An F-Rank Veterinarian Physically Heals an S-Rank Magical Beast - Chapter 67

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 67
The moment the party crossed through the dimensional gate, they were engulfed by air so thick and humid it felt suffocating.
Where the 13th Floor Valley of the Dead had been a bone-chilling, oppressive cold, the 14th Floor was like being cast into the heart of a massive sauna—the air clung to skin with an unpleasant, sticky heat. Instead of the ashen fog that had obscured their vision, towering ancient trees stretched toward the sky, and dense verdant foliage packed their field of view in every direction.
Beneath their feet lay decomposed leaf litter so soft it squelched with each step, while their nostrils were assailed by the fishy stench of unnamed beasts and the cloying scent of plant sap.
“Whew! This weather is absolutely perfect. It’s like a sauna set to ideal temperature. My muscles are going to get an incredible pump!”
Ma Dong-tak drew in a deep breath of humid air, visibly satisfied as he flexed his chest muscles. Beads of sweat rolled down his bulging frame. For someone who despised muscle loss and relished sweating, this hot, humid jungle was nothing short of an excellent outdoor gymnasium.
For Beris, the mage who treasured cleanliness and comfort above all else, however, this place was an even worse hell than the 13th Floor.
“Kyaaaah! What is this?! Something fell on my hair! It’s so sticky! Tree sap is dripping everywhere!”
Beris shrieked in horror, brushing the sticky sap from her hair. She desperately wanted to unleash a barrage of purification magic, but the humidity was so high that her flame spells were drastically reduced in efficiency. In the end, she had to settle for swinging her staff frantically and erecting a transparent barrier dome around herself.
“Everyone, stay alert. Something feels off about this place. There are far too many life signatures.”
I adjusted my medical bag and surveyed the surroundings with sharp eyes. I didn’t need to activate my Insight skill to sense it. Everything in this massive primordial jungle was alive and breathing, and simultaneously eyeing our party as appetizing prey. The rustling sounds from all directions and the bizarre cries of insects were proof enough.
“Vroom vroom! Master! Don’t worry! I’ll crush every bug blocking our path with these hellfire tires!”
Kim Chun-sam, who had absorbed the Undead Flame and evolved into a delinquent rampaging Centaur, scraped his front hooves roughly against the ground with bravado. Thanks to the cyan flames spouting from his joints, the humid jungle air grew even more oppressively hot.
“Right, Chun-sam. Lead the way and clear a path. Be careful so the elders don’t get hurt.”
I gestured with my chin toward the rear. Since Kim Chun-sam had detached the cart, Namgoong Cheon and the other Murim Alliance masters now had to traverse the treacherous jungle on their own two feet. Burdened by the aftereffects of the Lich King’s undead virus and the astronomical debt they owed me, their steps were heavy as lead.
“Huff, huff… Alliance Leader. Could we perhaps rest for a moment? These old bones’ knees are about to wear away completely.”
The Huashan Sect Elder asked breathlessly, leaning on his wooden staff. His robe was already a filthy mess of sweat and mud. I shook my head coldly.
“That won’t do, Elder. If you want to pay off your debt, you need to keep moving. We have to hunt more monsters here and sell the loot, or the interest will keep accumulating. Ah, if you need arthritis medicine, I can sell it to you for one hundred thousand gold per pill. Shall I prepare some?”
“N-No! I’ll endure it with my inner strength! My legs are still sturdy!”
The Huashan Sect Elder straightened his back forcefully, horrified by my capitalist prescription. He decided it was better to endure bone-breaking pain than to be fleeced for money.
About ten minutes had passed since they began pushing through the dense fern forest.
Beneath the Huashan Sect Elder’s feet at the front of the line, the ground suddenly trembled with a peculiar vibration.
“Hm? Why is the ground so soft… Kyaaaaaaah!”
With the Elder’s scream, the ground beneath him suddenly split open, revealing a massive maw that shot upward. It wasn’t earth at all, but the mouth of a house-sized carnivorous plant that had been cunningly hidden beneath the leaf litter. The plant snapped shut its two enormous leaves lined with saw-tooth-like spines like a trap, swallowing the Elder whole in one gulp.
