A Hospital in Another World? Chapter 1014: It's Done! My Lord of Plagues, I Saw It!

Wendell Demetri dived into the work of culturing pathogens, which were actually viruses.

He cultured them, cultured those things that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, couldn’t be seen under a microscope, couldn’t be sensed through meditation, and couldn’t be observed by magic.

Every day, he sliced, ground, filtered, and centrifuged. He diluted the solution with sterile saline, extracted it with a syringe, and injected it into mice or other creatures. As for whether the cultured substance contained pathogens, unless the injected mice fell ill, there was no way to determine.

Wendell Demetri despised this situation. He dreamed of seeing it with his own eyes—even if he couldn't see it with his eyes, he hoped to prove it in some way.

Taking the advice of the Lord of Plagues, he began filtering these solutions repeatedly, attempting to view them under a microscope:

"First pass, filtered with silk..."

Demetri, with a heavy heart, took out his finest piece of silk—the one he had intended to give to a female mage he admired but never had the chance—and cut a piece.

Single-layer filtration still left strange particles in the filtrate, making it quite turbid;

Double-layer filtration was still quite murky;

Demetri examined the filtered tissue fluid under the microscope. Under the microscope, he could still see cell-like structures.

He remembered the words of the Lord of Plagues well: filter until no bacteria can be seen, yet it can still spread...

So... silk wasn't effective?

If silk didn’t work, then linen surely wouldn’t, and cotton likely wouldn’t either. Wendell Demetri reviewed his available resources and chose another suggestion from the Lord of Plagues:

Thick paper?

Filtering with paper clearly worked better than silk. Although the filtration speed slowed significantly, the amount of tissue cells filtered out was also much greater than with eight layers of silk. Demetri took a deep breath and placed the filtrate under the microscope...

"Ahhhh! Why does this paper shed fibers?!"

Demetri had no knowledge of papermaking. Ordering strong, thick, fiber-free paper suitable for making filter paper, even if available in Nevis, would take half a year to procure.

So, Demetri turned to another material:

Ceramic shards.

Yes, ceramic shards.

"Someone, bring me a pile of unglazed, uncolored ceramic dishes..."

Fortunately, the locals had decent pottery skills—or rather, any indigenous tribe had to learn pottery techniques, or they wouldn't even have tableware. Upon Demetri's order, a pile of ceramic dishes appeared before him, which he began testing one by one:

"…It's impossible to filter through these!"

Why did he believe the words of the Lord of Plagues?

If ceramic dishes could filter water, they wouldn’t be able to hold water or soup!

That evening, during the open question time after the briefing, he raised this question. Garrett pondered for a moment:

"Ceramic filters... not all ceramic dishes or bowls can be used as filters. Ceramic filter elements should have many tiny pores, larger on the outside and smaller on the inside, so they can push water through..."

He casually summoned a Silent Illusion, sketching a cylindrical body covered with numerous tiny pores:

"Why don’t you ask them to make it more porous? If that doesn’t work, try Transmutation."

Asking them to make it more porous—Demetri didn’t trust the locals' pottery skills. Using Transmutation—he doubted his Transmutation skills were fine enough to create so many tiny pores.

However, Garrett's suggestion did inspire him:

"I can use Enlarge Person! By enlarging this dish, maybe... the pore sizes will also enlarge?"

"That might work... remember to check it under the microscope after the transformation."

Demetri eagerly went to try. To be fair, the Enlarge Person spell was indeed useful, especially since he focused on "enlarging the pores as well" while casting. After casting the spell, he placed it under the microscope—

Yes, the pores were indeed larger!

Demetri, satisfied, began filtering again. This time, the ceramic filter finally achieved the desired effect, and the filtrate no longer showed any bacteria. Then, he encountered the same problem as the Lord of Plagues:

There were no visible bacteria or pathogens in the filtrate, nothing visible at all...

Demetri added acid and alkali, froze and sliced;

Added litmus water, added purple grass water, added logwood solution, and all the dyes he could think of;

Used Detect Poison, Detect Disease, Detect Plant and Animal, Detect Undead...

Apart from Detect Poison indicating the presence of harmful substances to humans, all other spells and detection methods failed.

"Even Detect Plant and Animal failed... as expected, Detect Plant and Animal can't detect bacteria. According to the prophecy school, bacteria are too small and weren't recognized when the spell was created..."

As for whether bacteria were animals or plants, the last issue of "Magic" and "Ordinary Mage Monthly" featured three archmages arguing. One said they were animals, another said they were plants, and the third said they were neither...

