novelraw Chapter 376: Highly Toxic Or Antidote
Chapter 376: Highly Toxic Or Antidote
Within the Dream that spun endlessly in layered rotations akin to a kaleidoscope with its "Infinity" rings, Fisher's soul was dragged away from reality by that colossal magical power, entering the Crevice between the Spirit World and the world. Amidst the grogginess, his consciousness seemed to be plummeting without end. During this prolonged descent, his mind—which had been wounded by the Base earlier—recovered bit by bit. He struggled to look at the Ring of the Magic Monarch that still emanated a dark red radiance on his finger.
"Valentiina!"
Then, as if he had just realized something, he called out Valentiina's name. However, no one answered. The only thing that responded to Fisher was a sudden sensation of landing.
"Thud!"
Like a meteor, Fisher's consciousness violently crashed onto tangible ground. As the sensation of falling completely vanished, an extremely familiar feeling welled up in his heart, very similar to the feeling when he and Valentiina entered the Dream at the camp last time. His soul had left his body once again, but unlike that time, the Dream this time felt exceptionally real.
As soon as he hit the ground, his nasal cavity was instantly occupied by an extremely potent stench. That intense stench rushed straight to his brain, making even Fisher feel somewhat nauseated.
"Ugh..."
"Ah!"
"It hurts..."
Fisher panted for a moment, then struggled to prop himself up. What greeted his eyes, however, were massive, sprawling piles of corpses heaped together indiscriminately, some dead and some barely alive.All these corpses wore the clothing styles worn by Schwalians centuries ago. Men and women, young and old, people of all professions were simply piled together like this. Through the gaps between the mangled bodies of the dead and the dying moans of those on the verge of death, Fisher clearly saw that none of them looked human anymore.
The swollen pustules abruptly growing on their bodies were like demons squeezing every drop of their essence, turning what were originally slender and beautiful women into skeletons enveloped in foul-smelling, thick liquid. The extreme agony stimulated the fragile human nerves, driving them to frantically dig their nails deep into their thin, frail skin, letting thick blood that had turned black flow out from those wounds.
This was the Death-Rot Plague?
Frowning deeply, Fisher covered his mouth and nose, taking in the extremely terrifying scene around him bit by bit. The Schwalian clothing and the twisted, deformed sights of the diseased instantly reminded him of the great epidemic recorded in history books—the Death-Rot Plague.
Around Fisher, mountain-like piles of corpses were stacked everywhere. The groans echoed off each other like a dirge of this realm. Purulent liquid flowed and pooled continuously over the corpses like rivers, dyeing the land of Schwali into an unknown color mixed with bright red and pitch black. No matter how the flames ignited by lamp oil burned the corpses, it couldn't outpace the unceasing flow of corpses being hauled here on carriages. Even the originally tall fine steeds were tormented by this disease until they were nothing but skin and bones, constantly vomiting black purulent liquid from their mouths.
The sky was gloomy. The black, fish-scale-like clouds didn't let a glimmer of the sun peek through; they only revealed continuous streaks of scarlet. The stench in the air, mixed with some moisture, made it stuffy and hot, making one loathe to stay for even a second.
Fisher warily surveyed his surroundings. In his hand, a magic crest gradually took shape. This was the method he thought of when researching his trump card, the Dream magic. Directly constructing a fully formed magic in a dream consumes a very heavy toll on the soul. However, if he constructed the corresponding magic materials and then repeated the engraving process in his mind, he could quickly engrave a usable magic in his hand at a relatively low cost.
But the prerequisite for doing this was that one must be extremely familiar with the process and theory of constructing this magic. Furthermore, there must be absolutely no mistakes or pauses in the mental conceptualization; otherwise, it would directly lead to the failure of the magic's engraving and drain his mana dry.
Fisher warmed up his hands as he walked, slowly beginning to practice from low-ring magic, because he hadn't entered this place again since that time with Valentiina.
"Save... save me... Doctor..."
Just as Fisher was cautiously walking forward, his right leg was suddenly grabbed by a tiny hand. His pupils shrank, and he subconsciously tried to lift his foot to break free. But looking down, beside him by a pile of corpses, a little girl whose face was completely covered by Death-Rot pustules—rendering her original appearance completely unrecognizable—was breathing laboriously. Utilizing her sole remaining murky eye, she stared fixedly at Fisher, who was about to walk past.
"Save... it hurts..."
Her hands were stained with a lot of black purulent blood, unsure if it was her own or from the others who had long died beside her. She simply tugged at Fisher powerlessly like this. Clearly, she wasn't using much force, yet her eye, which had already been squeezed into barely a slit, still glimmered with a faint light of survival.
