It was a terrible soggy autumn day. The downpour that was coming from the dark skies had turned all of the roads into sloshing mud, but everybody from the village still seemed to be heading in the same direction, towards the Buddhist Temple up the hill where a large funeral wooden pyre had been created near the main building, on the opposing side of the barricaded Dungeon entrance.

In front of the pyre, a child was crying. MY child was crying, because...I was currently dead. Together with many of my brethren-in-arms, I had been placed on top of the wooden pyre while wrapped in oil-soaked pieces of cloth, and I was awaiting for that last spark of Fire which would incinerate my body and sever all of my ties with this world.

My boy was kicking and punching at a young monk girl in anger, but she just stood there and let him hit her. Only after the intervention of his mother, did the boy ever stop his violent outburst.

But even though he could not reach the monk girl anymore, he still kept screaming at her.

"It's all your fault... You let him die! You let him die! Why didn't you save him? Why didn't you save them all? Why did Papa have to die because of you?"

"I…(*choke*)...I am sorry!" The young girl bowed her head in a dogeza before the crying child, until her forehead was literally scraping against the floor. "I am sorry that I could not save him...or any of the rest...I grew complacent...I thought that I could fix anything using my strange cultivation methods and my Alchemical Pills, but I was wrong! The Dungeon proved to be a much more dangerous foe than we have ever imagined."

"I don't care! I want my Papa back! Give me my Papa back! Use one of your weird Immortal magics and make him breathe again!"

"I can't! I'm not a great Immortal like you think I am! I'm not some sort of a Saint that can raise the people from the dead...I'm just a foolish little girl with a bunch of weird cultivation methods at my disposal, but that's just about it...I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" The girl could only keep on crying and apologizing in front of the saddened family and the onlooking villagers who did not know what to say about the whole scene.

The child then immediately tossed a mudball into the face of the monk-girl so he could fill her with dirt and clay from head to toe, causing her to simply get smeared all over. That gesture had finally earned the boy a slap from his mother, who then began to ask for forgiveness.

"I'm sorry about his misdirected fury, Supervisor." The mother began to plead. "He is really saddened about the sudden death of his Father and is just taking his anger out on you. My husband knew how dangerous exploring the Dungeon could become when he signed up for the job, so please, don't take the child’s words too seriously. There is nothing anybody could have done about the accident..."

"I know! But...maybe...if I had tried harder…done something else...Then maybe they would all still be alive. In a way, the child is right... It is partially my fault...I should have used my skills better…(*sniff*)...I should have searched for improved spells that might have saved their lives...but there was so little time to do anything...and I was truly panicking back then…I..."

"Ok...That's enough of that. Let's try and not point fingers at anybody for now. It would only sadden the souls of our recently departed who have sacrificed their lives to protect the rest of us." The Mayor intervened, and began separating the two parties.

After that, all of the villagers who had known the victims in some way stopped in front of the wooden pyre, said a few words, and then added their own wooden logs on top of the whole pile.

Once the entire procession had gone by, the Mayor finally then placed a torch on top of the kindling, and then lit up the entire thing while letting out a long, long sigh. During the last moments, I felt my earthly body get engulfed by the flames and then…

Then, I woke up…

Gods fucking dammit, Morgan! Another prophetic vision? And one that was even from the point of view of a dead Guardsman? What the hell are you trying to do to me? Why are you showing me these disturbing images?

Great...now I feel like shit! I feel like I'm somehow guilty of something that I haven't even done yet! That I have failed at something before actually failing!

Still, even though the entire dream had been quite vague about the details surrounding the tragedy, there had been quite a few tidbits of information that I could still remember from the vision which might actually be helpful in avoiding that unfortunate outcome. It's obvious that whatever accident had occurred inside of the Dungeon before the funeral's time in my vision, I had been too unskilled and unprepared to handle that particular crisis.

Therefore, to avoid such a bad outcome, I simply needed to be a lot more prepared and a lot smarter in reality. While that's easier said than done, there were quite a few things that I could think of where there was some room for improvement.

