A Gamer's Guide To Beating The Tutorial

Unlike what Emil had told himself that night, he would go on to treat Kitty much like he did his own party members. Of course, he would always use ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ whenever he asked his friend to do something, but it might as well have been a straight order. Kitty took it as such. To him, Emil’s word was law, not that either of them dared to bring it up.

During the days, Kitty followed Emil like a shadow, sticking close to him and generally avoiding anything that didn’t include him, much akin to an introvert at a party who only knew one person there. Emil’s efforts to include Kitty into his party’s communal activities were moot. Putting aside the fact that Kitty had little interest in them, his party members viewed Kitty with some degree of rational distaste, bordering on a midway-point between disgust, anger and horror. Ursula was the worst. She frequently refused to so much as stay in the same room as him—not that his other party members were any less reluctant. But at least they pretended to tolerate him.

The worst part was that Kitty wasn’t even doing badly. He was downright amicable, and still they wouldn’t even give him a chance. Maybe Emil had been naive to seek a status quo where he, his party and Kitty could all hang out as mutual friends. He couldn’t know. But, since Kitty was far more volatile when left alone as compared to his party, Emil let his friend stick around him for the majority of the time.

In hindsight, Emil could recall few moments where his diminutive friend hadn’t been at his side. At night, while at the hospital, when doing the daily rounds… No, there was one time he would rather be alone than stand the company. In the month before everything had gotten worse, they had been invited to one of the city’s five judges for supper. Kitty had arrived, been scorned by several dozen aristocratic gazes, and instantly made the fully logical choice that he would rather be exactly anywhere else. Unfortunately, since Emil’s presence was of political weight, that night, Kitty had to spend the evening alone at the mayor’s manor. From what Emil could infer from a particularly snoopy servant, he had spent the evening in their shared room, on their shared bed, eating snacks and reading his books.

Emil had been appalled at the amount of relief that came over him hearing this.

But, other than that, things went well. October dragged its feet all the way into early November, leaving the skies gray and dull, the mood stuck in perpetual almost-winter. At night, Emil innocently hoped, even prayed, that the plague could end before winter began in full, so that greater famine could be avoided. He would not be so lucky.

In early November, before the traces of October had fully blown away with the crisp brown leaves, they began to find rats here and there. Not a lot. Sometimes, you could see them stagger out of their little hidey-holes, paws, ears and nose all black, and then they’d keel over. But they weren’t dead. Emil figured that out the bad way when he’d tried to push one from the hospital’s doorstep only to have it squeal huffily, drag itself to its trembling little feet and waddle a few steps over, laying itself back down like a dog disturbed. But there weren’t that many at first.

Then, more came. After only a week of November’s gray skies, the rats appeared en-masse, their panting little bodies piled up against the sides of houses and marketplace shops, half-hidden by the yellowed leaves piled in the same manner. Once, while doing their daily rounds, Emil spotted a child leap into a big pile of crunchy leaves, only for it to go crunch and squelsh as a flurry of rats attempted to scutter out, some of them dragging themselves by the front legs. The poor kid, screaming the second he saw the tails, was covered in what looked like black mucus. When Emil tried to clean him off, he realized by the smell that whatever the rats had left on the kid, it was most likely necrotic in nature. It was by a miracle that Emil had been able to keep working that day.

But they only came up in droves for a week or so. Then, they stopped. It was abrupt enough to make Emil wary rather than relieved. Still, Lent considered it enough cause to celebrate. Emil couldn’t fault him. The stablemaster had been sweeping comatose rats out of the stables for over a week, and if his bi-daily rants were anything to go by, a few of the drakes had even eaten some of the rats. He had every reason to be happy the rats were gone, but Emil was far less eager.

Only a few days later, his apprehension would be justified by the arrival of a comatose patient, with his limbs all black and his throat and neck on the verge of turning black as well. He didn’t last a day. But it didn’t have to mean anything.

Kitty, ever the steel-stomach, had asked to dissect the corpse, for whatever reason. Since this was likely nothing but a one-off case, Emil refused it. The patient had come in with his family in tow, and they deserved a complete body to bury. To soothe himself, Emil recalled that he’d read about how the legs of diabetics can turn black and require amputation. But wasn’t that only the legs? Then again, he hadn’t read anything more in-depth on the subject, so he could very well misremember it.

That was certainly easier than facing the truth. A truth that would come to stare him in the face within days.

Only the next day, another such patient would arrive. They weren’t comatose, and their neck and tongue lacked the blackening of the first one, but they were completely paralyzed from the neck down and had to be carried into the general ward. Although the normal patients were outside Emil’s jurisdiction, a few words with the right people gave him permission to keep an eye on them. He was lucky to do so, because only a few hours later, another patient would arrive. And then another. On that day alone, a total of six patients would arrive, all with one or more blackened limbs, one being comatose already.

At this moment, joined by Ursula, Jazz and—of course—Kitty, Emil stood over that final comatose patient, frowning slightly. Normally, he would never have shown such a despondent expression to a patient. However, with said patient unable to register it, he kept it, largely encouraged by the similar expressions on the other people in the room. The only one whose expression was more severe than his own was Ursula, who didn’t appear to have slept in the past year or two. Frowning a twinge deeper, Emil caught her eyes. “And you’re certain it isn’t just a mutation, or a variant of some sort?”

