Chapter 20 - Didn't Something Like This Happen Before?
Translator: Roshi
I received one billion won.
I had no choice.
If I didn't take it, he looked ready to plant himself right on our house's plush floor pad alongside Cer and never leave.
The place was spacious enough for living alone, but too small to accommodate one more full-grown man on top of that, so I took the billion and sent him on his way.
And even that was after haggling it down repeatedly.
-Hahaha. I'll have my lawyer handle the tax issues, so please don't worry about a thing.
Raymond broke into a beaming smile the moment I reluctantly agreed to take the money, then headed back with Jickan.
"Hmm. What am I supposed to do with this."
My mother always told me to be wary of free money.
She emphasized the value of income earned through honest labor.
I agreed wholeheartedly.
Because the money earned from treating cute animals felt so much more rewarding, even if the amount was the same.
'But honestly, this is pretty legitimate in its own way.'
It was money received for curing a curse that no one else in the entire world could treat.
I also got Jickan summoning rights and the right to have him play with Cer.
'Isn't this enough to justify spending it?'
Economically speaking, the best use for this billion won would be "investing."
When a lump sum comes in, the textbook move is to put it to work.
The fastest way to grow money is stocks, but.
Stocks can make you money, but they can also lose you money.
I'd heard enough to consider putting it into dividend stocks, but I shelved that idea for now.
What actually came to mind first was buying my parents a bigger house.
It would be a filial thing to do, and I wouldn't have to agonize over how to invest either.
'But if I tell them I got a billion won as a treatment fee, Mom would probably smack me upside the back.'
Even if I offered it, they probably wouldn't accept it anyway.
So the idea I came up with instead.
Was buying the building my Animal Hospital was in.
It wasn't a particularly big building, after all.
Maybe because it was an older construction, it seemed I could buy it for around 800 million.
On top of that, since I wouldn't have to pay the rent I'd been paying, it could be seen as having a similar effect to investing!
Jeong Shin-hu.
A man with many worries, but once he makes a decision, he acts pretty fast.
I bought the building right away.
"Cer, this building is mine now. Hahaha!"
Kkiing? Wasn't it already yours, master?
I explained the concept of rent to Cer.
Cer was clever and understood quickly.
Kking! Congratulations, master! You're so cool!
Lick.
I pet Cer as he celebrated enthusiastically.
It might not be a big building, but I was now one of those building owners I'd only ever heard about.
Feeling oddly proud, I gazed up at the hospital building.
"Ssaem! There's a patient with an appointment waiting inside!"
"Oh, right."
Yeah, even a building owner has to do what he has to do.
"Let's go in, Cer."
Kkiing!
*
"Thank you, doctor!"
"You're welcome." [TL: In the original, this line is written in clumsy Korean-phonetic English (유어 웰컴), humorously showing the protagonist's stiff English.]
Ding!
[Your EXP has increased by 1.]
[Restoration Lv.7 (Stage 2) effect: EXP gain slightly increased.]
[You have gained an additional 0.12 EXP.]
...
[Restoration 10 consecutive successes bonus: EXP increased by 100.]
[Restoration Lv.7 (Stage 2) effect: EXP gain slightly increased.]
[You have gained an additional 12 EXP.]
"Phew! Feels like we're getting more and more patients, doesn't it?"
Patients from abroad had especially increased.
Most of them had intractable diseases that were difficult to treat through conventional veterinary medicine.
Of course, my Restoration skill could cure even those kinds of illnesses the moment I laid my hands on them.
Any other minor ailments or inflammations getting healed in the process was just a bonus.
Seeing animals spring back to health and hop around, while their owners held back tears, always made me smile.
"My goodness, you're only charging this much for the treatment?"
"We charge based on the standards our hospital has set, so please don't worry about it."
Since health insurance doesn't apply to animal hospitals, treatment fees are basically set at each hospital's own discretion.
However, since every treatment at our hospital just ends with a single heal, click, and done.
Our pricing standards were a bit different from other hospitals.
For injuries, for example, the fee was standardized by severity: minor, serious, or emergency.
For illnesses, it was divided into mild, severe, and rare/intractable/incurable, with fees standardized for each category.
The amounts for each category were decided after careful deliberation with Park Ji-yeon.
Not too cheap, but also not so absurdly expensive that someone who wanted to save their beloved pet couldn't afford to.
