After several hours of delivery labor which involved a c-section, I delivered five live babies, four boys, one girl that seemed rather sick, and a stillborn girl who displayed the same symptoms as the live one. The matron and all five babies would’ve probably died if they attempted vaginal delivery, which they would because savages. To prove how hard was to do it with shoddy surroundings, rusty tools, and using spirits to disinfect stuff, I converted 43 fast-growth points into Proficiency for my efforts.
> Physician (*) [ 223 / 300 ]. Select 3 Abilities.
>
> * Detoxifying Treatment: Patients under your extended care ignore (Proficiency/4)% of poison effects. This is added to any resistances.
> * Revitalizing Therapy: Patients under your extended care add (Proficiency/5) to Endurance tests to resist the effects of wounds, infection, disease, parasites, or poison.
> * Improvised Tools: Tools you improvise and care for are considered sterile and (Proficiency/100) steps of better quality.
I needed all three of these ASAP. The baby girl was not going to survive otherwise. I already had a dead one with the same symptoms. Skin discoloration in patches, emaciated body, sunk orbits and cheeks. The boys were as healthy as they could be and I let the gnomes take them away. I kept mother and daughter side-by-side, as the woman also needed my abilities to recover from the impromptu c-section.
During the procedure, I barked orders at the guards who obeyed them without questioning me. They were used to obeying women. The nanny observed from afar like a statue, without moving to interfere or aid. Only now that both mother and daughter seemed fine he approached.
“What a shame. Another sick girl,” he bemoaned.
I snapped, turning my neck as I stared at him, “What? Is this normal?”
“Yes. Most girls don’t survive this malady. We don’t know what is happening to them, but it started a century ago and by now it is very normal. Most girls don’t survive birth. That’s why this nursery is in such a poor condition,” he waved his hand showing the frightened children huddling in the far corner, staring at the matron.
“She’ll survive and recover. I need to stay with her and treat her to see if she will be able to have more children. She lost a lot of blood.”
“She is your enemy, isn’t she?” The nanny asked as he leaned next to me. “You clearly dislike being here.”
“I’m a [Physician]. It’s a Proficiency I have. It is my duty to help sick people, no matter who they are. She might be at odds with me and I would probably kill her in the future, but now she’s someone that needs my help.”
The nanny smirked and spoke sarcastically, “This seems contradictory. You save a life with one hand only to kill her later? Help your hated enemy? This is insanity.”
“I saved six lives. And one girl. This baby here, I’ll raise her as mine. Not like a slave the way you kept me. But as something new. I’ll explain to you about the Physician’s Oath and the ethics of medical care later. But now, tell me what you know about this malady that affects girls. How it started, who is affected and who is not, and how many girls die this way.”
He held no information back. What he told me left me shocked. Appalled, aghast, horrified. It was not that fewer girls were being gestated, but that most girls were born dead. Stillborn just like the one I had here with me. Or almost dead like the live girl I was caring for, and would not survive her first month. The reason my former clan was so happy to sell me and the other clans to bid on the auction was that I was born without any signs of the mysterious malady that was killing girls left and right.
Fuck this cavemen gnome society.
----------------------------------------
Not an hour after the delivery passed when the guy with the crossbow hand barged into the nursery. The matron and baby girl were stable and I was preparing to do an autopsy of the stillborn one.
“Wyxnos’ grace, what is going on here, what have YOU done to the matron?” He barked.
Level 72 Tinkerer / Salvager Gnome
Damn, this guy is ranked up.
“Saved her life, three boys and another girl, apparently. And lower your voice before the patients. They need their rest,” I stared him down.
Contested Charisma Test successful.
Crossbow Hand approached and looked at the girl’s face. “She won’t survive, may Wyxnos care for her soul. Another one lost, what a shame,” he lamented.
“Nonsense. So long she stays with me, she’ll survive, period,” I rebutted.
“Apparently, sir,” Nanny said all butlerly, “ she is a skilled [Physician]. It’s a proficiency.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“By Wyxnos, where did you learn that?” Crossbow demanded.
I cringed every time they invoked their uncaring God.
“I invented it three thousand years ago in Auvani. You probably haven’t heard of it,” I replied.
“It’s a kingdom to the south,” he replied matter-of-factly.
I opened my mouth. “You know about the world outside this desert?”
“By Wyxnos’ wisdom, I do,” he preened, I cringed. “We can’t leave the desert, though. The air out there is poisonous to us. More than a few days out there, and you choke to death. I have high Endurance and can survive up to a week. With Wyxnos’ grace, we had a good team and used to hunt creatures out of the desert for a while, but we met some giants who in turn hunted us down. I got the idea for my weapon from them,” he rubbed his weapon-hand.
“The crossbow?”
“How do you know its name? I told nobody about it!” He became suspicious. “That’s what the giants called it. And you spoke their language right now!”
“Wait, can you speak Auvani?” I asked him in Auvani.
“A little. Where did you learn this? You never left these caves, I’m sure of that. By Wyxnos’ shield, what treachery is this?”
