Chapter 230: Beast Transformation Sickness

"Beast Transformation Sickness?"

Rod had heard whispers of it.

A condition that makes one's appearance hideous and terrifying, with thick fur, while behavior becomes violent and unpredictable.

Calling it a sickness isn't quite right, after all, even Plague Doctors have no way to deal with it.

It's more like a curse.

The Aethelorn Kingdom's handling of Beast Transformation Sickness patients is very passive.

They are merely gathered together and locked up in a place full of other Beast Transformation Sickness patients.

Except for mages conducting research on them at irregular intervals, there is almost no other handling.

So much so that escapes by Beast Transformation Sickness patients happen from time to time.

And as Lady Kali, an elf of vast learning, she knows even more.

The two watched the night sky, leaning side by side against the edge of the sail.

"Elven books record events related to the Beast Transformation Sickness; scholars speculate this disease can be traced back to the Third Era."

The night wind blew, and the elf's golden, soft long hair fluttered wildly in the air.

She had to hold it back with one hand to avoid losing her composure in front of Rod.

Rod knew this was exactly where his extensive collection of ladies' accessories would come in handy.

He took a silver hairpin with exquisite patterns from his spell satchel and handed it to her.

Lady Kali scowled.

"Why do you have so many ladies' items?"

"The moment I saw this, I felt it suited your golden hair perfectly; I couldn't resist buying it. It has a Yong De Mo Fa effect for hair care."

As he spoke, a price tag hanging from the silver hairpin dropped down.

127 Jin Along.

Of course, Rod had deliberately left it unremoved.

"A magic item with such a useless hair-care Yong De Mo Fa effect, and you actually spent 127 Jin Along to buy it?"

"It suits you, doesn't it?"

Lady Kali scowled and ignored him.

She pinned her long hair up, twisting it into a messy bun at the back of her head with the silver hairpin.

Come to think of it, there's a bit of a housewife's charm to it.

Tally, standing nearby, felt a bit jealous and secretly made her previously shortened hair grow long again.

"Master~~ My hair is all messy too~~"

"I saw you used a Transformation Spell."

"Tch."

Rod smiled and handed Tally an exquisite crystal hairpin.

This Chinese-style accessory is rare on the continent; surely only a shapeshifting succubus like her could pull it off.

Actually, although she spends every day with him, Tally is rarely interested in anything other than Rod and his vital energy.

Rod didn't think that was actually the case.

Perhaps he just doesn't know her well enough yet.

"Hmph."

Lady Kali, standing nearby, let out a barely audible light snort.

True.

Giving a gift to one girl, then turning around and giving one to another without any regard—it's no wonder you get rolled eyes.

But who do you think I, Rod, am?

My romantic nature is obvious to all, hahaha—I won't hide or conceal such things!

As for the other two present.

Banshee Chris, due to her fear of heights, is clutching Rod's thigh and shivering.

The female orc, Amy, having just recovered from serious injuries and suffering from carb coma, is catching up on sleep.

But even if they were awake, it wouldn't matter.

Small gifts, small surprises—these are things the two of them, including the zombie Selena and the ghoul Pan Ni, are not entitled to.

Let's continue talking about the Beast Transformation Sickness.

Lady Kali: "About two hundred years ago, the Rat People excavated the Melu Ruins from the Third Era underground. They accidentally touched the blood in a golden cup used for sacrifices within, thus contracting the original Beast Transformation Sickness."

"But whether it's because the Rat People are inherently Beastmen, or because their innate disease tolerance is very high, the symptoms of the Beast Transformation Sickness have not appeared in them; they only have fever and slight irritability, and it hasn't even shown strong contagiousness."

"The Beast Transformation Sickness could have remained hidden from the sun forever, until the human culture known as Dungeon Fever became popular."

Saying this.

The elf's gaze toward Rod held a bit more of the meaning of 'foolish humans.'

Ah.

Dungeon Fever, huh?

Rod couldn't help but cover his forehead.

This is a human historical node that remains quite famous to this day, famous in the way other intelligent races laugh about it.

The cause was that a human mage at the time found a stable and non-dangerous ultra-small dungeon and auctioned it for the sky-high price of 700 million Jin Along.

That's nothing.

Stable and non-dangerous dungeons have always been extremely precious; after the frantic scavenging a thousand years ago, such dungeon dimensions became even rarer.

Two billion Jin Along — the price was somewhat inflated, but everyone could only say they were used to it by now.

So much so that when this mage found another such precious labyrinth the following year and sold it for four hundred million Jin Along, many people didn't even recall it was the same person from the year before.

But the trouble was, a goblin merchant who ran underground villas caught wind of the business opportunity.

He used special means to have a woman bewitch that mage.

Then had him publicly announce that both labyrinths had been found even further below the underground villa belonging to the goblin merchant.

Needless to say, the goblin merchant's underground villas sold like hotcakes.

As for why he didn't simply have that woman swindle the mage's money outright? This involves the goblin sense of what constitutes an honest merchant — something ordinary people truly can't comprehend.

In short, he raked it in by the bucketful.

Meanwhile, certain failing human mages looking to ride the hype also jumped on the bandwagon, publishing the outrageous claim that "stable, safe labyrinths are more likely to be born underground."

And it was printed directly in major newspapers that had little sense of journalistic integrity.

The labyrinth craze was born from this.

But speaking up to this point, it still wasn't quite at the level of becoming a laughingstock.

What later generations found most hilarious was that those two "stable, safe" labyrinths collapsed simultaneously two years later.

Directly causing the total annihilation of the clans of two sucker races that had purchased labyrinths.

This incident caused an enormous uproar.

Anyone with eyes could tell something was off.

Sure enough, under the investigation of the Etheron Kingdom — which had been quite impressive two hundred years ago — it was discovered.

The so-called "labyrinths" were temporary dimensions constructed by that mage using a new spell, costing only two hundred thousand Jin Along to cast.

After this heinous criminal mage was arrested, he said the two spell-labyrinths lasting two years far exceeded his expectations; by his design, they should have lasted no more than two or three months at most.

But because of this tenfold discrepancy, the underground over the past two years had nearly been dug through.

This caused humans and the underground ratfolk to come into frequent contact, and beast-sickness thus reached the surface.

This is how beast-sickness came to the surface.

It is also the origin of the eighth-tier spell 【Labyrinth Art】.

"I wonder if you've noticed how I dealt with that beast-sickness patient."

Lady Kali didn't dwell on this point, and continued.

"Purified along with the splattered blood and corpse."

"That's right — the primary transmission method of beast-sickness is blood transmission; even external contact carries a significant risk of infection."

The elf looked at Rod, with a few more hints of disdain.

After all, he had personally chopped off the patient's limbs, making him the most likely to have come into contact with blood.

Rod knew she was deliberately using this method to remind him.

So tsundere — clearly worried, yet stubbornly refusing to say so.

He smiled and said: "There wasn't even a drop of blood on my sword."

(End of chapter)