different types of pills; many, I'd just concocted for the first time. When I was done storing and labeling them all properly, I handed them over to Ily and told her to have Alex boost them before coming back to see if we could figure out a treatment regimen for her.

A few minutes later she returned, carrying the equivalent of several dozen Aliphsilver in the form of alchemical pills. I took a second to reconsider which Creed — mine or Alex's — was the most busted when it came to making money, before emptying my head of any distracting thoughts. I would need the totality of my focus for what was to come…

"Ok, so… Here take one of these Yang Supplementing Pills first. In theory, this alone should be enough to mitigate the effects of your curse. But, if you start to feel any discomfort or pain, take this Yang Dispersing Pill to cancel the effects," I said as I handed her one of each pill.

She nodded hesitantly before taking the Yang Supplementing Pill and after a few seconds I could see a glow of vitality start pouring off of her. Everything seemed to be going fine until it suddenly wasn't…

"Ack!" Ily coughed up a concerning amount of blood before she collapsed on the floor and started seizing. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as she lost consciousness and shook uncontrollably.

"Motherfucker!" I cursed, not sure whether I was directing said curse at myself or the situation. More than a little panicked, I dove to the floor next to her and fumbled while trying to get the Yang Dispersing Pill in her hand.

Had I been in a better state of mind, I'd like to think that I would have done the logical thing and just taken another pill from the bottle where three Yang Dispersing Pills were stored. But, of course, with Ily looking like she was dying right in front of me because of my careless actions, I wasn't thinking straight.

By the time I finally managed to get the pill out of her hand, she was starting to grow weaker. Her seizure didn't look like it was ending, rather, it looked like she was in her death throes, so I couldn't afford to waste even a single second.

I popped the Yang Dispersing Pill, chewed it up, and fed it to her mouth to mouth while stimulating some of the acupoints in her neck to ensure she swallowed it.

Trust me, there was nothing even remotely enjoyable about the situation. I had a dying girl shaking in my arms, tasting of blood and bile, and I wasn't even sure my efforts would save her. In the next few moments, it was just as likely that I was tonguing a corpse as it was that I was saving myself from the most traumatic experience I could currently imagine.

I nearly wept in gratitude to all the gods I knew, when she recovered enough of her strength to stop trembling. I subsequently felt like a steaming pile of garbage when instead of pushing me off of her, she drew me into a desperate hug and refused to let go afterward.

Instead of hating me for effectively using her as a guinea pig to experiment on. She wholeheartedly latched on to me and miserably cried for what felt like hours.

Riddled with guilt, I just quietly endured it all. Every image of her body seizing and violently rejecting the medicine. Every speck of blood she'd coughed onto the floor or onto my clothes. Every whimper and every miserable wail, fearful of the death I would have induced…

I burned it all into the back of my head.

I'd overextended my confidence and it had nearly cost me dearly. The only thing I could do was take the lesson I'd learned today and vow to never repeat it going forward.