I fell onto my back as I saw the wereboar fall to the ground, the exhaustion and mana depletion taking its toll on me. For what could have been anything from a few minutes to an hour I drifted in and out of consciousness, by the time I managed to have the mental strength to do anything my body was still and slow.

“Hey you!” I heard a voice come from below. “What are you doing up there!?”

I peeked over the edge of the roof and saw a handful of guardsmen standing over the corpse of the wereboar looking up at me with stern yet terrified looks on their faces.

Using my arms I pushed my chest off the ground and took a better look at the guardsmen. I didn’t recognize any of them personally, but that was a given considering just how large the city guard was at times.

“Oh don’t mind me!” I called out as I raised my left hand in as calming of a gesture as I could. “I am just taking a short break up here, I won’t be much longer.”

“We have no issue with that sir.” The tallest of the guards called back up. He looked quite young and nervous, likely just recently promoted. “We were more worried about this dead beast down here on the street. Did you by any chance see what happened here?”

“See it, I was in the middle of it. The damned werebeast was chasing after me, I had no choice but to kill the damned thing. Honestly it was a miracle that there wasn’t anyone else out here when it happened, otherwise someone might have been killed.”

All of the guardsmen visibly flinched when I told them I killed the wereboar, while they likely didn’t know how dangerous it was they likely had heard stories about them. It likely wasn’t anything definitive, but enough to give an idea to just how powerful and dangerous even just a single werebeast can be.

“If that is the case sir then I think it is best if you come with us to speak with the captain, he will want to personally thank you for killing such a dangerous beast.”

“Of course, just give me a moment to climb back down.” I slowly stood up and began my descent down the side of the old warehouse. I started by sliding over the edge and placing my feet on the little edges created by the worn down stone bricks. Slowly I made my way back down using little edges and holes to lower myself down, when there wasn’t anything to either step or sit on I had to use what little mana I still had to create them myself.

After several minutes I dropped down onto the partly bloody street next to the nervous guardsmen, who had formed a loose circular formation with their spears in both hands pointing outwards as I came down. It was evidence enough of the basic training they received, but showed they knew very little of how to fight against werebeasts specifically.

“Now which was it to the barracks? I got quite turned around during the fight.”

“I will lead you there sir, just follow me.” The lead guardsman quickly answered as he stepped out of the formation. “You lot stay here for the time being, I will speak with the captain and have a larger group sent to take point of the situation.” The other guardsmen didn’t say anything as their commanding officer began walking in the direction of the southern distinct barracks with myself just a few steps behind him.

********

Waking up in the morning after fighting and nearly dying to a wereboar is by far one of the worst things I had experienced in my life up to that point. I had to put considerable effort to get out of bed and fix something up to eat, even then it wasn’t anything complex as I didn’t have the mental power to do so. Then I had to dress myself and head off to the clinic to start work. Exiting my home wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.

With all the movement I was doing I managed to loosen up the stiff muscles, however I was still very tired and the loud voices of people shouting through the streets was very distracting. It was like everyone on the street was banging on a drum, everywhere I was there was someone shouting about something. If it wasn’t merchants shouting about how good their deals were it was someone trying to catch someone else's attention.

I was tempted to try walking through the alleyways to avoid most of the traffic and noise, however I stopped myself just before I did so. ‘I don’t have the energy to keep my wits about. Hopefully nothing major happened today and things will be rather slow at the clinic.’ I was quite possibly the most wrong person in the whole kingdom that day.

Arriving at the clinic I found a rather large line of people waiting outside. People of every different race, age, and build were waiting for medical treatment. Around half I could easily see what their problem was, mostly physical injuries or illnesses that resulted in coughing. There were however a large number of people that were clutching their stomachs like they were about to puke.

I tried to push any worrying thoughts out of my mind as I pushed past the line of patients to reach the clinic, however things became far stranger when I entered. The waiting area was filled with people clutching their stomachs who were mostly groaning in pain. Even more worryingly Laelia was working and she looked tired as well. Her disheveled hair and look of relief when she saw me told me the situation wasn’t going well.

“There you are Arthur. No time to give a proper explanation, I just need you to work on diagnosing our patients for now. Anyone that has one of those new parasites we found a while ago needs to be sent to the back room where Quintus and his colleagues will help them.” Without even waiting for me to speak Laelia pushed me towards a patient that appeared to have an injury on their finger. By the time I managed to process what she told me was already gone.

“Alright sir, I just need you to keep still for a moment while I take a look at your wounds.” I begrudgingly told the patient as I started casting the first spell of the day.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

*********

The day was as hectic as it possibly could have been. Around a quarter of the patients that came into the clinic had some sort of parasite in their stomach, large parasites. I never got any confirmation if they were the same demonic parasites from the young boy over a month ago but it didn’t take a master healer to understand the odds.

‘This is an outbreak.’ I thought to myself during my lunch break as I sat down for the first time in several hours. ‘Either this a purely natural phenomenon that just so happens to be one of the most improbable things to ever happen, or someone has been purposely spreading the parasites for unknown reasons.’