“Elder! No!”
Namgoong Cheon drew his light sword in shock. Ma Dong-tak also charged forward with fire in his eyes.
“You damned weed! How dare you swallow our meal ticket! Spit him out right now!”
Ma Dong-tak was about to throw a heavy punch at the plant’s stem when—
“Stop! Don’t, Director Ma! You can’t hit that!”
I shouted urgently, blocking Ma Dong-tak’s path. He hesitated and lowered his fist.
“Why are you stopping me? We need to tear this weed apart before the old man gets digested!”
“We can’t tear it apart. That carnivorous plant contains ultra-concentrated acidic digestive fluid that dissolves magical beasts and converts them into nutrients. If we rupture it, not only will the Elder be lost, but we’ll all be splashed with acid and suffer severe burns. Besides, that digestive fluid is a premium material that sells for an astronomical price as an alchemical solvent!”
My eyes gleamed with greed once more. Even in this life-or-death crisis, I was already calculating how to extract the rare material intact.
“W-What do we do then?! The Elder is dissolving inside!”
Namgoong Cheon stomped his feet and shouted. I calmly opened my medical bag and retrieved an enormous syringe the size of a human forearm and a thick, long transparent tube.
“We need to perform gastric lavage. When someone has acute indigestion, the first step is to drain out the digestive fluid.”
I hurled myself toward the carnivorous plant, tube in hand. The plant, which had been methodically digesting with its leaves clamped shut, lashed out with sharp vine whips at me as I flew toward it.
“Chun-sam! Block the whips!”
“Roooaaaah! Pathetic vines! Burn to ash in my hellfire tires!”
Kim Chun-sam reared up on his hind legs and roared, charging at the plant’s vines. The cyan hellfire spouting from his body incinerated every vine it touched to cinders.
Seizing the opportunity, I landed atop the massive leaf of the carnivorous plant and ruthlessly shoved a thick hose into the gap where the leaves met.
“Now then, patient! Open your mouth wide! I’ll be extracting some gastric fluid!”
I gripped the syringe’s plunger and pulled with all my strength. Immediately, transparent and viscous acidic digestive liquid began flowing up through the hose with a gurgling sound. The syringe barrel filled instantly with potent acidic fluid.
“Luna! Bring the container! Not a single drop can spill!”
“Yes, yes! Kang Jin-hyuk!”
Luna stood ready with a specially crafted glass bottle. With practiced efficiency, I repeated the pumping motion, extracting every last drop of digestive fluid from the carnivorous plant’s interior and transferring it into the glass vessel. As the creature’s stomach emptied completely, its previously taut leaves shriveled like deflated balloons, becoming flaccid and withered.
“Okay, gastric fluid extraction complete. Ma Dong-tak! Now pry it open!”
The moment I gave the order, Ma Dong-tak seized both sides of the carnivorous plant’s closed leaves with his massive hands.
“Heave!”
Ma Dong-tak’s tremendous latissimus dorsi muscles bulged as he forcibly wrenched the creature’s mouth open. Huddled inside, unconscious and covered in digestive fluid with foam at his lips, was the Huashan Sect Elder. Thanks to extracting the acidic fluid beforehand, his life was spared, but his robes and outer garments had been dissolved by the acid into tatters, and half his hair had melted away, leaving bald patches.
“Cough, cough! Have I… come to hell…?”
Ma Dong-tak grabbed the elder by the scruff of his neck and yanked him out like pulling a radish, hurling him to the ground.
“Ugh, the stench. That rotten smell is absolutely overwhelming. Beris, wash this old man off.”
“Kyaaaah! No! Don’t come near me! If that filthy discharge gets on my clothes, I’ll kill you all!”
Beris shrieked in horror and mercilessly blasted the elder’s face with a torrent of purifying water. Hit directly by a water jet that rivaled a high-pressure fire truck, the elder rolled across the ground, narrowly escaping death twice over.
“Well then, Elder. For the carnivorous plant gastric fluid extraction and emergency gastric lavage rescue service, I’ll be adding a clean one million gold to your bill.”