"Doc... cough, cough..."
The magic in Fisher's hand dissipated bit by bit. He opened his mouth, just about to say something, but the girl's hand gripping his trousers had already dropped powerlessly bit by bit. Along the trail of her falling fingers, that purulent blood left a long, drawn-out mark on his trouser leg. Her eye remained open, but her breathing ceased. The mouth that had just wanted to say something was instantly occupied by strands of murky purulent blood, turning her into yet another member of the living beings within this massive Asura Purgatory.
Fisher knew full well that what was appearing before his eyes now was merely an illusion constructed by the Dream magic. Yet he inevitably let out a sigh anyway, because since this scene could appear in the Dream, it meant that someone had truly seen these sights with their own eyes in the past, otherwise the Dream couldn't have constructed them, just like the expanse of paleness Valentiina saw in her dream.
Fisher looked at the young life that had died of disease amid the pile of bodies, then slowly stood up and continued forward. Soon, between the piles of people taller than mountains, he caught sight of the rare individuals who were still walking.
There were several people wearing heavy black robes. The horses and oxen had all fallen ill, and there were no more beasts of burden to push these patients constantly being brought to be destroyed, so they could only use human labor to push the carts loaded with dozens of corpses forward.
The attire of these people in black robes was extremely uniform—they all wore heavy black robes in this extraordinarily hot weather. One didn't even need to think to realize that just standing in Schwali's summer wearing this thing would instantly make one sweat profusely, making even breathing extremely difficult. But to these people, these black robes were merely the most basic gear.
Even more iconic were the crude masks worn on their heads, seemingly made of some sort of leather product. Long, slender masks resembling bird beaks extended out from the black robes they wore. At the eye openings, a pair of spectacle-like lenses were embedded, greatly magnifying the exhaustion and agony of the people hiding beneath these masks.
On their black robes, at the chest position, there was originally a nameplate written in Schwalian script, which usually contained the person's name followed by their hometown. And underneath the nameplate, there was a drawing of a slender sword impaling the head of a dying snake.
Remember? In the myth of the Mother Goddess creating the world, she saved an injured little rabbit. After eating the apple gifted by the rabbit in gratitude, she bore the child "Humanity". In reality, within this story full of religious metaphors, true humanity was that injured rabbit.
The reason the rabbit was injured was because it was bitten by a venomous snake in the forest. And in the doctrines of the Mother Goddess, that venomous snake represented suffering and disease. Therefore, at the founding of Schwali, the Emperor slaying that giant snake held such symbolic significance because it signified that the suffering of the Schwalian people, who had been enslaved and oppressed, would come to an end.
In other words, bearing the symbol of a sharp sword impaling a venomous snake's head simultaneously proclaimed the identities of these people before his eyes...
They were all doctors who had sworn oaths before the Mother Goddess doctrines, vows to exhaust their lifetime of knowledge to fight against disease and suffering.
Very little was recorded in Naris's history books about the epidemic in Schwali, because it was precisely that epidemic that interrupted Schwali's invasion of Naris, pulling Naris back from the brink of national and racial extinction to the negotiation table. The Naris people kept their mouths shut about that humiliating history. Just as Balzac had said previously, for Fisher to have a rough understanding of the disease's outbreak process was already truly not easy.
Looking at the coughing doctors hauling corpses before him, Fisher frowned without saying a word, because those crude medical masks absolutely couldn't fend off the terrifying assault of the Death-Rot Plague. The doctors fighting on the front lines faced an extremely high risk of contracting the disease. Even after exhausting their lives and knowledge, in the face of such a terrifying epidemic, all that many of them could do was ceaselessly incinerate countless corpses.
"Cough, cough..."
A doctor pushing a cart coughed agonizingly and collapsed to the ground, while the doctors pushing carts beside him seemed numb. They threw the fallen dying doctor onto the cart as well, tossing him into the piles of corpses together, pouring oil over them, and silently watching that fragile flame burn those bodies.
And it was only then that Fisher realized that the nameplates on the chests of all these doctors bore the exact same name, and that was,
"Tolga Dalel."
Frowning, Fisher continued forward, crossing the largest mountain of corpses before him, and crossing the stench carried by the hot summer wind. In the scene before him, he suddenly saw a person dressed very similarly to the doctors from earlier holding a notebook, using some sort of container to collect the purulent liquid secreted by those Death-Rot patients.
