Chapter 90. Silence and Darkness (3)
“Victoria! Victoria! Snap out of it! Hurry!”
At the forceful shouting, Victoria suddenly came back to her senses.
“H-Huh?”
“Wake up! We don’t have time for this!”
Yukgap stood in front of her in his cheetah form, panting heavily.
His body was covered in blood, so it was obvious he had just come from a fight.
“Yukgap, what happened to you?”
“I’m fine! What about the Great Elder?”
At his question, Victoria looked down at the old woman lying limp in her arms.
Blood stained the elder’s mouth, and her body was rapidly growing cold.
Victoria stared blankly at the corpse.
“She died.”
“It happened so fast... before I could even do anything...”
Watching someone die right in front of her had left her completely numb.
The usual Victoria, overflowing with so much energy that she often seemed reckless, was nowhere to be seen.
But this was not the time for that.
“You can blame yourself later! Come with me!”
Yukgap practically dragged Victoria back toward the village.
What awaited them there was horrific.
“Ugh... ngh...!”
“Cough... cough... ghhk!”
“It hurts... it hurts... ugh...!”
Every woman in the village was writhing in agony, blood pouring from their mouths and noses.
Some had already stopped breathing and lay motionless on the ground.
The village looked like hell itself.
Victoria stared in shock.
“What happened to all of them?”
Yukgap answered grimly,
“No. 11 attacked them.”
“If we leave them like this, they’re all going to die.”
“What? No!”
Victoria’s face went pale.
“That’s why I brought you here.”
Yukgap forced himself to remain calm.
“There’s no time to take all of them to a hospital outside.”
“And I don’t have the ability to treat them.”
“But you do.”
His amber eyes met Victoria’s directly.
Then he said with complete conviction,
“Victoria.”
“You’re an alchemist.”
Those words flashed through Victoria’s mind.
He was right.
She could not stay frozen like this.
Right now, if anyone had a chance of saving these people, it was her.
The sharpness quickly returned to Victoria’s eyes.
“Where are the other Archons?”
“They left.”
“They probably achieved whatever they came for, so I don’t think they’ll come back.”
“That’s good.”
If the Archons were gone, she could focus entirely on treatment.
Victoria immediately gave Yukgap instructions.
“Yukgap, run back and bring every medicine and machine inside Robert.”
“This is an emergency, so Robert will understand even if we dismantle parts of his body.”
Yukgap asked in a trembling voice,
“Can you save them?”
He was trying not to show it, but the situation had shaken him just as badly as it had Victoria.
Victoria understood that.
She answered with determination,
“I have to try.”
“And I’m going to make it possible.”
“Alchemy exists to make everyone happy.”
Yukgap carefully entered the thatched house carrying a pot.
The villagers lay in rows inside, groaning weakly.
Victoria was resting against the wall nearby with an exhausted expression.
“How are they?”
Yukgap asked carefully.
Victoria answered weakly,
“Six have stabilized.”
“Five still need to be monitored.”
“And the remaining eight... I don’t think there’s anything more I can do.”
Victoria had worked through the entire night, gritting her teeth and refusing to stop.
But this was the best she could manage.
No. 11’s attack had been far more severe than expected.
Many had died before she even had the chance to treat them.
“The one fortunate thing is that everyone here is genetically identical.”
Victoria continued,
“So the side effects and treatment results are mostly the same.”
“That allowed me to standardize the treatment and save time.”
“Yeah.”
Yukgap nodded gently.
“You did well.”
Victoria looked down bitterly.
“If I’d brought more medicine...”
“If I’d brought more equipment, I might have saved more of them.”
She clearly blamed herself for everyone she had failed to save.
Yukgap’s chest tightened.
He quickly changed the subject.
“I made some rice gruel.”
He carefully held out the pot.
Victoria looked at it and answered quietly,
“Right. They’ll need food to regain their strength.”
“Start with the ones who have stabilized.”
Yukgap silently nodded.
Whatever happened, they had to do what they still could.
“Here. Have some rice gruel.”
He first approached a middle-aged woman sitting against the doorway.
“...”
She did not answer.
Yukgap asked with concern,
“Are you still feeling unwell?”
The woman stared at him for a long moment.
Then she weakly spoke.
“The girl that monster ate earlier...”
“She was my daughter.”
The sentence carried far too many emotions at once.
Yukgap instinctively looked away.
He could not bring himself to meet her eyes.
“I’m sorry about your daughter.”
“If I’d been faster... I might have been able to save her.”
“You’re also a monster like the man who swallowed my daughter, aren’t you?”
The woman looked at him with a complicated expression.
