8. Curse Plague (14)
8. Curse Plague (14)
Maybe the answer had been staring me in the face all along.
Why were the troupe members' birth bodies classified as "Innate Traits"?
If they were merely ordinary humans who happened to be born different, Wonderstein's biomancy should have worked on them. There was no reason it wouldn't.
But the system categorized their aberrant bodies as "Traits."
The implication was unambiguous.
The troupe members were born monstrous because of Devolut.
That was why their physical characteristics registered as Traits.
The Devolut in their parents' bodies had been passed to them while they were still in the womb.
From the very beginning, as their bodies first began to form, their very genes had been fused with Devolut.
That was why even a BioMancer's power couldn't alter their bodies.
Every piece of this puzzle only led me to one more question.
Why had Wonderstein gathered them together in the first place?
"They only look different! Their presence has nothing to do with what's happening now! And more than anything, weren't you healed thanks to Mister Wonderstein?"
Valentina planted herself in front of the crowd to defend me.
But by then, the demon of doubt had already coiled itself deep inside their hearts.
"B-but, Sister, look. The pieces fit together perfectly. Cursed monsters come near our village, and then all this breaks out—doesn't that add up?"
"She's right! There's a reason every village has the custom of driving out such unclean existences the moment they're born!"
"I doubt that mage ever healed us at all! What if he's just remodeling people into monsters so he can use them in his circus?"
The barrage of wild accusations finally snapped Sir Ivanenko's patience, and he roared.
"Stop spouting nonsense! Every person running wild right now is someone who didn't receive the cure, isn't that so? Those the mage treated are all perfectly fine!"
"Oh, Sir Knight! How can you be so naive?"
"You have to see his true scheme: he turns the plague-stricken into his monster soldiers, and the ones he cures—those he'll toss out as feed!"
"What absurd—!"
Ivanenko was about to raise his voice even louder when it happened.
From outside, shrieks began to ring out.
"Kree-ek! Food, food!"
"Ah... in there... Th-they are... Eat them!"
"Kee-ek! Living things... we eat!"
Voices that belonged to humans but sounded nothing like them were closing in on us.
The clamor of accusations that had been pouring toward me dried up in an instant.
People clamped their mouths shut and stared at each other.
The silence grew so thick you could hear the person beside you swallow.
The voices grew louder, and before long they had reached the cathedral's entrance.
The creatures threw themselves at the building without a moment's hesitation.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The things began hammering on the cathedral doors.
"Food...!"
"We eat!"
The villagers sucked in frantic gasps and scrambled backward from the entrance in a mass.
The soldiers did the same.
The result was that only three of us — me, Valentina, and Ivanenko — were left standing before the crowd, blocking the doorway.
With the infected bearing down on us, a message flickered before my eyes.
[Sub Quest — 'Cure the Plague' has failed. Penalty: 200 Devoluts lost.]
The Status Window had restored itself.
The Devolut I had absorbed was now fully subjugated.
I let out a sigh inwardly.
The quest objective had been to heal two hundred people.
By my count, I had treated roughly a hundred patients so far.
There was only one reason the failure message would appear at this moment.
It meant fewer than a hundred treatable villagers were left.
I stole a glance toward the rear of the cathedral.
The terror-stricken villagers were staring at me.
They caught my smile and, perhaps convinced I was mocking their ingratitude, averted their eyes sheepishly.
To be fair, they had little ground to stand on. Moments ago they'd been shrieking that I intended to turn them into monsters or murder them. Now that the infected were at their doorstep, the three people they'd just been condemning were the only ones standing between them and annihilation.
"Mister Wonderstein has done nothing wrong."
Valentina laid her hand gently on my shoulder and murmured.
"I do not judge a Madosa and assume the worst. You are a good person."
Her words pricked at a corner of my heart.
Did she even know who she was saying that to?
I was the very man she was hunting.
"When I learned that you're taking your troupe members and challenging the Circus Grand Prix together, it made me want to cheer for you even more."
I responded to her with a bitter smile.
I understood better than anyone what it meant to be born disabled.
The troupe members.
Their fates had been twisted by the Curse Plague from the moment they drew breath.
Wonderstein had taken pity on them and gathered them under his wing?
If only that were true. It would put my heart so much more at ease.
I recalled the way the troupe members had appeared in TT1.
Their resentment and fury toward the world had turned their hearts into monsters to match their bodies.
The Curse Plague. Devolut. Subjugation. Monster troupe members.
When I put every piece together, one horrific inference was possible.
Wonderstein had deliberately spread the Curse Plague. He had used human beings as a growth medium to harvest Devolut. And he had gathered up the plague's byproduct — the monstrous troupe members — and weaponized their rage at the world, turning them into tools for his own ends.
Wonderstein was the source of their miserable past and the grim reaper leading them toward an unhappy future.
And that demon was now me.
I was seized by the impulse to shove away the Saintess's hand as she continued to comfort me. I wanted to shout at her that the man she kept reassuring was not, and would never be, a good person.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The pounding on the doors grew louder by the second, but the doors held firm.
They were solid timber, dozens of steel hinges anchoring them deep into the stone walls.
The cathedrals of Kiev were built to double as fortresses in an emergency.
A squad of trained soldiers working in unison with a siege ram would be hard-pressed to budge them — a mob with bare human fists had no chance.
Perhaps that was why.
The creatures shifted tactics.
"Please open the door!"
"We... are not monsters!"
The pounding abruptly died down, replaced by children's voices. The voices of children who couldn't have been older than ten.
So they'd manufactured vocal cords.
Valentina and Ivanenko flinched for a moment but didn't waver. One was an expert in fighting demons; the other was a battle-hardened knight. These kinds of cheap tricks weren't going to shake them.
