Chapter 249 The Goddess's Reward
Not long after, Antonius regained his vital signs, his breathing and heartbeat became much stronger, and the coconut water finally had some effect.
But he still did not wake up, and Anson was unable to rouse him with Artemisia annua.
In fact, after Anson removed the anesthetic effect of the snake heart stone from Antonius, Antonius almost died...
The reason he didn't wake up was not because Anson's medical skills were not good, but because he was in severe pain and remained unconscious, probably based on the body's self-protection.
But even in his coma, it was clear that Antonius was enduring unimaginable torture.
His teeth were clenched, and he breathed like a wounded beast, making a slight hissing sound. His body was shaking instinctively, and it was painful to look at him.
Anson and Leon had both seen this situation before. This was the reaction of patients in the late stage of the Red Death. The severe pain would cause people to tremble even in a coma. The only difference was that Antonius's skin did not seem to continue to fester.
Fortunately, Leon still had a Snake Heart Stone in his hand - the one he got from Lisadilan was given to Milgan Kilik, and the Snake Heart Stone he got from the Doombringer in the Three Prophets Camp was still with Leon.
Only the Serpent Heart Stone could restore the suffering Antonius to a state of sleep with minimal energy consumption.
Apparently, the person who had used the Serpent Heart Stone on Antonius was actually trying to save him.
Obviously, it will be impossible to communicate normally with Antonius in the short term. At the moment, he can only be regarded as a semi-vegetative state.
Anson was helpless in the face of this situation. He could only wrap Antonius up and apply some ointment to try to heal his broken and festering skin.
Although Antonius's condition did not deteriorate, it looked like he could survive. But since we could not wake him up and communicate with him, we could only guess.
Just then, Lisa Dilan came back with Julia.
In order to verify his idea, Leon took Lisa Dilan to Boshi City to find a Red Death patient who was about to die and conducted a cruel human experiment.
The main purpose is to try and see if the blood of the Noldor can suppress the Red Death.
As a warrior, the Noldor elf did not refuse to shed a little blood, especially since it was to try to save people.
But the experiment failed.
The patient showed no reaction after being injected with Lisadilan's blood and still died of the Red Death a day later.
Perhaps, the failure of this attempt is not a bad thing - if it is confirmed that the blood of the Noldor is the life-saving medicine for mankind, then the consequences may be more serious than the Red Death itself...
And it is very likely to be an extremely twisted and perverted serious consequence.
However, although this human experiment was not successful, a small incident after the experiment led to another breakthrough in the research on the Red Death.
The experiment was conducted in an isolation area blocked by the plague fighters, which was filled with confirmed Red Death patients.
When Leon determined that the experiment had failed and rode out of the quarantine area on horseback, he and Lisadiran were attacked by several guys infected with the Red Death.
The sick people who launched the attack recognized Lisadilan as a Noldor elf, and they claimed that the Red Death was brought by the Noldor elves - the Order of the Ebony Gauntlet had long insisted so, and the Noldor elves were indeed not infected with the disease, so many people thought that the Red Death was created by the Noldor.
Although the attack ended quickly with the patients being hacked to death, Leon and his companions were all greatly affected.
Leon, Lisa Dilan, Julia, and the two accompanying horses were all stained with the blood of those guys.
One of the horses was Leon's mount, Alice.
Leon and Lisa Dillan are not affected by the blood on their bodies, but Julia and Alice are not affected!
Although Alice is smart, she is just a horse after all. She doesn't know how to protect herself from viral infection. Besides, horses can't wear pants and shoes, and her body is stained with a lot of blood from Red Death patients.
Julia, as Lisadilan's newly recruited guard, followed the lord and Lisadilan to Boshi City to complete the experiment. Although she had relatively complete protection, her hands were still stained with blood when she killed an enemy who pounced on Leon's back during the battle.
There was nothing that could be done about it ; no one expected the Red Death to launch a sneak attack.
Lisa Dilan almost wanted to cut off Julia's hand to save her life. Fortunately, his sword was covered with blood after cutting the enemy, so he didn't do it - a sword stained with poisonous blood certainly couldn't be used to complete the heroic feat of cutting off a hero's arm.
But a few minutes later, Julia said that she was completely fine - in fact, her body showed no symptoms at all and she was still not infected.
Lisa Dilan had indeed seen people who had been infected with the Red Death and survived, but Julia's situation was completely different. It was equivalent to not being infected at all.
In other words, Julia is a human without elven blood, but she is still completely immune to the Red Death.
Instead, Alice showed obvious symptoms. Red spots appeared on the horse's buttocks, which were stained with blood, and then she began to lose hair and develop sores.
A few hours later, Alice's buttocks were covered with a lot of abscesses, and when the sores burst, pus and blood oozed out. Poor Alice kept whimpering in Leon's arms.
However, Alice has always been kept fat and strong, so she probably has a good resistance, and it seems that her condition has not worsened rapidly.