Throughout the entire day yesterday, I had been Awakening the last batch of people who had yet to be processed, so after a whole day of concentrating on that act, I had simply crashed down inside one of the Clinic's beds and had fallen asleep like a log.

But simply being dead-tired did not seem to prevent the occurrence of Morgan’s visions, so here I was with a fresh new mental trauma that I had not even asked for, or wasn't even able to get away from in the first place.

As a consequence, the moment that I got out of bed, I immediately shifted my gears to full throttle. The first order of business from my to-do list was to cook-up a fresh new batch of Regeneration Pills, because I had run out of them yesterday morning.

I was now all out of those types of Pills because my entire previous batch had been used to tend to the wounds of the Guardsmen who had been delving into the Dungeon, and to also regrow the limbs of my “Hollow-man” side project.

Of course, nobody around here still had any idea how valuable these Pills truly were, as I had also been using them quite liberally for wounds that weren't actually even that severe simply because I had no “lesser” alternative at hand, so my supply had dwindled quite rapidly.

Yesterday morning before performing any awakenings, I had picked up Yi Gore, Mr. Nobi, Lingfeng, a medical stretcher and some freshly-carved wooden doll pieces that had also been made by Carmine at my behest, and then I had told the two guys who were capable of becoming invisible to go into stealth mode and then silently follow after me and Lingfeng.

After that, we had all headed to the Mayor's office building, down into the jail section where the Hollow body of the former Blood Cultist had been waiting for us.

The guy had still been displaying partially-grown weirdly-looking deformed limbs when we had walked into his cell, but ever since I had fed him another Regeneration Pill a few days ago, the missing appendages had grown back a whole lot more.

Of course, since the previous Pill-poison cooldown was now over, I had immediately ordered the mindless flesh automaton to swallow the penultimate of all my available Regeneration Pills, and then I watched in fascination as his limbs finally grew back to full-size.

After making sure that Mr. Vacant had now become capable of standing up on his own two feet, I then ordered him to change his clothes to those that I had prepared beforehand, and to also equip on his head the bad Pangerra Knockoff version of a Bleach-Ichigo white skull mask that would hide his identity from now on.

After that, I had the other two guys unstealth, place the previously-crafted wooden body that I had retrieved from my spatial-ring onto the stretcher, wrap the whole thing with a blanket, and then proceed to carry the entire thing out of the jail like it was the body of the recently-deceased Blood Cultist.

The Mayor had become rather startled after he had seen that only two people had gone inside of the jail initially, but five persons plus one “corpse” had come out instead, yet he already knew that some of my party members were capable of Cultivator magics like becoming invisible, so he wasn't that surprised about the sudden abnormality anymore.

The fake wooden mannequin body had even been carved on purpose to display an obvious missing arm and a leg beneath the cloth covering, so nobody had questioned us too much when we had taken the “corpse of the Cultist” away from the jail.

I had simply told the Mayor that the Blood Cultist had finally succumbed to his injuries, and that we had found him dead when we had entered the cell. We had also volunteered to dispose of the body, because I had told the Mayor that it still possessed some unstable magics inside of it which could hurt any other nearby normal people.

After that, we had simply taken the mannequin that had been wrapped in the cloth sack to the Buddhist Temple up the hill, then we had tossed the fake body of the Cultist inside of the already-smoldering funeral pyre which was used to dispose of all of the extra influx of Dungeon Demons. As everything had begun turning to ash because more dead Demons had kept getting piled on top, I knew nobody was going to ask more questions about the demise of the Cultist from now on.

As a result, I now had my own Hollow minion, yet none of the villagers knew about his real identity or questioned his “new arrival” within my group, since Mr. Nobi and Lew the Troll had also been some strange new faces that had popped out of nowhere, yet the Villagers had simply dismissed them as “friendly targets”, because they seemed to be part of Fung’s entourage and loyal to the Emperor.