I slapped a receipt onto the elder’s soaking wet forehead and flashed a devilish smile. The elder shed tears of grievance, but since it was true that I had saved his life, he lacked even the strength to protest.
However, their respite was short-lived. The sour stench of digestive fluid expelled by the carnivorous plant and the elder’s blood scent began attracting the jungle’s predators.
Whirrrrrrr—!
A spine-chilling vibration like helicopter rotors spinning echoed from the distance, rapidly drawing closer and blanketing the jungle sky in darkness.
“M-Master! What is that in the sky! A drone swarm?”
Kim Chun-sam activated the zoom function on his visor and shouted. I lifted my head to gaze upward.
They were not drones. Massive swarms of mosquitoes the size of ordinary cars and giant spiders with legs thicker than a man’s thigh descended upon us. The vicious insect monsters comprising the 14th Floor Gluttony Jungle’s ecosystem were charging toward their prey.
“Insane—these mosquitoes are as big as pterosaurs!”
Ma Dong-tak furrowed his brow and adjusted his grip on the iron pry bar.
“How dare they… invade my pristine domain! Burn them all! Erase every trace!”
Beris’s sanity completely shattered at the sight of insects. She soared into the air and began wildly swinging her staff, unleashing area-of-effect flame magic and lightning spells in all directions.
Boom! Flash! Rumble!
Massive fireballs rained down from the sky like hail. House-sized mosquitoes were engulfed in flames and plummeted as charred husks, while giant spiders crawling across the ground were struck by lightning and exploded. Yet the insects showed no sign of diminishing in number.
“Chun-sam! Clear a path! We’re charging straight through!”
“Leave it to me! Centaur rampage mode—activate! Get out of the way, you disgusting vermin!”
Kim Chun-sam roared forward with a cyan exhaust, charging madly through the heart of the mosquito and spider swarms. Each time his hellfire-wreathed hooves swept through the air, insects were trampled and burst apart.
Splat! Crunch!
“Road kill! Double kill! Triple kill! Hahaha! How do you like my tires!”
Kim Chun-sam reveled in the brutal drive, mercilessly crushing the insects. Ma Dong-tak followed behind, smashing the carapaces of surviving spiders with his iron pry bar, while the Murim Alliance masters swung their light sabers, severing the proboscises of mosquitoes diving from all directions.
Insect corpses and green body fluids blanketed the jungle floor. It was nearly a one-sided slaughter. Before my party’s overwhelming might, even the 14th Floor’s ferocious monsters seemed like mere gnats.
“Phew. The mosquitoes in this neighborhood won’t be dealt with by repellent alone. Does anyone have injuries?”
I collected the insects’ tags and fangs into my inventory while surveying the group. Everyone was breathing heavily, but there were no serious wounds. Only Beris gazed at the ground covered in monster fluids, continuously spraying herself with purifying magic, shuddering with revulsion.
That was when it happened.
Boom—!
The earth trembled. Unlike the vibration from when the carnivorous plant had erupted moments before, this was a different magnitude entirely—a heavy, ponderous oscillation as if an enormous mountain were collapsing wholesale.
Boom-! Crunch-crunch-crunch!
The vibration drew steadily closer. With each tremor that reverberated through the air, the insects and beasts that had been shrieking so deafeningly throughout the jungle fell silent in unison. As if sensing the approach of death itself, a bone-chilling hush descended upon the primordial rainforest.
“Master… a life-form reading of impossible proportions is approaching from ahead. This isn’t… this isn’t building-sized. It’s on the scale of a moving mountain range!”
Cyan warning lights flashed frantically across Kim Chun-sam’s visor. His voice carried an instinctive terror unbecoming of an artificial intelligence.
Beyond the jungle canopy where the mist had cleared, it seemed as though a massive storm cloud was rolling in. But it was no storm cloud.
A beast that trampled ancient trees dozens of meters tall like toothpicks as it revealed itself.
A grotesque hybrid—the bloated, warty body of a toad fused with the powerful hind legs of a dinosaur and blade-like dorsal spines. Beneath its jaw hung an enormous salivary gland pouch that drooped like a bulldog’s jowls, from which acidic saliva dripped ceaselessly.
