World Collision - The Eighth - 5
“If this pollen turns out to be a slow-acting toxin or carries some long-term curse, we shouldn’t return to the city for a while. Let’s stay put and observe.”
Thanks to Dolgoon, the legendary shaman skilled in treating illnesses and herbs, the analysis was straightforward.
It wasn’t poison at all.
Nor was it some creature’s eggs. (If anything, being pollen, it was closer to sperm.)
It wasn’t a medium for any kind of flow, either.
Swallowing it caused no physical abnormalities.
So what was it?
“???”
They couldn’t leave an army stranded on the plains forever. Ogolraeot and Dolgoon spent several months there before cautiously, very cautiously, beginning their withdrawal. Even after returning, they enforced a period of isolation.
And it became clear that nothing was wrong.
During that time the enemy launched surprise attacks, scattering more vile spawn and what seemed to be scouting bat-birds, but those were easily dealt with.
After fighting at their leisure, roughly a year passed. When the dimensional passage finally opened again, Ogolraeot’s world had changed dramatically. The terrain had been reshaped for defense.
The ruined city looked impossible to rebuild, so they dismantled it instead, moving the materials elsewhere to construct a new fortress. Ogolraeot’s World Shaping made long-distance material transport trivial.
“Why won’t this damned smell go away?”
Every soldier and every civilian said the same thing. Dolgoon reported it as well.
Ogolraeot was no fool. Even if he had been, his forty-six subordinate gods were certainly not all idiots.
“Isn’t this a brand?”
Having once managed a ranch, he used the term naturally.
Brand, mark, marking—whatever you called it, it had been stamped onto 3,500 soldiers and the bison. The realization made Ogolraeot’s skin crawl.
“A year later and the scent hasn’t faded; it’s only grown stronger. No matter what we try, we can’t remove it. And it isn’t even toxic…”
“It appears to be an olfactory marker. It was applied to every soldier and bison, then spread through the city as they moved about.”
Ogolraeot’s expression turned deeply sour.
Until now, two factors had allowed them to withstand Biin’s overwhelming military score of over 700,000 points.
First, the enemy could not project full power through the dimensional gate in its early stages.
Second, Biin himself could not control his beasts; he left them to instinct. Intelligent soldiers could therefore read and counter those instinctive movements.
But a mark changed everything. The soldiers and civilians who had been dusted with this pollen would draw the monsters like a tidal wave straight into the city.
The thought alone was horrifying… a bleak future by any measure.
So. How were they supposed to deal with it?
“……”
“……”
“……”
Ogolraeot and all forty-six gods fell silent.
“Well? Say something. Any idea will do.”
Ogolraeot pressed them like an irritable boss. Yet when a rational ruler demanded input, his subordinates offered only silence.
“There… isn’t a countermeasure, is there?”
That was the conclusion reached by all forty-seven gods.
There was no countermeasure.
In short, the mark had already been applied. They had to build a new strategy around that fact.
∞
Flow-based mysteries looked omnipotent at first glance. After all, long-range communication in the material world required at least the invention of the wireless telegraph, yet with mysteries even a stone-age civilization could manage it.
Yet flow-based civilizations were not supreme, and there was a reason the spirits had never conquered the universe.
【As you instructed, I have created the plant. It emits a distinctive scent and lasts about three years.】
“And it has no harmful effects on any creature in the opposing world?”
【It is harmless even to the Dessert Legion.】
“Excellent.”
The pollen Biin had scattered was indeed the work of the plant spirit Nyaltartep.
But the reason the scent lingered for two years was purely biological. The flowers simply produced an exceptionally potent and persistent chemical.
And such things could not be countered with mysteries.
“Wait, you’ve dispelled far more powerful curses and diseases. Why can’t you handle this?”
【The principles are different.】
A curse created by mystery carries malice. Severing that malice nullifies it.
Natural diseases lack malice, yet they still have a clear vector—the pathogen—and a biological immune system that resists them. Creating a flow that attacks the pathogen or bolsters the immune system is what healing mysteries do.
【But this is simply scented pollen. There is no malice.】
“The enemy’s army will smell this and march straight into our city! Are you saying there’s no malice in that?”
【That… is correct. However, the malice does not reside here. Furthermore, this is not a living organism, so we cannot destroy it one by one. And since it is not a toxin, there is no resistance to develop against the scent.】
In real-world terms, it was possible to wash the scent away or mask it with something stronger.
But locating and destroying every single scent molecule was impossible… even with mysteries.
“Then what about gathering all the scented pollen and burning it?”
【Pardon? No, no. That is out of the question. It is not entirely impossible, but it would consume power comparable to counting every grain of sand in a mountain…】
This was the limit of mysteries.
So the olfactory brand would simply have to be endured.
“This is ridiculous…”
【Conversely, because it is not mystical in nature, it might be manageable if we can cover it with a stronger scent or wash it away…】
Dolgoon’s voice trailed off.
The reason was simple. The Dessert Legion’s assault had devastated most plant species in the world.
Ogolraeot had always favored clearing nature to leave only desired plants, so genetic diversity among herbs was extremely low, and he had never specialized in plant-based mysteries.
Let alone any culture of flowers or perfumes.
