Chapter 8 - A Discussion on Corpse Growths

The walk back to the farm had just begun when Caina's grumpily grunted Noah's direction, "I would have appreciated being told we were leaving the village."

Noah chuckled, "sorry, didn't cross my mind. Was more focused on getting a healer."

Caina's eyes narrowed and burrowed into Noah's side as they continued step for step down the flattened dirt road that wound through the forest that surrounded the village and by proxy Liora's farm.

"I can see that," she hissed. Her irate expression faltering before she let out a sigh, "haaa… so what's wrong with the girl? She dealing with internal pain or something more prompt in nature?" she decided that perhaps in place of being annoyed getting an idea of what her patient may have would help her prepare the necessary treatments for it.

Noah bobbed his head to the side, his toes digging into the dirt as they walked, a fact he became all to aware of after Caina so kindly reminded him back in the tavern. "Definitely more prompt. She's got a, uh, cut, a big one."

Cain nodded already thinking about the balms she'd need to stop the bleeding and help with the sealing of the wound, but she needed more information than 'it's a big cut.'

"Can you go into more detail? How big exactly? Do you know the depth? Any sign of corpse growths? Where on the body? Chest? Back? Legs?"

Noah processed her request, drawing a blank at 'corpse growths.'

"I'm sorry, but what are corpse growths?"

Caina frowned, sending him a look as if it were the most idiotic question she ever did hear. "You're not very read, are you?" Noah flinched, even he knew what that meant in context of another world.

She just called him stupid. And he couldn't retort because in terms of this world he was just that, stupid.

"Sorry, memories hazy over the past few weeks and beyond. I barely remember much of my past let alone stuff like 'corpse growths' so if you could just humour me."

"Amnesia?" she questioned with a raised brow.

"Yeah," Not completely accurate but it worked.

Caina sighed, "can't help with that," she shrugged glancing her eyes over the depths of the forests, "corpse growths, its this horrible disease that those with open wounds tend to get. The area of the wound will progressively get worse and start releasing ichor while sometimes the skin may even start turning black and die. Apart from cutting the limb off, there's nothing I can do about such wounds. I just don't have the equipment on me to deal with that type of thing. So, she have any of that? If so I'll start sharpening my bone saw."

Noah flinched away, a bone saw was the last thing he was going to let this girl take to Liora's arm. 'Sounds like she means an infection,' he concluded, still not glad with the insinuation of amputation that just made him want to sprint back to ensure no infection happened to come about.

"From what I saw, no, there wasn't any infection. But that was hours ago when I first bound the wound. Which, thinking about it used the shirt I had on at the time," he lifted his hand to his lips and press his knuckles to his lips, "that thing can't have been very clean."

Now it was Caina's turn to look confused, "Infection? What in the world is that? And what does a shirt being not clean have to do with this?"

'Right, medieval times. Hygiene and sciency words aren't prominent here.'

"Infection is what you called corpse growths. Just another word for the same thing." Caina rose a brow but said nothing in response. A word for the same thing was hardly anything she needed to care about, though infection… it certainly sounded better than corpse growths. That would just be another thought for later.

"The fact that the shirt I used for Liora's bandages not being clean or sanitized just increases her chance of getting an infection." He grumbled, now finding he wanted to race back to the farm to get it off her and reclean the wound with whatever Caina had in her satchel of many things.

"Why would that be?"

Noah's head flew Caina's direction, searching for any signs of her pulling his leg, and yet all he saw was a genuinely confused and curious girl.

"Its not like cleanliness has anything to do with gaining corpse growths."

'I'm sorry what?' cleanliness had everything to do with not getting an infection, it was literally the only way apart from antibiotics that would help prevent getting one. But once again, medieval times leads to medieval means of thought. "Caina, if you don't mind me asking, how does someone develop corpse growths?"

Caina frowned, chalking Noah's idiotic question up to his apparent amnesia, this was a simple thing everyone knew. "Considering you are dull in the head," Noah twitched, being called stupid was one thing, but dull? Really? "I will tell you. Corpse growths are a curse of the goddess of pestilence, Parminal. Formed by a curse she placed upon the world in the form of an ambient miasma that forms around those with untreated wounds. Slowly seeping into the wound before manifesting as a putrid yellow ichor that fills the wound, slowly eating and destroying the skin in an effort to kill those who are taken by the plague. Cleanliness means nothing to an ever-present miasma."

It was about as accurate as he had expected, maybe a little more so. He could see the initial signs of them understanding what bacteria was, and they certainly had the essence down of a wound infection. But they lacked an understanding of pus and what its purpose was.

He was no doctor, but he knew that pus was just evidence of the body sending white blood cells and various other things to fight of the infection. It certainly wasn't something that ate the body. Dead cells certainly couldn't eat anything.