Fisher paused his footsteps slightly, watching the doctor—wearing the heavy bird-beak mask and leaking a bit of red hair from beneath the black robe—constantly running about the epidemic area. He watched as that doctor researched day after day, persistently manipulating corpses in a world filled with the stench of death and purulent liquid.
"Whoosh~"
A foul wind blew past, sending sheets of theses, drafts, and experimental proofs filled with Schwalian text fluttering over. The bloodstained draft papers were covered by the blurred time and years within the dream. Fisher grabbed many of the scattered drafts, seeing only the conclusions. But there were many, many more—many more processes witnessed by the death repeated day after day, witnessed by the devastated land seen day after day—that he hadn't seen.
"Preliminary Theory on the Origin of the Death-Rot Plague I: The Mana Origin Theory"
"Preliminary Theory on the Origin of the Death-Rot Plague II: The Schwalian Long-Tailed Rat Variant Origin Hypothesis"
"General Theory on the Origin of the Death-Rot Plague: The Death-Rot Bacteria"
"General Theory on the Prevention and Treatment of the Death-Rot Plague"
"Antagonistic Research of Schwalian Kassi Grass Secondary Secretions Against the Bacteria: On Failure I"
"Hypothesis on Transmission Suppression"
"A Letter Pleading for Protective Supplies for Frontline Medical Personnel"
"Preliminary Theory on the Manufacture of the Anti-Rot Agent"
"Tolga's Theory of Anti-Rot"
What fluttered over in the wind were sheets of draft papers with rigorous demonstrative structures, densely packed with experimental records and research reports. Every sheet of paper, every word on them, was authored by a doctor named "Tolga Dalel".
Those draft papers stained with blood and purulent liquid flowed past Fisher's fingertips one by one. He took steps forward, catching sight of increasingly grotesque and bizarre scenes one after another.
He saw Anti-Rot churches built from living patients and skeletons. He saw an abominable, skeleton-like church figure leading coughing Death-Rot patients in reciting the Scripture of Creation. He saw the tightly shut fortresses of nobles. He saw Sun Knights wielding longspears and giant cannons charging through flesh and blood, except the steeds beneath those knights were entirely deformed masses of flesh, and the ground they trampled upon were sprawling patients...
Amidst his silent pacing, grotesque and bizarre scenes arrived in quick succession, until all that clamor faded away entirely. Only then did Fisher see a strange gentleman at the end of the road, wearing a black leather coat and a bird-beak mask that seemed to embed itself onto his face. He had his back turned to him, bearing no nameplate, nor the medical symbol of a giant sword piercing a giant snake's head.
Before that quiet back, which Fisher found both quite familiar and quite wary of, was an enormous, shattered Mother Goddess Statue. The upper half of the Mother Goddess's head was already broken, symbolizing that the Mother Goddess's loving gaze had vanished without a trace. And before that Mother Goddess Statue was a massive cross. Pinned to that cross was a red-haired girl dressed in linen and sackcloth. The girl cast her gaze downward, wearing a devout smile at the corners of her mouth. Just like that, she was crucified to death before the idol of the Mother Goddess.
Fisher finally recognized that the silent black silhouette standing before the cross was no longer a part of the Dream, but truly and undeniably Erwind.
But looking at Erwind, who was as quiet as a statue, merely staring at the cross before him, Fisher hesitated for a moment before speaking,
"Tolga..."
Erwind's body heard Fisher's voice from behind him. He didn't deny it, nor did he turn his head. He merely looked at the serene girl crucified on the cross before him, then spoke,
"Fisher, you truly are a genius. All mediums within the crevice between the Spirit World and reality are amalgams of the subconscious and the soul. The mana ordinarily consumed to construct a magic is definitely an astronomical figure. Yet you were actually able to dismantle the engraving of magic layer by layer to construct it, and finally assemble it together to take effect. Although this train of thought is simple, accomplishing it is as difficult as ascending the heavens."
The fact that Erwind could say this sentence proved that immediately upon entering this Crevice, he sensed its properties and could draw conclusions about the phenomena occurring here. Then, he must have also quickly realized that one couldn't construct life or complex items here.
Both of them were extremely intelligent scholars. Even though they were enemies, after seeing those densely packed draft papers earlier, Fisher still deeply admired the brilliant intellect and tenacious willpower of the person before him.
"You praise me falsely... Hundreds of years ago, before observational magic was even created, you were actually able to deduce the true pathogenic source and transmission routes of the Death-Rot Plague, and even discovered the inhibitory effect of Kassi grass's secondary derivatives on the Death-Rot bacteria. Moreover, at that time, you hadn't obtained the Life Completion Manual. In comparison, my actions amount to absolutely nothing..."