We'd been flexibly adjusting things little by little over time, and that's how the current system came to be.
Since we were curing diseases that no amount of money could treat elsewhere, the owners might feel like our prices were absurdly cheap.
But the point was, this price list had its own history behind it.
And objectively speaking, the amounts weren't all that cheap either.
Anyway.
Since there were plenty of foreign patients questioning the treatment fees.
I started thinking I should make a big, prominently displayed fee chart with foreign language translations.
"Ssaem! The next patient is ready to come in!"
"Coming."
I prepared to see my next cute patient, like always.
Creak.
The owner who opened the door and walked in had nothing in their hands.
I greeted them first and tilted my head curiously, and he explained.
"Hello, doctor. Would it be possible for you to take a look at my summon?"
"Ah, so you're a hunter. Sure, of course."
He'd come in empty-handed because he was a summoner.
This was the second summon patient since Jickan.
"Shall we take a look?"
"Yes. Summon."
Whoosh!
What appeared out of thin air was a large hawk-type summon.
The summon flapped its wings and landed on the summoner's arm with a slightly weary expression.
"We went into a Gate and got hit with a debuff while taking down an Orc Shaman boss. The thing is, it says it can't be removed for a set period of time..."
Normally, debuffs like this would be removed by buffer-class hunters who had the Dispel skill.
But apparently, that didn't work on this one.
When I checked the detailed information.
[Debuff: Shaman's Grudge]
-Inflicts slowdown, stamina reduction, and mana reduction for a set duration. (Remaining duration: 29 days)
※This debuff cannot be removed.
A debuff that couldn't be removed for an entire month.
"It's not life-threatening, but Windy's been feeling sluggish this whole time... And with the debuff, we can't even enter Gates anymore."
Understandable, since they needed to regularly clear Gates to make a living.
Like this, they couldn't even enter a Gate at their proper rank, and even if they did, the danger level during combat would be far too high.
'Hmm. It says it's an unremovable debuff, but will it work?'
I wasn't sure if I could do something the system had outright declared impossible.
Well, only one way to find out.
"Alright, let me give it a try. Restoration."
I placed my hand on the large hawk Windy's back and activated my skill.
Flash!
Whoosh!
Light seeped in, and.
Fortunately, Windy regained its strength in an instant.
Chirp!
As if it had never been drooping, Windy flapped its wings vigorously.
Then it nuzzled its face gratefully against my hand.
Ding!
[Your EXP has increased by 754.]
[Restoration Lv.7 (Stage 2) effect: EXP gain slightly increased.]
[You have gained an additional 90 EXP.]
Since the patient was a summon, the EXP gain was incomparably higher than from regular animals, and.
[Achievement: You have cured an unremovable debuff. (Repeatable)]
[You have gained 3,000 EXP.]
[Restoration Lv.7 (Stage 2) effect: EXP gain slightly increased.]
[You have gained an additional 360 EXP.]
The unremovable debuff I'd been worried about was even classified as an achievement and gave me EXP.
'So it does work.'
EX-rank for the win.
I'd thought the achievement EXP was a bit stingy for removing something that was supposed to be unremovable, but seeing that it was repeatable made it make sense.
"Wooow...! I came just on the off chance, and you really can cure anything...! Thank you so much. I'm so glad I worked up the nerve to come!"
"Haha. Don't mention it. Seeing your summon get its energy back makes me happy too."
The summoner unsummoned Windy, bowed several times in thanks, then left the treatment room.
A moment later, Park Ji-yeon's voice rang out.
"Ssaem! But how are we supposed to charge for this one?"
"Oh."
It seemed like I'd need to create a new fee category.
*
"Haaah! Time to go home!"
Kkiing!! It's time to go home!
Another fulfilling day of treatments was done.
I'd earned a lot of EXP and made a lot of money too.
Today especially, the summoner's visit had netted me a nice chunk of EXP.
As it turned out, there was a reason summoners were suddenly showing up and foreign patients were increasing.
[Black Phoenix Guild's S-Rank Summoner Raymond's Sudden Visit to Korea, Why?]
[S-Rank Summon Jickan. The Thunder-Commanding Summon Was Hit by a Curse?]