Perhaps he, even with his trivial knowledge of modern medicine could help these people learn something new about medicine, even if it were just simple things like hygiene standards and the various ways a disease could be transferred from person to person.

He doubted he could become anything like a saint or whatever the term this world used and have his word travel world or kingdom wide. He was not a person seeking for such popularity. If he could help the few around him, that was more than enough.

"Thank you for the explanation…"

"Welcome," Caina quickly replied.

"But I have to disagree with this idea of an ever-present miasma by some higher being the reason for someone becoming infected."

Caina's steps halted while Noah kept walking, only stopping once he notice her not besides him and turned to face her. Seeing an irritated expression on her face, "And what do ya know!? Ya ain' ever had the training! Don't you come round and spout some shit about knowing something ya ain't studied for."

Noah was left a blank at her sudden and thick accent.

"I spent years studyin for my badge! You ain't got shit!" Caina lifted up her left arm and showed off a small teardrop pin with a small blue sapphire at the centre of it on her wrist. "So shut yer mouth about knowing stuff you. Don't. know. About!" Steam vented from Caina's nose as she stormed past a befuddled Noah.

Had he known she'd take him commenting on it he would have shut his mouth.

And yet, he already opened it. May as well keep it going.

"Look," Noah shook himself awake and sped up to her side, keeping pace with her, "I wasn't questioning your belief. I just meant to add my own thought on it."

"Ya? Then it's a stupid thought, so just shut yer mouth, because ya don't know shit about medicine especially when ya can't remember your own past."

"I agree." Caina stumbled over her feet, normally when someone tried to act like they knew something, they were just c.o.c.ky bastards trying to impress her and get into her pants. Saying he agreed with her about knowing nothing about medicine was a first.

"I'm no healer, I have no training and no experience. I barely know my potion from my poultice. And I may not have many memories of my past life, but I do remember a few concepts. Things that go against this idea of this miasma being the reason for infections. I didn't mean to offend you. And I'm sorry I did. I just thought to maybe start a conversation with you and learn from it." Noah lowered his head to her, "once again, I am sorry for offending you in the way I did. I didn't mean to act like I knew more than you did."

Him being so kind to her after her outburst was putting a dampener on the whole anger thing she had going. Caina scratched behind her ear, unable to look at Noah, "no, I over-reacted," she grumbled apologetically, "back at the school everyone kept acting all high and mighty like they knew everything cause they were noble born while I put effort into my studies. Doesn't help when I run into people who think they know everything about things they don't know about."

Noah was all to familiar with those people, the arrogant thinking themselves omniscient, constantly flipflopping from one bout of internet googled knowledge to another with barely a thought to questioning a professional themselves.

Silence befell the two as they continued their walk. Said silence remaining between them for minutes on end until finally Caina up and said, "If you don't mind, I'd like to hear whatever it is you think is the cause of corpse growths. I'll try not to get annoyed."

'Try being the operative word.' Noah snorted. She seemed to genuinely want to listen to him now that she didn't think he was trying to be a know it all. "From what I remember," Noah pinched his chin to think, "infections- or, well, corpse growths as you call them. Are something gained through certain bacteria entering a wound where they will begin to grow and multiply within the body. The body will then start trying to fight off the bacteria creating the pus which itself doesn't cause the wound to worsen…" Noah cast a glance to Caina, realizing that some of the words he used were beyond her.

"Bacteria are what I guess you could compare to this miasma of yours. Question, is there only one type of miasma, or are there multiple?"

Caina hummed to herself, "there's just one. Is that not so for this 'bacteria' thing you are speaking about?"

"Not in the slightest," he shook his head, "bacteria is more of a collective term than anything. You know how snakes have poison in their fangs?" he waited for Caina to nod, "now imagine that poison floats through the air, is invisible and comes in hundreds of thousands of different variations each having their own different attributes, either good or bad. That's a stripped-down version of what bacteria is in essence. I can go a bit more in depth into it, but my word is hardly law on this topic. Really all you need to know about it is that certain bacteria feast inside injuries and will breed within said wound forming an infection."

He could see suspicion and doubt in Caina's face, what he said about a flying poison seemed ridiculous to her, why would a poison fly through the air? How was that to do any harm. That wasn't to mean she didn't believe him somewhat; she had heard rumours of mushrooms forming clouds of toxic mists. But those were mushrooms, not whatever a 'bacteria' was.

"This bacteria is alive?"

"Yes."

"Then what does it look like?"

That was a question he was not prepared for, how was he supposed to explain an amorphous blob of sickness without a book on hand that actually explained it better than he could. "I don't know. They're smaller than the eye can see."

