Chapter 26

When she entered the room where the patient was, the disgusting stench of pus and blood pricked at her nose. And then, there were the boils that would make anyone who saw them feel itchy as well.

Nevertheless, as soon as she saw Morgan lying in that rough bed, struggling with his illness, a relieved sigh came through her lips.

"Oh…!"

Mumbling quietly, she soon examined the patient's skin with a bit more focus. Still, she was far away.

The boils peppering his entire body fully was causing such a deadly fever severe enough that it was a cause for fear.

"These are common symptoms of some viral diseases, but…"

The shape of the boils and the marks that would be left after the boils subside were a different story.

"Isn't the shape of the boils far too perfect?"

How nice would it have been if there was just a system message that would say, 'Yes, that's right'? Those messages popped up only for the purpose of shocking her and never when she really needed them.

So she thought about what she could do. She could think of one possibility that was the most likely, and so Reina persistently tried to recall her memories from her previous life.

"Umm…"

The only problem was this: the epidemic, which she had an inkling of, had already ended during the time Han Jae-hee lived in that world.

That's why the records of that epidemic that she had read were all old, and the quality of the photos in those remaining files was also not good.

Besides that, it's impossible to conduct any significant tests in this world where medicine had yet to be fully developed.

After thinking for a while, Reina gasped quietly as though she realized something.

"Right…! Hannah. Milk. I mean, you've milked cows before, right?"

"Yeah?"

They were dealing with an epidemic here, but why was she suddenly talking about milk? Thinking that this was too random a question, Hannah was baffled.

"Uh… Yeah, but…"

"Right now, who are the people who didn't get sick?"

After being asked a vague question, Hannah thought about it for a moment, but her eyes soon widened.

"Ohh…? Now that you mentioned it, I think everyone who's fine milked cows before."

"Then… If there are small scratches on your hands, the pus from cows can seep in and act like a vaccine for immunity… So the people who've milked cows…"

With this eureka moment, Reina's expression finally became bright again.

"Hannah, I think I know what kind of epidemic this is."

"R-Really?"

"But there's still one last thing I need to check."

After this, the two of them ran to the rear of the village where the cows were kept.

* * *

The young woman, who had been eagerly observing the cow's milk just now, burst into a peal of laughter.

"I knew it! I knew it, I'm amazing!"

Though Reina was walking down the path of presenting herself as a random idiot, this time, she had reason enough to say such narcissistic remarks without hesitation. As expected, the cow's milk had pus from cowpox.

"I knew it! It's smallpox!"

The terrible disease that Morgan and the other villagers had contracted was the terrible plague that she knew from before called 'smallpox'.

The disease had claimed so many people's lives and caused such devastation until the method of immunization through cowpox had become widespread.

It's no wonder that her ancestors thought that the disease had been caused by an angry god, that's why they begged and prayed to that jealous and terrible god to spare them mercy.

But the way to prevent smallpox, which had plagued mankind for millennia, was surprisingly simple.

"Immunization through cowpox, which is a milder disease than smallpox."

In other words, it was a form of a vaccine."

"Well, now as long as we can get immune through this… Ah, right."

As Reina was about to transfer the cow's pus to another plate, she paused.

"I didn't think about the infection."

Cows that were being raised in such a place like this were likely to be quite unsanitary. That's why the only virus that people could get infected from wasn't just the pox.

After coming to her senses, Reina looked at the cows around her.

But she was met with an unexpected sight.

"The cows are clean?"

"Ah, that?"

They had snuck out in the middle of the night and they were sitting on a huge rolling pin for fabric, and she might be confused as to why they were here looking at cows, but Hannah calmly explained why the cows were clean.

"We kept getting pus on our hands when we were milking them, that's why. So we take the cows that usually produce pus and bring them to the stream so we could wash them, and then we'll milk them. We did that yesterday, too."

Oh, what kind of unexpected bonus was this?

Of course, it still wasn't completely safe until they were actually sterilized, but at the very least, the cows weren't soiled and covered in their own excrement.

"Then you don't find any pus anymore?"

"Um… Sometimes there still is, but we just throw away the milk that has it."

"Ah…"

If they drank it as it was, then would it have had the same effect as a vaccine?

'Mm… I'm not so sure about that. Even on Earth, oral vaccines weren't as widespread.'

"Anyway, what a relief."

She had been endlessly worried about the disease until now, but soon, Reina collected the pus and sat down. She could have gone back to her room and handled the rest of the process there, but she was in a hurry to do everything she could before daybreak.

"The needle and alco… No, I mean, the distilled liquor, please."

"Here."

After being handed the needle, Reina readied the liquor so that she could pour it on the needle later. The distinctly pungent smell of alcohol stabbed at her nose.

Then, she focused her mana over the tip of her finger. A small flame was conjured.

"Whoa."

Hannah gaped in amazement as she watched this happen. Magic existed in this world, but it wasn't something that many people possessed.

More than that, Hannah lived in the mountains, so she wouldn't have been able to see such a rare sight up close.

"It's incredible every time I see it, Jay."

"Right? I think so too."

"It's something that you see every day, though. Why are you still amazed by it?"

"No one else but you and Morgan know that I can wield magic, so I don't use it anywhere else."

"Ahh, right. You did say that."

Nodding, Hannah's gaze followed after Reina's quick movements. But in no time, a frantic response popped out of Hannah's lips.

"J-Jay? What are… you doing?"

Perhaps in her perspective, what Reina's doing was pretty grotesque. After heating the needle with the flame at the tip of her finger, she wiped it off with liquor, she dipped it in the plate of pus.

But this wasn't all. The process of vaccination hadn't even started yet.

"This is nothing."

Reina answered calmly. And without even letting the pus dry on the needle, she stabbed herself in the arm.

"H-Huuuh…? J-JAY!! WHY DID YOU STAB YOURSELF WITH THAT!!"