A Hospital in Another World? C.309

Back when Garrett Nordmark was penniless, he had researched how to manually create the undying flame at a low cost, even when he couldn’t afford a shadowless lamp—not even 1/36 of one. His conclusion was that the costliness lay in the enchantment process, primarily due to the materials required—it needed ruby powder!

That was prohibitively expensive! The kingdom’s native production of rubies was laughably insufficient. To use them on a large scale, one had to either smuggle them from the kingdoms under the Radiant Church’s control, from the distant Orc Wastelands, or import them from the Southern Black Continent and the New World... And the Southern Black Continent was mostly under the Radiant Church’s control as well!

Garrett couldn’t fathom why rubies were necessary. Weren’t they just aluminum oxide? Red when mixed with chromium, blue with iron or titanium, and other colors with different elements... Why not just use aluminum oxide directly, or even aluminum...

But then he remembered the difficulty of aluminum smelting; there was a time in history when it was more expensive than gold, and he understood. After all, flawed, impure rubies could be ground into powder, whereas aluminum, if not left unused, would be prohibitively expensive once produced!

Garrett had considered experimenting with electrolytic aluminum but lacked the conditions and couldn’t ignite the electrolysis skill. Once he had unlocked the skill, he dove into bacterium culture. Electrolytic aluminum? It seemed Aurora’s seniors were playing with various electrolysis; let them have their fun, it’d be good to see what they came up with.

Now, under pressure, Garrett recalled this idea. The first step was to conduct his own electrolytic aluminum production—what was he thinking? Of course, it was to look up literature!

Garrett rushed to the tower’s control room at the top, badge in hand:

"MOSS, please help me look up papers related to electrolysis."

"Of course, Master. Searching for papers, keyword: electrolysis. MOSS will retrieve them for you immediately, please wait."

The tower spirit responded without hesitation. One advantage of having a high-level mage tower was the direct access to literature through the tower spirit. It’s said that the White Tower and the Peak’s mage towers can access new papers immediately upon upload;

The high-level mage towers around Nevis City can access papers uploaded more than half a month ago;

As for high-level mage towers in other regions, unfortunately, depending on the council’s maintenance frequency, they generally lag by six months to a year;

Ordinary mage towers in other regions, like the one Garrett used to stay in, Hartland City’s mage tower... better to subscribe to journals yourself. As for unpublished papers, they’re generally unseen...

MOSS’s efficiency in paper retrieval was very high. The crystal ball flickered, and soon a light screen appeared, displaying titles, keywords, abstracts of papers page by page. Garrett flipped through several pages and found that since he introduced electrolysis technology last year, countless magicians have delved deep into this area, with over 100 papers published!

"Fantastic! I don’t have to grind electrolysis myself!" Garrett was excited. Spreading the technology was the right choice! How much of the tech tree can one person push forward? It’s through the collective research of many magicians that real progress is made within the council!

As for the difficulty in searching through numerous papers, that was easily solved...

"MOSS, search keywords: electrolysis, new substances."

"MOSS, search keywords: electrolysis, metals."

Upon searching, Garrett was overjoyed. Both the transmutation and energy manipulation schools had magicians claiming to have produced a "strange white metal." Garrett spent a contribution point for each paper, found out they had even measured the metal’s density, hardness, melting point, etc., with significant differences between them...

Could it be two different metals? Garrett made a trip to the trading center, bought back both metals, and then had Mr. Norwood try enchanting them. It wasn’t long before Mr. Norwood, holding a silver rod, ran over with a shocked face:

"Boss, where did you find this? It’s so useful!"

"It works?"

"It works!"

These two silver-white metals—one lighter, the other slightly heavier—both produced excellent results when used for enchanting the undying flame. The heavier one, Garrett guessed, was aluminum, which made spellcasting smoother, consumed less magic power, and lasted longer (Garrett guessed this was because the impure ruby powder contained a lot of impurities).

Using magnesium for enchantment resulted in the silver rod emitting an extremely dazzling white light!

"Alright! Mr. Norwood, please write a paper. Let’s send the paper and both metals to Master Tolga!"

Master Tolga treasured them like a

gift. It could even be said that the entire alchemy workshop treasured them. The raw materials for making these two metals, the former being ice stone and bauxite, the latter being magnesite and dolomite, were abundantly produced in the kingdom. No more hassle with ruby powder!

That stuff was fine, brittle, hard to grind, and painful to work with, not to mention not very effective without being ground into powder!

Finally, no more struggling with low-quality ruby mines!

