“Sung Jinah, Sung Jinwoo? The doctor will see you now.” The nurse said, and the two got up to follow her. Once inside the office the doctor motioned for them to sit down.

  “Well, we’ve gotten the tests back.” said Doctor Crenshaw, looking over the paperwork. Jinah couldn’t speak English, so she didn’t know what he was saying without the translator app on her phone giving her a delayed, literal translation. Luckily Jinwoo had learned English well enough to speak with the people here, so he could translate. “You and your mother have the same blood type. That means that you are a valid blood donor. Furthermore, you are what we call a Pre-Awakened. Some people call them Sleepers. They are people that have the potential to become Awakened, but they don’t have enough mana flowing into them to surpass the rate at which their body can use it.”

  Jinwoo finished translating a few seconds later and she looked confused. She said something in Korean and her brother spoke up. “Does that mean that I can help my mother?”

  The Doctor nodded. “Yes, it does. If we send your blood into her, it will use the mana inside her to slightly strengthen her, to help her fight the disease. And if we put her blood inside you, you will have more mana, which your body will use to improve itself. Both of you will benefit. And if if the procedure is a complete success, you will use so much mana from her body that she will be able to wake up for brief periods of time. I must warn you that this isn’t a cure. Your mother’s condition is genetic, like diabetes. With continuous treatment, however, she may be able to live a relatively normal life.”

  A few seconds later Jinwoo stopped speaking and Jinah started crying and quickly saying something. After a few seconds, Jinwoo spoke again. “She’s thanking you many times, and wants to start as soon as possible. She is very happy. I have a question, though. Will this increase the chance of Jinah becoming Awakened?”

  The doctor shook his head. “While some people believe so, we simply don’t have enough evidence to say one way or another. I personally don’t think it will help her chances, though it will result in her body being enhanced similar to that of an Awakened, she won’t actually have mana reserves or any special skills.”

  Jinwoo nodded and thanked the Doctor. After that the nurse took Jinah to set up in the hospital room beside her mother, to get her used to staying there for so long without moving. She would need to lay there for at least four hours per day, every day, with a machine pumping blood between the two of them, for a month before their mother is likely to wake up. She didn’t seem to care, though. All she needed to do is wait, and she would be able to speak with her mother again.

  The next day Jinah had to rely on her phone for translation, as Jinwoo had to go to work at the construction division of the guild, building an apartment building so that they could house all of the people that were coming to the city. About thirty percent of the guild’s income came from real estate, with another ten percent coming from selling utilities to the people here, so the construction company was extremely important to the guild’s revenue.

  At the end of the day one hundred shards were transferred into his guild account. It was about what he would make per day doing basic dungeon runs, the equivalent of one E rank core, but he hadn’t been forced to risk his life to earn it. And he was the lowest rank of employ in the construction division. If he could get some more experience he could get a promotion and increase his salary to one hundred and fifty or even two hundred shards per day.

  ---

  Simon Belgrove sat behind his desk and looked at one of the reports. The Eternal Flame guild’s profits had increased for the seventeenth month in a row. He, as the S Rank guildmaster of that guild, was earning massive amounts of money as well. Their primary hunting location in the last several months had been the nearby swamp, with their efforts to explore it netting them several unique plants. They had collected seeds from these plants, as the constant temperature of their surroundings meant that they were always producing, but so far they had only managed to grow two of them.

  These plants, however, should prove quite useful. While one of them was edible, with a taste and texture similar to spinach, it maintained a temperature of sixty to seventy degrees for several days after it died. This meant that they had a way to produce another type of food down here, where all of the food was imported. The constant temperature also meant that some of the workers had started carrying the leaves in insulated bags in order to stay warm when outside. Perhaps that could be another source of income?

  The second plant, when eaten, made one more resistant to heat and, based on one accident in the kitchen while a chef was trying to cook with it, it made one more difficult to burn as well. While this could be useful, the main problem down here was freezing, not burning. If they could find the opposite, a plant that prevented frostbite, they would be able to turn it into massive profits. Hopefully one of the other plants they had gathered the seeds from, or one of the other plants in the forest, would have such a property.

  While the profits from hunting the monkeys and wolves was adequate, the true profit in that forest would be in the plants. Simon knew it. He just needed to find a way to prove it to the shareholders, who thought that the massive profits they were already enjoying could still increase. Why did he have to take the company public again? Yeah, he reminded himself, starting a guild on another continent wasn’t exactly cheap. They had managed to pay back all of the debts by selling the shares, but now he had to listen to people overseas who would never set foot on the continent tell him how he should run the guild.

  ---

  Sung Jinwoo entered the apartment and took off his jacket. The crew had been working on the fourth floor of an apartment building near the start of the main cavern. This meant that it was around three degrees where he was working, necessitating warm clothing. With all of the physical work he had to do, however, the jacket was more than enough to keep him warm. “Jinah? You here?” he called out, and she poked her head out of her room.