"Sir, what should we do? Alice is like this..."
Upon hearing that something happened to Alice, Wendy's husband rushed over. She was usually very nice to Alice, although Alice had been unwilling to pay attention to her because she was scared by the grenade.
"I wonder if it can recover after drinking my blood..."
Li Ang was almost in tears, and was using a small knife to measure his wrists, trying to draw some blood - he was immune to the Red Death.
After making two gestures, he turned around and looked into Wendy's eyes, probably thinking that Wendy's blood might be more effective...
However, after looking at it for a few times, he finally gave up this unreliable idea. He was also reluctant to let Wendy bleed... So he turned around and continued to look for the angle to cut his arm.
Alice had saved him many times and had followed him through many battles. Unexpectedly, an accident would happen to such a low-level enemy. The lord was now anxious and going crazy.
Le Ang is also a human being after all. Alice is in danger, and people like him will inevitably experience a temporary drop in IQ.
"This is impossible... My lord, blood transfusion is useless, let alone drinking blood? Please don't mess around, I don't want to treat your injuries."
Anson snatched the trembling knife from Leon's hand and threw it aside.
However, although Anson is a doctor, he is not a veterinarian, so he cannot cure horses. Besides, he has not found a suitable cure for the Red Death yet...
"But I can't kill it, can I? It's contagious! My poor Alice..."
Li Ang also knew that the idea of bleeding was probably unreliable, but he was anxious... He had no choice but to hold Alice's huge head and stroke the horse's neck to comfort her.
"My Lord, I feel like there's nothing wrong with Alice... It looks like her butt is about to scab over."
Wendy moved closer to observe for a while, and suddenly said, "I don't think Alice's cry is in pain now. She used to jump around when she was in pain or frightened... Now the cry is more like she is hungry..."
"Um?"
The lord took a half step back, held Alice's head and looked left and right, then stretched his neck to look at the horse's butt.
Alice licked Leon's face twice, whimpered twice, and began to push her nose into his hand.
"Eh... Yeah? Alice, are you okay?"
The Lord always feeds the horses with his own hands, so he certainly knows what Alice's pushing his hand means - she really is hungry...
The horse's buttocks were indeed beginning to scab over, and Alice also wanted to eat, so it was obvious that there was no big problem. Horses were indeed more resilient than humans, and could even withstand the Red Death...
Now that Alice was fine, the lord's intelligence once again took the upper hand. He stared at the small scars on Alice's butt for a while, then kissed Alice fiercely and shouted excitedly.
"Anson! Anson... I may have found a way to deal with the Red Death!"
Li Ang felt that he should have thought of it a long time ago, but because he had always been distracted by ideas such as cults, magic and witchcraft, he had never considered the most important approach - the scientific approach.
Julia is a normal human being. She has had no contact with races like elves in her lifetime, but now she has no reaction to the Red Death. Why?
The only difference between her and other humans was probably that her hands were once stained with Antonius's poisonous blood?
At least that's what the lord guessed.
In order to verify this conjecture, Anson tried it with his own hand - this kind of experiment can only be tried on healthy people, and people like the lord who are immune to the virus certainly cannot be used for the experiment, but there are only a few people who have been contaminated with Antonius' blood.
So Anson decided to go it himself.
For this purpose, he tied his wrists tightly to temporarily block the blood circulation, and also specifically instructed the lord to cut off his hands immediately if anything went wrong.
If there are signs of infection, the life may be saved as long as the hand is cut off quickly enough so that the poisonous blood does not have time to circulate to other parts of the body.
This time, the experiment was successful.
Anson waited until his hands turned blue and swollen from poor blood circulation, but still showed no symptoms of the Red Death.
"I think I understand...Antonius is the antidote! His blood is the vaccine! The Red Death virus in his body has lost its activity, but it can stimulate the human immune system to resist the Red Death virus... "
The Lord excitedly said something that no one could understand, but his expression was extremely excited: "Anson, I know how to control the Red Death!"
"Sir, are you planning to use that Antonius...hiss...he has already lost too much blood. If everyone is stained with his blood...isn't this a bit too cruel?"
Although Anson didn't know what smallpox was, and didn't understand words like "immune system", he still understood the meaning of the lord's words.
"No... Anson, I'm not completely inhuman... Alice also contracted the Red Death, but a strong warhorse like Alice won't die from the Red Death... The Red Death is very similar to smallpox! A vaccine can be made from large cows or horses! I should have thought of it earlier, but I was always thinking about magic and sorcery..."
The fact that Leon was not contagious despite being contaminated by Antonius' blood only served as a reminder. What really prompted him to come up with a solution was the pox that appeared after Alice was infected with the Red Death.
In the end, Leon found a way to deal with the Red Death by using the method that humans in another world used to control smallpox - vaccination.
However, he used horses instead of cows.