"Smaller than the eye can see? That's just idiotic. Why would there be creatures smaller than what one can see? That just seems pointless and inefficient." She huffed a breath.

Noah could just shrug, he didn't have any way to magnify and get a proper look at bacteria for her to believe her, so he'd just have to settle for word instead. "I can't prove it, but that's how it goes." He lifted his head, swivelling it around beginning to notice the trees thinning out and a thick golden hue forming between them. They'd spent longer talking than he thought, they were close to the farmhouse. Just ten, maybe twenty more minutes before Liora could get her treatment.

Caina didn't say anything, just stewing with the idea of miniature creatures in the shape of rabbits and boars breeding within wounds to bring about corpse growths. 'No… that's just stupid.' She sighed. Why did she even give him the time, it was just ridiculous an idea.

Just as they were about to pass into the beginning of the golden fields of wheat, a soft rustling from a bush behind them drew both their gazes to turn around, now realizing there, along with the rustling of the bush was a slight buzzing noise.

It didn't take long for Noah and Caina to realize what it was. And what it was caused them both to widen their eyes in surprise, "a Saborian honey bee… those shouldn't be this far away from the mountains?"

Indeed, twas a honeybee, that hovered a foot off the ground. Shaped like a young girl with two large black compound eyes in place of human eyes. Atop her head were two large segmented antennae, starting as black at the bottom but gradiating to yellow the closer it got to the tip of the antenna.

Her… it's? entire body was layered in plates of shiny dark chitin with bright yellow, frizzy fur peaking through across various parts of her body, acting even as her hair albeit her hair grew much longer and resembled almost silk in its consistency with a thick ring of white fur running around her neck like a scarf.

Even from her back he could see a bees abdomen with overlapping segments of yellow, black and browns with a sharper point on the end. But most unnervingly for Noah was the fact that the girls entire lower half, her legs specifically were of three separate and well-defined segments, her upper leg, going to her knee being the femur. Then from her knee to her ankle forming the tibia, growing progressively thinner and thinner before it formed into a third nearly curved and nearly as long metatarsus that finally ended in a slightly curved and pointed tarsus with two small claws on the end of it.

Were she not floating a foot off the ground, Noah may have very well mistaken the girl for a cosplayer, every part of her screamed it. And yet he knew he'd be utterly wrong.

The insectoid girl hovered around the pathway for a few seconds looking around her, even wandering its compound eyes over Noah and Caina for a few seconds while its translucent wigs rapidly fluttered to keep her off the ground and floating across the path and into the forest, ignoring both the people who were just silently watching it.

"That was an interesting sight to see. Shall we keep walking? I don't want to keep this patient waiting for much longer." Caina didn't wait for his response and just turned on heel, already predicting that the pathway into the field would lead to wherever they were going.

Noah was still dumbstruck by the sight of the Saborian honeybee. It looked so human, but it wasn't. It was female, that much he knew from its wider h.i.p.s and the noticeable bump on its yellow, n.i.p.p.l.e-less chest. But its added segmented body parts and bug-eyed eyes shut that thought off almost immediately.

He had been expecting it, especially after reading through the monster encyclopaedia, how most if not all the monsters within were humanoid in one way or another. And now he had the evidence to prove the case.

"This world is f.u.c.k.i.n.g weird." He mumbled to himself taking step after step backwards, staring into the distance where he could see the silhouette of the little monster girl. Turning on heel to catch up with Caina who had put a good distance between them while he was stuck in bafflement.

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Yeah, so i'm going for the literal interpretation of MONSTER-girl. Not just human girls with simple things like an added abdomen or half spider. I mean all the works, eyes, jaws and all that fun stuff. I just find the more monstrous looking ones more fitting with the world I have envisioned and honestly, more interesting.

I don't blame anyone who finds it a turn off. But hey, we all have our own kinks.

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Early chapter cause I feel like I kept you waiting long enough.

Okay, so update on Patre-on. Those in the $10+ range get access to all chapters of Monstergirl Rancher early aswell as any other stories I produce in the future, but those in the $3/$5 tiers will get access to an additional chapter every time a new one gets released on . Essentially meaning those in the $3-$5 do actually get a small perk every week.

Another added bonus, I've decided to shift the releases from once a week, to twice a week. Which I can either do on the same day, or spread across the week on tuesday and thursday/friday. I'll put that up to you guys to decide upon

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danbooru.donmai.us/posts/3543184

This is about as close but not exactly what I was thinking the Saborian Honey bee would look like. And with the size of this ones 'assets' this would instead be considered the queen while the soldiers and workers (Which appeared in this chapter) would be smaller.

I've made a new category on the discord where all monster girl species will get their images posted (all of which are unnoficial until I can either afford, or draw my own ill.u.s.trations for them.)