  “Oh, hey, big brother. Yes, I’ve just been studying, so I haven’t left all day.” As English was the standard language here and the translation apps were too slow for normal conversation, anyone that moved here from a non-English speaking country would need to learn it. So Jinah had been cramming all day, and their mother would need to do so once she woke up if she wanted to speak with anyone besides the two of them.

  Speaking of their mother, Jinwoo was reminded that Jinah needed to visit her every day. “You been to see mom yet?”

  Jinah shook her head. “I wanted to wait until you got home, since I can’t talk with anyone at the hospital.”

  Jinwoo nodded and grabbed his jacket again. “Well, grab your phone. I’ll take you over there now, then maybe go and get us something to eat.”

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  Ten minutes later they entered the hospital, this city being much smaller than Seoul where they had lived and their apartment being near the hospital. Jinwoo explained to the nurse why they were there and they were lead to the elevator. Jinwoo’s guild ID would be added to the elevator so that he could use it to visit her whenever he wanted, as this hospital was owned by the guild, but Jinah would need to be given an ID so that they could do the same. They would have to go to the guild bank and get her one, though it wouldn’t show her as a guild member, kind of like how back in Korea they both had state-issued IDs that weren’t also a drivers license, but if Jinwoo had learned to drive and passed the test his ID would be updated.

  At the bottom of the elevator they were lead fifty meters down a corridor to where their mother was waiting in a fairly normal room, though it had large windows that let anyone in the hallways look in. So much for privacy. Jinah was lead to a bed beside their mother’s and the Nurse leaned over her to put the needle in each of her arms. Once it was in, their mother was connected to a different line and the pump was turned on. Jinah watched as a thin red line went down the center of the tube from her left arm and the one from her mother’s left arm. After thirty seconds the blood from her mother reached her right arm and she started to shift uncomfortably.

  “Something wrong?” Jinwoo asked, and she shook her head.

  “Not really, it just really itches.”

  Jinwoo told the nurse what she said and the nurse nodded. “That’s normal. Her cells are responding to the high levels of mana in the blood. She’ll get used to it in a few minutes, so she just needs to hang in there.”

  Jinwoo grabbed her hand and told her what the nurse said, and she nodded and tried to relax. While the itching, or more accurately, the tingling feeling that was slowly spreading through her arms, took a few minutes to go away, she squirmed a few more times, but eventually it had spread throughout her whole body and started to go away at the injection site. A few minutes after that the strange feeling faded completely and she was able to relax.

  “Good,” the nurse said. “Now we just need to wait for four hours. Did you use the bathroom before coming in?” Jinah shook her head. ‘Bathroom’ was one of the words she had learned from the online Conversational English class she was taking. “Well, if you need to go, send your brother to get me, and I’ll take you in there. You’ll probably be weak after the first few treatments, until your body completely adjusts to it, so you’ll need help walking, and I doubt you want your brother to do so.”

  Jinwoo translated and Jinah looked embarrassed at the idea, the nodded.

  The nurse left and for the next two hours they sat there watching videos on their phones, the satellite internet allowing them to use streaming services from Korea. After that, Jinah started up the English classes again and Jinwoo helped her by explaining a few things he had learned about the language.

  Eventually the nurse came back into the room and turned off the pump. “Well, that’s it for today.”

  She disconnected the lines from Jinah, and Jinah started to get up, only to look at her brother in horror. “I-I can’t move my legs.”

  Jinwoo quickly translated and the nurse nodded, then went to the foot of the bed and started removing Jinah’s socks. “A common side effect of the treatment. The nervous system is affected by the upgrade process, and since she didn’t use her legs during the treatment her brain essentially forgot they were there.” The nurse rubbed her foot until Jinah started to feel like there were needles in it, then the nurse started moving her legs like she was pedaling a bicycle. Jinah laid down and winched from the pain, but after a few minutes the pain went away.

  “She says her legs feel fuzzy.” Jinwoo said, and the nurse nodded.

  “Complete feeling will return after a few minutes. She just needs to use them.” Jinwoo translated and Jinah nodded, then swung her legs out of bed and stood up. Or, at least she tried to, but with her legs the way they were she couldn’t balance very well. Jinwoo caught her, and the nurse came over to help as well. “I’ll help you walk for now. I assume you need to go to the bathroom?” Jinah nodded. “Then I’ll help you.” She slowly walked out the door and down the hallway to the lady’s room, and Jinah did her best to walk as they went.

  Five minutes later she returned, this time a bit shaky on her feet but able to walk on her own. The nurse told them goodbye and said she would see them tomorrow, and the two of them left. There was a Chinese food place near here which they wanted to try. While it wasn’t Korean, it was closer to what they were used to eating than the fast food places they had passed on the way here. “Tell you what, how about this Saturday we go shopping and I take you out for fried chicken? You always like that, right?” Jinah nodded and they made their way to the Chinese restaurant.