I felt tired and defeated sitting in that chair. Tired from the night before and defeated because I didn’t know how to fix the problem. I managed to kill the wereboar and gain some gratitude from Captain Tasius again, but this was entirely out of my league.

‘And after winter comes and goes, war will begin again between the kingdom and the empire. Joining in the fighting will only lead to my own demise, the best way might just be to avoid fighting all together. There should be some medium-sized towns and cities to the north or south that are out of the reach of the war, and if I really need to I can return to Antium for small periods of time.’

Mentally I began to plan out what I would need to do in order to avoid the war, first a decent sized town or city far enough away from the capital and border would be needed. Then I needed a decent amount of money for supplies and possibly land, which I thankfully already had courtesy of the crown and my alchemy skills.

‘It might also be a good idea to look into buying a communication orb, one never knows when instant communication might come in handy. I may need to contact some of my old colleagues in the future when I am far away.’

*********

In the back of the clinic Laelia along with Quintus and his colleagues were doing their best to help their patients by removing the demonic parasites. While some were just false alarms a worrying amount of those sent to them did actually have parasites growing in their stomachs. By the time Arthur arrived and allowed Laelia to check on the progress there had already been more than one hundred people who had parasites removed. Each was then taken to the basement where they would be kept for the time being for observation.

Walking up to her old mentor Laelia placed her hand on his shoulder. “Quintus, how bad is it?” He looked back towards her with a look of exhaustion she hadn't seen on him in years.

“Not good my dear. We already have more than one hundred cases of parasites with more showing up every hour.” He pointed to the half dozen enchanted jars that were on his table alone. “If we want to keep this contained and prevent the spread we will need more people from the guild, possibly from outside the capital just to keep up.”

“Have you spoken to the guild about how bad it is? Surely they must be able to find the manpower to help keep the situation under control.”

“I have spoken with them, unfortunately they are taking their time to muster enough people to help. The young and old healers you see around us are the first line up. We should be getting another handful in a few days, but they haven’t given me any definitive numbers yet.”

“So we are on our own?” Laelia looked to her old mentor with crumbling hope. She could still recall the days when she saw him as powerful as the gods when it came to his restoration magic, now she could see that age was catching up to him and dragging him down.

“Just for the time being. Don’t worry so much my dear, you will end up as old as me if you keep worrying about things outside your control.”

‘It would be a lot easier if I wasn’t also worrying about you as well.’ She thought to herself but didn’t say out loud.

*********

By the end of the day everyone was almost entirely drained of their mana but thankfully all of the patients had been dealt with. In total there were around three hundred people that came through the day that had a parasite in their stomachs, most weren’t quite as big as the first one we discovered but the rest were roughly around the same size and the patients suffered for it.

Then to make things worse everyone that could was required from that point on to come in to work just about every day of the week until further notice. While we all knew it was to accommodate the rapid influx of patients that we experienced and would likely continue to experience, nobody was happy about it, least of all myself.

“Hey Arthur, are you alright?” I heard a voice call out to me as I began walking down the street towards home. Turning to look back I saw it was Calavia, and she was running towards me panting slightly as she did so.

“Are you ok Arthur?” She asked again once she was standing next to me.

“Yeah, I'm alright. Just a little tired.” I answered quickly before I continued walking.

Calavia, now following me, waited a moment before following up with another question. “Did you have a rough night last night?”

“I guess you could say that, if you count nearly dying to being a rough night.”

“Nearly dying!” Calavia shouted in surprise as she stopped. "What happened!”

“I was just out for a walk to calm my mind when I found a wereboar eating a stray dog.”

“Is there wereboar still out there? Do we need to worry about it coming back to try again?” Calavia was practically shaking like she was frozen. I could practically feel the fear coming off her like the heat from a bonfire.

“No we don’t, I managed to kill the beast on my own before it managed to get me or anyone else. Even if that wasn’t the case werebeasts don’t just transform whenever they feel like it, it has to be on certain days during the night. Even then I don’t think they have any control over their transformations, the one I dealt with had the mind of a simple beast. It didn’t even register pain until I nearly took its arm off.”

Calavia remained quiet as we started walking again towards my home while I explained what happened during the fight with the wereboar. I knew she was a brave person and more than willing to put her life on the line, but I could tell she didn’t like my explanation of what a werebeast is.

“Is there really no way to try and stop one of those terrible werebeasts without just killing them?” Calavia asked quietly like she was afraid of the answer she was going to get.

“I don’t know.” I answered honestly. “I haven’t really done any proper research on werebeasts. I assume there are several books in the guild library that might go over them, but given just how dangerous they are there likely isn’t much dedicated specifically on them for mages of either our ranks.” Calavia didn’t say anything more as we entered my building and eventually entered my home.

The inside was cold as the weather was beginning to change and there wasn’t anyone to stay and keep the place warm, so I quickly conjured up a small handful of flames throughout my home with what little mana I still had to try and remove the chill. Without asking Calavia did the same, only she conjured more flames that burned noticeably hotter.