Mad Rat Disease

Vanessa was led into the operating room by the nurse.

Harsh gaslight spilled down from overhead, and the nurse secured her hand firmly to a specially made wooden support.

"This will hurt a little. Bear with it."

As Doctor Norman spoke, he picked up a pair of hemostats and a small bone file. A hammer and chisel lay on the tray beside him.

Vanessa watched the tools gleaming coldly, her eyelid twitching. "Aren't you going to use any anesthetic?"

"Normally, I would use some..." Norman carefully examined the unusually neat wound and shook his head. "But you don't need it in your case. The cut is too clean. There's almost no need to clean the wound; I just need to smooth down the jagged bone a little."

"By the time the anesthetic took effect, I could have stitched you up twice."

With that, he picked up the file and began filing the broken end of the bone as though filing a nail, inevitably tearing open the scab over the wound.

A sudden burst of piercing agony struck! Vanessa let out a shrill scream, her body instinctively jerking upward, only to be held fast by the straps. All she could do was tremble helplessly.

"Hey, that scared of pain? And you call yourself the 'Mad Caregiver'?"

"How... do you know..."

"Heh, whose hands do you think all those 'special goods' Old Razi deals in end up passing through?"

Vanessa's vision darkened with pain, and she nearly fainted. Suddenly, all her trembling stopped. Her taut body slowly relaxed, and she sat straight again, leaving only calm on her face.

"Hmm?" Norman glanced at her, somewhat surprised. "You actually managed to bear it?"

Of course Vanessa had not managed to bear it, but Elliot had helped her do so.

After discovering the anomaly in Spirit Vision, Elliot had completely abandoned his gaming mindset and become more focused than ever before.

And...

Vanessa stared fixedly at the operating table. She suddenly understood why that being had intervened at this moment.

Doctor Norman was deftly stitching the edges of her skin together with a curved needle and catgut. There was nothing remarkable about that in itself.

But in her eyes, both Norman's hands and the instruments he held were enveloped in a soft, faint white glow!

What is this?! Could it be... supernatural power? she wondered in alarm.

Meanwhile, Elliot was almost certain that Doctor Norman possessed some sort of supernatural ability.

The "glowing bloodstains" he had just seen in the secret chamber had given off the same faint white glow!

The difference was that the white light on the bloodstains had already grown dim, while the white light on Doctor Norman's hands was much brighter and more active.

On closer inspection, tiny motes of light seemed to be flowing from the doctor's hands into Vanessa's wound, helping stop the bleeding and guide the stitching.

It looks like Spirit Vision lets me glimpse traces of the supernatural.

But...

His gaze swept across the operating room. The equipment here was not brand-new; much of it bore obvious signs of use.

Yet nowhere else glowed with white light.

There's no way this operating room has no traces of blood left in it... but I can't see anything.

Back in the manor.

Elliot looked away from the card and turned once again toward the dazzling white light behind him.

So these bloodstains... probably aren't ordinary blood. They must have some connection to the supernatural. I can even see them after every trace has been cleaned away.

This manor probably still hides quite a few secrets. Now that I have Spirit Vision, I'll have to explore it thoroughly...

His attention returned to the girl. After a moment's thought, Elliot controlled her and spoke:

"Actually, it's fine once you get used to it. It doesn't hurt that much, so I can bear it." Her voice was so steady that she hardly sounded as though she had just experienced excruciating pain. "Doctor Norman, how much do you know about Mad Rat Disease? I heard it doesn't spread to living people?"

"Mad Rat Disease?" Norman gave her a surprised look, then understood. "Oh, that corpse? Well, strictly speaking, Mad Rat Disease isn't an infectious disease. It isn't even a 'disease'... it's a kind of... well, a state that's rather hard to describe."

"At first, people discovered that rats in certain areas would inexplicably go mad. Then people near those mad rats would also develop symptoms of mania and become extremely aggressive, so it was named Mad Rat Disease."

"That sounds... like there's nothing particularly special about it?" Elliot frowned.

"No, what's special is that these symptoms only appear after death."

They only appear after death? Highly aggressive, able to move... aren't those zombies?

Elliot was utterly shocked.

How did this world have zombies too?

"Hasn't the empire sent troops to suppress them?"

"Troops? You need troops to deal with these things?" Norman sounded rather amused. "However vicious it is, it's still a corpse. If a patrol officer comes across one, a single shot puts it down, and that's that."

"Besides, these things have a strange characteristic. They can indeed spread like an infectious disease, but... there's a geographical limit."

Only then did Elliot remember that Mad Rat Disease apparently did not infect living people. In that case, it really was not much of a threat.

This world had developed basic firearms, and patrol officers were armed with guns. Besides, even without a gun, someone in full plate armor could let a corpse break its teeth trying to bite through it.

With enough zombies, you had a biohazard crisis. With only a few, they became a "scarce resource" instead.

Wait.

"What do you mean by a geographical limit? And that corpse... didn't get up either?"

"It means that once Mad Rat Disease breaks out, its area of effect is fixed. Once they leave that 'infected zone,' the pathogens inside those corpses rapidly become inactive. The one you brought back was already inactive."

Norman explained offhandedly as he stitched. "So although it can spread, the danger is manageable. There's even debate over whether it counts as a disease... have you ever seen a disease that can only spread within a fixed area?"

"You definitely won't see any moving Mad Rat Disease corpses here. We're in the city, after all... yours came from outside too, didn't it? Hmm?"

Vanessa made no sound. Puzzled, Norman turned his head, only to see the girl's eyes wide open, her pupils contracted to pinpoints.

"You mean... corpses can only move within an area where Mad Rat Disease has broken out?"

"That's right."

"Then... what if Mad Rat Disease broke out inside the city?" There was a barely perceptible tremor in Vanessa's voice.

Norman's hands stopped involuntarily. After a while, he said gravely, "Then... they might really need to send in the troops."

"After all, there are far too many corpses in New Scandinavia."

Elliot and Vanessa both fell silent.

Both had taken part in the battle that day, and that man had clearly displayed every symptom of Mad Rat Disease.

So Mad Rat Disease had broken out in this city?!

No, Vanessa had encountered that man several days ago. Mad Rat Disease had already broken out in this city long ago!

"All right, the operation is finished. I'll write you a prescription. Go pick it up at the pharmacy in a bit..."

"Doctor Norman, I have something important to discuss with you in private!"