"Since they’re too small, could it be possible to enlarge them a bit to see them?"

Demetri was hopeful. He took a drop of the filtrate from the test tube and added it, bit by bit...

No reaction.

No reaction.

Still no reaction.

Maybe... he didn't aim accurately?

Demetri thought it through and concluded that this was likely the reason. One major factor for spell failure was the inability to lock onto a target—casting aimlessly wouldn’t yield results!

Perhaps he should try a different target... like bacteria, or... cells?

Demetri eagerly prepared a new filtrate. With the help of the microscope, he locked onto a bacterium with his mental power, held his breath, and cast Enlarge Person. Chanting the spell, activating the model, and releasing—

"Boom!"

Under the microscope, the bacterium he locked onto swelled, swelled, swelled...

And exploded.

It exploded!

Pale red, deep red, chunks, pieces, spreading out under the microscope. Demetri stared at the mess, speechless for a long time:

How did it explode?

Why did it explode?

The effect of Enlarge Person didn’t include causing explosions!

If Garrett knew about this, he might have shrugged: "Ask me sooner; I tried that already, and Enlarge Person doesn’t work."

It was likely due to the structural strength of the cells, or the cell walls, or the bacterial cell membrane—the strength of the bilayer phospholipid membrane was too low. When the contents enlarged and swelled, the bilayer membrane's strength immediately failed~~~

Otherwise, why did I struggle with optical microscopes, staining, and finding various dyes? I still haven’t found gentian violet, and I’m crying...

But Demetri didn’t ask. Even though the bacteria exploded, it gave him a hint:

I can use a microscope to observe cells!

I can check these cells for changes to confirm the presence of pathogens!

Those mice, losing or gaining half a gram—a mouse weighing around 20 grams, fluctuating by a gram with a single bite—temperature rising or falling by 0.1 degrees, breathing faster or slower by a second, it all seemed so troublesome!

I can directly observe the cells. If I can identify consistent changes, I can confirm that these seemingly healthy mice are actually infected!

Demetri was greatly encouraged. He replanned his work and set a goal:

Every day, dissect 20 more, no, 30 more, no, 50 more mice!

Except for ensuring sleep to have spells for the next day, all the time apart from eating, sleeping, and meditating would be spent working!

Dissect, dissect, dissect!

"Wendell, time to eat! We’ve got braised beef today! The beef was brought from a thousand miles north!"

"You go eat, just save me a piece." Wendell Demetri stood at the dissection table, focused, his muffled voice coming from behind his mask:

"If it’s convenient, save me a piece of beef in a corn tortilla..."

"Wendell, have some tea? It’s three in the afternoon, take a break, have a cookie!"

"You go eat, I’m not done yet." Demetri compared the afternoon’s recorded data, writing furiously:

"Out of 100 injected mice, 1 showed fever symptoms... 5 were lethargic... the rest reacted normally... mice infected with the same pathogen using Plague Spell, 10 showed fever..."

"Speculating, the Plague Spell enhanced pathogen’s effect is relatively strong, possibly due to increased toxicity or accelerated growth... or spell instability requires repeated testing..."

"Wendell, aren’t you going to rest? Those girls who brought our meals are quite nice..."

"You go ahead." Demetri pressed his eyes to the microscope, activating a sound illusion to avoid saliva on the slides:

"I’ve got a little more... let me finish observing..."

"Seriously."

"Too diligent."

"That’s why he’s already a Level 7 mage... I can’t keep up... working ten hours a day, I’m about to collapse..."

"Let’s go, let’s go..."

Footsteps gradually faded. In the large laboratory, only the skeletons continued diligently observing, measuring, and feeding. Under a lonely lamp, Demetri worked tirelessly:

Work hard!

Work hard!

He couldn’t fight, his mentor wasn’t high-level, nor was he a direct disciple of a legendary mage; he couldn’t even get a golden skeleton! People ten or twenty years younger than him were already Level 9 or 10 mages

, and he was still at Level 7!

Such a rare opportunity, how could he not seize it!

Day after day, night after night, finally, Wendell Demetri, with a thick stack of documents, knocked on Garrett’s door:

"My Lord of Plagues! I’ve done it! I saw it!—Look, these pathogens, after 15 iterations, injected into mice, showed no reaction, but we detected cellular changes!"

"Liver, kidney, brain cells, all had pathological changes!—Then using mouse brain extracts for another round of injection, the 16th iteration pathogens could no longer cause changes!"

"100 mice, all 100 showed this! I hypothesize these pathogens are now usable!"

"We’ve made the vaccine you wanted!"

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