Two hours had passed, I taught Jenna about basic hygiene as a nurse and that took longer than expected, only four adventurers came in so far, one of them had a nasty slash mark on his wide back and it was the perfect opportunity to teach Jenna on how to dress and properly look after a wound.
I took off my shirt and laid down on the couch, the fever was getting a little too serious for my liking, I was wearing a black tank top and it still felt like I was being cooked over fire, I wish I had some ice right now.
Jenna: Claudio, look at my hands, are they clean enough?
Claudio: No, wash them again.
Jenna: WHAT?! But they are clean!
Claudio: Jenna, do it just like I taught you, I can tell that you didn't wash them properly by how fast you came back to me.
Jenna: But…
Claudio: So you are telling me that if I got up right now and looked at your hands, there wouldn't be dirt under your fingernails and between your fingers?
I wasn't opening my eyes and I could tell that Jenna was shocked at my evaluation.
Jenna: Sorry for talking back to you, I promise I will do better.
Claudio: Mhm, strike one kid, if my hands looked like yours when I operated on you, you would've died, alongside the other adventurers, you better take this seriously or else.
Jenna: Understood!
Jenna rushed back to the washrooms one more time. Oliver entered the lounge, he has been checking on me and talking to me whenever there was free time, he is a funny man to say the least.
Oliver: Hey Claudio, you are showing too much skin, who are you trying to seduce?
Claudio: Hello Oliver, you are not covering your head today, who are you trying to blind?
Oliver: HAH!
He soon left the lounge, what the fuck was that about? Usually he comes here to tell me something important, oh… I guess I have some guests right now. The door opened and one of the wolf siblings entered, Ulfhild.
Ulfhild: H-Hello Claudio.
Claudio: Hello Ulfhild, how are you doing today?
Ulfhild: I'm doing great thanks!
Claudio: Well then get the hell out of my lounge.
Ulfhild: H-huh? What? No…
Claudio: I am joking relax, I guess this is visit is about your hearing problem?
Ulfhild: Oh haha yeah you remembered.
Claudio: Rest on the bed over there, I will get something from my bag and be with you in a moment.
The lounge was empty now that everyone miraculously survived that day, all except for one adventurer who was lazy and kept on saying that he still feels sick despite being in the best condition out of them, I will have kick to him out soon.
Claudio: Okay Ulfhild go lay down your side.
She turned to the other side, I turned on my flashlight and what I saw was nothing short of horrifying, her ears were caked in with dirt and some otherworldly creatures.
Claudio: Ulfhild, I advise against sleeping on the ground in the forest.
Ulfhild: What was that?
Claudio: Never mind.
I quickly got to work, I scraped off a comical amount of old earwax and dirt, there was two dead purple maggots that were in rigor mortis as well. Throughout the whole procedure Ulfhild was shaking her legs, guess this was her first eargasm.
Claudio: Can you hear me better now?
Ulfhild: You are so loud!
Claudio: Sorry, switch to the other side now.
Jenna entered the lounge to see me awkwardly lifting my body up on the bed, the beds were horrendous, I can't adjust the height and it didn't help that ulfhild's shoulders were wide.
Jenna: Do you want my help?
Claudio: YES! What took you so long!
Jenna awkwardly rushed towards me and I handed her the flashlight that I was holding in my mouth.
Claudio: Oh my god!
Ulfhild and Jenna: What?
Claudio: Jenna bring me the salt drops now.
I dripped some in her ears and a purple spider crawled out of her ears, it was hiding under a crust of old dried earwax.
Ulfhild: Oh my god! Bela?!
Claudio: It has a name?!
Ulfhild: This is my contracted spirit Bela! I lost her a couple of years ago! So it was in my ears all along?!
You nasty bitch, I hate it here.
Ulfhild: Oh could I ever pay you back Claudio! Thank you so much for your help! Oh Ulmar will be here in a couple of minutes, I can hear him now!
Claudio: We are not done yet. You said that there were some trouble with your vision as well.
Ulfhild: No-no you did more than enough please…
Claudio: I insist, I want to check if my knowledge is applicable here or not so, it's not like I'm doing you a favor.
Ulfhild: What do you mean?
Claudio: Just do as I say please.
I spent the next 10 minutes examining how bad her vision was, everything seemed fine so far, it seems like she was born with blurry, shortsighted vision, so she has myopia, same as Angelica…
Ulamr: What's wrong Claudio? You look down.
Claudio: That's my thinking face, I want to try one last thing, I think I may have a solution for Ulfhild's vision problem.
I went to my bag and pulled out Angelica's eyeglasses, I contemplated giving it away at first but I really need to move on with my life, well it's not like it's gonna be a perfect fit for Ulfhild anyways.
Claudio: Ulfhild, try this on.