The villagers, though, were another matter.
They began to stir at the sound of the children's voices.
"Are there children out there knocking on the door right now?"
"But I swear I heard monsters a minute ago."
"Could we have been so terrified that we imagined it?"
A middle-aged woman burst out from among them.
"Oh, heavens, that's my son's voice! Get out of the way! Mama's coming right now!"
Right on cue, the children outside began to wail loudly.
"Mama! Mama!"
"Open the door!"
"Papa! Papa!"
"Please open the door before the monsters catch us!"
I moved to stop the woman, but Sir Ivanenko was faster.
Thwack.
He slammed the scabbard of his sword into the back of her head as she fumbled with the side-door latch. The woman let out a squawk and crumpled to the ground.
Sir Ivanenko checked with an impassive expression that she was unconscious, then turned to the villagers.
"Are there still any halfwits here who believe those are real children?"
At his glacial remark, the villagers shook their heads vigorously.
The fanatics, seeing this strategy had also failed, began to work out a new one.
"The things—they're... merging together!"
The soldier keeping watch from the bell tower shouted down.
"What do you mean, merging?!"
Sir Ivanenko demanded details, but I understood the moment I heard the words.
This was an ability the fanatics had demonstrated in the game.
They could fuse their bodies to assume a far more powerful form.
If hundreds of fanatics were combining, the resulting strength would be staggering.
"Get away from the door!"
At my shout, Sir Ivanenko hurled himself sideways on reflex.
At the same instant, something tore through the cathedral's front doors and came crashing in.
Kaboom!
An impact that sent tremors through the stone walls shook the cathedral.
"Uwaaah!"
"Wh-what is that?!"
Splinters of timber scattered across the chapel. I stared into the dust cloud at the thing that had punched straight through the doors.
It was a pillar of bulging, blood-red muscle, twisted and braided together into cables as thick as a man's waist. At its tip, broader than a man's torso, jutted an ivory-colored blade bigger than a human being.
One of the fanatics' signature weapons: the "Fake Mantula's Blade."
Realized here at an oversized scale.
Crrrack. Boom.
The thing ripped the cathedral doors clean out of the frame, and an enormous shape forced its way inside.
"Uwaaah! What is that?!"
"M-monster!"
The villagers fled in blind terror toward the rear of the cathedral.
It was a creature several times more massive than an elephant.
But calling it a "creature" at all felt like a violation of common sense — something in the gut recoiled at the word.
The thing looked as though hundreds of human bodies had been kneaded together like dough. Faces, hands, and feet were embedded all over its shoulders, legs, belly, and back. The moment they spotted the living villagers, they erupted into frenzy.
"Kree-ek!"
"Food!"
"Ke-he-hek!"
An elite horror born of fused fanatics.
The Flesh Mass.
In the game, even when a thousand merged, it had come off as little more than a misshapen lump — an ugly potato. But staring up at one in the flesh was overwhelming. Judging by its size, at least three hundred had contributed to this abomination.
"Everyone, get behind me!"
Spears of light over three meters long erupted from both of Valentina's fists.
But compared to that fearsome power, the veil of light shielding her body was alarmingly thin.
She had spent too much of her divine power healing the plague's curse from a hundred people.
In that moment, a dreadful image flickered across my mind.
The transition scene into TT3's final stage.
There lay the Saintess, bleeding out, dying.
No.
I couldn't allow that.
I could not let my own mistake put her in mortal danger.
Facing the Flesh Mass, I remembered.
In the original story, drinking Wonderstein's blood was the fanatic's "baptism."
And I had spilled blood earlier.
Blood that had been saturated with Devolut still undergoing subjugation.
I didn't know precisely how it had acted, but it was clear what had triggered this catastrophe.
I placed a hand on Valentina's shoulder.
"Mister Wonderstein?"
"Protect the people."
I stepped past her and moved to the front.
Every eye on the Flesh Mass swiveled toward me.
The Fake Mantula's Blade, jutting from its rear like a scorpion's sting, also turned to train on me.
"What do you think you're doing! Mister Wonderstein! You must fall back!"
I shook my head at Valentina's shout and looked up at the Flesh Mass.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't save you all."
"Mister Wonderstein!"
The whip of the blade, a dozen meters long, came flying straight at me.
I stretched both arms out and took it head-on.
Crash!
The impact sent my consciousness reeling.
I had the Smiling Man to thank for my composure, even now.
Muscle Strength 5.0 and Tissue Hardness barely allowed me to withstand the force.
I glanced around.
The villagers were standing right beside me.
I'd been sent flying a full ten meters backward while absorbing the monster's blade.
It was a miracle I hadn't blacked out.
"Ar-Are you still alive?"
I saw tears pooling in Valentina's eyes — she who was always so spirited.
I gave her a reassuring smile.
Then I laid my hands on the blade impaled through my waist.
A BioMancer had one more privilege.
I had only used this ability once before, since arriving in this world.
When Ella had fallen into the water.
Back then, I had dismantled one of my existing Traits to replenish my shortfall of Devolut.
Dismantling a Trait I'd granted myself returned half the Devolut I'd spent on it.
Dismantling a Trait granted to another person required consuming half the Devolut used to create it.
I clenched down with every ounce of strength, ensuring the tentacle-blade couldn't slip free.
And I activated the ability.
"Dismantle."
Crunch.
Squirm. Crrrack.
The sensation of flesh and bone twisting apart transmitted through my arms.
The creature's muscle fibers ruptured and burst, spewing blood.
"Kreeeeeeeeek!"
The monster shrieked in agony.
I watched it and allowed myself a faint smile.
Wonderstein could dismantle Traits and reduce them back to nothing.