Chapter 5: Hi.

New Moon City was very big.

But it seemed like an awful place to live by my old standards.

The roads were wide, but everywhere I looked was littered with trash, and this was just the main road; forget about those back alleys.

I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even have a sewage system.

But that was beside the point; what mattered was that I had traveled probably five hundred kilometers to reach this place; finding any better city might cost me even longer to travel, and I might even get in danger during the journey.

All in all, trying for another city wasn't worth it, but this seemed like the kind of place where I could begin my future plans.

First of all, I'll try for plan A, the medical route; whether I could add plan B on top of that remained to be seen.

But first things first, I'll look for some good clinic or hospital nearby. Getting employment and a roof over my head sounded like the best possibility right now, but unfortunately, the former revealed itself as a no-go.

Getting information wasn't too difficult; entering a nearby pub, I ordered a drink, and the owner was far too happy to tell me what I wanted to know.

I found out that they didn't have hospitals here; there was definitely no universal healthcare either, but there were various clinics around the area, but only the rich, the wealthy, and the powerful could afford their services.

That meant that the poor people wouldn't be able to afford treatment or that they would have to pay their life savings for it.

I did not like this; it was too... capitalist?

Yes, it was too capitalist for my tastes.

Plan A was slowly taking shape in my mind, and I liked where it was going. It was time to bring affordable healthcare to the people of this world.

I just hoped that the money the Xia girl had given me was enough to set up a small laboratory with a clinic. I had to make my own medicines if I wanted to really help people.

These guys probably still used herbs and magical rocks as if those were remedies for every pain and illness.

I'd also have to get a sterile room; there was a lot to do, but fortunately, I had no timeline to adhere to, just an objective and a plan.

Apparently, I had enough money to get a small house; just how much money had that girl given me?

Was she really rich enough to just give away that much money, or was the value of properties here just that low?

But it didn't matter; now that I had a base of operations, it could only be a basic clinic for now. I didn't have the space to make a real and sterile operation room, but I could make a very basic laboratory without good enough glassware.

I had enough means to reproduce basic antibiotics, at least.

A week passed, and finally, my work was done, and so came the time to open my door to my future patients and hand out the shop's sign, which in itself made me chuckle.

Paracelsus' clinic.

It wasn't a good sign, but it was enough for now. I had even used the Rod of Asclepius, the very symbol of healthcare, which originated from the ancient Greek who ascended as the God of Healing.

It seemed arrogant to want to fill the shoes of someone called the God of Healing, but I was more than sure that I could bring a greater revolution than either Asclepius or Paracelsus had done; I had modern medicine after all.

I did a little bit of promotional advertising before opening, obviously, since I wanted patients.

But soon enough, very few people joined me in the clinic, with very few being a euphemism for none.

So what could I do other than begin my mission of recording my knowledge to have the willing learn of the beauty of the human body?

And so I began, and what better first work than a replica of 'De Motu Cordis' with modern knowledge and arguments?

De Motu Cordis was one of the milestones, marking the beginning of the modern study of the human body.

It wasn't complicated work to replicate, at least not for me, but it was a rather enjoyable endeavor.

During that time, I also had my first customer, an old lady.

She opened the door, inviting herself inside and triggering the bell on the door, alerting me of her presence and confusing the old lady herself.

It didn't take me long to reach her and escort her to the chair in my office. "Greetings, welcome to my clinic; how may I help you?"

"Are you a doctor?" She asked, the distrust obvious in her eyes.

"Indeed." I replied, straightening the white coat I donned. Just because I was pretty attached to it after years of using a similar one, it made me feel more professional, despite being a professional by definition.

"Aren't you too young?" She asked, the distrust not lessening.

"Oh, yes, many may say so, but trust me, I'm older than I look, and I spent most of my life studying the human body and how to help people in need." I replied, trying to reassure her of my qualifications.

But I honestly couldn't blame her in the least; I did look like a teenager after all, since, obviously, this body was a teenager.

Finally, she asked, bowing her head, "It's my granddaughter; she's sick, and I don't know what to do. I don't have a lot of money, but I can give you everything I have. Please help her."

I waited no time to stop her from begging; helping people was my profession.

The little girl was too ill to leave her house, so I had to take the trip myself. I donned a primitive face mask to stop whatever microorganism she was infected with and got on my way, following the old lady.

