I'm a Serious Student; I Only Eat Nine Kinds of Potions Every Day

"How the fuck had he survived until now?"

He finally voiced the question he had been holding back for so long, his voice filled with almost absurd bewilderment.

Yuri cleared his throat.

"He said he couldn't live without painkillers now. His stomach and intestines hurt so badly he couldn't bear it."

He paused, then added,

"That kind of craving and fear can't be faked."

He had worked in this field for more than ten years and had seen too many drug testers. He could tell at a glance who was truly in pain and who was pretending.

The barely suppressed agony on Evan's face was not an act.

"He probably doesn't have long to live," Yuri concluded.

Pierson looked at the three medicine bottles and waved a hand.

He had no interest in those three drugs. Just a pile of mortal trash.

The time that followed was boring as hell for Evan.

He began to regret not bringing a few books with him.

Once he was sure there would be no surprise strip search, Evan fished out the little glass vial of Night Demon Potion he had tucked in his ass crack and hid it somewhere more concealed.

There were no cameras in this ward, not even a peephole.

The Night Demon Potion was his final trump card.

If anything went wrong at night, this bottle would let him move through the darkness like a fish in water and find a chance to escape.

Two hours passed.

The B Virus's reversal effect appeared.

[Three-Stage B Virus: Side effect reversal complete.]

[Your immunity has increased. Constitution permanently +0.02.]

[Your Self-Awareness has increased. Spirit permanently +0.02.]

Evan looked at the two lines and nearly laughed in anger.

"Immunity, and Self-Awareness?"

He connected the two pieces of information with the earlier notifications in his mind.

"So the B Virus's side effects are lowering the host's immunity and lowering the host's Self-Awareness."

"Making the host more vulnerable to infection, allowing the B Virus to multiply and devour inside the host's body."

"And then... making the host gradually stop recognizing himself?"

A cold sweat seeped down his back.

"Fuck. Raising viruses like venomous insects."

"You bastards really aren't human!"

The logic behind this thing was even more terrifying than he had imagined.

They treated people as petri dishes, used Syphilis as nourishment, and let the B Virus continuously devour, multiply, and concentrate within the human body.

And in the process, the host would gradually lose Self-Awareness and turn into something they wanted.

He quietly carved this clue into his mind, intending to ask Hill about it if he got the chance.

The Healing Church's Copper Pill, the Red King Laboratory's B Virus.

The two organizations had planted different seeds in the bodies of lowly mortals.

And the thing produced when those seeds collided within the same body had unexpectedly been absorbed into his panel.

At twelve thirty in the afternoon, lunch arrived.

An intern in a white coat carried in a tin tray, set it on the bedside cabinet, and left without saying a word.

Evan sat up and took a look.

It was fairly lavish.

The staple was white bread, good bread made from fine white flour with a golden crust, the sort Evan normally could not even bear to smell.

There was a cup of warm whole milk, a small dish of mashed potatoes, a sliced tomato, and a small portion of roasted carrots and beef sprinkled with rosemary.

A lunch like this would cost at least twenty cents outside Gooding Street.

"The Red King Laboratory is willing to spend money, at least."

Evan picked up a fork and began eating slowly.

After lunch, he was bored out of his mind and called through the door.

"Doctor, could you get me a few books to read?"

After about five minutes, the door was pushed open, and Yuri casually tossed in a stack of things.

Several old newspapers, two medical handbooks, and three worn-out medical textbooks.

The covers of the textbooks were scuffed through, their spines patched with tape. Their pages were yellowed and brittle, giving off the mixed scent of old paper and mothballs.

Evan opened them one by one.

Since he had already planned to apply to Medical School, he had no aversion to any of it.

More importantly, his mind still held the basic medical and chemical knowledge of twenty-first-century Earth.

Many pathological descriptions that baffled people in this era were obvious to him at a glance.

For example, one handbook described the cause of "bile sickness" as "an imbalance of bodily fluids and excessive black bile."

After reading a few lines, Evan matched it with cirrhosis and bile duct obstruction in modern medicine.

Time slipped away without him noticing.

