Hearing that there was food available now that she was awake, Jeanne threw aside all other thoughts and quickly got up to eat. However, looking at the way she rose from the bed, she didn't look in the slightest like someone who had gone five days without a single bite to eat.
Alina watched with a thoroughly helpless expression as Jeanne devoured every last drop of soup from the pot and finished off the bread on the table piece by piece. She couldn't help but marvel at the girl's incredible appetite; if she were to eat that much food herself, it would take her an entire week! Jeanne had just single-handedly consumed an amount equivalent to a week's worth of Alina's rations, and by the looks of it, she wasn't even entirely full yet—she was clearly leaving some room in her stomach for the upcoming dinner, which was truly a formidable feat.
"By the way, did anything strange happen during the few days I was resting?" Jeanne asked, breaking off a piece of bread and tossing it into her mouth as she casual questioned Alina.
At this hour, Talulah was likely still off somewhere handling various affairs, so Jeanne, feeling rather curious about the current situation in the village, had no choice but to pry for information from Alina. By now, her eating speed had finally slowed down. After devouring three large loaves of bread, she wasn't quite as ravenous anymore, so her pace with the final loaf slowed down enough to grant her the breath to converse with Alina.
Even though Alina had witnessed this sight countless times before, every time she saw Jeanne eat like this, she couldn't help but worry that Jeanne might actually gorge herself to death. The main reason was that if this volume of food were stuffed into a normal person's stomach, they would already be rushed away for emergency gastric lavage, otherwise, they could only quietly wait for death.
"Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The biggest event over the last few days was that Dr. Kal'tsit conducted a medical diagnosis for everyone in the village to check on their physical conditions," Alina answered softly, her eyelids twitching slightly as she watched Jeanne repeatedly shove food into her mouth, terrified that she might hear her cry for help in the next second.
"Oh? Did you go as well? How is your Oripathy?" Jeanne was startled to hear that Kal'tsit had been conducting physical exams for the entire village.
That workload was certainly no small matter! After all, confirming the condition of an Infected wasn't something that could be done with a superficial glance; it required drawing blood from each individual for a meticulous examination! When she thought of the small testing equipment they had managed to acquire, Jeanne felt a wave of despair on Kal'tsit's behalf. Using that tiny device to check everyone one by one would probably make Kal'tsit's tail frizzle with sheer exasperation!
However, Kal'tsit wasn't nearly as flustered as Jeanne imagined. Even though the medical equipment in this place could only be described as rudimentary, she was fully capable of performing examinations under even harsher conditions.
"Me? My Oripathy is extremely stable! I didn't know much about my condition before, but the doctor said my Oripathy is controlled exceptionally well and is very mild." Seeing Jeanne fret over her Oripathy, Alina felt quite happy. To be honest, over these past few years, she had almost forgotten that she was even an Infected.
After all, her Oripathy wasn't particularly conspicuous, and she hadn't suffered from the agonizing flare-ups that plagued other Infected for a very long time. The Originium inside her body seemed as though it had fallen fast asleep. She was well aware that this was all thanks to Jeanne; ever since she contracted the disease, it seemed to have been completely suppressed. According to Kal'tsit, the Originium density in her body was practically identical to someone who had only just been infected.
"But Kal'tsit did mention something to us. She said the conditions of the Infected in our village are all remarkably stable—so stable that she even suspected there was something wrong with her own tests." Alina recalled the look of utter disbelief in Kal'tsit's eyes after she finished the check-ups. A medical report like that truly did not belong to a normal Infected village; the number of severe Oripathy cases was simply too low!
According to Kal'tsit's understanding, an Infected village, especially the various settlements within Ursus, ought to have the highest concentration of severe cases. Yet this village consisted almost entirely of mild cases, and even moderate cases were rare. If Jeanne hadn't been present, Kal'tsit would have already begun a thorough investigation to find the cause.
"That's good then. It's wonderful that your conditions haven't worsened..." Hearing that there wasn't much change in their illnesses, Jeanne felt relieved. She nodded and continued to contend with the remaining quarter of her bread.
