Free Web NovelChapter 9: First Antagonist is a Blackmailing Nurse
Max had only ever heard women moan in two contexts: hentai games with questionable translation, or, well, porn. So when Ms. Diaza started groaning like a dying banshee in a haunted hospital, his first thought wasn’t, ’Wow, I’m a natural healer.’ No. It was, ’Crap, I broke her shoulder. Rune bug. Fatal error. Please check your syntax and try again.’
Because magic, apparently, was just like coding. Forget a comma, miss a line, boom—your program doesn’t run. Or worse: it deletes someone’s quadriceps. And judging by her twitching, shaking, and near one-minute-long moaning session (which, side note, sounded less like medical relief and more like a late-night browser history situation), Max was ninety percent sure he had bricked her muscles.
So when she finally stopped, panting like she just sprinted a marathon, Max braced for the incoming boss fight: angry nurse edition. He half-expected a courtroom trial, or at least medieval juvie. Maybe even public guillotine. But instead of rage? She looked... thrilled. Her face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.
"What was that?" she asked, eyes sparkling.
Max, utterly spooked, immediately panic-dumped his entire crime scene confession: that he’d drawn some rune from a medical textbook, purely experimental, nothing official, please don’t kill him.
Diaza’s grin only widened. Max, of course, didn’t notice. He was too busy imagining how long it’d take to build gallows. freēwēbnovel.com
Diaza, still buzzing like she’d just discovered chocolate for the first time, tried very hard to compose herself. Straightening her clothes and taming that post-moan glow, she fixed Max with what was supposed to be a stern look. freёwebnovel.com
"You know, boy, what you did is unlawful?" she said, voice wobbling between lecture-mode and please-do-that-again mode.
Max shook his head instantly. He wasn’t dumb. He knew enough about law to understand the golden rule: if you don’t know it’s illegal, you can sometimes skate free. Bonus points if you act dumb—aka society’s way of saying ’congrats, your brain isn’t fully cooked yet, so here’s a legal get-out-of-jail-free card.’
"Well, you did," Diaza continued, smile tugging at her lips even as she pulled her skirt straight, "and not just one law. You used a rune without permission, and worse, you studied them before your coming-of-age ceremony." She leaned closer, voice mock serious, "That’s a big offence, Max... I should report you to the Ministry of Magic."
Diaza’s words hung in the air like a death sentence wrapped in polite packaging.
Max’s brain, naturally, didn’t process the threat. It latched onto the dumbest part: ’Ministry of Magic? Really? What’s next—owl post and a bald guy with no nose waiting to sue me?’
He could practically imagine himself dragged into some gloomy office with stacks of parchment taller than him. Meanwhile, his survival instincts screamed: ’Say sorry, grovel, cry;
But what actually came out of his mouth? A squeaky, "Uh... please don’t?"
Diaza chuckled. Not the comforting, motherly chuckle. No. This was the, ’I know a juicy secret and I’m not telling unless’ chuckle.
"Relax, boy," she said smoothly. "I don’t like paperwork anyway."
Max let out a huge breath—like someone who’d just dodged a very dramatic cell door slam—but didn’t realize he’d just buried himself in an even deeper hole.
"But I do have to do this paperwork, you know as a good citizen," Diaza said, stretching like she’d just finished a spa day. She was relaxed, amused, and absolutely not hiding the tiny smile that said I know exactly what I can get from you. Max, bless his chaotic brain, had seen enough grim movies and read enough grim manga to know when someone was about to play the polite version of extortion.
His inner monologue, predictably unhelpful, offered up the classic solution: ’Should I kill her?’
Yeah. No. That was peak villain-tier thinking and also wildly impractical. Max came from a society where murder was ranked even higher than tax evasion and, like, public indecency—socially unacceptable and not something his nervous, shut-in, anime-consuming self could pull off. He could barely ask for directions without breaking into sweat. The idea of actually committing murder was cartoonishly beyond him.
So instead he swallowed the thought, plastered on his best ’I’m terrified but loyal’ face, and waited to see what terms the Hands of Mercy had in mind.
"Please—don’t report me. I’ll do anything you ask," Max blurted, voice wobbling like a badly voiced anime protagonist.
The nurse—the conveniently villainous first antagonist of his debut arc—tilted her head, amusement dancing on her face. "Really? Funny, because not reporting this would probably get me in more trouble than reporting you."
Great, Max thought, internally sighing. He’d skimmed the local laws and half a dozen grim forums about illegal magic; he knew using runes on a civilian could land someone like Cassian in serious trouble. The nurse was right—this wasn’t a slap on the wrist. This was paperwork with teeth.
He was still seething. This wrinkly nurse had just become the first proper villain in his shiny new main-character life, and that didn’t sit right with him. ’You just wait,’ Max thought, ’I’ll make you regret this.’ Yes, his brain kept gifting him weird lines from his past life—gross, but whatever. He didn’t bother to mentally edit the impulse. Rage spent on inner monologues didn’t need polishing.
Diaza watched him, perfectly calm. "Lucky for you, I’m not some government spy," she said. "So I can help—if you help me. Deal?"
"I can help," Max blurted, voice all eagerness and too-wide grin.
She nodded at his enthusiasm. "Good. Then follow me. Coincidentally, I’m short-handed today. Tell me—have you learned the healing rune well enough to stitch and patch?"
The question caught him off-guard. "I... learned it, but I’ve never performed it before." He followed her out of the library and down toward the hospital basement.
She sighed, not unkindly. "Can’t be helped. If you can’t do it perfectly, try your hardest. Someone’s life might depend on you."
Max nodded, trying to look brave. "Right," he said, then immediately added, because doubt needs company, "What now?"