But because I did not want to carry Mr. Vacant around with me everywhere I went, I simply took him to the Smithy building and then I told him to follow any orders that Carmine would give him, as his basic “programming” was still smart enough to execute basic tasks like lifting a crate full of materials or moving a forged item from one place to another. Even though the orders he could execute couldn’t be too complex or contain any abstract notions, SOME help for Carmine was better than no help.

After parking the “Hollow” at the Smithy, I had gone back to Ping’s Clinic and I had spent the rest of the day Awakening the rest of the people that I had missed until now, or healing any of the villagers who had gotten wounded during the Dungeon delving or from farm work.

Of course, because of that, I had completely run out of Regeneration Pills, as one of the woodcutters had come missing the tip of his pinkie from a badly-placed swing of his axe against a stubborn-wooded tree, so I had been forced to feed him my last available pill to regrow it back.

Therefore, for the moment, my current priority of the day was to create a new batch of Regeneration Pills, since the damn things had become an almost indispensable item in my available arsenal. I should kiss the Immortal Chicken’s ass for providing me with such an incredible resource. Or drown him in tea.

Once I was done eating breakfast, I immediately took Will-E together with me to the shack at the very edge of town where I had installed my Pill Forge, because he still had quite some very large amounts of immortal chicken meat deposited inside of his storage space which that was the main ingredient of the Regeneration Pills.

All of the other components of the recipe were just some easily-obtainable Health, Stamina, and Magic Essences that could be “squished” out of anything, so the only part of the entire mixture that could be considered “rare” was the Regeneration Essence from the chicken meat, of which I fortunately still had plenty.

After overcharging some spirit stones, affixing them into their slots, and then warming up the entire Pill Forge, I began fiddling with some of my already existing Essence jars. I was still grateful for Will-E's time-frozen storage space, as none of my precious Essences had decayed or had lost any medicinal potency while they had been kept within.

Fortunately, I was now also carrying with me a bunch of precisely crafted measuring cups and a balanced-scale that had been recently crafted by Carmine at my behest among other weird things. The containers and the weight-measuring device had been created using the clockwork precision of her Subclass, so I was now able to use extremely precise quantities of scooped-up Essences inside of my recipes instead of simply eyeballing it with a teaspoon, as all of the containers now had precise demarcations of weights and quantities carved upon them.

Using my new precise measurement tools, I spent the entire morning improving my already-existing Regeneration Pill recipe by fiddling with the quantities and then observing the results, so I had managed to increase the Regeneration percentage of the medicinal effect to 22% of overall Body Integrity and to reduce the cooldown Pill-poison even further, down to barely 5 hours.

I wanted to simply keep on playing with the Pill Forge and experiment with some other recipes that had popped up inside of my mind, especially since I was getting a lot of new inspiration from the memories that were leaking inside of my head from the Blood Cultist's transplanted roots, but I simply did not have the time to do that for the moment, since I had promised Ping that I would help around the Clinic again, because we still had a couple of patients that had come complaining of stomach aches for some yet-unknown reason during the previous day.

As soon as the latest batch of my Regeneration Pills had finished “cooking”, I immediately placed them in a large pickle jar, as I had made quite a few of them, I stored them inside Will-E, then I headed back to the Clinic building where I was welcomed by a soft-smiling Ping.

But just as I was rejoicing that I had taken care of that cumbersome Pill-creation business, the door of the building suddenly got forcibly pushed open and a bunch of the younger Monks all came rushing in while dragging along with them the unconscious body of Zacx the Formic, who now seemed to be foaming at the mouth and twitching spasmodically from time to time.

"Gods, what happened to him? Did something hit him?" I couldn't help myself from exclaiming.

"Sorry, Em*mmff*...Supervisor, but we found him like this when we went to check if he was alright in the morning. Brother Zacx kept complaining that he can't get any sleep for a few days now, so we went to see if he was OK, but we stumbled upon his twitching and unconscious body instead."

"Ugh...I think his current state might be partially my fault...Here, place him on the third bed on the right side, it's still empty."

