Business picked up faster than expected.
It made sense. Official hospitals charged exorbitant fees; there was always a market for a cheap alternative.
Especially when that alternative actually worked.
Half a month passed.
Every morning, a small line formed in front of "Sosuke's General Store." Most were the local poor, carrying a grotesque variety of injuries.
There were soles pierced by rusted nails. Bloody gashes from strained cables. Children covered in weeping, pus-filled eczema.
Sosuke didn't pick and choose his patients. He worked like a man on an assembly line.
Wash, pour, bandage.
Those fifty Ryo bottles of Purified Water became hard currency on this street.
People started calling him the "Little Miracle Doctor."
Sosuke disliked the title. It drew unnecessary attention.
But he needed money. A massive amount of it.
Right now, he sat behind the counter, a sizzling, fat-dripping roast leg of lamb resting in front of him. It was an entire hind leg. It had cost him eight hundred Ryo.
Sosuke ate ferociously. He didn't even bother chewing thoroughly, swallowing large chunks of meat and sinew whole.
He was eating to forcefully replenish the severe cellular deficit caused by refining chakra.
Half a month of training.
The chakra reserves in his body had finally grown from the thickness of 'two strands of hair' to a single 'chopstick.'
It was still pathetic. Probably worse than a first-year Academy student.
But it was a qualitative leap. He could feel it now—this energy could marginally enhance his muscle output, or sharpen his vision to that of a hawk for brief, localized intervals.
Burp.
Sosuke let out a belch. Only a bone, picked clean, remained of the lamb leg.
The grease made him slightly nauseous, but the cells deep within his body practically sighed in satisfaction.
Right then.
The sunlight filtering through the door was blocked out.
Not by a single person. By a crowd.
The few patients waiting in line scattered in a panic, fleeing as if they'd just seen the plague.
Sosuke wiped the grease from his mouth and looked up.
It was an acquaintance. The young thug who had come in with a pierced foot; his gait had already returned to normal.
He was respectfully leading the way. Behind him, a man was being carried on a makeshift stretcher. Trailing them were over a dozen burly men armed with clubs and short swords.
The Red Snake Gang.
Sosuke didn't move. He remained seated, idly toying with the lamb bone in his hand.
"Clear the room," a bald man at the front growled.
The door to the general store was shut. The curtains were violently drawn.
The room plunged into gloom, lit only by the flickering flame of an oil lamp on the counter.
The stretcher was set down on the empty floorboards.
A foul stench immediately permeated the air. It was the smell of rotting flesh, heavily masked by cheap, pungent cologne. It was nauseating.
A middle-aged man lay on the stretcher. He was emaciated, his face sallow, his eye sockets deeply sunken.
The left leg of his trousers had been cut open. His calf was wrapped in thick black cloth, and dark, tainted blood dripped steadily from the fabric.
"This is our boss," the young thug who had led the way stepped up to the counter and whispered to Sosuke.
"Boss Viper."
Sosuke nodded. The name fit the gang's aesthetic perfectly.
"What happened?" Sosuke asked.
"Dog bite," Viper croaked from the stretcher. His voice was weak, laced with a venomous chill. "A ninja hound."
Sosuke's mind raced.
'A ninja hound.'
In this village, the only ones who bred ninja hounds were the Inuzuka clan. It seemed this gang boss had provoked someone far above his weight class.
"It's been half a month," Viper gasped for air. "The flesh is rotting. Used the best coagulation powder we could find. Useless. The rot keeps spreading."
"Have you sought out a medical-nin?"
"Gutter rats like us don't get into the Konoha Hospital." Viper let out a self-deprecating scoff. "Even if we did, those high-and-mighty doctors wouldn't waste their time treating a street thug."
He locked eyes with Sosuke.
"Word on the street is your water can regrow flesh on bare bone."
"Rumors," Sosuke stated, standing up and stepping around the counter.
He approached the stretcher.
"Unwrap it."
The lackeys hesitated.