Master Tolga, Mr. Norwood, and those two magicians who electrolyzed the strange metals dove into research to increase production. Setting up hydroelectric generators, winding coils to raise voltage, increase current, build a larger, even bigger mercury-arc rectifier, large electrolysis tanks...

What?

Someone wants Garrett to attend a funeral?

And retract that statement?

Let them drop dead! Oh, it’s about the funeral, then the one who should be dead is already dead...

The School of Transmutation collectively kicked back Baron Hopman’s request. Meanwhile, Garrett, happily with his students, started practical work on infectious disease treatment.

The hospital was finally completed, and the apprentices Garrett brought along could finally independently conduct bacterium culture microscopy for various infectious diseases like cholera, dysentery, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc. Now, the question was, where to find patients?

Stand guard at the clinic?

Ask the temples if they have any infectious disease patients and remind them to refer them over?

Or, like the priests of the God of Nature or the bell doctors of his previous life, wander the streets in search of patients?

Wait for an epidemic outbreak in the city, then go around collecting patients?

Not that it wasn’t an option, but in the situation where a large number of live cases were needed for teaching the apprentices, waiting for patients to fall from the sky was obviously inconvenient. Garrett decided to approach temples, religious orders, and the city hall all at once, and then, with two priests from the God of Nature’s church, he staked out at the treatment center in the harbor area.

It had been a while, but the clinic was still the same. Merchants, clerks, apprentices came and went, occasionally some poverty-stricken people with worried faces hesitated at the clinic’s entrance, wanting to enter but stopping themselves. Around dinner time, injured dockworkers limped in, bleeding from arms or legs, hoping to get a free healing spell, or a mother rushing in with her child...

In general, the stationed priests could skillfully handle everything, and Garrett didn’t notice any signs of infectious diseases that required him to initiate an emergency plan.

After two days of calm and leisure, on the third day at noon, while Garrett was peacefully reading in the clinic, a group of sailors rushed in at the entrance in a panic:

"Priest!—Save us, Priest!"

Garrett stood up abruptly. In just moments, the clinic was filled with the stench of blood:

At least twenty to thirty sailors were brought in. Those with head injuries, suspected broken arms, suspected broken legs, moaning loudly, unconscious... The worst injured was carried by two men, with two others supporting his body to prevent him from shaking:

A long iron bar pierced from his back to his front, going through his entire body!

It wasn’t far from the harbor here, but the injured had already lost who knows how much blood, their clothes nearly entirely soaked red. The clothing was of good quality, but the skin on the face and hands was rough, clearly also a seaman—perhaps a high-ranking one. An elderly man followed, gasping for breath, his woolen coat covered in fresh blood, slamming a purse on the table as he entered:

"Please, Priest, save him first! He’s my son!"

Garrett and Priest Farley both leaped into action. Priest Farley shouted:

"Everyone, come out! Aaron, go call people from the Temple of the War God! Franz, go to the Spring Water Temple! Call a high-ranking priest! Must be high-ranking! We can’t handle this kind of injury!"

Garrett was already moving towards the injured, quickly assessing, quickly sorting. Those with broken arms, sit over there, broken legs, the same, those bleeding, throw a tourniquet, gauze, anything, directing them on where to bind or press firmly. While assessing, he turned back, shouting at the two apprentices he brought:

"Tear off the injured’s clothes! Tear them off! If not, cut them off! Clean the skin, alcohol for the wounds nearby, wait for us to take over!"

He quickly assessed the situation, sorting all temporarily non-life-threatening patients that could be delayed. Returning to the center of the hall, the clothing on the torso of the injured with the through-and-through wound had been completely cut away, revealing a bare back with an iron bar protruding terrifyingly from the right rear side.

Priest Farley prayed over the injured, beams of white light falling one after another, yet he dared not touch the iron bar. The leading old man paced anxiously beside, frowning deeply:

"Can you save him, Priest?... Can you?"

"It’s hard to say..." Priest Farley finished another prayer, looked up, and sighed. "I can only try to keep him stable, wait for a high-ranking healer to come, and see if they can remove the object. Ah, this injury is too dangerous; I have no confidence..."

"How long will they take to come?"

"If we’re lucky, at least an hour... Ah, I don’t know if he can last that long... Bring over the healing potions! Bring more!"

Garrett silently observed. He called an apprentice with the Endless Ink Pen to kneel in front of the injured, using the Detect Magic repeatedly for examination. After a while, he interjected:

"Maybe... I can be of some assistance?"