A Serious Student Who Only Takes Nine Types of Potions a Day

"What about dinner tonight..."

Yuri's gaze turned icy.

"Those who fail don't qualify for food. It's written in the contract."

Evan curled his lip and muttered, "Cheapskate."

Then he began taking off his hospital gown.

Once he had stripped completely naked, Yuri's gaze noticeably lingered.

That gaze settled between his legs, sweeping back and forth twice.

It did not find what Yuri had been looking for.

A faint trace of regret and confusion flashed across Yuri's face.

While changing, Evan casually stuffed the half-full bottle of Aspirin into his jacket pocket.

Yuri saw it, but said nothing.

A dozen or so Aspirin tablets were worth less to him than a single drag of a cigarette.

Once he had finished tidying up, Evan put on his jacket and gave Yuri a completely unguarded smile.

"Doctor Yuri, if there's any other drug-testing work in the future, remember to let me know."

The corner of Yuri's mouth twitched violently beneath his mask.

At that moment, he had only one thought: This guy had been completely drugged insane.

Every other person who signed the contract came in to take medicine looking unwilling and nervous. Even after taking it, they would stare at the bottle and tremble for ages.

Only this guy.

The drugs everyone else regarded as monsters and wanted to avoid at all costs looked like delicious candy to him.

He stuffed anything into his mouth.

And right then, Yuri watched Evan unscrew the bottle of Copper Plague pills in his hand, pour one out, and pop it into his mouth.

"The Healing Church's medicine really is the best." Evan swayed his head as he sighed, then drew a crooked cross over his chest.

"Praise the Heavenly Father."

Yuri barely suppressed his disgust at Evan's stupidity, stopping himself from kicking him in the ass with his leather shoe.

Evan left the ward carrying the bottle.

He walked down the corridor.

The corridor was quiet, with only the thudding of his own footsteps on the floor.

As he passed the other four rooms, his powerful physique and the enhanced hearing brought by the Aspirin reversal allowed him to catch a few sounds.

Those sounds drifted through the wooden doors, intermittent and faint, almost as if they came from another world.

"Please... stop growing..."

The voice came from the first room on the left, a woman's—weak, trembling, and choked with tears.

"Who am I? Where am I?"

From the second room on the right came a man's voice, flat in tone, as though he were reciting a poem he did not understand.

"Ah... ah..."

From the ward at the far end came a voice whose gender could not be identified.

It was only a low, rhythmic moan, like the sound made by some wounded animal.

Evan did not stop walking, but a chill ran down his spine.

Those were the sort of sounds one would hear in an insane asylum.

A decline in self-awareness. He had heard the concrete form of that side effect with his own ears.

"Stop growing." Evan repeated the words in his mind.

"Could it be that after the B Virus devours syphilis, it makes something grow on the body?"

He remembered how Yuri's gaze had lingered between his legs during every examination over the past two days.

That had not been a doctor checking for rashes. It had been an experimenter searching for some expected mutation.

A genuine chill crawled up his spine.

"Once I develop, I'll kill every last one of you!!" Evan could not help feeling furious.

He pushed open the clinic's front door, and a cold wind mixed with the smell of coal smoke and horse manure rushed into his face.

Evan narrowed his eyes and looked toward the setting sun sinking into the gap between the buildings at the end of the street.

The blood-red glow dyed half the western sky bronze.

It shone on the brick walls of the buildings opposite, on the roofs of freight carriages, and on the dark faces of the day laborers waiting for work at the street corner.

That was how humans were. No matter how miserable their lives became, they would never give up hope of surviving.

He took a deep breath.

Then the smog floating in the air made him cough several times, leaving his throat itchy.

In the middle of a November evening, the cold wind cut across his neck like tiny knives.

Evan pulled up his jacket collar and shoved both hands into his pockets, his fingertips brushing against the hard shells of the three medicine bottles inside.