“This is absurd…”
In the end, they had no choice but to prepare for the worst.
Ogolraeot completely reshaped his world. He raised numerous tall towers that had never existed before; the enemy world teemed with flying creatures, so air superiority had to be secured.
He also invested more boldly in volcanic terrain, raising its level and acquiring several powerful mysteries derived from volcanoes.
These included creating toxic fumes or sulfur gas to dominate the skies, and explosive projectiles to repel large armies.
Because World Shaping also granted great advantages in editing the Spiritual Realm and territories, it was not difficult to siphon terrain experience from unneeded pastures and pour it into the volcanoes.
The farmlands were encircled by cities, walls, natural mountain ranges, and rivers, turning the entire world into a colossal fortress-city with farmland at its heart.
Under normal circumstances such reckless terrain editing would have drained his divinity, but that was precisely where World Shaping shone.
By placing the ranches, the dimensional gate, and barren unclaimed lands on the outer perimeter, and by inflating the very ground itself to create natural height, he reduced the usual cost of building massive walls by more than half.
Surrounding the city was a moat of rivers. The rear was sealed by volcanoes that could not be crossed. Inside the fortress stood vast fields and towers ideal for repelling aerial threats.
It was an almost impregnable design. A land reshaped by divine authority. Even if Yogur-tosoth and Shuc-rimmurath attacked together, they would never breach this fortress-city.
“Brand or no brand, what does it matter? They still have to come if they want to destroy us, don’t they?”
And at last the dimensional passage stage began.
The first priority was naturally to recall Haina, the knight commander who had endured five hellish years in that world, along with her troops.
Throughout the two-year lull, Biin had kept sending powerful yanggeng and puddings to hunt them down, as though he no longer saw any reason to keep them alive.
The resources spent to keep them supplied had been enormous, yet because the main base had not been attacked, they had managed to preserve roughly a thousand lives by the end of the second year.
“Ughhh… I really thought I was going to die.”
“Come, return quickly. You won’t be able to rest comfortably for long. From now on it’s two-way traffic. Still, you should at least have a few months to recover.”
If he did not give them rest, desertions would occur—desertions in the form of suicide in the living world.
“By the way, what is that smell? You carry a strange scent, my lord.”
“Hm? Ah. This… it’s nothing. Just something I picked up fighting the vile spawn of the enemy world.”
Anyway, Haina’s return signaled Biin’s impending invasion. Using World Shaping for instantaneous relocation, she rejoined her forces and returned to her world without incident. The knights breathed a sigh of relief.
Then, upon returning to the city, Haina saw it.
High in the sky, beside the sun, the terrifyingly enormous eye of a colossal living being.
“Huh?”
“Do not panic. That thing cannot enter our city anyway. The dimensional passage can never open near our main base.”
That much was true.
Especially since they had not scattered but instead consolidated their cities, enclosed the farmlands, and reshaped the terrain into an ironclad fortress-city. There would be no crop failures from the vile spawn, nor any mass slaughter of scattered forces.
Therefore, no matter how wildly those creatures flew or crawled, entering this inner sanctum was impossible…
That was why Yogur-tosoth used his power to widen the dimensional passage several times over and open many more gates. Ogolraeot thought it pointless. Did he intend to conduct a siege with wild animals?
Moments later, a mad torrent of gamchi, sugar lumps, jelly lifeforms, and countless pollen and flower seeds burst from the passages on the wind. It was the enemy’s own style of offensive.
Expecting a massive wave assault, Ogolraeot, his subordinate gods, and their troops suddenly realized something.
“Ah.”
The fatal flaw in their ironclad defensive strategy.
It was not stupidity that had led them here. They had become too fixated on the “mark.”
Fearing that scattered civilians and soldiers would be hunted by wild beasts drawn to the scent, they had used World Shaping to gather everyone into one place and attempt an airtight defense.
But the sense of smell was just as effective at keeping one away from a target as it was at tracking one.
They weren’t coming. They weren’t even approaching. Instead of attacking the fortress-city, they merely circled its perimeter.
As if they had no desire to approach anything that smelled so foul.
“Aaaaaagh! All forces, sortie! Stop the vile spawn pouring in at once!”
They had voluntarily crammed their entire civilization into a narrow zone.
This would not do. They should have prepared to push back with force instead.
No matter how large they had built the fortress-city, Ogolraeot’s world was fundamentally grassland terrain.
Even with mountain ranges and rivers forming natural barriers, the defended area was only about 400 square kilometers.
And the total area of the world, expanded to accommodate the bison herds, was roughly 4,000 square kilometers.
If the Dessert Legion invaded and terraformed nine-tenths of the world into Dessert Desert, there would be no hope left. Trapped inside the tiny fortress-city, surrounded by the Dessert Legion that now controlled the entire plain, they would eventually wither and die.
In frantic haste they opened the gates and sent out more than ten thousand bison cavalry they had raised.
Opposing them were, by rough count, some 430,000 gamchi of various species, roughly 10,000 martial sugar lumps, 8,000 magic sugar lumps, and nearly a million jelly lifeforms writhing their way across.
They had to grind all of that down with ten thousand cavalry.
Failure meant extinction.