Case 04:
The Doctor Who Wouldn’t Die
SEVERAL DAYS HAD PASSED since Glenn’s heart stopped.
The search for Molly Vanitas was underway throughout Lindworm, but the graveyard city manager was nowhere to be found. Not even the speed of the Centaurs or the heat-sensing abilities of the lamia were able to find her. She should have been somewhere in Lindworm…
Now, there was one more person who was visiting the Graveyard City to search.
“Oooh…”
She was trembling, and not just because her body was made slime.
“As I thought… It looks like you’re in the Graveyard City, ancestor…”
Her name was Lime, and she was a slime who worked as a nurse in Lindworm Central Hospital. She’d studied with Glenn and Sapphee at the Academy, but due to an unfortunate accident, Glenn had lost part of his memory—only the part that involved Lime.
Until a little while ago, she’d been with Arahnia, helping to preserve Glenn’s body. But now…
“Oooh.”
Lime kept moving, still trembling. She had received Cthulhy’s permission to leave the hospital and gone to search for Molly.
The second-generation Molly Vanitas was a mythical creature called a shoggoth that took over the first-generation’s bones. That shoggoth, who had once created quite a stir throughout Lindworm by taking the form of doppelgangers of people in the city, was apparently a distant ancestor of slimes. Their bodies were amorphous and could divide and transform at will.
The shoggoth had significantly greater control over this process and could perfectly mimic the bodies of others. Slimes couldn’t hold a candle to second-generation Molly.
As they were the same organism in essence, Lime knew intuitively that if she got too close to Molly, she would be absorbed into her, losing her own sense of self. Molly also knew this and made sure to stay away from slimes.
“You’re here…”
But today, Lime had come to the Graveyard City on purpose to search for Molly. The shoggoth was a being with no fixed form. Even when far from others of the same species, they could sense each other’s locations. Slimes that had separated from the shoggoth also had a vague idea of where the shoggoth was.
The moment Lime entered the Graveyard City, she knew. Her ancestor was there. All the cells in her body were quivering, wanting to return to a single existence.
This is scary.
Lime understood that if she were absorbed by Molly, she would cease to be herself. But even so, she needed to search for Molly now. She had to do it for Glenn.
I’m scared of losing my memory and becoming something other than myself. But even scarier…would be not doing everything I could to help.
Lime wasn’t a doctor or a pharmacist, but she was a nurse. There had to be something she could do to help the patient. To help Glenn.
She proceeded through the Graveyard City, following her sense of Molly. She finally arrived at the back of the church that Molly worked out of and entered the building.
“A dead end?”
Her sense of Molly was cut off at the altar. In a normal situation, Lime might think she’d been mistaken and give up…but her cells were communicating with the presence of her ancestor. That meant Molly was definitely there.
Molly hadn’t gone anywhere, after all—she had been in the church all along.
“That means—there must be a hidden door!”
Lime dissolved the human form she had been maintaining, transforming herself into gel. She tried to cover the wooden altar with her body, finding an ingenuously hidden door in the back. The door was held shut with a strong lock. It looked thick and made of steel, so strong that not even an ogre could break it.
“Hehe, that can’t keep me out!”
Lime slipped through the opening in the door. Locks were useless against creatures as amorphous as slime. Even Molly couldn’t do this, Lime thought, since she had bones.
She put her strengths to use and flowed along.
Is this a basement? An underground tomb?
Lime remembered hearing that the previous manager had been collecting a large volume of corpses that had no place to go for funerals. She also heard that some had been embalmed for the manager’s collection. Subterranean chambers were excellent locations to store corpses, as the temperature and humidity never changed. The constant nature of the temperature also meant a lamia’s heat detection would be ineffective.
Lime continued along, finally arrived at an open space. There were bunk beds with multiple tiers lined up against the wall, and objects wrapped in cloth lay across them. These were probably corpses.
And in the center of the space, Molly Vanitas sat on the floor, doing something.
“Umm…” Lime shyly called out to her.
“You don’t need to get closer, our descendent.”
“Errr.”
Molly rolled her eyes around to look in Lime’s direction. Lime’s body grew protrusions that tried to move toward Molly, like iron sand being pulled in by a magnet. It was trying to join with her.
“It is still early, and our duty is not completed—but you did well finding us. You are welcome here. If you get closer than necessary, we will return to being one. You can speak from there,” Molly warned.