It is to use larger horses to actively infect the red death, and then extract body fluids from the scabby horses and drip them onto humans.
The reason why he didn't use cattle was mainly because he had more horses - for this southward reinforcement, he brought more than 2,000 horses.
Although Antonius' blood could also serve as a vaccine, he was still alive, and he didn't have much blood...
Jocelyn's Gato war beast was recruited to serve as the first batch of smallpox carriers. The big guy had a stronger resistance, and the only impact of the Red Death on it was a few small mosquito-like bumps on the horse's body...
Jocelyn was also the first human to try horsepox.
This former Dusk Knight is more adventurous and is quite positive about things that can benefit all of humanity - according to him, he believes that this can atone for the not-so-kind things he did in the past.
After being vaccinated against horsepox, Jocelyn developed some minor sores on her skin and had a low-grade fever all night.
The next day, the sores on the skin scabbed over, the fever subsided, and the patient was completely fine.
Then he tried to touch the blood of the Red Death patient in Anson's way.
They succeeded.
Horsepox did immunize people against the Red Death.
Your Excellency has probably accumulated unimaginable merit this time - countless people will be saved from the Red Death if this vaccination method can be quickly promoted.
Speaking of rapid promotion, this is where Amy and Sarah come in...
The beautiful princess knight is very popular even in Bacchus. In places like Boshi City and Karen Deer Castle, Amy's team is even more popular than the Knights of the Glorious Cross.
Although they did not contribute much to controlling the Red Death, when it comes to promoting horsepox, all of Leon's troops plus Cleon's plague removers, thousands of people, may not be able to match any of Amy's small teams.
No matter where you are, most people are still members of the Appearance Association...
With an all-female army, and Sarah's friendliness and persuasiveness, Amy and her Griffin Claws easily convinced all the surrounding lords and tribunes. Not only did they quickly spread the method of using horsepox to make vaccines , they also helped the lords reverse their reputations.
The name Leon soon changed from a big devil who ate children to the messenger of the goddess of order, Eunomia, in the vicinity of Boshi City and Karen Deer Fort. Sarah was smart enough not to mention Damia, the goddess of shelter and harvest. After all, Leon was the lord of the Fierce Lion Territory.
Perhaps Amy and Sarah's publicity was effective, and Leon soon heard about this merit with his own ears...
Just as the news of the effects of horsepox spread quickly, a female voice that sounded extremely familiar appeared in Leon's ears, or rather, appeared in his mind.
"Well done... kid, but be careful... there are more evil enemies eyeing our territory."
This was the voice of Eunomia, the goddess of order, the same gentle female voice that had originally told Leon to be careful behind him.
At the same time as this voice "arrived", there was also a reward, and this reward was extremely obvious. Not only Leon, but almost all of his companions found that they seemed to have become stronger at the same time.
The others thought that this was a physical manifestation of immunity to the Red Death. They thought that perhaps the vaccine could make people stronger, so there was another reason to spread the vaccine.
But Leon knew that this was encouragement from the Goddess of Order to people like him, and it was also the first time he truly felt the goddess playing a practical role.
'Your Iron Bone skill has been upgraded, currently at level 10';
'Your first aid skills have improved and are currently at level 5'.
This was a long-lost system reminder. If it weren't for the way to prevent the Red Death this time, Leon would have almost forgotten that he had a system. Iron Bone directly increased by 2 levels to the highest level, and First Aid directly increased by 4 levels - this was probably because of Antonius.
'Your teammates' skills have been improved, you can check their skills.'
The names of several teammates lit up at the same time.
Anson's skill level is Healing, which is now at level 9! It seems that treating diseases is also classified as a healing skill, and finding a solution to the Red Death is obviously very important to the goddess, so the increase is not small.
Anson's Iron Bones have also increased, but it is still only level 2. His foundation is really too poor...
Jocelyn and Julia have both upgraded their Iron Bones, currently at level 9 and 6 respectively.
Amy and Sarah didn't improve their iron bones. They mainly improved their persuasiveness. Amy also improved her command... It seems that the goddess is fair and will improve whatever you do.
Of course, Amy's command is not high, only level 4, but her persuasion is level 7;
Sarah now has a persuasive power of level 9. Obviously, their efforts to spread the faith of Eunomia have probably received extra care from the goddess...
Li Ang's own improved attributes were not much, but these improvements were unexpected gains, which was always a big surprise. Moreover, basically everyone who participated in this matter had an improvement. The goddess really seemed fair.
It's just that Lisadiran didn't get any benefit from having his blood drawn - probably because the Noldor elves are not under the control of the goddess of order...
In fact, the Lord thought that Alice should also be rewarded, but Leon's system was incomplete, and the horse had no panel data, so no changes could be seen for the time being - Leon felt that the goddess might not use her power on the horse...
In fact, compared to the skill improvement, the lord cares more about the wording of the goddess Eunomia.
'More evil enemies', and...
'Our territory'.
