Plin Ch 2.9

Early in the morning, the hospital room was bustling. The servants were busy keeping the wet towels cold because of the raging fever, the doctor was busy checking vital signs, and the secretary was busy with his own tasks. It was like a marketplace.

Hugo, who had barely opened his eyes, held his throbbing head and looked at the bustling hospital room. His splitting headache was affecting his vision, making it difficult to focus. Even though it seemed to be a bright morning, everything was dark and gloomy.

Hugo tried to enhance his vision by using his beast-form eyes, but he gasped at the pain that felt like a pickaxe was digging into his head. In extreme pain, he gave up on using his beast-form and held his head.

“Ugh…”

“Sir Hugo!”

Several servants immediately rushed to him.

“Where are you uncomfortable?”

“Please lie down. The doctor said you need complete bed rest—”

“You’re awake now.”

The cold voice cleared away the somewhat fussy concerns.

“Uh, what time is it…”

Hugo asked, deliberately avoiding eye contact.

“It’s ten in the morning. You collapsed yesterday at 3:10 AM, so the time of the crime is estimated to be about two or three hours before that.”

“Crime…?”

“Isn’t this the first time you’re hearing about this? When was the exact time? All I know are estimates.”

Thibeau folded his notebook with a thud and asked.

“…..”

The secretary, who had been assisting Hugo closely for twelve years, was indeed different. While everyone else was fretting and at a loss for what to do, he alone calmly grasped the core of the situation.

“Tell me yourself. What is the cause of this karmic retribution beam?”

“Um… I need to sleep some more—”

When Hugo leaned back on the bed, exhausted, Thibeau yanked the blanket off and brought his face close, almost too close for comfort. He put his mouth to his ear as if telling a ticklish secret and whispered in a rapid-fire manner.

“Branson Vayne. 27 years old. Manager of The Scope’s QA department. 2 weeks to recover. Diagnosis of concussion. Assaulted by an unknown assailant.”

“Haa, what a sad story… But that’s not enough to warrant an official expression of condolence from the company, is it? Ugh… He’s not even dead…”

Hugo was still in pain, even as he spoke. His eyes were flushed with fever, and his dry lips were cracked and crusted with blood from where he had been biting them.

“Stop pretending to be innocent. We don’t have time. Who did you hire, and what was the payment? Tell me quickly. So I can handle it easily.”

Thibeau opened his notebook again and waited with a pen in hand. He told him to separate his personal and professional life, but he didn’t expect him to handle it so personally. He was dumbfounded, but he couldn’t just stand there in a daze. If the people he had hired to injure someone were ordinary lowlifes, there was a high possibility that they would threaten to expose the assault case to the media. It was necessary to deal with them before any untoward incidents occurred.

“…Don’t worry. I made sure there would be no loose ends…”

“The karmic pain is clearly abnormal, isn’t it?”

The incident itself was a cause for karmic pain, but the severity was extreme. The doctor was even concerned about shock from the excessive pain. The burning fever in his stomach hadn’t even started yet, and even the headache stage was intense.

“…..”

What kind of lowlifes did he use? Hugo avoided giving a direct answer. It was the first time he had seen his master so lacking in confidence. The situation felt ominous. Suddenly, another possibility that he hadn’t even considered came to mind.

“Did you…”

“Haha.”

Hugo lifted his chapped lips and smiled awkwardly.

“You crazy bastard, did you really… do it yourself?”

“…There’s really no filter between your brain and your mouth—.”

“There are also bastards who don’t filter between their brain and their actions, you know?”

As the saying goes, ‘like master, like servant’. Thibeau took a deep breath. Can I live to a ripe old age? No one knows the answer to that, but in his case, the uncertainty was even greater.

“I thought I could live as I pleased now… since I met the lucky fox twice in one day…”

Uncharacteristically, Hugo’s voice trailed off as he added.

“It was a kind of luck experiment, ugh…”

“Stop talking about luck experiments.”

He knew Hugo’s philosophy about ‘luck’, but experiments should be conducted step by step to observe the progress, what kind of experiment was it to just throw your body into it recklessly.

It was obvious that it was retaliation for s*xual harassment. These days, he was often dazed during meetings. He would blush around his cheekbones, probably imagining something, looking like a newlywed groom.

“Hngh… ugh.”