Sure enough, after the little Monks had bowed their heads and had left, I immediately dug my spirit manipulators into Zacx's head once more and found a continuous stream of mind spikes assaulting his frail Worker Ego, who had now retreated even deeper inside a corner of his own mind and was shivering like a leaf.

The continuous stream of hostile data seemed to be capable of giving even my own mind a large-enough headache the instant I came in contact with it, so it was no wonder that the poor guy had been unable to do anything for the last few days!

The entire flood of nastiness was obviously the work of a few Queens from the Conservative faction who had felt so threatened by the new discovery, that they had outright decided to eliminate the problem at the root by taking turns throughout the day and then flooding the connection between themselves and the poor worker who had no idea how to shut down his own “4G/5G” network with some rather massive amounts of hostile intent.

The whole data influx sounded like a whole parade of Feminist Landwhales continuously screaming shit at you 24/7 without any way for you to block them, or without any of them getting even a little bit tired or getting a sore throat.

Since there were plenty of Queens in the conservative faction, it meant they could take turns and rest, yet there was only a single “problem” worker at this other end of the line, so they only needed to keep on screaming bad things across the connection until the poor guy simply died of exhaustion, as he obviously wasn't able to sleep while being exposed to such a constant abuse.

As the poor Ant-Man had already become mostly unconscious, I immediately decided to try and test something out which had a small chance of working, which was to simply sever away his antennae.

The antennae of a Formic were usually his olfactory organs, but they were much more than a simple “ant's nose” replacement organ. They could process very large amounts of sensory information that came in different forms, as they also had electroreceptors, magnetoreceptors, chemoreceptors, and even some weird form of light receptors lining their insides.

Also, while I kept on touching the poor Ant-man's spirit-roots, most of that flood of vicious information seemed to be arriving from somewhere that I could only describe as from the “top of his head”, so I could only assume that the antennae were the organs responsible for acting like some literal 4G/5G transmitter-receiver pairs for the “ant-network” that seemed to connect all of the Hives together.

Therefore, I retrieved from Will-E a small spray bottle that contained some highly distilled alcohol in which I had powdered and diluted a nerve-numbing Alchemical Pill.

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I had discovered the numbing Pill by accident when I was playing with some weird-looking burrs back at the Blue Mountain of Books Sect. The first time I had touched one of those Pills, I had been rendered unable to feel the tip of my fingers for a couple of days after that.

On the other hand, the resulting diluted mixture that I had created as a byproduct could now be safely used as a local anesthetic, as it was something similar to that Lidocaine substance that all dentists oftenly used back on Earth on their patients before poking at the teeth.

I immediately liberally sprayed the substance around the base of his antennae to numb the spot, and then I carefully removed both of them with surgical precision while being assisted by Ping. The instant the last antenna got removed, the entire flood of mind spikes that had kept assaulting the poor Formic suddenly stopped coming, allowing for silence to finally settle down inside of the ravaged mindscape of the poor bug-person.

After that, I also fed him a small sedative Pill which then caused the Ant-man to finally fall asleep for real after an entire week of forced wakefulness, so he began snoring and making snot bubbles while laying down on the Clinic's bed.

As a result of my impromptu amputation, I was now in the possession of a couple of Formic antennae, which I immediately deposited inside Will-E storage space, so that they would not get damaged or decayed.

Those items were quite some interesting organs which I could bet possessed some hidden features that might be of use for something else. I mean, this world had a very large crafting culture revolving around the creation of items that had monster parts as components, and the Formics had been considered “monsters” in many parts of the world for many thousands of years.

Only during the last few hundreds of years had their kind actually “joined” the other sapient races due to the efforts of some extraordinary Explorer Adventurers who had proven that most of the Insect Beast People were generally just as smart and educated as the rest of the other Humanoids, and could be reasoned and traded with without any problem, even though they were still considered “weird” in the opinions of many people because of their natural characteristics like their fanatic devotion to their Queens.

"Are you sure that was the best thing to do?" Ping began to doubt my actions. "Although Zacx was finally able to fall asleep, you might have crippled the poor guy for life. I'm pretty sure that his antennae are the organs he used to smell with, so you have now basically cut off his entire “nose”. He might really hate you for that, once he wakes up."

