Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

"Did you previously mention that you were going to perform a kidney removal surgery?" Shiller's hand rested on the rail of the passageway, his eyes looking at Strange.

"I meant we don't have the facilities here to undertake organ removal surgery." Although Strange had guessed what Shiller intended to do, he still spoke out of professional instinct, "Removing an organ isn't that difficult, and even non-professionals can manage it. The difficulty lies in ensuring the patient survives and maintaining the viability of the removed organ."

"So, you're saying it's possible to remove?"

"Yes, if survival rate isn't considered, there's absolutely no problem."

After thinking for a bit, Shiller then asked, "What if it's not a human organ? Can it still be completely removed?"

"No big issue," Strange replied, "Even though I'm completely unfamiliar with their body structure, there isn't any delicate procedure that I can't handle. Removal would definitely not be a problem."

Shiller touched his chin and said, "On the first day, our patients were mostly civilians with no special identity, but afterwards, a civilian hero came, followed by Stark and the raven man."

"This means that the patients we deal with later may become more significant and not so easy to deceive. Stark had a gun, so others might have weapons or superpowers. Killing them to silence them isn't so simple."

"Are you thinking of taking something from their bodies while ensuring they survive?" Strange gently tapped the edge of the hospital bed before adding, "But if they leave the hospital, feel unwell, and go elsewhere for checks, they might find out."

"Then we make sure they have no chance to go elsewhere for checks," Shiller said. "To ensure they don't find out, they'll ultimately have to die, but they can't die here. Otherwise, it might impact the hospital's reputation, causing no one to come here for treatment."

Strange nodded and said, "Right. Although there isn't a quantifiable standard, I guess there still is something like a reputation value. The earlier patients were like a tutorial, and it didn't matter if they died. But from the character Nova onwards, the success rate of treatments became important."

"The good news is that we haven't killed too many people after that," Shiller continued. "At least Stark made it out alive, which should have also increased our reputation value."

"The game has always been guiding us to balance income and prestige; we can sell the organs we get from patients. But if too many people die, we won't receive more patients."

"And the storyline in the Dreamworld is always progressing, urging us to find solutions quickly. So we must keep seeing more patients in the real world to figure out what exactly is going on."

"But we can't be led by the nose."

Shiller licked his teeth with his tongue. The tooth he was missing was on the right side, the second last one excluding the wisdom tooth. Though it temporarily didn't affect speech and chewing, the damage would certainly become more severe if it continued this way.

"What do you plan to do?"

"Again, people can die, but not here. It's best if they die shortly after going home, so they won't go check what organs they're missing."

"This world has police," Strange pointed out. "If their deaths are too similar, it will definitely catch the police's attention. If the police discover they all recently visited the same hospital, our exposure risk is high."

"Then don't make their deaths look too similar," Shiller lightly tapped the top of the rail with his fingertip, saying, "There are over a thousand different plagues here."

Strange inhaled softly, saying, "You plan to extract plague samples from one patient and transplant them to another to control their time of death?"

"Exactly," Shiller grinned wide. "There are about 200 diseases where the incubation period before symptoms appear is very precise. Once we encounter such diseases in a patient, we can try to preserve the viral sample."

"This way, when we come across valuable patients' organs, we can remove the organs through surgery and then infect them with a controllable plague, ensuring they fall ill and die shortly after returning home, and it won't trace back to us."

"What about the police?"

"Even if the police come after us, we can brush them off with excuses of substandard hygiene or cross-infection. After all, what else can you expect from a hospital in this era?"

"What if they perform an autopsy and find the organs missing?"

"In the 200 diseases with controllable disease timings, there are also over 60 that cause devastating physical damage. For example, Acute Ore Disease, about 8 hours post-infection, the patient turns completely into an ore cluster, making such bodies impossible to check for missing organs."

"Moreover, many diseases are infectious. Although I don't know how this world handles the spread of diseases, they probably use those same old tricks. The first measure is to kill and cremate the infected immediately, definitely the best treatment method. No daring forensic scientist would dare to autopsy a plague victim."

"How do you plan to preserve the virus samples? And how will you infect the patient without them noticing?"

"Many diseases have precursors before full onset," Shiller spoke again, "That's a fundamental setting of this game, otherwise we wouldn't be able to diagnose what disease a patient has contracted."

"Yes. But these precursors usually take some time to appear. There are no symptoms immediately post-infection. How do we convince patients to wait here until we can observe the symptoms?"

Shiller seemed to have anticipated this. He tapped on the nearby instrument tray with his hand and said, "That's the key there. I just bought regular anesthetic from Bear Caregiver. Based on some magic principle, its effect is almost identical to modern anesthetic agents."

