Trailing from bed to bed, Leonardo examined each child individually. Using Vita Dharma, it was a piece of cake to thoroughly assess everyone’s condition. From worst to best, from youngest to oldest, he arranged the order in which he would tend to them to maximize efficiency.

Some were frankly already on the brink of death, and it was a miracle the roughly 20 kids even made it this far. Mostly thanks to a rich diet, their immune system sustained them for 3 days of continuous torture.

Alas, not everyone made it.

Coming over to the cellar, he observed three lifeless bodies. Barely older than 3 and younger than 10, they seemed to be affected the worst. While he didn’t even deign to remember their names, Leonardo still sunk in forlorn sadness.

‘How cruel you are,’ he lamented fate with a resigned sigh, then stilled his emotions and proceeded to perform a rough autopsy. He could do nothing for the dead, but perhaps they could help save the living.

While he had a sufficient instinctual knowledge of what plagued them, he nonetheless decided to take it one step at a time so as to ensure as high a success rate as possible.

The organs were in decent condition, save for the lungs and heart which observed serious deterioration. The latter was shriveled while the lungs seemed to have been eaten from the inside. They were filled with odd clots of phlegm mixed with blood. It seemed that muscles and bone also experienced some temporary weakening.

‘This is going to be tough…’

Stitching the bodies back up, he covered them in the makeshift coffins and left the cellar, only to see it was already dusk.

After a cursory glance at the children, he noticed two of them had their conditions worsen. Despite his accumulated fatigue, he couldn’t bear to rest, knowing they might not make it to tomorrow. As such, he steeled himself and proceeded with the first cleansing ritual.

First, he undressed the patient and thoroughly cleaned their body with Anabella’s help. Then, he used his acupuncture needle set along with some magic to dampen their senses. Lastly, he set to purge the phlegm from their lungs. This required a lot of precision and effort on his part, something a haphazard cough could never achieve.

Closing his eyes, he made use of Spatium Dharma to hone his senses on a microscopic level. With Vita, he identified the intrusive virus, then used the needles as a conduit for Primal Dharma to eradicate them into their base form of chi.

Using that lingering energy, he then tried his best to repair the damage and enhance their metabolism, which proved to be the hardest part as his proficiency was woefully insufficient.

While magic was normally cast in a near instant, it took him several hours on each patient. Even as he grew more accustomed to the ritual, hours passed and the conditions of the others worsened. As such, he was stuck in a perpetual uphill battle to save everyone.

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Time passed fleetingly and Leo was stuck in a daze throughout it. His mind was working in overdrive, but seemingly only had enough focus for the procedure.

Before long, a full 3 days passed and he found himself in Yukiko’s room again. She’d exercised since young and had the highest resistance, thus leaving her for last.

As he inserted the needle into her chest, she shivered slightly and opened her eyes.

“B-brother Leo, you’re here… I’m so happy… to see you..”

Snapping out of his daze, he looked at her blurry eyes and forced a smile. He ignored her resigned tone and tugged on her cheek with his fingers.

“Silly lass, how could I not come when you’re in such pain? Don’t worry and sleep, I’ll stay by your side.”

Yuki squinted her eyes to regain a brief moment of clarity, “I’m glad,” her tone lost power and she fell back asleep, too weakened to even struggle.

Sighing ruefully at what she had to endure, Leonardo clapped his cheeks to regain a modicum of alertness then dove right into the ritual. Yet, no sooner than he spread his senses throughout her lungs, something baffled him.

“This is strange.”

The typical phlegm was missing from Yuki. Instead, there was an odd membrane of oozing energy surrounding her breathing apparatus. It continuously broke down, leaving bits of oxygen through. Then, it was repaired in an instant and impaired her breathing once more.

A continuous war was being waged, with the immune system in a stalemate with the virus. Neither seemed capable of overwhelming the other, leaving the girl in a constant state of weakness and pain.

This should by all means have been impossible, as even Leonardo’s reinforced system didn’t hold a candle to what he was seeing. It made little sense for a normal mortal to resist this long, and even less so since Leonardo knew her since she was a baby and she clearly didn’t awaken traces of magic.

‘Forget it, I should just be thankful she made it this far.’

Slipping the needles in, he gathered his focus and struck against the virus. Yet, the moment he tried to dismantle it, it started to reproduce wildly as if with renewed vigor. The preserved balance was broken in that instant, and the infection spread with insane speed throughout her body.

‘Something is wrong!’

Yet, before Leonardo could even think of countermeasures, Yukiko shook violently on the bed. The needles sprung from her body and shot off into the roof like darts.

An unsettling, pervasive pressure spread throughout the orphanage. It seemed to come from afar, and albeit indistinct - it unmistakably expressed anger.

Leonardo found himself frozen in sheer horror, as the wrathful presence was almost palpable closest to him. The other orphans outright collapsed, despite not even being the focus of this distant ‘gaze’. He found himself at the mercy of this creature, and despite not liking it in the least, his struggles seemed fruitless.

Meanwhile, Yukiko retched and phlegm burst from her mouth and nose. She was suffocating, and Leo could do nothing but tremble beside her.

It seemed that in saving the children, Leonardo drew the attention of something he shouldn’t have ever had to deal with.

‘A karmic enforcer?’ he guessed at first, but it didn’t make much sense. He disguised his magic as acupuncture medicine, so it shouldn’t have incurred judgement on this scale. No, this was something else, or rather, someone.

“ENOUGH!”

Watching as Yuki struggled to draw her literal last breath, something snapped in him and he brushed off the pressure. Mustering every inkling of energy in his body, he unleashed a massive burst of chi.

Combining it with his will and evoking control over the Animus Dharma, the psychic blast thundered across the local area. Invisible but sharp, it spread like a tsunami of swords, enveloping the watchful will with it.

Yet, this also left him gaping for breath and empty. His body was devoid of any lingering energy, and his will sapped fully. A migraine assailed him, but Yuki must have had it worse, so he forced himself past the pain.

Struggling, he dragged himself to her side — yet her heart was no longer beating.