"I know, but I didn't really have a choice. Unfortunately, his antennae were also the pathway through which the hostile hive Queens were assaulting his mind, so this was the most simple solution available. I'm just glad that I was right, and that the connection got cut off. Also, if he ever actually desires to regain his missing appendages, I can always give him one of my Regeneration Pills. I cooked a fresh batch this morning right before coming here, and they are even better than the last ones."

"You should show me how you create those strange things one of these days. I have also dabbled in the ways of Alchemy during my younger days, but I must admit that I have never heard of such an impressive Pill like the one you keep on making. The villagers don’t know better, but as a medical practitioner, I know that a Pill capable of regrowing missing limbs and organs would cause even the Big Sects to start fighting over it tooth and claw. And yet, you waste them like they are common painkillers."

"I will show you how to make them, rest assured. But I must warn you that you will first have to modify your own spirit roots in a rather strange way. Also, you will also have to agree to join my Party, otherwise you won’t be able to use my Pill Forge, because it is a level 50 item and only by being acknowledged as my companion can I remove the strain of the requirements. In truth, it would be wise for you to also join one of the Dungeon delving teams and start leveling up for real. I have a few healing spells available that you would be able to choose from once you break past level 25. I think those would help immensely with your daily job."

"I'm…not sure that I am cut out for that sort of violence. I don’t like hurting things, or seeing anything get hurt. It is why I have made a career out of healing people instead of harming them. Plus, I'm a little bit on the old side to be traipsing around a Dungeon with those younger folk. I can hear my joints creaking if I move too fast."

"I know that you are a gentle soul, Ping, but sometimes, the best way to help is to get right into the middle of the fray. Being sorry about hurting something or somebody is a good thing, but only when there is a chance to prevent the conflict by talking things out or by simply avoiding each other.

"Yet, no negotiation is possible with those insane Demons and creatures from the Dungeon. They simply want to destroy everything, so you should not feel guilty about murdering them to defend your home and your friends.

"The practical experience that you would be getting from the emergency situations which tend to occur inside of the Dungeon would make you a better healer, no matter which way you look at it.

"Also, I can guarantee to you that you are going to feel a lot better and slightly younger once I will show you how to get all of your meridians opened. Damn it...actually, I am going to have to hold a lecture about that to the entire village, won't I? Are there still any people that I have not Awakened yet?"

"Nope, you finished the entire village yesterday. I'm surprised that you had so much patience in you to even Awaken the children and the elderly. Any other Immortal would have disregarded those people immediately."

"Pfff...hah...Immortal my ass. I told you, I'm not anything like that. I am still as vulnerable as hell. Drop a boulder that’s too big on top of my head, or smash me over the face with an overly large demon punch and I would get instantly splattered. Instant Game Over.

"Just because I have been using my wits to stay above the waterline and get away from any danger, it does not mean that I'm like one of those Heroic people that can fight Dragons all on their own. You should have seen the Hero of the Sun...that dude even got DECAPITATED and he still managed to regrow his whole body back, then finish the fight!"

"Indeed, but you DO have the potential to become one. Compared to an average peasant that would be born and live as a nobody his entire life, you have been Blessed by the Heavens, so you can do a whole lot more with your existence.

"If this wasn't obvious to you yet, you have managed to change the Destinies of each and every person inside of this village thus far. Without you ever coming over here, they all would have simply lived and died as average peasants, but now that you have Awakened everybody, there is a decent chance that they could all become something greater. Maybe some of them will even manage to live long enough to become actual Immortals by themselves."

"Look, Ping, just because someone can start cultivating, it does not mean that they have gained any sort of immortality. Stop using Cultivator and Immortal as interchangeable words."

"And YOU should stop nitpicking about every term like that, because you know exactly what I’m talking about. “Immortals” is just the common way the villagers got used to addressing any person from the Cultivator Sects, because they all tend to look like magical superhumans in the eyes of the uninformed peasants. They don't know any better."

