CHAPTER 200: CHAPTER 196: THE PLAGUE MAKER (2)

The ’disease’ causing havoc wasn’t a disease at all. It was just Fester’s [Festering Aura] that had turned all food into literal poison, with a hint of weakened undead virus sprinkled on top for garnish.

Since the virus was weakened, it explained the slow spread of the disease and how the dead didn’t turn into the undead as they should have. The [Weakened Virus] was one of the many things Blaze had experimented with during his travel to the Sadarla.

He had already used it once on the tribes that bullied Deca and knew they’d be effective. But there was one issue.

At first, Blaze had been planning to just release the virus and let it do its work. But unlike the unprepared tribes, the Solia kingdom had strangely gone undiseased for centuries.

He believed they must have methods to cleanse most diseases and didn’t want to take any chances. Hence, he sent Fester there.

Even if they somehow cured the disease, Fester’s presence alone would kill them all.

Blaze smiled as that thought appeared in his head.

He never had to put Fester’s skill to use on Earth because he could go as wild as he wanted to there. But for such reconnaissance-cum-silent assassination missions, no one could beat Fester.

Now that it had been taken care of, Blaze turned his attention towards his own task.

While he waited for the corpses to produce oil, he had already begun a strange experiment on his ’children’. It seemed his ’seeds’ had not only given them strange abilities, but also given Blaze control over their bodies.

After the initial oil-production tests failed, Blaze lost his mind and became angry. In frustration, he returned to the tribe’s village and felt something was off.

Much like him, his children were also frustrated. They didn’t know why, but despite the best efforts of their mothers, the children didn’t calm down. However, as soon as Blaze relaxed, the children did too!

That’s when he realized that his seeds were still functioning inside the children. They were dormant, but he could rearm them to cause such a reaction within the children.

So he began experimenting on them once again and realized he could control them just like he controlled the undead on Earth. Honestly, the control went even further because he didn’t just control their minds, but every organ in their body.

He could regulate the chemicals and hormones in their bodies. If a child was down, he would have their release a mixture of dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin to please them.

But if a child stepped out of line, he would release adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine to give them a healthy dose of fear.

He had gone from controlling bodies to minds, and now, he could control their emotions... and even cause organ failure in the blink of an eye.

At the moment, he had taken a few of the children back to the ’temple’ to bless them with more strength. In other words, he wanted to somehow extract his ’seed’ from their bodies.

If he managed to do that, he would then try to convert it into a new disease and release it within the kingdom. That way, he would win over them without the Solians even knowing about it.

There would be no bloodshed. Hence, there would be no alerts issued to the Collective. They won’t even realize, and the entire planet will be under his control.

If someone were to be infected with the new disease, they would never escape his control. Then perhaps he could also get the Collective under his control, along with Anur.

That must happen.

While Anur had helped him, he knew it was only a matter of time before they turned against one another. For now, they were working together because their goals were the same. But once the Collective was done and dusted, she would ruin him... quite easily.

She still has the system’s controls.

The system that gave him everything could also take it all away just as easily. Hence, he had to implant his ’seeds’ in her before taking down the collective.

"Wait... why stop at sapient beings?" Blaze wondered. "I could use it to control beasts in my favor as well? I can even try to raise a sentient tree like Cyclops. The possibilities are endless."

As new ideas flowed into his mind, he became even more excited. His excitement caused the children back in the village to go berserk. While their mothers chased after them to calm them down, the men could only leave the village to continue hunting as per their god’s commandment.

The more he toyed around with others, the more Blaze learned about the original gods of the world. While he wanted to join their league, he didn’t want to become like them, as they were quite pathetic.

Those gods might appear to have absolute control, but they were in fact, a useless bunch who lived because of the faith of their followers.

Not only that, if they were truly so mighty, won’t they’d have stopped him before he caused chaos on Sadarla?

Instead, he wanted to become a god that didn’t depend on the prayers or faith of his followers, but an entity they couldn’t live without... literally.

"How will they live if their organs fail one after the other?" Blaze mumbled as a faint smile crept to his face.

In fact, if such gods existed, Blaze would use his diseases to dominate and control them as well. Wouldn’t be a hell of a fun experiment?

***

Nearly a month passed, and Shilia had turned into a ghost town.

Once the heartbeat of the kingdom, only ashes remained in the city. The crops had been burned, and the fertile ground was doused with acid.

The brilliant architecture and planned city was now covered in ash as if, instead of a snowfall, they had ash-fall. Burned remains of corpses still remained, but not even the scavenging creatures dared to touch them.

The once-busy market square was filled only with collapsed stalls and dried stains that the wind refused to carry away. Wooden signs swayed and creaked in the cold breeze that floated like the last breath of the dead city.

However, the city wasn’t entirely empty.

Sure, the Kingdom had erased it from existence because of an uncontrollable plague, but they couldn’t keep doing that over and over. Just destroying Shilia had done irreparable damage to them.

That’s why they had to figure out a way to stop the disease from ever returning. To make a ’cure’ if they will. For now, they had told the masses a twisted tale of the Deca tribe burning down the city.

Not only did it fuel hatred against their god, but it also led to a spike in volunteers wanting to join the various fighting forces.

The hell raisers were one such group.

They were the ones who burned everything and everyone in Shilia. Boots crunched against the scattered bone pieces on the cobblestone roads, collecting samples to make a cure... if that was even possible.

Suddenly, their captain raised his hand, signaling the group to halt.

In front of them was the burned down chapel of the sun gods.

They had read the reports of how this was the last place to fall. It stood tall for a month as the head priest fought against the inevitable. In the end, the capital gave a final order.

The Hell Raisers were deployed to erase everything.

They didn’t stop until no traces of civilization remained, but no one was left to tell the stories of the place.

"Sir, the count came short," one of the soldiers reported.

"How many?"

"...three hundred and seventy-two."

The captain raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

Their job wasn’t just to kill everything, but also to ensure no one escaped the city in desperation. They had done that. No one had left the city from the moment they took charge.

Still, they were short of nearly four hundred corpses. It was no small number.

Even a single missing corpse could cause panic and chaos in the capital, one could only imagine what kind of chaos would occur when the news of nearly four hundred mission corpses reached the capital.

"Search everywhere," the captain instructed the group. "Gutters, sewers, farms, I need every corner checked, and those remains found at all costs!"

"Yes, sir!"

The troops disbanded to look for ashes to check for ’DNA’ or what they called Hetero blood analysis. It was a gift from the gods, which they used to identify who was burned and who wasn’t based on the data pool they had.

After all, every citizen within its territory was added to the pool upon birth or inclusion. They could identify anyone who had passed from the smallest sample.

Any case of a missing sample would be treated as if an individual had escaped the cleansing and would be hunted by other authorities throughout the kingdom.

"I know no one left the city alive..." the captain mumbled to himself. "But who would steal ashes of the dead and why?"