Speaking of which, had she forgotten something? She had a vague recollection that someone had approached her right before she went to sleep. Jeanne tilted her head, unable to remember exactly who it was, only recalling that there had been such a person. Who on earth was it? Mudrock? Talulah? FrostNova, or Patriot?
Jeanne felt as though a single long sleep had entirely wiped her memory of the preceding events! No matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn't recall who had approached her back then, making her wonder if her memory was starting to fail her.
"Oh, you're awake! I must say, it's about time you woke up! If you stayed asleep any longer, we were going to start worrying whether you had contracted some sort of illness."
Just as Jeanne was racked with cognitive effort trying to deduce who she had forgotten, Talulah returned home. Seeing Jeanne awake and eating, she spoke in an astonished tone.
This air-head had slept for five whole days! Over these five days, Talulah hadn't been able to rest properly either, constantly worrying about why Jeanne hadn't woken up yet and wondering if she had fallen under some sort of Blood Demon curse. It was an old rumor she had heard from others in the past—that anyone attacked by a Sarkaz of the Blood Demon lineage would fall into an incredibly prolonged slumber, and by the time they woke up, they would have turned into a Blood Demon themselves.
Although that sort of tale sounded exactly like a bunch of nonsense invented by adults to frighten children, seeing Jeanne remain unconscious for so long had caused her mind to wander into wild speculations. Fortunately, Patriot had subtly reassured her once, confirming that Jeanne hadn't had her blood drained by the Sanguinarch, and that Blood Demons didn't possess the ability to turn others into their own kind anyway.
Hearing Patriot say this had naturally made Talulah feel rather embarrassed; after all, she hadn't realized when she had started muttering such obvious misinformation to Patriot. But seeing Jeanne now, the anxiety that had been weighing on Talulah's heart finally dissipated. This girl was finally awake; because of her prolonged slumber, Talulah had been somewhat distracted during her Arts practice over the past few days.
"I'm awake, I woke up naturally. What did you do today to leave yourself looking this exhausted?" Jeanne asked, greeting Talulah as she noticed her friend return with a distinctly fatigued expression.
As if remembering something, Talulah slumped into a chair with a weary look, appearing exactly like someone who had been dragged off to perform hard labor for an entire day without a single moment of rest.
"It's nothing major, really. It's just that the other village has started building houses, so we all went into the forest to chop timber and haul logs."
In these snowy plains, attempting to construct every single house out of stone was blatantly unrealistic. The vast majority of the dwellings here were made of wood, and they weren't particularly afraid of fire anyway. Since this region was covered in snow year-round, there was little worry about stray sparks igniting the timber, and wood was an exceptionally easy resource to find here.
"Uh... then you've truly worked hard!" Hearing Talulah mention hauling logs, Jeanne suddenly remembered that she had completely forgotten about this matter!
This was supposed to be her job. After all, with her ability to summon earth wyverns, she could easily find more than enough heavy labor to transport the logs, and moving them wouldn't have required any real effort at all. But for Talulah and the others to handle this work, the difficulty was on an entirely different level. Imagining so many people hauling logs down from the mountain, it was bound to be an grueling task.
"It's fine. Working together with everyone kept it from feeling too exhausting, but the moment I sat down to rest, the fatigue caught up to me like it was lunging at me." Talulah let out a tired sigh, then poured herself a cup of water and drank it slowly.
While drinking her water, Talulah looked at Jeanne as if recalling a specific detail, and then inquired in a curious tone:
"Right, what did Dr. Kal'tsit want with you? I remember someone telling me that after the incident that day, the doctor apparently sought you out to say something, right?"
Talulah's reminder instantly jogged Jeanne's memory. The person who had intercepted her back then and said she had something to discuss was indeed Kal'tsit! How could she have forgotten about that?
"Oh, that's right! Kal'tsit did look for me earlier! Sigh, I was in such a rush to sleep back then that I ignored everything and ran straight back to bed, completely forgetting that she had asked for me."
Hearing Jeanne's words, Talulah felt that her friend had probably slept herself into stupidity, given that she had entirely forgotten the identity of the person who had approached her. However, she didn't say anything further. She simply held her cup of water and sipped slowly, staring at Jeanne for a long time as the girl lamented her failing memory.