"But YOU do, so why do you keep on using the incorrect term?"

"Meh, force of habit, I guess? Nobody has ever complained about the inaccuracy of the term until you came along."

"Fair enough. But since we are indeed trying to smarten up all of the people from the village, you should also start using the correct terms. For now, we are all just a bunch of low-level Cultivators, and immortality is only a goal and a dream. In fact, immortality is just some b...*Crash*"

*Doorslam*

"Ping! Supervisor! Help! There was an accident in the Dungeon! It's Guardsman Shen! He got hurt real bad...His team members are bringing him over here right now!" One of the younger runner boys that were posted at the Temple suddenly burst into the Clinic and cut off my speech.

Immediately, both myself and Ping jumped on our feet and then rushed out of the door to meet the incoming delver team. Once they arrived in the front courtyard of the Clinic, I immediately noticed that most of them were glowing bright yellow because of some strange substance, with Guardsman Shen being especially smeared in the stuff.

"What happened? And why are you all yellow?"

"(*Cough*) We were all deep in the second strata of the Dungeon. As we were walking back towards the surface because we had just finished our shift, we ran past the staircase that leads to the third level, when suddenly a strange yellow glowing humanoid-looking creature came out from below and then rushed towards our entire group. Once it got close enough to all of us, it simply detonated itself.

"(*Cough*) Shen was acting as our tank, so he took the brunt of the impact. He got knocked back quite a few paces by the blast, even with his shield up. Also, all of us seem to be having trouble breathing ever since we came in contact with that yellow substance, and I think I can almost see small glowing mushrooms growing all over my skin around any spot where that yellow stuff landed on me."

"Can you describe this monster in better detail?"

"Well, it's strange, if you were to ask me, he looked like one of the armored personal bodyguards of the old Magistrate. (*Cough*) Except that growing out of his face and out of his arms, there were these strange glowing mushroom-like plants that kept on pulsating rhythmically. He looked like some sort of incredibly bloated corpse before he rushed towards us while gurgling, and then he blew himself up."

"Mushrooms? Shit! Then these yellow things are SPORES! Ping! We have an emergency that requires immediate quarantine protocols! We can't afford to have these flesh-eating spores spreading any further! You three! With how many other people did you come in contact with while you were coming down the hill?"

"Ugh...I dunno...With whoever was posted at the Dungeon entrance and the runner boy?"

"Shit, so we might be getting a lot more victims...Will-E! Immediately rush to the Temple and tell all of the Guardsmen which have been exposed to drop whatever they are doing and to get their asses down here as soon as possible. Also, tell them to avoid contact with any other being, as everybody could now be a vector for the spread of the spores. You should be fine, since a flesh-eating mushroom has nothing to eat from your metal frame, but do try to avoid any of the other villagers as much as you can. Spores like these can become airborne quite easily and then spread for miles, so we must be extremely careful, otherwise the entire village could become contaminated!"

As I watched the little golem rush towards the temple, I also opened up my connection with the rest of my party.

[Fung, are you there?]

[Yes...what's wrong? Why are you using the party chat?]

[Go to the Mayor's building immediately and tell him to keep every villager away from the street that connects the Temple to the Clinic. Also, tell everybody to go inside of their homes and to keep away from any other people. If they have any symptoms that look like yellow glowing spots appearing on their skin or feel a nasty cough coming on, they should report to the Clinic immediately. We have a serious problem on our hands down here!]

[Right away!]

"Ok, you three...bring Shen inside and place him on the nearest bed to the entrance. Also, I want the rest of you to strip-down naked. Ping, heat up some water in the larger vats, as we are going to need to boil away all of these clothes and armors to kill off all of these nasty spores permanently. Also…shit...where is my surgical costume and mask? Ping, you should wear yours as well! You don’t want any of this shit spreading onto you!"

"On the table, in my office…"

"Well, go get them!"

*Cough*Heave*Cough*Heaaaave*

"Shit! Shen is choking! The damn spores probably got into his airways! Hurry! Also, make sure to bring along all of those new surgical tools that Carmine made for us! We might have to use them sooner than expected!"