From the progression of the illness that the old lady presented me with, it seemed like a classical bacterial infection, which I hoped would be the case since I had an antibiotic ready for that, but it was way too early to be certain of anything.

Fortunately, my guess revealed itself to be correct; I just gave the old lady the powder penicillin I had prepared for this possibility and left, taking a single cyan coin, which wasn't a lot based on my research, and then left.

I hoped that I didn't come too late, but I trusted that the girl would be fine.

The old lady seemed still distrustful, though, especially when I gave her the powder since she was probably expecting the usual leaves.

I just hoped that my penicillin would work; it was the best I could do, and if it did work, it would be of help to countless people.

After a week and some other patients in the middle, the old lady came back to thank me, which brought a smile to my face and a plus to my study on the efficacy of my drug. One patient wasn't significant, but it was a start.

A month and a half passed, and I started getting more and more patients, finally reaching more than a few every day. The money started rolling in with the more important cases, which I immediately invested back into my laboratory, which in turn made me produce higher quantities of medicines.

Evening came, and with it also came the time to close up the clinic and return to my other job, creating a compendium of my knowledge of the human body.

After the De Motu Cordis on the circulatory system, it was time to write a book on the nervous system, which was unbeatably the most vital part of the human body.

Paper was costly, so I had to not make any mistakes in my writing; these were going to be pieces of history, as I had never heard anyone even remotely understand these subjects, not even the few other medics that I had met during my brief stay here.

Those guys just thought of using precious ingredients that cost tens of times what an average family could make in a year, all just to treat the equivalent of a cold.

They made pills in a furnace and ground herbs without disinfecting them or purifying the useful active substance, leaving all the useless things, but they still demanded tens of times what I asked for, which was barely enough to get balanced food to eat and to keep my laboratory going.

I sat down in my chair, which I had upgraded from a mere wooden chair to a pretty nice cushioned reclinable chair, and sighed deeply.

Life was hard in this world, far harder than on Earth, but that didn't mean that I wouldn't be able to make this house resemble the comfort that I was used to; all it took was a little bit of work and effort, but most importantly, trial and error.

I sat there with an inked pen in my hand, looking straight at the paper I was supposed to write on, but the inspiration eluded me—not the knowledge itself, but the words to portray it with.

These people lacked the concept of chemistry and physics, so I needed to dumb down my book to make it understandable to the masses.

And only then would I be able to go deeper and in more detail on the molecular mechanisms behind everything.

But not now; I couldn't be bothered with writing, so I just went back to work on my more important and immediate project, building a microscope.

I had already built a rudimentary one, but it was barely good enough to see the bigger microorganisms; I needed more accuracy.

So I worked; I had some lenses commissioned from a glassworker nearby, and buying anything from that guy was incredibly expansive; the people here wanted nothing more than to swindle every other penny of their hard-earned money.

They didn't care how their greed would cause problems for the common majority; I had even seen some guys just killing each other on the streets, and nobody reacted in the way I would have imagined.

They just looked impassively; some even laughed at those who had died, calling them trash and such.

I could barely believe it when I saw one of my own patients fighting another, just because the latter had accidentally bumped shoulders with him. People I personally talked with turned into little more than bloodthirsty monsters at the slightest offense.

It was horrible; this entire city was so filled with pain, rage, and negativity that I couldn't bear it.

The cultural differences were too much for me to bear, so other than treating my patients, I stopped interacting with others altogether.

The new microscope prototype was finally ready, and as soon as it was done, the circular tattoo on my hand shone brightly.

Suddenly, I was no longer alone in the room; suddenly, the girl I had saved around two months ago appeared in front of me, no longer naked as she had been in the green world.

Instead, she wore the same red dress that I had seen her in when I rescued her, her hair let down, of the same scarlet color.

My eyes widened in surprise, but the girl stayed there, staring at me weirdly, as if I were some weird creature she couldn't understand.

"Greetings, I hope you've made a recovery." I tentatively said

"You're weird." She replied with a statement.

"Being normal is overrated, but for what exact reason are you saying that for?" I replied, putting down my prototype and giving the vampire girl my complete attention.

Whatever version of a vampire she was, I was pretty sure she could kill me easily.

"You seem like a common person, but you have knowledge outside of the norm, not to talk about the treasure you bear with you." She said it calmly, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

What treasure?