[No Awakener with S-Rank Curse Removal Skill Exists; Wound Untreatable Even by S-Rank Heals]
[EX-Rank Healer Jeong Shin-hu of Korea Reported to Have Completely Cured It]
[World Attention Focused on News of Jickan's Treatment]
[Summoners Worldwide and Owners of Pets with Rare Diseases Expected to Turn Their Eyes to Korea...]
It seemed the news had spread far more widely, and far more globally, than I'd expected.
The moment I opened the main page of a portal site, stories about the EX-rank healer were plastered everywhere.
People's reactions were hotter than I'd expected, too.
└Whoa, the EX-rank healer did this?
└That guy was an early Awakener who didn't do any hunter work because he couldn't heal humans
└Right. EX-rank but running some animal hospital
└But he really does cure everything except humans?
└That hospital has good reviews too. They say the director is kind and highly skilled.
└He can't heal humans? Then just don't lol
└fr lol
└But doesn't this mean if we have our boy Jeong Shin-hu, he can treat every summon in the world?
└True but this was a special case, got cursed by an S-rank boss and even S-rank healers couldn't fix it so they came to him
└Yeah normally a regular healer could handle it
└Still, Jeong Shin-hu is definitely the last line of defense
└fr we've got some summoner hunters in our country too right, must be so reassuring
└And other articles say Raymond offered to help clear Korean Gates anytime as a thank you
└fr? That's insane so he didn't just get paid, he got summoning rights?
└Wow what a freakin patriot if it were me I'd have just asked for like 100 billion and retired lol
└lmaooo true
└The dude's an EX-rank healer who can't heal his own kind so he was like sweet and happily ran a one-man animal hospital, he just built different lol
Well, to be precise, it wasn't because I was a patriot. Cer just liked Jickan so much that I asked for playtime, and the rest was just conditions that came attached to that.
Anyway.
With articles like these hitting portal sites and the topic blowing up in hunter communities.
People were flooding in from all over.
Well, I was happy if more summons came.
Summons gave a lot of EXP, after all.
"Cer, want to take a walk on the way home before heading in?"
Kkiing! Kking!
He'd been happily sitting with his Comfort Toy, but he must have been itching to move around in his own way.
"Oh my, isn't that Cer?"
"Oh, you're right!"
"Hello, doctor! Would it be okay if we took a picture with Cer?"
"Of course."
Kkiing!
Ever since the news about Cer saving a child had aired, more and more people recognized him during our walks.
On the neighborhood walking route, Cer was nothing short of a celebrity.
Click, click!
He'd gotten quite used to being photographed by now, even striking his best angles and poses in time with the shutter sounds.
"It came out so well!"
"Thank you."
"Cer, thank you. Bye!!"
Kkiing! Goodbye!
Cer saw the passersby off, then pranced around the walking route like he was on top of the world.
And when we got back home.
[Have you been well, Cer?]
Kkiiing!!
He dashed over to Jickan and buried his face in his mane.
The little guy had energy to spare.
[Heh heh heh, you rascal. That happy to see me?]
Jickan had shrunk himself down to around Cer's size and was playing with him.
Gone was that agonized look from yesterday; he seemed to be enjoying himself in his own way.
"Let's eat, Cer. Would you like some meat too, Jickan-nim? Cer grills it really well."
Kkiiing!!
[Heh heh, well then, let me see...]
Whoosh!
Sizzle sizzle sizzle sizzle!!
Watching Cer grill and eat the meat, Jickan took a bite too.
Chomp chomp.
[Ohhh... From this cut of meat, such flavor... Cer's flames truly are extraordinary.]
Jickan, too, fell under the spell of Cer's signature open-flame grilling and inhaled the meat.
[Thank you for the hospitality, benefactor. I'm afraid my time is up, so I must take my leave...]
Kkiing! Come play again!
After Jickan left, I was craving meat too, so I asked Cer to grill some for me and ate.
Seriously, it's not just me who thinks this is delicious.
Cer really does grill it well.
I finished my satisfying meal and stood up.
"Serintia should be coming in a few days."
Thinking about the innocent Serintia brought another smile to my face.
How should I put it, it was kind of like having sent a daughter off to a boarding school.
The time I'd drunkenly whined about wanting to raise a daughter, that wish seemed to have been granted in a roundabout way, which felt both strange and nice.
'Heh heh, I'm not even married yet and here I am talking about a daughter.'
Hmm, but come to think of it, didn't something similar happen with Cer too?
......
...Huh?
*****
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