Sure enough, the moment I went into my Qi vision mode, I immediately saw how many of those yellow spores had started growing along the airways of poor Guardsman Shen. Extremely thin filaments were now beginning to dig down from the base of the spores straight into his flesh and then sucking-up the nutrients from the victim to grow their own bodies.

Gods damn it, and they were all growing up so fast! I immediately realized that this was the nightmare scenario that I had been warned about by Morgan! The kid that kept kicking me in my dream, that was probably Shen's 7-year-old son that I saw around the village! Fuck you, Mother System! I am not going to let you deprive that child of his Father, just to fit your pathetic narrative demands! Fuck your 8-staged story arcs!

I know that every progress must come at a steep cost, but I simply refuse to pay that cost with the lives of others!

As soon as Ping brought me my surgical protective gear, I quickly put it on, then I stripped Shen of his twisted and dented armor plates and I also tossed his yellow-tainted undergarments into a nearby boiling vat of water.

After that, I simply forcibly cracked his life-shield, plunged my spirit manipulators down his airways and I then began violently scraping his insides by force to remove all of the yellow growing gunk. The damn mushrooms were growing at an alarming rate that was visible to the naked eye, and I had no idea if I would be able to make it in time.

The worst problem was the fact that some of the spores had made their way inside of Shen's chest, and were now growing patches of the yellow stuff all over the internal lining of his lungs. As a result, Shen was now having a lot of trouble breathing, and was quickly becoming hypoxic.

Even though I kept scraping all of the unwanted fungi by dragging them out of his body through his mouth and then dumping them into a nearby boiling vat of water to kill them, the superficial wounds which I was causing to the internal lining of his airways by violently plucking out the intruding spores were starting to compound themselves with the other wounds that had been caused by the blast, and were making Shen even worse. Therefore, I immediately cast my healing spell on him to compensate.

The Regeneration spell did indeed perform its intended job and was now restoring the bleeding walls of the airways, but the spell could do nothing about the continued growth of the yellow fungi. And those fucking things just kept on growing and growing! Almost the entire upper part of Shen's lungs had now turned yellow, even though I kept dragging out the bad stuff as quickly as I could. I was able to clean the smaller airway pipes just fine, but it seemed that I was not able to cope with the massive infestation that was now occurring inside of the lungs!

Gods Fucking Damnit! Fuck you, Mother System! I’m NOT letting Shen die in front of me!

Ok, this is “make it or break it” time! Or rather, “break it to make it”, given the circumstance.

"Ping...bring me the surgical set...I am probably going to have to perform an insane surgical procedure on poor Shen! Quickly!"

Oh, Gods! I sooo did not want to have to do this! I also hope that this works, otherwise that poor young child is going to hate me forever!

The moment that Ping brought me the surgical tools Carmine had crafted for both of us to my specifications, I also told Will-E to completely disinfect his arms by dunking them directly into the nearby boiling water, and then to use the medicinal alcohol to rub them clean as well, just to be doubly sure.

Fortunately, Shen had been unconscious throughout the entire scraping process, because he had been knocked out-cold quite badly by the corpse explosion. In truth, I was praying that he would remain unconscious for the foreseeable future, because the next procedure that I was going to perform on him was going to hurt like hell.

I could simply not risk administering any sort of anesthetics to him, because those had the chance of only making things worse if they were to slow down his struggling metabolism even by a little.

After that, I choked down my jitters and bit my own tongue, then I proceeded to open Shen's chest cavity in a way that I could only approximate to an Earth's clamshell thoracic surgery, by cutting below the breasts.

The application of my healing spell continuously kept stopping the bleeding at the edges of the cut flesh and once I was deep enough, I got Will-E to act as my bonesaw and rib-spreader by using his hydraulic arms to cut the bone and then spread the whole thing apart by force.

