Chapter 3354

Strange performs an examination on Stark, who is on the operating table. However, this time it is not to check for any illness, but to examine his physical characteristics. Schiller holds the medical record book to record the report.

The two of them cannot get out for now, but that does not mean they cannot send information out. Although that nurse looks fierce, it is clear that she can be communicated with. If he gets her to take the message out, they can split the reward money, which counts as making a small profit.

Of course, any money Stark was carrying has definitely been thoroughly scavenged. The final haul is three gold coins, over twenty silver coins, and six or seven copper coins.

Schiller does not know what the conversion method is in this world, but it does not look like a decimal system. However, this is good news, meaning copper coins might be more valuable than they imagined.

It is a pity that the gun in Stark's hand was conjured with magic, so they cannot take it. Otherwise, this job would have been a massive profit.

After finishing the scavenging, Schiller directly gives Stark an injection. Intravenous bolus injection is very simple; basically, anyone with hands can do it. After Strange explains the technical points, Schiller succeeds on the first try.

He sighs with some regret, then he and Strange stuff Stark back into the passage. After the gate closes, the sound of a heavy object hitting the ground comes out, and when the passage opens again, the person has already disappeared.

"I think we should celebrate the success of our first treatment." Schiller says, stuffing all the gold coins into his pocket while pulling out the small purple crystal core he found inside the raven earlier from his other pocket.

Strange takes a look, then shakes his head and says, "It should be something like an energy crystal. The magic system here is completely different from ours; they cannot be mentioned in the same breath."

After researching it and finding no results, the two of them prepare to go their separate ways. When they are ready and pull the lever again, what falls out is actually a bird-man.

His body is a normal human body, covered in pitch-black patterns on the skin, and he is wearing a suit and a bowtie. However, his head is a giant raven's head, and his sharp beak is like a keen guillotine.

Schiller, feeling guilty, immediately gasps and, with extreme speed, ties the raven-man, who has not yet regained consciousness, to the bed.

"Damn it, that raven couldn't be his son or something, could it?" Schiller grins, but soon freezes again, then says, "Wait a minute, does he have... inside his body too?"

Just at this moment, the bird-man's finger twitches. Schiller, quick-witted, uses the intravenous injection technique he just learned to give him a shot of mandrake anesthesia directly.

Mandrake is not on the raven's diet; he should be unable to be immune to this toxicity. Sure enough, the raven-man, who was just about to wake up, faints.

"Now there are two possibilities." Strange says, "Either he is that mysterious Mr. Raven, and he came down to settle scores with us. Or he is just an ordinary resident who just happened to grow a bird head."

"No matter who it is, we cannot let him leave alive." Schiller bares his teeth, revealing his sinister true colors, and says, "It's his bad luck to fall into our hands. Do it, open the chest."

Strange has no objections and directly picks up the scalpel. After unbuttoning the suit, they find that the other party's chest is covered with black feathers. Schiller is not polite at all and directly plucks all the feathers out.

Strange slices open the chest in a few strokes, but does not find any strange structures inside the chest. His body tissues are exactly the same as a human's, his heart and lung functions are sound, and there is no mysterious little crystal.

Schiller, unwilling to give up, looks up at Strange and says, "Can you perform craniotomy on birds?"

Strange walks over directly, picks up the blood-stained forceps from the ground, holds them up, and says, "As long as you don't consider the survival rate, what's difficult about a craniotomy?"

"Bang! Bang-bang!"

When the nurse's eyes appear on the observation window again, Schiller blocks her line of sight very timely and says, "A patient with ore hyperplasia disease, it's inevitable that the movements were a bit loud. By the way, ma'am, after sending away that irritable patient, I just realized something was wrong..."

Schiller begins to tell the nurse about Stark, shakes the report, and says, "How can I not have some credit for this? I want half of the bounty, that's not too much to ask, right?"

"You want me to go to the police station to report it?"

"Of course not, just find someone to send a letter." Schiller says, leaning against the door, "Money falling from the sky, why not take it? What do you think?"

The nurse says neither yes nor no, takes the report Schiller wrote, and leaves. Schiller does not care much about whether this succeeds or not and turns back to look at Strange's situation.

Strange, with blood all over his hands, picks up a purple crystal core from the ground that is much larger than the previous one. The strange magical light shines on the glass eyepiece of the black bird-beak mask, looking exceptionally dazzling.

Schiller takes the crystal core and admires it; this thing looks very valuable, but perhaps it has some other uses. He does not put this thing together with the gold coins, but finds a jar and throws it inside.

"What about the corpse?"

"Pluck the feathers clean," Schiller says, "and then throw it into the fireplace."

"Aren't you worried about something going wrong?"

"I just want to see what kind of situation will arise."

The two of them work together to dismantle the raven-man's corpse and stuff it into the fireplace. Schiller stares at the fireplace flames for a while and finds that the big mouth behind the wall is opening its mouth again, saying something.

"Trade..."

"What?"

"Give me food... I'll give you treasure..."

The candlelight in the room flickers, as if reminding Schiller not to easily believe the devil's words. But Schiller does not care about that; he says, "What treasure can you give me?"

