"Uuughh," a slightest of groans muffled by the beeps and clicks of different machines and monitors triggered Marcie to stir. Her head pounded with an ache that is reminiscent of a hangover and her eyes found themselves ultra sensitive to the smallest of light. What had really jarred her awake, however, was a rather putrid smell that wafted in from the vents above.
She recalled this odor only once in her life. As a child she had the pleasure of being dragged by a distant relative to their workplace one summer who was looking after her while her parents were on vacation. It was such a grotesquely terrible idea as that workplace happened to be a slaughter house for the local ranchers of the community. Aside from the awful stench of butchered animals, she remembered throwing a day-long tantrum at her relative until she used up so much energy that she fell asleep.
Marcie felt a queasiness swell up in the pit of her stomach and desperately wanted to relieve her distress into a nearby garbage can. The thoughts of action, as natural as they may have seemed, have been unable to be formed into action as she lay on the bed. A shrill of panic began to envelope her upon the realization that she was completely unable to move a single part of her body.
Everything had felt extremely numb and the only thing she seemed capable of doing was blinking her eyes. She tried her best to see what was going on. She wasn't strapped down so something must have happened to her body.
~Ding!
'User is currently paralyzed from a mild tranquilizer. Currently detoxifying…
5 hours 32 minutes until tranquilizer dose is neutralized'
A tranquilizer? Was that what was added to her IV drip in the hospital? Marcie checked her stats in regards to poison.
'Poison Resistance D-3' was what the window of this mysterious system showed. 'Poison Resistance D reached level 3 huh?' Marcie wondered why the system recognized the tranquilizer as a poison. That was something she would have to investigate later.
Closing out the windows for now, Marcie tried to get a more clear understanding of where she was. This wasn't her hospital room, but it still had a very similar set up. There were no windows and a fan in the ceiling was running to circulate air.
'Either I am in an inner room or I am underground…' She thought. The smell of slaughter continued to permeate around the room. Marcie looked forward to when she became nose-blind to it.
'The smell of a slaughterhouse… could this be in the basement of a guild building? I heard they do their own dismantling of monster parts' When the portals first arrived, many privately-owned butchers got overloaded with monster dismantling that caused the meat prices in the market to spike drastically for about a year when the butchers no longer had time to butcher normal livestock. At first, the government attempted to alleviate the strain by handing out grants to open more butcher shops, but that ended up creating a bigger mess. Many of these nubile butchers ended up embezzling valuable monster parts or setting up fake locations for the money grab.
After guilds began to be established, monster butchering moved to being taken care of by them exclusively. This served to re-stabilize the food markets and had managed to block scammers from taking advantage of it. Monster-based items entering the markets have to be endorsed by a properly licensed guild to be accepted.
A click came from the door off to the side of her bed as two figures walked in. Marcie shut her eyes to pretend she is still unconscious. One stepped so lightly she could have mistaken them to be a phantom while the other person sounded like their feet were made from lead. The stomps indicated that this person favored walking on their heels more than the balls of their feet.
"The Patient might wake up at any time now. We need to give her another dose of tranqs while we wait for them to finalize their plan." An older gruff man barked at the other person. His voice was hoarse and smelled heavily of singed cigars. The pungent smell was enough to make Marcie's nose wrinkle ever so slightly.
"Yes yes…" a tired woman cooed back. Marcie felt the sudden tingle in her numb body as a window flashed behind her eyelids.
~Ding!
'You have been inflicted with another dose of tranquilizer. Poison Resistance D is now level 4.
14 hours 16 minutes until tranquilizer is fully neutralized'
Upon hearing the confirmation that she is once again alone in the room, Marcie let out a tiny moan. Even though her anxiety had caused her breathing to shallow, she could only notice the room beginning to twist as she fell back unconscious.