"Unwrap it!" Viper snarled.
The black cloth was peeled back, layer by layer.
As the final layer fell away, even the hardened thugs around them couldn't help but avert their eyes.
It was gruesome.
A massive chunk of flesh was missing from his calf, as if it had been violently torn away by a wild beast. The edges of the wound were a necrotic grayish-black, brimming with seeping, yellow-green pus.
Worst of all, the stark white of bone was faintly visible through the rot.
This was no ordinary infection.
A ninja hound's teeth were often coated in proprietary toxins, or their saliva naturally carried chakra that aggressively inhibited cellular regeneration.
"This leg is nearly gone," Sosuke stated bluntly.
"Can you save it?" Viper stared a hole into Sosuke.
"Amputation will save your life."
"I eat because I have these legs." Viper's hand drifted toward the short sword at his waist. "Without my leg, my enemies will chop me into mincemeat by tomorrow. If you don't cure me, you won't survive the night either."
A threat. A naked, unapologetic threat.
Sosuke's expression didn't twitch.
"Treating it will be agonizing. And I'll have to scrape the bone."
"As long as you keep the leg attached, you can skin me alive for all I care."
Sosuke nodded.
He turned and walked toward the back room.
"Prepare hot water. A massive amount of it. And clean basins," he ordered.
The Red Snake Gang immediately scrambled to obey.
In the shadows of the back room, Sosuke extended his hands.
His will surged, activating [Precious Metal Generation].
This time, he manifested a blade. A scalpel forged of pure silver—incredibly thin, and razor-sharp.
Silver was too soft for proper weaponry, but as a single-use disposable scalpel, it was more than sufficient. Moreover, pure silver possessed exceptional, naturally occurring antimicrobial properties.
In addition, he generated a microscopic, needle-thin silver probe.
Task complete, he walked back out carrying a tray covered by a white cloth.
"Hold him down," Sosuke instructed. "No matter how loud he screams, do not let him move."
Four bruisers stepped forward, pinning Viper's limbs with a dead-weight grip.
Sosuke pulled back the white cloth. The silver edge of the scalpel flashed under the oil lamp.
Viper's pupils constricted violently. He was an expert with blades; he could tell at a glance that this knife was extraordinary.
No wasted words.
Sosuke went to work. He didn't need anesthetics. He didn't have any anyway.
The blade sank into the rotting flesh like a hot knife through butter.
"Urgh!!!"
Viper's body arched violently, a feral, guttural roar rumbling in his throat. Yet he stubbornly swallowed the scream.
He was a ruthless bastard, indeed.
Sosuke's hands were dead steady. Between two lifetimes of existence and the countless surgical compilations he had studied in his previous world, he was no stranger to human anatomy, even without practical experience.
More importantly, chakra enhanced his visual acuity and manual stability. He could clearly discern the microscopic boundary between necrotic tissue and healthy cells.
Squelch. Squelch. Chunks of rotting meat were carved away and tossed into the basin. Dark, tainted blood spurted freely.
Sosuke grabbed a nearby bottle of high-concentration Purified Water—a custom brew with ten times the silver ion density of the retail version—and flushed the wound directly.
The violent chemical reaction sent a froth of white bubbles hissing from the open flesh.
Viper finally broke. He let out a bloodcurdling shriek, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he passed out cold.
Good. Kept him from thrashing.
Sosuke continued the debridement. He worked until he exposed bright red granulation tissue and the stark white of the periosteum.
He picked up the fine silver probe.
This was meant for detecting deep-tissue toxins. He scraped it along the depths of the wound against the bone.
This was the primitive, legendary procedure of 'scraping the bone to cure the poison.'
The silver needle blackened instantly.
Poison. Just as he calculated.
Sosuke took a deep breath. The chakra within his body surged, channeling to his fingertips.
He generated fine silver powder and sprinkled it directly over the exposed bone.
This was localized antibiotic therapy pushed to the absolute limit.