Ulfhild flinched at the coldness of the metal against her face; she slowly opened her eyes, made a shocked face and exclaimed:
Ulfhild: HOLY SHI-
***
An hour had passed since the wolf siblings happily left the lounge, they insisted on compensating me and I told them we would discuss the details later.
Lyria came back from the errand that I assigned to her. Yesterday I read in a book about alchemy about a mushroom called Limt Vosces that is used for some certain potions. There is a mysterious quirk that left the scientist puzzled about the mushroom, for some reason, before it is used in a potion, when it's in the clear slimy liquid form after boiling it and letting it soak in alcohol, it changes colors when interacting with human blood!
To the average scientist in this confusing world, this is useless to know about, but when I read about it, I fully believe that, in theory, I can tell if the person can have the same blood type or not!
Lyria: Here, I managed to find two pounds near the tribunal trees.
Claudio: Thanks a lot Lyria, now please leave you are stinking up the lounge.
Lyria: Choke on them.
Claudio: What was that?
Lyria: I said you are welcome.
***
Day 7 since entering the city
Today is Thursday, which means one thing, tomorrow is my off day! After I came back from my shift yesterday, I spent a couple of hours researching my rights as a foreigner and a krippal and what I found was nothing short of shocking. Here are the list of things that I cannot do if I ever found myself any other city besides this one
Krippals don't have the right to purchase water, or food.
Krippals can be enslaved on sight by nobles or people who have similar authorities to them.
Krippals can be killed without any consequenses under the law of Canem Canes, which is hilarious because that is the current law that the city is working on right now, or soon after the nobles are back from their dungeon trip.
I spent a lot of time reading, and the section about krippals only covered like 2% of the book I was reading which is insane, I assume the people here are not very knowledgeable about this topic or else I would've been killed when I was carrying 20 pounds of meat when I entered the city.
I can tell the looks and treatment I was getting was mostly because of their superiority complex.
My theory about the Limt Vosces mushroom was a critical success to say the least, I had Lyria run towards the orphanage and collect some blood samples from Julian and his sister, the concoction changed the color to purple for a couple of seconds before returning back to the normal clear liquid. I asked Lyria to prick her finger and add a drop of blood to it and the liquid turned to golden yellow.
For some reason the liquid didn't change when I added my blood to it, in fact, I ruined the whole concoction and I had to make another one, I brought in another servant and asked him to do the same as Lyria and he happily obliged, the liquid turned pinkish red.
***
Later at the guild
Jenna: Look Claudio, I thoroughly washed my hands, didn't touch any object with them, and also I completed the homework that you gave me yesterday.
Claudio: Let me check the homework.
Jenna patiently stared at me, hoping that she finally passed as my assistant.
Claudio: Jenna, you actually did well, good job.
Jenna: Bulhaaaaa!
Claudio: But you keep on failing the practical exam for some reason, is something wrong with your head kid?
Jenna: WHAT?! HOW!
Claudio: It seems like you are memorizing everything without understanding them, see the 23rd line about the silent killers?
Jenna: Yeah the little monsters that cause infections?
Claudio: Yes, good you actually understood half of the problem.
Jenna: What's the other half?
I stared at her silently, waiting for her to realize that she have been chewing on her fingers the whole time.
Jenna: Hm? Oh… Fuck.
Claudio: Yeah, if a patient came in right now with an open wound and you treated him with your contaminated fingers, what would've happened to him?
Jenna: Uh… He would get a fever that we can't fully predict the outcome to and at worst, die.
Claudio: Correct, now go wash your hands again.
Jenna later came back with her hands wrinkled and eyes filled with determination.
Claudio: Here Jenna, this is a gift from your teacher, congrats on being accepted.
Jenna almost put her hands on her face, she had a mixed reaction of shock and happiness, she did the signature otherworldly bow and said:
Jenna: Thank you so much for being patient with me.
Claudio: Mhm, open your hands.
I had a pouch filled with 250 groshen, she saw the money and her eyes were wide open in shock, she looked at me and asked:
Jenna: All of this for me?
Claudio: You deserve it, you will soon know that it is not enough so be prepared.
Jenna: 'Not enough?! I would rather help him fix adventurers than fight another damned giant!'
Jenna reached for the bag and pulled away last second instinctively.
Jenna: AHA! You wanted to trick me and contaminate my hands!
I let out a chuckle and patted her on the head.
Claudio: Haha smart girl.
Jenna: Now your hands are contaminated!
Claudio: I guess so.
***
Later that night
Out of the blue, a clan of adventurers with a name so ridiculous that I didn't bother memorizing came in heavily injured from traveling, two of them were on the verge of death. They were screaming at me to use a healing potion on them but I simply ignored their requests, sure, they looked bad but compared to Jenna and Lucia they looked like they had a scratch.
