novelblue
Chapter 61: Black Death (8)
Chapter 61: Black Death (8)
Chapter 61: Black Death (8)
To be honest, I didn’t have much thought even after hearing that Mr. Alex was on sick leave.
That was life; you never knew what could happen, when it’d happen. To exaggerate, humans were creatures who could just randomly collapse on the street as they went on their way.
Asking things like ‘Why is he sick all of a sudden’, ‘Why did this happen to him’ was meaningless. Questioning the plausibility of matters relating to life and death would only give you a headache.
If the teacher was sick, you just accepted it and moved on.
Yeah.... that was exactly my thought before I saw the transmigrator’s face.
Immediately after Miss Heerlein announced Mr. Alex’s absence, Vermel who had gone pale asked no questions and came to me. As I tilted my head curiously, he held out a piece of paper. The class’s attention turned to us.
He was holding out a patent license agreement.
“Sorry, but could you fill this out for me right now?”
Lotte and Freyr who were sitting nearby didn’t seem to know why the transmigrator was handing me this kind of paper. That was also my reaction at first, but unlike the other two, I quickly caught on to what the situation was.
It wasn’t only me. As much as they’d hate it, this one hypothesis would come to mind for anyone who had experienced a similar situation back in my world.
This was a pandemic.
Pandemic, or more loosely described as a ‘plague apocalypse’. Literally, it was when people fell ill and the country was shaken due to a lack of proper response to the spread of an epidemic.
This must be what the transmigrator was concerned about. There were plenty of grounds for that conclusion. Firstly, the patent license Vermel requested was for the mosquito-catching EMP.
What was a mosquito, essentially? A hotbed of various infectious diseases.
Starting with malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, etc. I remembered seeing statistics long ago that mosquitoes were the animals that had killed the most humans.
This world should be no different. The only difference probably was that mosquitoes were Magic Beasts made of machines. They died from EMP rather than pesticides.
Since I was a physics student, I didn’t know how to mix the raw ingredients of a pesticide based on their chemical structures. But the mosquitoes of this world were beasts rather than organisms. In order to kill them, one needed to use electromagnetic waves, not pesticides.
Even if I didn’t know how to make pesticides, EMPs were something I used to make for fun since school days. This was my specialty.
“For sure.”
I filled out the patent application on the form he gave me without asking anything. Vermel seemed stunned at that. He must have found my response surprising.
Of course, because things would have looked different if I hadn’t believed that Vermel was a transmigrator. We were both wary of each other, but at the same time we were probably using each other having similar ideas. If either of us revealed ourselves, then this delicate balance would topple.
Alright, let’s not think that far for now. I wrote the contract permitting mass production of the EMP scroll and handed it to Vermel.
This turned out to be a good move.
“Everyone. Don’t come to school for the time being and try not to leave your dorms. If anything happens, we’ll provide a hotline through the Air Magic students so give us a call. Understood?”
It was as predicted. The incident this time was going to be a pandemic.
Exactly three days after Mr. Alex fell ill, the entire Academy was ordered to close. Public facilities like restaurants and theaters where many people gathered all closed down. I used my tutoring fee from Lotte to purchase a bunch of droplet masks just in case.
And not long after, Lotte and I became completely stuck in our double dorm.
“Shouldn’t we go out as support...?”
“Go out and do what?”
“Something, anything. It’s a noble’s duty to do so.”
“Yeah, I should do something, too.”
My duty was to confine Lotte who wasn’t grasping the situation to our room. With her ankles bound for the first time in her life, Lotte screamed her head off to be released immediately.
“Didn’t you hear the teacher say we’re not to leave?”
“Ughh....”
But Lotte was easy to handle, at least, probably since she was a good student. It only took the teacher’s noble words to convince her.
Still, she seemed to want to do something. In a way she was steadfast, but stubborn in another which made her a tiresome sort. She kind of resembled Professor Hasfeldt, strangely enough.
The way to handle someone like this was easier than it seemed.
“If you rush outside right now, then everyone could die. Staying put is the way to help the quarantine officers.”
“I know that, but...!”
“Okay, if you’re that worried about others, then come help me.”
That was to give them something else to do.
I held out a blueprint to Lotte, the one containing the mosquito-catching scroll.
“I think the cause of this is a mosquito or flying insect.”
Lotte hadn’t been present when I made the EMP scroll, so I needed to explain the exact process to her in detail. Once she finished listening, Lotte’s face brightened up.
As soon as I finished my personal briefing, Lotte grabbed magic papers, leftover mana stones, coils and started building EMP scrolls. Seeing this, I was proud on one hand but it also made my head spin. I lay down on my bed to rest a bit.
