At the mention of this, much of the joy faded from the Wood family's faces.
Mallon sighed. "Actually, this disease probably spread through the city a long time ago."
"Two or three months ago, medicinal ingredients for treating colds and epidemics started getting harder and harder to buy in the city. At first, only a few common medicines went out of stock. Later, even the herbs for reducing fevers and stopping coughs were snapped up."
"Back then, everyone just thought more people were getting sick lately. Nobody suspected an epidemic."
After all, the fever and cough in the early stages of this plague were much like those of an ordinary cold.
"What finally made it impossible to keep things under wraps was something that happened at the City Lord's Office a few days ago... I heard the City Lord's Wife fell ill..."
According to the version Wood and his wife had heard, the City Lord's Wife initially had only a persistent high fever. Several groups of Alchemists were summoned, and she took plenty of medicine, but she never improved.
Then the City Lord's Wife discovered gray-silver scales growing on her body. The City Lord flew into a rage and detained every servant responsible for caring for her.
To find out who had brought the disease in, the City Guard stripped and examined more than a hundred personal servants one by one. They found over a dozen people who had already developed scales.
Some had them on their backs, others around their waists and stomachs. They kept them tightly covered with high-collared clothing every day and continued working at the City Lord's Office as usual.
That was when everything blew up.
The City Lord immediately ordered an investigation into everyone those servants had come into contact with over the past month.