  ---

  Gabriel stepped off of the main street and into the tailor’s shop. Gerald Taylor was an A rank summoner who decided to join the guild’s crafting section and had become their best armorsmith until a year ago when his five year contract expired and he decided to quit in order to start a tailor shop. Now Gabriel went to him exclusively for his clothes.

  Many people in the guild thought he was too weird and tried to avoid him, even when he was in the guild. It wasn’t because he had dreams of designing dresses, and insisted on making beautiful but impractical ones and hanging them in his store window, but the nature of his summons. They were both fox girls. Normally people would just consider him a bit of an otaku, and, in fact, before he got his powers he would have called himself one as well. Now, however, there were two facts which made people question whether they wanted to be around him. First, he could change the size and apparent age of the summons at will, though their powers, one being a B rank healer and one a B rank fire mage, didn’t change with their appearance. The second was that the only ages they ever became were from 10 to 16 years old. This made many people question whether he was attracted to minors, and resulted in them avoiding his shop for ordinary purchases.

  Anyone that asked Gerald would get the reason for their age, he liked cute things and those were the ages he considered the cutest. That was also why he made dresses. But people didn’t want to ask him, they wanted to judge and make assumptions, so his business hadn’t grown nearly as fast as his competitors despite being of higher quality, at least in Gabriel’s opinion.

  In the front of the store, on top of a display stand, sat a ten year old girl with fox ears on her head and a tail, with a red belt around her pink kimono. This would be the fire mage summon. “Is your master in?” Gabriel asked, and she jumped down and bowed. “Can you take me to him?” She nodded and motioned towards the back of the store before walking back there, stopping after a few seconds to make sure he was following. When she got to Gerald’s work room she knocked on the door three times and, when he answered that she could enter, she opened the door.

  “Oh, Gabriel, it’s good to see you!” he said, then ran over to shake the man’s hand. When he was done he looked at the fox girl. “Thank you, Red. You can go back to the front now.” She bowed and walked away. “So, I assume you are here for your suit?”

  Gabriel nodded. “So, how did it turn out?”

  “Quite good, actually.” he said, walking over to a rack and picking up an outfit on a hanger. “When you first brought me the material I wasn’t sure if I could make it into proper cloth. But I managed it in the end. And the material is quite nice. I even made a dress out of it.”

  “That red one in the window?” Gerald asked, looking over the suit. One of the teams had found a Stagnant A ranked spider dungeon and managed to gather some of the webbing from inside. Stagnant gates were those that, while technically being in a state of Dungeon Break, couldn’t spread out into the area due to the cold and lack of food, so they never had more than a few monsters outside them. About half of the known gates on the continent fell into that category.

  While the team that raided this spider dungeon only brought back enough to test if there was a market for it, Gabriel had bought all of the webbing and given it to Gerald to be turned into cloth. The suit that was made of it was a jet black fine silk business suit. While it looked like a typical business outfit, it had been infused with energy from an Essence Stone from an A ranked monster, so if an Awakened activated it by putting it on they would have protection capable of stopping a mid-range A rank attack without being damaged. That made it one of the best armored business suits in existence.

  “That’s the one. Don’t you think it turned out nice?”

  Gabriel nodded his head. “Quite nice. In fact, if I was seeing someone I might consider buying it for her.” He looked over his suit one more time. “This suit turned out really good as well. I don’t see any flaws.”

  “Of course, not. I don’t sell defective merchandise.” He looked a bit offended, but Gabriel had known him long enough to know that he was faking it.

  “So,” asked Gabriel. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Well, as you supplied the silk and the Essence Stone, I only really have my labor in it. And since I kept the rest of the silk, that also has to be deducted.” He thought for a few minutes, then spoke up. “I’d say around eight hundred shards ought to cover it.”

  Gabriel shrugged and pulled a D rank stone from his pocket, then handed it to the tailor. “Consider the rest a tip.” Many people carried the stones as a form of cash, though they only worked for purchases in increments of 100 shards. For smaller increments, if they wanted to pay in cash and not just run their guild issued debit card, people often used common goods, like rare metal ingots or Elixir pills, which all had a set value with the guild that hadn’t changed in the last five years.

  “Thank you for your business.” said Gerald before pocketing the stone.

  Gabriel used one of the changing rooms to change into his new suit and put his old clothes into a bag, then stepped out onto the street. While everyone recognized him, they also knew that he hated being treated special because he was the head of Fenrir guild or essentially the mayor of this city, so they barely let seeing him change their reaction as he walked by. After all, you wouldn’t want to upset someone that powerful just by being too nice to them.