Strange immediately understood Shiller's idea, saying, "Are you planning to use this professional anesthetic to help patients skip the initial period of infection?"

"Yes, and we can completely control when they fall ill after leaving by controlling the dosage of the anesthetic."

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"Let's take Ore Disease as an example. Acute rabies has an onset time of about 8 hours, while initial symptoms typically appear about two hours after infection."

"So if we anaesthetize the patient for two hours, we can confirm whether they are infected. If we let them go at this point, they will fall ill six hours later."

"But if we anesthetize them for seven hours, they'll start showing symptoms within an hour of leaving, or even at seven and a half hours, or seven hours and fifty minutes. By then, they definitely won't have reached home and are very likely to fall ill in the street."

"Is there any benefit for us?"

"Of course, what if we could precisely control it to seven hours and fifty-nine minutes? After we shove the patient back through the corridor, they'd only have seconds before they start showing symptoms. So, who would be the unlucky one?"

Strange also flashed a smile.

Shiller turned his head to look at the hospital bed behind him and then spoke, "I guess as the plot progresses, someone will come to help us improve and expand the hospital ward. By that time, there would also be passageways above these two beds, and we will be busy amongst various patients with strange diseases, striving to improve the healing rates, making money, and advancing the plot."

"But in reality, we don't need to spend money to expand the passageways. The remaining two beds can be used to place anaesthetized patients. This could greatly reduce our workload, while also enhancing our reputation and earning money not so slowly."

"The only problem is..."

"It's a bit unethical, yes, but are you in?"

"What the heck, let's do it."

"Click." A metal bar was pulled down. Rustling sounds resumed, and with a "bang," a figure landed on the operating table. Two elongated shadows approached from either side, like the encroaching God of Death.

Falling onto the operating table again was a figure with green skin, small in stature with short limbs, but with disproportionately large hands. Its features were wrinkled, and its skin had many bark-like patterns.

This creature, resembling a small Tree Spirit, also fell in a disheveled heap. Shiller had noticed that none of the patients who arrived here were ever conscious, perhaps a convenience provided by the game system.

After a few seconds, the small Tree Spirit hazily woke up. As soon as he woke up, Shiller saw its eyes shining like golden gemstones.

When Shiller glanced at Strange, Strange happened to look up at him. Their gazes met for a second, then they both went back to their respective tasks.

About ten minutes later, Shiller placed two golden gemstones in a glass jar. As Strange began peeling the bark-like substance from the skin, he said, "I assume limb atrophy syndrome isn't what you want, right?"

"Yes, the onset of this disease is too long, and it's not lethal enough. Although, it's quite contagious."

"What should we do?"

Shiller set down the glass jar, then said, "The fireplace is running low on firewood. Throw it in. I want to see what treasures the fireplace will give us."

Strange instantly understood that Shiller probably had some guesses about the fireplace and was now trying to verify them.

Shiller, who had put down the glass jar, walked to the operating table, dragged the motionless Tree Spirit down, and threw it near the fireplace. Due to its small size, Shiller just tossed the entire creature into the fire.

The flames in the fireplace flickered, and the body of the Tree Spirit was quickly burnt to ashes. A gurgling sound came from the chimney, like some frightening beast vomiting.

"Snap!"

Yet another object fell into the flames and then onto the floor. Shiller walked over to pick it up and discovered it was a toenail.

Strange also came over. Seeming somewhat disgusted, he put on gloves before taking the nail and then shook his head, saying, "I'm quite sure this isn't my toenail. And what I lost was a thumb. This piece is too small to possibly be a thumbnail."

Shiller pondered for a moment before quickly walking to the shelf and taking out a tooth from the glass jar.

After examining the tooth structure, he found that this tooth was also not the one he lost. Judging by the structure and wear and tear of the tooth, it should be the second premolar, which is the third last tooth counting from the wisdom tooth, while Shiller's missing tooth was the very last one.

"Do you think this thing could be taken into the dream?" Strange voiced his speculation, saying, "To take a punishment on our behalf? Is that the idea?"

"Quite likely." Shiller responded, "This should be a prop that helps us delay the progression of the dream plot."

"What if we don't sleep?" Strange asked, frowning, "There doesn't seem to be a rule here forcing us to sleep, right?"

"I guess if we don't sleep for an extended period, some other conditions might occur." Shiller obviously had a better understanding of the game's design and mentioned, "The consequences might be much more severe than losing a tooth."

Strange sighed lightly and said, "Seems like we still need to figure out what exactly is happening in the dream, and why the two children we control are being tormented?"