Jason rolled up his pant leg, but halfway through the motion, he suddenly froze.

"What’s wrong?" Isaac asked, giving him a light pat on the shoulder.

"N-nothing..."

Jason snapped back to himself and continued pulling the fabric upward.

The moment the wound came into view, he went completely blank. It looked nothing like he remembered.

The once grotesque, festering injury was now covered by a neat, thin layer of scab. Most of the dense blisters had disappeared. The skin that had originally been swollen purple and black had faded into a dark pink, and fresh new flesh was already growing along the edges.

He cautiously touched it, and it didn’t hurt.

In fact, it itched slightly, the kind of itch that only came when a wound was healing.

"This..." Jason’s eyes widened. He crouched down and stared at the injury over and over, as though afraid he was hallucinating.

What the hell was going on? He wasn’t seeing things, right? How had it recovered this fast?!

It hadn’t even been that long. He distinctly remembered the wound looking nothing like this earlier.

For a moment, Jason genuinely wondered whether he was hallucinating.

Suzy had only applied that ointment a short while ago. Could the medicine really be this ridiculously effective?

The shock hit him so hard he could barely speak.

Seeing his expression, Isaac assumed the injury must be severe, and his face darkened further.

He grabbed Jason by the arm and pulled him to the bedside, lowering his head to inspect the wound personally.

But the moment he saw Jason’s leg, he froze too.

"This is the injury caused by acid rain?" Isaac asked slowly, his tone strange.

"Uh...yeah." Jason nodded blankly, still trapped in disbelief.

Isaac stared at the healing wound for a long moment. He pressed lightly around the edges, then squeezed Jason’s calf to examine it more closely.

The thin scab did not budge at all. The skin beneath it was intact, with no sign of further decay.

His expression shifted from grim seriousness to confusion, then into something far more complicated.

"You brat...at least the injury wasn’t too serious." Isaac finally released him, relief hidden in his voice. "I’ll have Doctor Riato give you some medicine later."

Then he turned toward the doctor.

"Doc, please oblige."

At some point, Riato had already set down the medical case and walked over to Jason’s side.

His gaze was even more focused than Isaac’s, carefully studying the wound inch by inch.

"Mhm. It’s not too severe," he said calmly. "I’ll give you some ointment later. Apply it for a few days and you’ll recover."

Jason immediately opened his mouth to explain.

"N-no, Uncle. My injury was actually really serious! It’s because Su—"

Before he could finish, Isaac shot him a look that practically screamed: Stop talking nonsense, you little bastard.

He pointed at Jason’s calf.

Under the light, the thin scab gleamed with healthy color. The new flesh beneath it looked pink and fresh. There was not the slightest trace of severe infection left.

"This is what you call serious?" Isaac laughed incredulously. "You brat clearly haven’t seen what a truly serious injury looks like."

Jason panicked.

He bent down again and yanked at his pant leg, practically trying to expose his entire calf.

"No, Uncle, listen to me! It really wasn’t like this before! This morning it was still rotting. It looked almost exactly like yours!"

Isaac and Riato exchanged a glance.

Riato shook his head faintly, an amused, helpless smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

Isaac sighed and patted Jason on the shoulder again, much more gently this time, like he was soothing a sulking child.

"All right, all right. It’s a good thing the injury isn’t serious, so why are you panicking?" Isaac’s tone softened noticeably. "That acid rain killed a lot of people. The fact that your injury ended up this mild means you’re damn lucky."

The acid rain had arrived without warning, strange and vicious. Blended into ordinary rainfall, it was almost impossible to distinguish at first glance. No one had been prepared for it.

Direct contact with skin could still cause damage, but it was rarely fatal. However, once it touched an open wound, everything changed completely. Then it became deadly.

Isaac had already seen countless people die after infected wounds came into contact with the acid rain. Several of them had been his own men.

Even though he had prepared precautions early and minimized unnecessary outings, he never imagined that a traitor close to him would stab him with a dagger contaminated by acid rain.

Isaac had treated the wound immediately afterward, yet the infection still spiraled out of control.

Only after finding Riato did his condition finally stabilize.

As someone personally infected by acid rain, Isaac understood better than anyone how difficult recovery truly was.

Even Riato himself could not guarantee a full cure.

So when Jason insisted that the wound had still been festering in the morning but had healed to this extent by afternoon, Isaac naturally assumed he was talking nonsense.

Or perhaps he had simply confused himself.

Either way, there was no possible way an acid rain infection could recover that quickly.

Jason opened his mouth, wanting to argue back, only to realize he had no idea how to explain it.

What was he supposed to say?

"My friend’s ointment is basically miracle medicine. It healed most of my injury in less than an hour."

Forget his uncle not believing him. Even Jason himself thought it sounded absurd.

But the terrifying part was... It was true.

"Uncle, I’m telling the truth..." Jason’s voice turned hoarse with frustration. "Before I came here, the wound was still rotting. My friend applied some medicine, and it’s only been a little over an hour since then..."

"A little over an hour?"

This time, Isaac genuinely laughed. The deep sound echoed through the room.

"You brat, your story gets more outrageous the longer you talk." He shook his head in amusement. "My arm has been infected by acid rain for nearly half a month. Doctor Riato has used who knows how many precious medicines on it, and it still hasn’t healed properly. And now you’re telling me your wound recovered in a little over an hour?"

As he spoke, Isaac rolled up his injured sleeve further and held out his arm for Jason to see.

Compared to the last time Jason had seen it, the purplish black discoloration around the wound had spread even farther in just this short span of time. Dense translucent blisters crowded together along the infected flesh, horrifying enough to make anyone’s scalp crawl.

Isaac pointed at the wound, his expression unusually grave.

"See this? This is what a real acid rain infection looks like." His voice turned heavy. "Your little injury probably only got splashed by a few drops. It’s nothing serious at all."