It seemed we’d have to disconnect from society for a while starting today. To get information during this time, I’d have to read the papers or listen to the radio.
I chose the latter.
There was someone from the Imperial Disaster Headquarters just talking about what I had predicted. I listened closely.
“Has it been magically proven?”
“Yes. After collecting samples from 500 Black Forest Mosquitoes around the Academy, we discovered that about half of them were carrying the pathogen that causes the Black Death.”
As he listened to Professor Glyston’s briefing, Vermel breathed a sigh of relief. He was glad that the Philiut Empire’s healthcare and health insurance systems were better established compared to the neighboring countries.
SYSTEM : To reach the Happy Ending, there must be no deaths within the Academy.The era of the Empire was around the early to mid-twentieth century. If it had been any earlier in time, then there wouldn’t have been a happy ending. The Empire was running in an orderly manner with the introduction of antibiotics and a modern healthcare system. Looking at it like this, it was hard to think that the politics had fallen into the hands of the beasts.
“Actually, us elves have once suffered a plague like this Black Death long ago. At the time, our ancestors came up with a relevant cure.”
“May we know what it is?”
In response to another doctor’s question, Professor Glyston showed them a book.
“Using the extract from plants like limes or mandarins as a medicine....”
Some fruits like oranges or tree barks provided ground-breaking means in curing the Black Death. That knowledge was something only known to the transmigrator who had played this game which was the stage of this world.
Is this scurvy or something?
He had to take into consideration that it was an imaginary disease within a game. Furthermore, the Black Death had a completely different meaning from the one on Earth.
“Is it actually effective?”
“It is. It’s known to be a good method in alleviating ‘ironization’, one of the main symptoms of the disease.”
“This is coming from the elves who are friendly with the Elementals, no? It’s certainly worth believing.
“We can try it out for now since it wouldn’t hurt.”
Where the two elves–Vermel and Professor Glyston–were currently was the Disaster Management Headquarters within the Imperial court. Here, a heated discussion was taking place on how they could prevent the spread of the Black Death plague.
There was only one reason why an undergraduate like Vermel who wasn’t even a doctor could be here. It was because the infirmary teacher, Sephia Glyston, had helped him gain entry.
Thanks to that, Vermel, being a transmigrator, got to observe something that was hard to see in the game. After all, it wasn’t easy to see the government’s response in person in an age where there weren’t any t.v.’s or public disaster briefings. There were radios, sure, but it was hard to gain a detailed sense of reality from that alone, not to mention the static.
Anyway.
I can know what’s going to happen in the future.
“Then here is the final briefing. If we combine the epidemiological investigation data that just came in, the pathogen is mostly occurring in areas with lakes, reservoirs, and other bodies of water. This falls in line with the fact that the primary habitat of a mosquito and its larvae is near the waters.”
“What are the numbers for the infected and critically ill?”
“There’s no exact diagnosis as of yet. However, we’ve investigated.... 30 000 infected... and about 12 000 critically ill. The count is.... expected to increase... in the future.”
“And deaths?”
“...... Thanks to the antibiotics, there have been... no deaths yet.”
The death toll. Vermel at least knew what it was for the Academy.
SYSTEM : Trial progress(30%)SYSTEM : The way to the Happy Ending is not yet closed.No one in the Academy had died yet. The fact that most of the students and faculty were upper class with health insurance played a role in lowering the number of deaths. Most of all, there weren’t many in the state who were dying due to advances in medicine.
The subject who caused this Trial only wants to buy time, anyway. There’s also the possibility that they’re purposely controlling the toxicity.
The First Trial. There were two main ways to finish the Black Death episode.
First, hold out doggedly until the disease completely goes away.
Or second, find the culprit... the Great Mecha who spread the plague and chase them from the capital.
The second plan isn’t bad but... it would be a bit of a gamble.
He had to make a decision right here. And just as Vermel was lost in thought with his chin in hand.
“But with the issue... being what it is, let us heed Professor Glyston’s words and... set quarantine guidelines. We will leave the specifics to the diplomats and His Majesty, while the rest of us....”
Fwump.
The doctor who had been doing the briefing complained of dizziness and fainted on the spot.
“Excuse me, what is happening?”
“Didn’t everyone here have their temperature measured?”
“Wasn’t the Black Death’s incubation period supposed to be one day? This person has already been fine for a week!”
The Management Headquarters turned into chaos in an instant.
Right.
Because of how real it was, he overlooked one of the strongest abilities of the Cataclysm who controlled this disease.
In the game’s most difficult <Nightmare> mode....
... The incubation period of this disease changed at the will of that beast.