Also, a lot of my spirit manipulators were now stuck deep inside Shen, since I was now forced to act as a makeshift respirator device, as I was now inflating and deflating his lungs regularly with my branch-tentacles to the rhythm of my own breath. I had thought of using the bellows from the Smithy for the job, but I simply did not have the time to retrieve it and craft something usable from it.

As both of Shen’s lungs and heart suddenly got exposed, I forced one of my Regeneration Pills down Shen's throat, which immediately got dissolved into a weird stream of medicinal Essence and then triggered a massive repair effort inside of his body.

As soon as the Pill's effects started showing, I immediately grabbed one of his fungi-infested lungs, and then I simply severed it away from the body. As soon as the organ got removed, because the Regeneration Pill's effects were still active, a myriad of those black tentacles that belonged to the System immediately burst into the body, and then swiftly began rebuilding a new lung for Shen from scratch.

The black tendrils even began trying to close up his entire chest wound, but Will-E's hydraulic arms were simply just too strong to overcome, so it remained open.

The downside was that after the Pill used-up all of its medicinal effects, only a single lung had been regenerated. Fortunately, the new lung seemed to be in pristine condition, so Shen was still able to somewhat breathe with my constant assistance, even though he was functioning with half of the normal oxygen intake. I was sincerely hoping that he would not receive any permanent brain damage due to hypoxia, if he somehow managed to make it out alive after my intervention.

Still, because of the Pill cooldown, the next 5 hours of waiting for the Pill-poison to wear off proved to be quite infernal on my nerves, as I clamped shut the infested airway leading to the other lung by using one of my newly made surgical tools and then I removed the tainted organ which had now turned totally yellow on the inside because of the overgrowing mushrooms.

I found myself forced to apply my healing spell continuously so that poor Shen would not bleed to death and to also keep on pumping his lung manually. I also sent word via party chat and I told the others to send his brother over here, as soon as I had found out that he had one.

Once he got in the building, I immediately forced the brother to donate blood, because this way, the chances of a blood-transfusion failure due to incompatible platelets were reduced to a minimum. Of course, when his brother saw Shen opened-up like a clam he almost fainted, but both Ping and myself assured him that this was all done with the purpose of saving his life.

During those infernal 5 hours, a few more of the Guardsmen also began to display similar symptoms, but fortunately for them, they had not inhaled the spores too deeply, so for them, I simply asked all of the other members of my party to use their own spirit manipulators to clean up the insides of the victims before things got even worse.

I even found myself being forced to call Carmine down from the Forge to also give a helping hand, because more bodies than we had initially expected had become infested. Heck, even Yi Gore was trying to help out, just so he could prove his prowess in front of the dwarf girl.

But once the Pill-poison cooldown vanished, I was finally able to feed poor Shen a second Regeneration Pill, which immediately regrew back his second missing lung.

After that, I told Will-E to slowly let go of the chest opening, and then I watched as the System simply “glued” Shen's body back together, including his cracked rib bones.

All throughout the entire rapid-healing process, I had still kept my spirit manipulators inside of the Guardsman body to assist with his breathing, and I had also made sure that none of the evil spores had remained inside of him.

Even after the entire operation was over, I still stayed by Shen's bedside and watched over him for a while longer, as I still felt somehow deeply responsible for his entire wellbeing, as the nightmarish cries of his child at his funeral still haunted me from my futuristic vision. I deeply swore to myself that I would not let such a thing come to pass, if it was within my ability to do something about it.

Only after I fell asleep from exhaustion on top of Shen's bed, did the others manage to get me away from him.

When I finally woke up again, I immediately puked all of my guts out. I mean, I wasn't a surgeon, nor have I ever pretended to be one, but I had just cut a man open in half and I had pulled out his organs with my own two hands!

Of course, it was all with the purpose of saving his life, but it did not make the entire ordeal less psychologically traumatizing. Holy fucking shit! How do those surgeons get used to this kind of thing? Oh, my Gods...my hands are shaking…

Fortunately, I had been able to grit my teeth and remain stone-cold calm during the whole operation, but because the adrenaline rush had now worn off, I was currently melting like a candle in the wind.