In two days, he had earned two dollars and eaten three decent meals.

But those were small gains.

The real harvest was on the panel.

As he walked, he brought up his status panel.

[Class: Demon Hunter (Digesting)]

[Rank: None]

[Traits: Basic Sanguine 8%; Copper Plague 0.09%]

[Physique: 1.915→2.013]

[Mental: 1.025→1.107]

[Spirit Vision: 0]

[Talent: Power of the Nine Dragons]

[Regeneration: 124%]

[Blood Quality: 116.1%]

[Syphilis: 48%→31%]

[Liver Damage: 40%→39%]

[Brain Nerve Damage: 13%]

"Pneumonia and digestive tract ulcers are completely gone."

Evan slowed his pace, his gaze moving back and forth over those lines of numbers.

"Syphilis dropped straight from 48 to 31."

"My physique broke through two."

He raised his right hand and examined his forearm under the light of a streetlamp that had just flickered on at the corner.

The patches of copper-red rash that had once covered his skin, the shameful marks that had made him a laughingstock in gym class and had left him pinned down by people's stares in the cafeteria, had completely vanished.

His skin was so clean that it looked as though he had never been sick at all.

A belated sense of exhilaration surged up from the depths of his heart.

He pressed his lips together, not allowing his smile to fully bloom, and merely slipped his hand back into his pocket.

Then the panel changed again.

[Syphilis: 31%→11%]

The number took a huge leap, and Evan stopped walking.

Immediately afterward, another value changed as well.

[Copper Plague: 0.09%→0.1%]

He froze for a second, then understood.

"So that's it. Copper Plague inherited the B Virus's trait and can grow by devouring pathogens."

An old carriage horse by the roadside snorted, puffing out a cloud of white breath.

The driver tugged the reins and cursed as he turned the corner.

Evan stood there, his mind racing.

"In other words, if I want to increase Copper Plague's progress, besides taking medicine... I can also deliberately infect myself?"

"And the most efficient way to get infected is..."

His thoughts stalled for half a second.

"Selling ass?"

Evan's legs instinctively squeezed together slightly.

"Fuck, that's way too perverse."

Detective's Investigation

While Evan's mind wandered, his eyes swept over the ground.

Unfortunately, there were no discarded needles lying around.

The United States of this era was far from possessing the "openness" and "freedom" it would have a century later.

The moral values of Puritan immigrants were still mainstream, and church bell towers could be seen everywhere in the streets and alleys.

Unable to find a needle, Evan turned his gaze toward the street corner.

Heavily made-up prostitutes were everywhere, dressed in cheap blouses cut down to their collarbones, chewing gum as they leaned against gaslamp posts and flirted with passing men.

But male prostitutes were almost nowhere to be seen.

This was not their territory.

More importantly, sodomy was still a crime in this era.

If caught, even a fine of several hundred dollars would be considered light.

In serious cases, one could be castrated outright, or sent to an insane asylum with the label "morally depraved" and locked up until death.

"Fuck, is something really wrong with my brain? What am I even thinking about?"

Evan muttered, shook his head, and turned onto Gooding Street.

More than ten minutes later, the sun had completely sunk behind the buildings.

Dim streetlights came on one after another, their warm yellow halos spreading through the night fog, while the street remained lively.

A badly played accordion melody drifted from a tavern entrance. A drunk stumbled out, crashed into a fire hydrant at the corner, and burst into laughter.

Evan had originally planned to go home and put his things down before heading out to find something to eat.

But the moment he stepped onto the second-floor landing, the keen senses brought by his physique breaking through two, combined with the hearing enhanced by the Aspirin reversal, allowed him to detect something wrong.

Someone was hiding in the shadows above the stairwell.

The breathing was soft, but its deliberately suppressed rhythm made it easier to notice.

A faint smell of tobacco mixed with cheap whiskey drifted down from above.

There was more than one person.

Evan did not stop walking, but his mind was racing.