[14th Floor Mid-Boss: Behemoth of Gluttony]
[Traits: Infinite Appetite, Skin Durability Immeasurable, Ultra-Corrosive Gastric Acid]
“Hah… what in the world is that… a mountain come alive and moving….”
Before that overwhelming presence, Namgoong Cheon’s legs gave way and he collapsed. Even Ma Dong-tak felt cold sweat beading on his palms as he gripped the iron lever, swallowing hard.
“Hey, Jin-hyuk. That doesn’t seem like something we can solve with a good bludgeoning, does it?”
The Behemoth showed no hostility toward Jin-hyuk’s party, nor did it roar. In those massive toad eyes dwelt only a single emotion—the pure hunger to devour the tiny protein masses before it.
For this jungle’s absolute ruler, combat held no meaning. Only predation and digestion existed.
Shhhhiiiiick-!
The Behemoth’s maw opened grotesquely, and from within erupted a massive crimson tongue like a red carpet, lashing out like a whip. Despite the creature’s mountainous bulk, the tongue’s speed transcended the sound barrier.
“Dodge! It’s sticky!”
Jin-hyuk shouted and hurled himself aside, but he couldn’t completely evade the Behemoth’s tongue as it swept across dozens of meters of jungle floor.
Splat, squelch!
The colossal tongue ensnared Jin-hyuk, Ma Dong-tak, Kim Chun-sam, Beris, Luna, and the Murim Alliance masters all at once. The sticky, revolting saliva rendered the entire party immobilized. Ma Dong-tak attempted to tear the tongue free by unleashing his raw strength, but the rubber-like muscle refused to rupture.
“Aaaahhhhh! Disgusting! Covered in saliva! I’m covered in its spit!”
Beris shrieked, but the tongue coiled around the party in an instant, dragging them into the Behemoth’s gaping maw.
Slam!
With the sound of massive jaws closing, all light vanished from the world.
Only the squelch of viscous mucus and the acrid reek of gastric acid that burned the flesh remained, vibrating through absolute darkness.
Jin-hyuk’s party had been swallowed alive into the stomach of the 14th Floor’s absolute sovereign, the Behemoth.
“Cough, cough! Is everyone alive!”
Jin-hyuk ignited a mana-light in the darkness and called out. The party lay sprawled across the soft, undulating stomach lining. Already, the floor was piled with half-dissolved bones of monsters and sticky gastric fluid rising to their ankles.
“Ugh… never in my life did I think I’d end up inside a monster’s belly. So this is where I become digestive waste….”
The Murim Alliance elders lamented in voices of despair. Ma Dong-tak struck the spongy stomach wall hard with his fist, but the soft flesh merely absorbed the impact entirely, refusing to tear.
“Damn it! We can’t get out! Jin-hyuk! Do you have any brilliant ideas!”
In that moment when everyone had surrendered to despair and panic.
Jin-hyuk’s eyes gleamed instead as he rummaged through his medical bag, producing the largest surgical scalpel and a chainsaw. A manic smile twisted his lips.
“Why are you all despairing? From a medical standpoint, this is an incredible opportunity.”
“An opportunity? We’ve been swallowed by a monster—how is that an opportunity!”
“Think about it. If we attacked from outside, we’d have to pierce through that thick skin and blubber. But now we’re positioned right in the middle of its softest, most vulnerable organs.”
Jin-hyuk engaged the chainsaw, and its terrible whine filled the Behemoth’s stomach. The bone-chilling motor sound reverberated through the beast’s interior.
“No matter how high its defense is, no creature wraps its stomach walls in steel plating. If it’s difficult to breach from outside, we simply tear our way out from within.”
The eyes of the unscrupulous capitalist doctor gleamed with the ferocity of the most vicious predator.
“Alright, everyone. We’re about to begin a self-administered endoscopy and forced gastric resection surgery. Prepare yourselves to tear through the stomach wall completely.”
An unprecedented survival ordeal was about to unfold within the monster’s belly—a grotesque surgical intervention for the most horrifying case of physical indigestion imaginable.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————