“No,” Ursula said, her voice as grave as her countenance. “Whatever this is, it’s new. It also doesn’t look like anything from Earth, and it isn’t in the lexicons here, either. It’s something completely new.”

New, and recent. A scalding thought burnt Emil’s mind. “You don’t think that we…?”

She gave him a look before shaking her head. “I doubt it. If this was from us, it would have shown up earlier. More importantly, one of us would’ve been sick.” With great reluctance, she turned to Kitty, only barely able to keep the contempt out of her voice. “You. You can smell this stuff. Whatever’s eating this guy… has it been on any of us?”

Kitty blinked at her slowly, turned to look behind him, and stared at her for a second longer before realizing that she was talking to him. “Oh! Um…” He wiped his nose. “Nah, nothing like that. I haven’t really… I mean, this is new, but none of us have been sick yet. Nope.” He sniffled slightly, nose wrinkling at the admittedly pungent smell. “But this is also the first I’ve smelled of it, aside from the rats, so…”

Something in Emil’s chest dropped. “The rats?” He didn’t even try to keep the mounting panic out of his voice. “Are you saying that—”

“Yeah, of course,” Kitty said. “I mean, It’s kind of obvious, right? The whole city’s teeming with the stuff.”

“Rat plague,” Ursula breathed. When Emil turned to her, he found her hands tied into tight fists, her knuckles white. Between them, the patient took a rattling breath. “Bubonic? No, the symptoms are wrong… But is it the rats, or is there a smaller carrier? And if it is the rats, then…”

“But we can’t be sure that it’ll become a plague yet, can we?” Jazz asked hopefully. “The rats aren’t around anymore. If they died, then the plague should have died along with them.”

“Does it look dead to you, Jazz?” Ursula said, jerking her head at the patient.

“I’m just trying to look at this optimistically,” Jazz said, drawing back slightly. “We don’t know if this is a trend or a fad. If the plague is spread by the rats, then the rats can’t spread it anymore.”

“But if the rats aren’t the main vector,” Ursula continued for her, “then whatever is the vector will now be moving on to bigger, better hosts. Such as…” She perked an eyebrow. Jazz’s defeated expression did nothing to sate Ursula’s unhappiness. “However, vector or no, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that the corpses themselves are vectors. If the plague spreads through the handling of dead bodies, then…”

She looked down at the patient between them. Three anxious gazes followed along.

Emil caught Kitty’s gaze. His chest felt so tight. “Can you smell how many there are?” In his hurry, he couldn’t even bother to specify if he was asking for rats or people. “Can—can you smell them?”

Slowly, Kitty’s face settled into a frown. “...No. The whole city’s covered in it, so I can’t make out individuals, and even then…” The pain of being unable to fulfil Emil’s wants soon became too much, and Kitty attempted to turn it around. “B—but if you show me enough patients, I might be able to start recognizing it!”

Emil nodded feebly. “Yeah. Thanks.” He turned to Ursula and Jazz. In a mere instant, only by seeing the look on his face, they both drew themselves up, ready to hear what their party leader was about to say. “We can’t be sure what this is, or even if it will become a pandemic. Even if it—”

“Epidemic,” Ursula corrected.

“...Thank you, epidemic. Even if it has cross-infected goblins, we still can’t be sure to what degree it retains the same qualities as with the rats. It might have the same effects, or it could have entirely new symptoms. It might spread just as fast, or this could be all we ever see of it. Either way, I’ll need you two to keep treating it as best as you can, and if we keep seeing this volume in the coming days, then…” The fatigue of close to four months of fighting a plague hit him like a fist to the stomach. He drew in a shallow breath. “Then, we might have to accept that there’s another plague on our hands.”

Both Ursula and Jazz made appropriate shows of horror. Kitty tried, but since he hadn’t seen what the other three had, he couldn’t quite muster it.

“In the meantime,” Emil continued, his fatigue deepening into exhaustion, “I’ll go talk to the mayor. I doubt he’ll be interested in our theories and fears, but he needs to know.”

Ursula smiled slyly. “That way, when everything goes to the shits, you can tell him how you told him so?”

Emil chuckled tiredly. “Yeah. Something like that, I guess.” He began heading for the door, Kitty moving to his side, only pausing once he reached the door. He turned around and gave Ursula a weak smile. “And, uh, make sure to keep me updated if any further patients arrive, alright? Keep them separate from the other patients, and…” The look on her face quieted him. He gave a meek laugh. “Heh, yeah, sorry… You know how to handle this way better than I could. Old habits die hard, huh?”

She returned his smile. “Don’t worry about it. Try not to upset the mayor too much, yeah? He may be an ass, but he’s also the one deciding what we eat tonight.”

Emil shivered at the thought. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll try to keep it in mind.”

She nodded, Jazz said goodbye to him, and off they were. By now, Emil couldn’t even muster a twinge of sadness at how nobody ever said goodbye to Kitty.