Chương 26: [That Time I Accidentally Got Rabies On Fifty-Six Separate Occasions During a Time Skip]

"So how are we going to negotiate this?" It's easy to forget while nurtured by the often-gentle hands of the 21st century, but when you were living in a pre-industrial world, life-or-death negotiations weren't exclusive to the realm of the high nobles and their scheming courts. Neighbors on the cusp of starvation might find themselves tensely bargaining for hours over crop failures and hunting prizes.

Peddlers teetering on bankruptcy could spend hours carefully spending their stock and their goodwill on increasingly desperate gambles to reverse their fortunes. It even existed here, at the family table, with three sets of eyes carefully gauging the other — probing for weakness, exploring for opportunity, and winding up in anticipation for an attack.

"Aye, well, thing is, I just don't wantcha suckin' on me wife's tits."

"But I'm a hungry boy."

"Sure, sure, but… y'know." M'lresli'svi'sw gestured broadly at his wife, who nodded in quiet agreement with her husband's assessment.

"Would it help at all if I told you that despite having the mind of an adult man, biologically my body hasn't developed any of the physical chemicals that would allow me to actually derive any kind of sexual gratification from the experience?"

"Son, yer talkin' as if a pair of peasants could understand what the heck that means. I don't even know how to read."

"And I couldn't even finish my masters in data science after that brain parasite ate my frontal lobe," Merrith agreed.

"Ah beans," I snap my finger.

"You should really stop breakin' yer fingers like that."

"Having nine broken fingers will be the least of my problems if I starve to death," I assure my father.

"If I can't get any of that tit-illating tit lactate, what are our alternatives?" M'lini'snti'sno took a quick glance around to see if there was any easy solution to a difficult problem. Good thing he did because there was.

"Oh! I just strangled a rat with this old rag. You could suck the blood right off!"

"I'm not a pediatrician but that's probably okay." (TIME SKIP WOWIE) The village doctor was a common sight in our household, and not just because I kept getting rabies from my diet of dried rat blood. Once the rest of the villagers in our insignificant dust collection of a town found out that not one, but two people had been isekai'd here, the doctor had made a point to check in with me every week or so to get an idea of how I was developing. He called it a matter of intellectual curiosity.

I called it a waste of my time. Except for all the rabies treatment.

"I've been reviewing my notes, Mr. Protagonist, and I have come to a startling conclusion."

"Tell it to me straight, doc," I run my severely malformed fingers through my hair.

"I have pushes to up. Chins to also up. Cults to vate." The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"It's just… I realized something phenomenal. You are… immeasurable."

"Heh," I snort, "did you expect anything less from the future anti-hero savior of your universe? I'm a nuclear bomb of potential babe. I breathe hurricanes and piss typhoons. I swallow dragons and spit out the scales cuz I outscale everything. I'm technically inorganic because no cell can contain me."

"Maybe? But also you're literally immeasurable. I have no idea how tall you are, what you weigh, etc. This could be a real problem if you have high blood pressure or something."

"Heh," I snorter, as I just leveled up my snorting skill.

"Don't you worry about that, Doctor. Once we find out what my amazing cheat skill is from the Goddess, the only pressure I'll feel is my financial obligations to pay off my medical debt."

"There's nothing I can do about that." The doctor stood up.

"I'll swing by a few more times during the next time skip, but you'll never see me again, okay?"

"Heh," I snorterer, "Don't worry about it. Soon the only doctor I'll need is a doctorate in data science to understand all the data on my Stats Screen when I finally get to see it."

"Oh, you could ask your mom for help with that." The Doctor nodded, standing up to brush the dirt off HER skirt. Yeah, I bet you assumed it was a man because I said he was a doctor didn't you? Well check yourself. Women can be doctors too. You'd know that if you cultivated your woke skills.

"I just might. See you later off-screen, Mr. Doctor."

"Yeah, sure. Also I can't measure if you have rabies anymore."

"Ah beans." (ANOTHER TIME SKIP?? WOWE!!!)"It's tradition in our village to send our young boys out on journeys when they reach ten years old," M'lliesn'stin're's's'w'e proudly announced to the rest of the village, a sparkle in his eye and a hand on my back.

"But since we don't know how old the Protagonist is we're just gonna send him out now." Everyone cheered. I was a strapping man of some unknown number of years now, standing at a proud height of???? with XX healthy teeth and probably at least two digits worth of functioning fingers. I had spent my childhood doing various exercises and not sexually harassing either my mother or my baby sister, who stood at the front of the crowd with a faint blush.

My parents didn't waste any time pumping her out after I entered their lives, and they fawned on her with all the love and support they never showed me. Which was fine. I didn't need their love. A loving family would just make it harder to be the brooding all-powerful God of a protagonist I was destined to be.

"As is also tradition," my father continued, "this fully-adult man who is technically my son has prepared a speech for this occasion. Would you be so kind as to start, Mr. Protagonist?"

"Of course," I take a step forward and puff out my chest, several buttons ripping off as my enormous chest strained against the confines of my peasants' rags.

"To the dear villagers of whatever town this is: I just wanted you to know that for the past however many years it's been, it has been a real treat growing up among you. I've learned so much in my time here. Like your names! And your occupations. And all the various quirks that make you all feel like living agents in a thriving and well-developed world. Of course, you all know about that so there's no need for me to repeat it."

Everyone in the audience agreed — they WERE a super well-developed cast of supporting characters with a rich and detailed history, weren't they?

"But tragically, as the Protagonist, I cannot be contained to this small town, lest you one day fall victim to bandits or monsters or the encroaching capitalist ventures of the Accident Factory. So I must away on a grand journey and I suspect I shall never return. But I'll always remember the rats' blood. The doctor. And all that other crap I already talked about." I took a step back, putting a hand to my bulging, swollen chest.

"In fact… I think the only thing I could forget… is my medical debt okay bye."

"It's not a bit!" Ilia shouted at me as I sprinted the other direction.

"This will be a critical plot point, I swear!"