The evil big mouth disappears. But Schiller hears a few "clanging" sounds coming from the chimney pipe, as if something is falling down.

"Gurgle," something falls into the flames, then suddenly bounces once and rolls onto the floor.

Schiller walks over to take a look and finds that it is actually a tooth, with some small sharp spikes growing in the center of the tooth.

Schiller hands the tooth to Strange. Strange takes off his mask, puts on a monocle, observes it carefully, and says, "This should be the tooth of a patient in the late stages of ore disease. The ore has already grown out of the bones. There are some residues here, which might be food he ate before he died."

Schiller thinks for a moment and says, "Perhaps we can use the jellyfish fluorescent agent detection method to see the nature of the residue."

"What's the use of this thing?" Strange asks.

Schiller shakes his head, signaling that he does not know. He takes a jar, pours some jellyfish fluorescent agent into it, and then soaks the tooth in it. The part with the residue presents a faint red color, looking like tissue cells.

The flow of time here seems to be faster, and soon it is evening. The nurse comes again, and Schiller gives her a report. And when the nurse leaves, Schiller hears movement at the door; he walks out to take a look, and it is surprisingly a few silver coins.

It seems the nurse agreed to the bounty matter, but she did not agree to the distribution plan and did not give Schiller and the others half. Schiller only curses "stingy" in his heart and closes the door.

He was exhausted last night, and tonight he plans to have a good sleep, so he comes to the chair by the fireplace, leans against the soft back of the chair, yawns, and soon enters dreamland.

He, like Strange, soon realizes that he has entered a dream. Only this time, he is tied to a chair, and a cold metal instrument is about to reach into his mouth.

Schiller widens his eyes, looks left and right, and finds that what is fixed on the chair armrest is not his own hand; it looks thin and young, it should be a child.

The metal forceps in his mouth suddenly clamp onto a tooth, then pull outward violently.

Schiller gasps. The real pain does not wake him up, but instead makes his body start to tremble continuously.

Schiller subconsciously looks at the pair of hands holding the forceps, but sees nothing; the forceps seem to be floating in the air, with no one controlling them. Schiller looks into the distance again.

The pain stimulates the brain, but the hazy hallucinations he is accustomed to do not appear; he only hears himself screaming, and tears flow from his eye sockets. This is clearly not his reaction, but this child's.

Schiller cannot help but curse in his heart: "Since there is no one operating it at all, then run!"

And on the other side, Strange is not sleeping soundly either. Yesterday's strange dream actually connected. The little girl was taken out of the cell, taken to a room with mysterious patterns drawn on the ground, and then hung up.

He sees a blurry black shadow kneeling at his feet. Strange just wants to look closely at this person's face when he feels pain in his foot. One of the nails on his foot is pulled off.

Strange breathes in lightly. He can feel the pain, but cannot fully control his body. The little girl struggles because of the pain, and he can only watch helplessly.

In a trance, he feels a beam of light. When he opens his eyes again, the faint light shines in from the small window above the room. It is actually already dawn.

Schiller wakes up almost at the same time. He subconsciously licks his teeth with his tongue, then freezes in place.

He is missing a tooth!

Strange also subconsciously looks at his own feet. He does not feel pain, but when he takes off his boots, he finds that the nail on his right big toe is gone.

Schiller sits up from the chair and uses his tongue to lick the wound where the tooth should have been; there is no bleeding there, nor is there any residual tooth root. This tooth seems as if it had never grown out at all.

Strange also moves his toes, feels no abnormality, and the big toe nail also seems as if it does not exist.

Both of them see the other's strange behavior and stand up from their chairs at the same time. On the way to the operating table, Schiller pauses. And at this moment, the bear orderly's voice sounds outside the door.

"Want some good stuff?"

Schiller walks quickly to the door. Before the bear orderly can speak to him, he says directly, "Can you sell things here?"

"Sell things? What do you have to sell?"

"That's too many." Schiller takes out the small crystal core from before, shakes it at the observation window, and says, "How much is this thing worth?"

The bear orderly behind the observation window immediately widens his eyes; he lowers his voice and says, "Puppet crystal? Where did you get it?"

"Don't worry about that. I can only tell you that our supply here is stable, guaranteed in quality and quantity. You can also tell us what you need, and we can find a way to get it. How about it? Are you buying?"

The bear orderly is clearly struggling.

"This thing is very dangerous," he says, "hardly anyone on the black market dares to sell it, and you actually managed to get this..."

Schiller looks at him silently.

"Alright," the bear orderly grits his teeth and says, "20 silver coins."

"You'd better not be fooling me."

"I have to take a big risk to sell this thing; this price is very fair."

After some bargaining, the deal is finally concluded at the price of 26 silver coins. Schiller also buys some other things.

After the bear orderly leaves, Schiller sees the money bag he left on the ground, picks it up, and starts counting the silver coins inside.

Just when Strange sees a light brighter than the silver coins flickering behind Schiller's glass eyepiece, he knows that from this moment on, the nature of the game has changed.

?? Stark: Unscrupulous quack!

? (End of chapter)