Hugo couldn’t continue speaking and groaned in pain. A tidal wave of nerve pain hit him without warning.

It felt like shattered shards of gold were raking through his head. After the sharp edges ravaged his brain, they scraped out his eyeballs and tore his throat to shreds.

“Cough, cough…”

Hugo grabbed the bedsheet and struggled not to lose consciousness. The dragon’s claws tore the bedsheet like paper. Cotton fibers scattered like snow. Transparent tears flowed down his cheeks. They were so hot and viscous that Hugo thought he was bleeding from his eyes. He couldn’t even breathe properly.

Beep, beep beep—.

It was chaos. The vital signs connected to Hugo’s body fluctuated. The doctors, including the attending physician, moved in unison. However, they did not take any medical measures, such as administering drugs.

Click, click. They skillfully restrained Hugo’s limbs to the bed. In extreme pain, he might unknowingly harm himself or others. In fact, during the restraint process, the safety pads on the doctors’ forearms and chests were torn.

The dragonewt, suffering from karmic pain, was losing his reason. The restrained man thrashed like a beast. The pain that split his head was now traveling down his esophagus. It was the beginning of the burning sensation. Long claws and a huge horn, a little under a meter long, that had ominously sprouted, proved this.

Dragons don’t reveal their horns just any time, as they are precious to them. They reveal their horns when they lose their reason, when they are overwhelmed by extreme pain, and rarely, when they want to appeal to the opposite s*x.

No type of painkiller, sedative, or muscle relaxant worked on karmic pain. The fact that one had to endure the terrifying pain as it was was why this pain was called cruel. Some doctors compared Hugo’s karmic pain to phantom pain, in that only the pain perception function of the brain was alive, and there were no physical changes in the body.

“Argh, haa… Thibeau…”

“…Master. I’m here.”

Thibeau answered with a complicated expression. Although he had witnessed this scene many times, he could never get used to the sight of his master, whom he had served since he was a child, suffering so much.

No matter how much it was said to be the dragon’s karma-clearing process, he always wondered if Hugo was becoming more twisted because of this excruciating pain. No one could endure such pain in their right mind.

“Plin… the white fox…”

Hugo couldn’t finish his sentence.

It was his third time fainting. The doctors secured his airway, made sure he was breathing properly, and checked his blood pressure. They released his legs and massaged them to ensure proper blood flow.

To avoid getting in the way of the busy doctors, Thibeau stepped back and almost bumped into someone.

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

“You’re working hard.”

“No, ma’am.”

Hugo’s mother, Lady Baek, looked at her unconscious son from afar. She naturally wanted to get closer, but it was to avoid disturbing the medical staff. As befitting her benevolent personality, her finely wrinkled face showed a hint of concern.

“What is it this time?”

It wasn’t a harsh tone, but the end of her words was firm.

“I was careless in my service.”

“I’m not here to argue.”

He couldn’t drag it out any longer. In any case, if she was going to find out, it was better for her to hear the sugar-coated truth through him. Having made up his mind, Thibeau carefully began.

“…Recently, the master found a ‘real’ white fox. The master was very happy because the periodic karmic pain didn’t come. He considered it great luck… and he wanted to test if the karmic pain would disappear if he kept the fox by his side…”

“Test, you say.”

Her neat eyebrows rose. Thibeau, sensing her mood, quickly took a step back.

“…Additionally, it seems he was trying to uphold justice. The victim was a person who habitually committed s*xual harassment and species discrimination in the company. Of course, justice should be realized publicly by state agencies, but for such cases, the punishment is often inadequate, and there isn’t even a prosecution…”

“Get to the point.”

Lady Baek closed her eyes, and a calm anger could be seen between her brows. Suppressing his urge to speak, Thibeau answered based on the who, what, where, when, why, and how.

“At 1 AM today, because the victim s*xually harassed the white fox, Master harbored a grudge and struck Branson Vayne’s head with a bat in the Centerbelt area, causing an injury that requires two weeks of recovery.”

Thibeau held up two fingers.

“I know that Hugo’s personality is far from just.”

“Yes, ma’am…”

He had no words to refute that. He didn’t make any further excuses.

“Haa… My precious child, who did he take after to be like this.”

She let out a sigh. No matter how much they taught him, it was no use.