Yes, Tolga didn't have the help of the Completion Handbook—an overpowered item—back then. At that time, just like the thousands upon millions of plague doctors toiling on the front lines, she wore a crude bird-beak mask, battling against inexhaustible corpses burning daily and ubiquitous diseases. She summarized the properties and patterns of the Death-Rot Plague, creating the "Panacea Potion" that is still in use today...
"Heh, Magic Lord praised me exactly like this as well. She told me that in her world, such medicine wouldn't be designed by humans until several centuries later. She called me an absolute genius and personally gifted me the notes left behind by the former Lord of Life for research..."
Erwind remained motionless, merely looking at the quiet red-haired girl's corpse nailed to the cross before him. He seemed to want to touch the girl before him, but was blinded by the piercing smile on her face, unable to lift his hand.
"Genius... You know, Fisher, geniuses are what humanity tolerates the least. In this world, it has always been the high-ranking geniuses accommodating those below them; never have the masses of ordinary beings below reached upwards to embrace them. Because being incompatible is the thing the masses loathe the most."
"Our entire family were devout followers of the Mother Goddess, my younger sister especially so. Because I followed the Mother Goddess's guidance, I walked the path of medicine, attempting to use my meager knowledge to save the common people tormented by disease under the heavens. And whenever I see you, this magic genius whose fame has skyrocketed, I think of my sister. Her innate amount of mana was larger than ordinary people, and her perception of the World's Echo far exceeded normal bounds. She was highly likely to become a master of magic rarely seen in Schwali's history, just like you."
"Until that year, war arose all around and the Death-Rot Plague ran rampant. I, along with countless doctors, was drafted into the epidemic zones to combat the Death-Rot Plague. I witnessed too much suffering brought by the torment of the plague; I witnessed towns where the population halved in just one day; I witnessed piles of corpses taller than mountains; I witnessed esteemed medical masters stricken down by the epidemic, scattering their lifetime of rich knowledge as pus and blood upon the earth."
"Through all of this, I never gave up. Time and time again, I experimented, innovated, and researched, attempting to use my limited knowledge to exhaust the boundless disease, to return peace to the homeland where I resided."
"Rumble!"
In the sky, gloomy, fish-scale-shaped dark clouds intertwined and collided, until that scarlet skylight was drawn by force to form an extremely distinct clap of thunder.
"Yet what countless corpses and sacrifices yielded was nothing at all. Schwali continued to wage wars on the disease-breeding lands, the infected soldiers bringing the initially controllable epidemic to even further places; the church we believed in, which was supposed to guide its believers to be strong, whipped fragile lives, squeezing their flesh and blood to construct massive numbers of Anti-Rot churches; the castles of the nobles were shut tight, luxurious clothes they couldn't finish wearing tossed in wardrobes, and food, even if it spoiled, refused to be distributed to others, because they knew that the moment they opened a crack, those mad mobs would eat them along with it."
"Neither ignorance nor madness ever stopped me. I shielded my eyes and ears, firmly believing that as long as I could research the antidote, all this madness could end. Yet that madness driven by desire didn't wane in the slightest. Under the guise of 'sacrificing to the Unbladed Knight,' the bishops extorted wealth; under the guise of 'hunting Witches,' they humiliated the young girls who had managed with great difficulty to survive the epidemic. Men tormented by hunger and disease were once again dragged by Schwali onto the battlefields of external conquest..."
"The enemies we dedicated our lives to fighting against transformed in the blink of an eye into the apocalypse they felt deeply grateful for, becoming the 'Unbladed Knight,' the Mother Goddess's emissaries worthy of praise; the people we sacrificed everything to protect transformed in the blink of an eye into slaves they wantonly exploited and oppressed, into livestock placed at their mercy, into animals they trampled underfoot and spat upon..."
Fisher looked at the girl nailed to the cross, suddenly realizing that possessing superior magic talent in that era was not a good thing for a person. Because of properties extremely similar to Witch Species, many among them died violent deaths, and the girl before Tolga must have been one of them.
"Fisher, aren't you curious as to what kind of favor I exactly owed Elizabeth that made me help her like this in Naris?"
"The conditions for entering the church to sleep are harsh. Even though my sister has been dead for hundreds of years because of that madness, even if her name as a devout follower's of the Mother Goddess has faded, groaning beneath the unwarranted crime of being executed for resisting rape, she was barred from entering the churches. Not Kadu, not Schwali, nor even those minor nations possessed a single church that could formally accommodate her to slumber at the feet of the Mother Goddess... and Elizabeth gave me this chance."