They came from a distant town, fleeing from the war, so I probably have to guess that this city is going to get busy in the next weeks.
Jenna showed remarkable competence, I thought since she was young that she would be shaken and scared but she proved otherwise, she was calm, quick and composed, I would've rewarded her with another gift but decided not to, I can't let her think that I'm a philanthropist who gives money away every day.
When we saved one of the critically injured adventurers, the other one simply lost too much blood and was heading into a cardiovascular arrest soon. I pulled my blood type revealing concoction and asked his entire group to add a drop from their already bleeding wounds, two out of 14 showed similar dark brown colors to the dying man so I told them that if they wanted to save him they would need to do just as I said.
Thankfully, they didn't want the poor guy to die so they agreed to the blood transfusion.
The adventurer had second degrees burn mark all over his abdomen and some painful lacerations so I cleaned him up with saline and did a quick job of stopping the bleeding and suturing up the wounds that were not affected by the fire. While Jenna did a pretty good job with calming down the enraged adventurers while also taking care of their wounds.
After things calmed down, I kneeled next to the injured adventurer and was glad to see that his heart rate was not high, indicating that he was not heading towards cardiac arrest any time soon, I gambled with another man's life and was rewarded with a new life saving discovery.
If I was treating normal respectful people then I would not have attempted something so reckless but since I was dealing with these thugs, I say one death wasn't so bad after all, so it is what it is I guess.
***
Day 8 since entering the city
Friday, my rest day, I woke up feeling amazing knowing that I'm not going to that place today, my fever has gone down and my wounds mostly healed... Shit, I don't know what to do now besides studying.
Afternoon
Lyria: So Claudio, why don't you interact with the other residents? I've only seen you go to the public sauna once after all.
Claudio: Please don't get me started Lyria.
Lyria: What do you mean?
Claudio: Well first things first, there is that creepy fucking slave trader, I was enjoying my time until he came in with his slaves and he started fucking them at the spot while maintaining eye contact with me!
Lyria: That's…
Claudio: Oh and don't get me started on the nudity! Why is it so normalized in here?! Also there is that creepy woman who seems to be following me every chance she gets!
Lyria: You mean Mrs. Flora? You know her and Nola grew up in the same orphanage right?
Claudio: That is mildly interesting, but still doesn't excuse her weird behavior.
Lyria: Forget that I ever asked.
*knock knock knock*
Oh my god it better not be a fucking visit
Servant: Mrs. Claudio, there is a someone at the gate by the name of Suzie that is trying to meet with you, she says it's urgent, should I let her in?
Well at least this is something new, and I'm tired of studying anyways so it works.
Claudio: Sure let her in.
A couple of minutes later
A young woman, around 16 to 17 came into my apartment, the first thing that I noticed about her was that she had very dark circles under her eyes and that she walked funny, as if her buttocks hurt, if my evaluation is correct, the poor girl was sodomized.
Claudio: Please sit, what brings you here today?
She sat awkwardly on the chair before introducing herself.
Suzie: Uh… Hi my name is Suzie and I really need your help PLEASE! I will pay you how ever…
Claudio: Calm down, take a deep breath.
She did as I instructed, and she exhaled weakly, Lyria was ready to send her head flying at any moment but I signaled to her that she should chill out.
Suzie: I'm so-rry it's just about my mom, I don't know… she can't give birth the baby comes out wrong! The healer said that she couldn't do anything to help!
Claudio: Ok I understand but please repeat everything from the beginning, clearly this time.
***
Suzie told me about her life as we made our way to the brothel that her "Mom" works at, what a crazy coincidence to say the least, Suzie grew up with Nola at the orphanage, however she was sold to the brothel that she currently works in 7 years ago because she was talentless and food was that scarce.
Today she visited Nola and asked her if she knew anyone who can help her save her foster mom and Nola pointed at me. I didn't hide my prejudice against this whole situation but Suzie assured me that her foster mother actually adored her and never let anyone do anything to her, well not all the time at least.
We soon arrived at the Brothel and I was geared up like I was going to war, Lyria took care of the luggage while I was thinking about all the things that could go wrong, from the looks of it, it seems like I will have to perform a C-Section surgery, but how can I convince them? I don't even have help right now… OH SHIT!
Claudio: JENNA!
Jenna was casually walking down the street with a huge roasted cow leg at her hands, she had her siblings besides her and they all had the same comically large piece of meat in their hands as well.
Claudio: Hello everyone do you mind if I borrow your sister for a moment? This is an emergency.
I pulled Jenna and handed the piece of meat to the nearest beggar on the street.
Jenna: What's wrong?
Claudio: Sorry Jenna I know it's your day off but I will make it up to you, I need your help.
Jenna: I don't care about that Claudio, you taught me that it will always get busy, even on your day off.
What an angel!
Claudio: I'm proud of you.