“Ohhh, Ancestor…I am Lime from the Central Hospital…”
“Registered. I recognize you. You did well coming here. We are your ancestor by lineage, but you are our superior in Lindworm. We ask for your help.”
Molly was making something. She was working meticulously on whatever it was—a combination of a wooden frame and metal. There were a number of them already lined up in a row.
“Ummm, you know everyone is searching for you?” Lime tried.
“We understand the situation. About Dr. Glenn’s death, right?”
“He’s not dead yet!” Lime protested, but Molly just rolled her eyes around.
“No, materially, he is dead. That is why Lime was searching for us to resolve the situation. If our understanding is incorrect, please provide correction.”
“Um, what…are you doing?
“Of course, we are performing our duty to bring Dr. Glenn’s soul back. The necessary volume exceeds our specifications, so the mission required our full focus for completion. We relocated to a place where we can concentrate on our work for maximum efficiency.
“What?” Lime cried out.
Everyone was desperately searching for Molly—but the way she said it, she was just working in a quiet place where she could concentrate.
“The rule is that the dead cannot come back to life. That was true even in our time. But we have confirmed countless cases of the dead’s body and soul separating in the Graveyard City.
“Uhm, oh…”
“Normally, souls scatter. But it seems the first-generation somehow took Dr. Glenn’s soul all in one piece. In that case, we should be able to bring it back here without damaging it. We will soon be finished with the number requested by the first-generation.” Molly looked around at the many lanterns she’d made, nodding with satisfaction.
“Ancestor—do you know? What is happening?” Lime asked.
“To be precise, we don’t actually know anything. Our system lacks sufficient information to accurately analyze the current situation,” Molly explained.
“In that case—” Lime started.
“However, we have an existing memory. This may be…a memory of first-generation Molly’s soul, which probably returned to these bones on one occasion. We are only lodging in these bones, after all. When the original owner returned, it seemed we went dormant.”
“Whoooa.” Lime remembered Skadi saying something about receiving a warning from Molly. She wondered how much the first-generation manager had foreseen.
“We were making the necessary volume of the necessary objects based on that memory.”
“You mean—these lanterns?”
“Correct. The principles and reasons are unknown, but if there are lanterns, Dr. Glenn will return.”
Molly went back to her work, falling silent. She was sure Lime didn’t understand. However, after inheriting the first-generation’s records, Molly was confident in that memory. Even if it wasn’t her own memory, each of the cells in her bones remembered.
That… Lime thought. That’s a lot like me…
Back when Glenn was at the Academy, he lost a portion of his memory, forgetting every moment of the time he’d spent with Lime. In order to treat Glenn’s head injury, Lime had reconstructed his brain cells with her own tissue. The memory loss was a side effect.
And yet, she was sure he hadn’t truly lost his memory. The connection had just been temporarily severed. Glenn would always have those memories. She believed that, and that was exactly why she couldn’t lose Glenn.
The second-generation Molly was performing this task as an extension of first-generation Molly, despite the idea not existing in her own memory. If it was the same, Lime had to act. She had to trust her own memories of the past and move forward.
“I will help!” Lime declared as she desperately held herself back from moving closer to Molly. “Please let me help. The faster it’s done, the better!”
“Understood. The materials are there.” Molly pointed at a mountain of wood and glass.
“Okay!” If they just had to be assembled, Lime could help well enough.
“If you don’t know how to do something, you may ask. However, keep your distance, as you will be absorbed if you get too close.”
“I-I know…”
If you are deemed to be inefficient, we will assimilate you, so keep that in mind.”
“No, please don’t!” Lime cried to her ancestor. Molly rolled her eyes around.
“That was a falsehood… We made a manager joke.”
“I didn’t get it!” Lime blubbered, trembling.
She kept working, however, trying to replicate the lanterns she saw. She had always been skillful with her hands, and as a slime she was an expert at copying others.
Glenn’s memories of the Academy was sleeping. She was sure that her cells, in his brain, would recover that memory someday. Lime didn’t want it to end like this, and so she would do everything she could, even if that meant working with her frightening ancestor.
The most important thing was to not give up. Sapphee and the others hadn’t given up on Glenn, either. If there was something they could do, they would do it.
We will save you, somehow—
Lime had no idea if she was being helpful or not. But she chose to trust Molly and kept making lanterns.