After a considerable amount of effort, the results of Dame Kal'tsit's examination of Jeanne finally came out. At this moment, Jeanne was staring at the doctor's expression with a face full of nervousness. Even though she had absolute confidence in her own physical health, she couldn't help but feel her heart tighten when she saw that slight furrow in the other woman's brow.
It was just like going to the hospital for a check-up; if the doctor suddenly assumed a very serious expression, your heart would inevitably start wondering if there was actually something wrong with you.
Jeanne felt exactly that way now. Sitting across from a silent doctor with a face full of gravity was simply too much pressure.
"Um... Doctor Kal'tsit, is there something wrong with my body?"
After waiting for a long time without hearing the other party speak, Jeanne could no longer keep her composure and asked cautiously about her condition. She wasn't worried about having some terminal illness, but she was worried that her body had undergone changes she didn't know about. For instance, had a "stone" made of Originium grown inside her? After all, she usually relied on "crunching" Originium to replenish her mana—what if there were some residues left behind? Or perhaps a small "Alien" was parasitizing her body, but because her body was a bit unusual, it couldn't burst out of her chest like in those horror movie tropes?
Hearing Jeanne's inquiry, Kal'tsit looked at the sheet in her hand, then at the Jeanne in front of her, and then back at the report.
Don't do that, Doctor! If there's something, just say it straight! Looking back and forth like that is really challenging my fragile little heart!
Immediately after, Kal'tsit let out a sigh and fell back into deep thought. After studying it carefully for a long time, she finally said to Jeanne:
"There shouldn't be any problems, but let's wait a bit and draw blood one more time to check the situation. In the thirty minutes before you came here, did you eat something you weren't supposed to eat?"
Kal'tsit tossed the lab results onto the table. Everything on it was normal—in fact, every indicator was so normal it was practically abnormal. The only thing that wasn't normal was the Originium content in the body. The number for this indicator had seriously exceeded the range of what a human could withstand.
To put it bluntly, Kal'tsit could now consult Jeanne on one thing: Why are you still alive?
The Originium content in this child's blood alone was over a dozen times more severe than that of a typical high-severity infected person, and the infection level of her internal organs might be even higher! If this medical record were placed in any hospital, the doctors there would only be able to politely reply that she couldn't be saved and to wait for death, before calling the police to have this severely infected person detained.
However, Kal'tsit had a certain level of tolerance for such things, because she knew there truly were people who could ignore the infectivity of Originium, even if they swallowed it raw. After all, such an oddity existed within Babel, and that person's physical examinations were always handled by her personally, with no one else allowed to interfere.
"Before you came to find me, you ate Originium, didn't you?"
Kal'tsit looked at Jeanne and asked. Since she already knew the other party was also a human, how could she not guess what she had eaten? It was just that Kal'tsit didn't quite understand: why did Jeanne eat so much Originium? It almost caught up to the two-month intake she had prescribed for the Doctor.
The reason the Doctor ate Originium was to maintain her somewhat unstable mental state, so that she wouldn't make errors in judgment due to a loss of rationality during command. But through Kal'tsit's prior observations, it seemed Jeanne wouldn't be affected by some unknown force that would influence her mental state.
This was also a point of difference between Jeanne and the Doctor. That fellow wrapped herself tightly in those strange clothes all day, not even wanting to expose her skin to the air. This was because even though the Doctor wasn't affected by Originium, the current Terra still contained things sufficient to harm her fragile body and spirit. Her absurdly thick clothing was actually a special device to isolate those harmful external elements.
But look at this one—living in Terra for so many years without wearing any protective gear and without the slightest ill effect. If the Doctor knew this, her teeth would turn sour from jealousy.
Seeing Jeanne nod slightly, Kal'tsit only gave a faint nod in return. She made no comment on an act that, in the eyes of others, was no different from seeking death. Although she didn't know the necessity behind her eating Originium, since it wouldn't cause her to contract Oripathy, there was no need for deep probing.
"Even though its impact on you is almost zero, try to eat as little as possible if conditions allow you to substitute it with other substances. After all, it is a mineral; eating too much is bad for the body."
Despite the damage being non-existent, Kal'tsit still gave her a reminder from the perspective of human health. Eating too much of this ore was truly bad; it wasn't just that it made one prone to going crazy—one simply couldn't sleep while the body was digesting Originium! She had heard more than once that a certain someone desperately wanted to sleep, but because they had "crunched" too much pure Originium, they couldn't sleep all night and just ended up scratching the walls.
"Uh... thank you. I'll pay a bit more attention in the future."
Jeanne said so, but she knew her own condition. If she had to rely on eating food to accumulate mana, she estimated the food she'd have to eat every month would be measured in tons. As for side effects, she had been using the stuff as a mana supplement for a while, and her body hadn't shown any abnormal reactions at all!
"As long as you remember. Alright, the time is about right; let's draw blood one more time to see the situation."
Seeing that the time was right, Kal'tsit asked Jeanne to extend her arm. She wanted to test it again to confirm the digestion status of the Originium in her system. But when the results of this second blood sample came out, Kal'tsit was somewhat dumbfounded.
The report clearly stated that at this moment, there was not a trace of Originium in Jeanne's body! The blood was as clean as that of a newborn infant.
How was this done? Where did all that energy go? You couldn't say all that energy was cleanly "digested" by this child, could you? According to her estimates, the Originium content in her body was enough to power a small sedan for five hundred kilometers! How could a human body absorb such massive energy so completely?
"How is the situation, Doctor Kal'tsit?"
Jeanne saw a visible emotional fluctuation appear on Kal'tsit's face again, so she asked what exactly was happening to her body. Kal'tsit snapped out of her daze from the report. She was certain that this child's body had a massive difference from a normal human's, but she couldn't see the specific reason why.
"There's no problem. You're healthy—even a bit too healthy. If this blood sample were taken to a medical academy, it would be a case-study level healthy blood sample."
As Kal'tsit answered, she pondered what the cause of the physical change could be. But even if she racked her brain, there were no clues. Could it be related to her constitution that allowed her to produce holy water? Or was it that her body had an extremely massive demand for energy, causing the Originium to be decomposed shortly after entering her system?
If it were truly like that—if she could find out why Jeanne's energy consumption was so fast and then reverse-engineer a drug from it—it could, to a certain extent, reverse Oripathy. It could even turn a terminal, high-severity infected person into a light-severity one, thereby fundamentally extending their life.
But if she wanted to find out the specific reason for that energy consumption, the crude medical equipment here simply wouldn't do. Even the current medical level of Babel wouldn't be enough! However, this time had indeed opened Kal'tsit's eyes; at the very least, her new discoveries today were more than all those of the past thousand years.
Kal'tsit watched Jeanne depart, then looked at the two test reports on the table. She casually threw them, along with the two blood samples, into the fire. Such things...when lacking the research capability, are better off existing only inside that young girl's body.
This was the kind of thing that could trigger a tsunami in the scientific community of Terra. If even a sliver of news leaked out, the child's peaceful life would vanish. No, perhaps it wouldn't be that severe. At the very least, she could choose to move to Laterano. For her, that place should be the safest refuge.
(Fumina: Sorry for the terrible updating schedule the past few days. I am about to start my second semester, and was dealing with dorm problems. It should be back to normal now.)