In the sky, thunder boomed once more. The heavy moisture swept up by waves of frigid wind was on the verge of coalescing into droplets of liquid, preparing to wash over the earth.
"Drip, drop..."
Drop by drop, strand by strand, eventually transforming into an overwhelming curtain of rain that covered this expanse of heaven and earth. Fisher twitched his nose, but only smelled a dense, fishy stench. He raised his hand, only to see that the raindrops falling from the sky left streaks of bright red akin to blood on his hand. He lifted his eyes, only to realize that this entire realm had already been dyed red by boundless blood.
It's raining...
"Over a long period of time, I gradually realized that the cause of so much suffering wasn't the Death-Rot Plague, wasn't war, wasn't Elizabeth, wasn't Blake... but ignorance. This is an attribute engraved upon the essence of fragile humanity. No matter how eras change, no matter how the world changes, ignorance still drives humanity to commit wrongs time and time again..."
"I don't intend to kneel before beings of a higher tier than us, not even to the gods. But I must ascend. I must, as they sang their praises of me during the disaster, use a whip to flog and correct their mistakes, use the truth of wisdom to guide them from making errors..."
Equally standing in that sky-filling curtain of blood rain, Erwind stood blankly before the cross suspending his sister's corpse, exactly as he did hundreds of years ago. He tilted his head back, gazing at the pouring rain. The Mother Goddess didn't answer his perplexities; she merely let the merciless rainwater batter the bird-beak mask that had once witnessed him saving the masses, until the mask fused seamlessly into his face bit by bit, inch by inch, never to be removed again.
Beneath Fisher's feet, the mountain of corpses and sea of blood behind him, the large and small pools of purulent liquid behind him, the enemies Erwind fought against and the compatriots he sheltered—all of them at this moment, flowing along the thick bloody water on the ground and accompanied by the ceaseless rain and thunder from the sky, entirely surged into Erwind's quietly standing body.
It was only at this moment that Fisher suddenly realized: those scenes he had seen earlier weren't constructed by the dream at all, but were all part of Erwind's soul!
"Rumble!"
Above the distant vault of heaven, thunder and the rain curtain intertwined, just as the devout servants kneeling beneath the loving Mother Goddess sang of passing,
"Under the loving gaze of the Mother Goddess, your pure white cape is stained by the searing, violent wind."
"In the flogging of the unbladed, use the testimony of death to cleanse the purity of the soul."
"The punished children are ignorant, unable to discern whether you are a highly toxic poison or an antidote."
"Ah, esteemed Emissary of the Mother Goddess, pure and flawless Unbladed Knight!!"
The hymn wherein those ignorant believers praised the Death-Rot Plague gradually grew impassioned. Meanwhile, all that massive, innumerable flesh and blood had entirely flowed into Erwind's body. His originally illusory soul became incredibly solid. Even while drifting outside the world, an entity-like sensation of soul and spirit gradually uniting was produced. And this was proof that Erwind was but a single step away from the Mythic Rank.
Erwind's entire dream became entirely pure and flawless, as if that filthy, disgusting flesh and blood and the Death-Rot Plague had never existed. In his dream, there were only two simple objects left: the cross with his sister's corpse nailed to it before him, and the broken statue behind that cross, half its head destroyed, rendering the Mother Goddess's loving gaze unseen.
Erwind stood thinly before the cross like that, until a pure white cape, seemingly woven from the purest radiance in the world, grew inch by inch from his back.
"In order to seek the truth, to break free from humanity's ignorance, it is only right for me to abandon ethics and morals, societal frameworks, my physical human body, name, and past. I shall turn what I have gained, what I have thought, into the path of the future..."
"Only power can correct ignorance, and only rationality can restrain desire."
The pure white cape fluttered against the fierce wind, rain, and thunder. Erwind slowly turned his head. Empty-handed, without carrying any tangible blade or weaponry, he quietly fixed his gaze upon Fisher before him like an apocalypse heralded by the Mother Goddess.
The enemy before him had lost his original name, solely because of the terror of his rampage and the ignorance of the believers, he had been bestowed a noble title.
In despair, they sang praises of and lauded this merciless plague, laughably believing it was an emissary sent down to the mortal realm by the Mother Goddess to punish her beloved children...
He is the pure white Unbladed Knight, Erwind.
"Fisher, there are only the two of us left here. Come."
"..."
Fisher said nothing. The magic in his hand grew brighter and brighter, until the ring count of the constructed magic elevated bit by bit, bursting forth with an extremely dangerous color.
"Swish~"
Following the sound of the pure white cape fluttering, the next second, heaven and earth lost all color.