His “giants” were probably normal people, who killed the uncivilized scavenger gnomes thinking they were pale goblins or some shit like that. Out there in the wild, people killed whatever they fancied and ran away from the rest. Anything that moved was Exp until proved not.
“I have no time or will to explain it to you. You shot my knee. Were it not for my patients here requiring my care, I would kill you right now. So do me a favor. Make yourself useful, get out of here and send some guys to find and bring me the bodies of the baby girls who died recently like this one,” I pointed at the stillborn one. Crossbow Hand stared silently at me. I set my title to [Hero Queen] and my Status to something level 158. “{Appraise} me and tell me if you still want to see if I can make good on my threats,” I dared him. Both men stared wide-eyed. “Scram! Fetch me the dead babies and I might find a way to save more girls.”
Crossbow grumbled but I forced another Charisma check. He went away.
“Nanny, I need better tools. Knives, hard stones, a metal hammer. Herbs. Dried plants that came on people’s bodies. Send some guards to get them.”
Nanny cleared his throat. “The other matrons are here,” he discreetly pointed at the entrance.
Some were on palanquins, some were walking. Seven matrons entered. “What do we have here? What have you done to the head matron?” One of them asked with a “cop” tone. Like the guy who does a traffic stop and wants to bust you for drugs even if you don’t have any.
I was about to ask Nanny to handle it but he took a step back and crossed his hands behind his back. So fucking useful. These matrons’ levels were all in the low thirties. A testament to these gnomes' funky Exp rules. The head matron, unconscious before me actually gained a level from giving birth. Freaking amazing. I learned why after I got the System back. Look at this baby lurking in the Perk shop:
> Birthing Matron (very rare): You gain one Exp award of your current total level’s Exp reward for each live boy you give birth to and ten times this reward for each live girl. Stillborns give 50% regardless of gender.
I didn’t pick it. I had no need for it as I had no intention of giving birth to children, ever.
Doing the math, the head matron earned twelve and a half rewards of her level, basically the same as if she’d killed twelve creatures of her level. That if she hadn’t any Exp multiplier Perk. She would still need more than a hundred babies to rank-up, though. Doable? I don’t know, but it was a fact these women could level up by birthing babies. Actually, the gestation period was three months, they could deliver babies five times in a year of sixteen months, giving them a month of vacation for recreational sex. Heh. Each litter yielded around five boys, with let’s be optimistic and say a girl every other year. That’s sixty Exp rewards every two years, they would need around thirty-four years to rank up from zero. Given these gnomes' average lifespan was three centuries, it was pretty doable.
Why didn’t they have a matron rank up and shoot through the levels? The answer was easy. Birth mortality. Case in point, the woman I treated would’ve died today if I hadn’t intervened. They basically played Russian Roulette with their wombs five times a year.
Did I mention how much I hate this gnome society? Trust me, it was not enough.
----------------------------------------
I argued with the matrons while tending the mother recovering from unsanitary surgery and the daughter recovering from a mysterious poisoning. I’d rather be doing an autopsy on the stillborn girl but would they let me? Of course not. And all of them were pregnant so I couldn’t even go death Princess on them and farm some Exp for my grievances.
In the end, I won. I got three points of Leadership and one on Diplomat for my troubles.
But the baby needed to be fed. I had a lactating woman right in front of me so I milked her in a potion vial with a thin mouth I could use as a baby bottle. I was about to feed the girl when my intuition told me there was something odd with this. The baby girl was recovering and I knew for a fact she would recover from her poisoning without my assistance. But everyone was so sure she would die that something else was going on here. I stared at the breast milk in the vial and thought, “what the hell, let me check this stuff.”
I sipped it and immediately spat it back on the cave floor. “What the actual fuck!” I interjected. Nanny approached. “Drink this!” I ordered him.
He sipped it and immediately spat it back on the cave floor. “This milk is tainted!” He exclaimed.
“With?”
“Gnome nectar,” he admitted. “How?”
I puffed my cheeks until they looked like balloons. Then I warbled the biggest non-gormandizing groan of anger ever. No, I screeched my annoyance.
There’s a saying that goes like this, “you are what you eat.” If one spends all the time eating tasty ooze-secreting gnome dick, what do you expect that will happen with the stupid woman’s stupid milk?
I took a knife I was sharpening threateningly while negotiating with the matrons and cut the stillborn baby girl’s arm, sucking on it to draw a bit of blood. What did I find?
That the blood-placenta barrier of these gnomes (I was so mad I forgot I was one too) was fucked up. The dead girl’s blood was full of… drum roll… gnome drug nectar. No wonder this shit registered as poison to my {Chemical Analysis} Perk.
That was why so many girls were dying before they were even born or dying shortly after being born. Their fucking mothers were so addicted to gnome dick secretions they couldn’t stop fucking and sucking on the tiny meat popsicles even while lactating.
This was so sick I felt like throwing up.
It all made sense now. The mutant gnomes develop something that makes women crave their jizz. The normal gnomes die out because they are unsuccessful at reproduction. Then the drug jizz kills the baby females, the gnomes go extinct.
Seriously, killing them all was an act of mercy. I was almost convincing myself to act.