When the panel popped up another notification, it was already two in the afternoon.

[Unknown fusion side effect reversal complete.]

[Beyonder Characteristic "Copperization 0.01%" has evolved into "Copper Plague 0.03%" (click for details).]

"Copper Plague?"

Evan raised an eyebrow.

He opened the details panel with his mind.

Lines of explanation unfolded before his eyes.

[Copper Plague: Transform the body into a copper form. Using copper as a carrier, you can devour and control viruses and bacteria.]

[For every 1% of progress, immunity and resistance to blows greatly increase. Constitution permanently +0.03] (The value afterward corresponds to the enhancement effect before it; they are not two separate enhancement effects.)

[At 30% progress, activate: You are immune to the vast majority of viruses and bacteria, and can partially transform your body into copper.]

[At 50% progress, activate: You can concentrate viruses and bacteria, and infect targets through scratching and biting.]

[At 70% progress, activate: Gain complete immunity, complete copper transformation, and use copper as a medium for infection.]

[At 100% progress, activate: Transform composite viruses into the extremely fast-acting Plague of Copper.]

A Fruitful Drug Trial

Evan stared at those lines, and his heartbeat sped up by half a beat.

This Beyonder Characteristic was far too dangerous, and far too vicious.

Control viruses. Control bacteria.

If used poorly, this thing could cause widespread infection and death in any public place or water source.

He instinctively looked at his fingernails, then touched the teeth in his mouth.

"Good thing this doesn't spread through breathing. It needs scratches or bites to transmit."

"And since it's a Beyonder Characteristic, I should be able to control whether it's active."

He linked this discovery with his earlier guesses, and a larger picture gradually became clear.

The Healing Church and the Red King Laboratory probably both had no idea that their drugs could merge into something like Copper Plague.

An ordinary person being worked over in turns by these two beastly organizations would never last until the day a Beyonder Characteristic manifested at thirty percent.

Otherwise, given this thing's effects, one side would have monopolized it long ago.

This was a product of coincidence.

A byproduct that had leaked through the cracks while the two forces fought a covert war within the same building.

He might be the only person who knew about it!

Without changing his expression, Evan closed the panel.

The pain struck again. He poured out three pills from the bottle of "painkillers" Yuri had tossed him and swallowed them.

[Your digestive function has increased. Constitution permanently +0.001.]

[Your hearing has increased. Constitution permanently +0.001.]

"...It was Aspirin after all."

They had only changed the bottle.

Time passed little by little.

Near the end of the first day, Yuri came in with the freckled nurse to perform an examination.

They measured his pulse and blood pressure, pressed on his abdomen, and examined his rash.

Neither of them said a word throughout the process. Once the examination was over, they left without saying anything.

The first night was peaceful.

He touched his stomach.

The digestion progress of the Demon Hunter Characteristic was slowly advancing. The cramps were lighter than before, but they continued.

The second day was no different from the first.

He continued taking the B Virus, and the reversal effects continued accumulating.

After four doses, his Constitution had permanently increased by 0.08, and his Spirit had permanently increased by 0.08.

The Copper Plague's progress had climbed to 0.09%.

Examinations, meals, reading, medicine, sleep.

It was like spending two days in prison, except the guards fed him.

Then, as the setting sun of the second evening shone through the ward window and cast a patch of orange-red light onto the opposite wall, the door was pushed open.

Yuri walked in, followed by the freckled nurse.

His expression was colder than it had been at any previous time.

"Mr. Arkham, I'm sorry to inform you that you do not meet the requirements for the second phase of drug trials."

He tossed a bundle onto the bed.

It was Evan's clothes, folded crookedly.

Three medicine bottles were tossed beside them: Copper Pill, Aspirin, and Mercury Pill.

"Please leave now."

The freckled nurse took two coins from her apron pocket and stuffed them into Evan's hand.

Two dollars.

The first thing Evan did was swiftly grab the three medicine bottles and shove them beneath the bedsheet to keep them from being taken away again.

Then he looked up, a perfectly measured trace of dissatisfaction on his face.