Chapter 63
[Title: LOL, Jackpot]
(Meme of a golem unable to keep itself upright)
(Meme of magic beasts collapsed on the ground and panting)
I'm a scout myself, but something feels off.
Did they all get drunk together?
- LOL, why are they like that?
- Well, it's good for us if they're suffering from a status effect.
- Wow, so there really were four steel golems.
ㄴ For real, if they'd invaded normally, Kellearton would've been completely screwed.
A scout's post about preparing for the wave was uploaded to the Gallery.
A report saying the magic beasts were acting strangely.
At first, most people were simply relieved that things had gone well, even though they had no idea what had happened.
But the strange symptoms grew more serious in less than an hour.
[Title: Uh, Something Feels Off]
(Meme of all the magic beasts and golems dead)
(Meme of the surrounding plains' vegetation rotting away)
(Meme of crows that flew in to eat the corpses becoming corpses themselves)
They all suddenly started dying.
I have to run, so I can't take questions.
- What is this?
- No, this is kind of creepy.
- Can a golem really just die that helplessly?
- ?? Was it cursed or something?
ㄴ Is there even a curse that powerful?
ㄴ I've never heard of a curse that could finish off a wave that sent out five mutant magic beasts in an hour.
It was nice when the magic beasts were woozy.
The steel golem was an absurdly powerful magic beast that could destroy a castle wall all by itself.
It was one thing if they weakened, but it was another if they all died in an hour.
- What is this, divine punishment?
- It's God's curse! God has cursed us!
- Is the Great War starting again?
Hundreds, even thousands, of wave magic beasts quietly became corpses, forming mountains.
Every animal in the area rotted away.
Of course, the animals that came to eat them died too.
A terror from the unknown.
The Gallery's mood soon became engulfed in fear rather than celebration.
- What do we do if that comes our way?
- Couldn't an entire city die in an instant?
- They die so fucking painfully, too.
- (I'm scared, elf meme)
“We should probably make an announcement.”
Modern firearms had been impressive enough to make me gasp, but chemical weapons were on another level.
Before panic spread through the Gallery, I wrote a new announcement.
[Announcement: Important Announcement Regarding the Current Topic]
Author: Head Mod*
It's me.
This is an announcement about the Kellearton rift topic.
(Meme of all the magic beasts dead)
To get straight to the point, yes, I did this lol.
I cut them off before the damage could spread, but I didn't expect the aftermath to be this severe;
That's a nerve agent called VX.
I threw it into the rift, and they all died trying to crawl out after being exposed to it, so don't worry.
I wrote this because all kinds of ghost stories and rumors were circulating in the Gallery.
“That should be enough, right?”
I told them what it was and also made clear that it would never be used against people.
Naturally, thousands upon thousands of comments began appearing as soon as I uploaded the announcement.
- But there aren't any marks on them?
ㄴ For real, there aren't even traces of an explosion.
ㄴ Even magic leaves traces, so what the hell is this...? Are they just dropping one by one without a sound?
- Head Mod, did you learn curse magic too?
ㄴ Head Mod*) There are things like that?
ㄴ ?
ㄴ ???
ㄴ No, not really; but if even you don't know, then what the hell is that?
Meanwhile, some Gallery users focused on its undeniable killing power.
They suggested actively using it for defense and combat.
[Title: Head Mod, This Is Seriously Great]
The effect seems insane.
Can't you release that thing called VX into the Marketplace?
- For real lol, an insanely overpowered weapon just dropped.
- Can't we use it to wipe out the magic beasts?
I did consider that at first.
But I found out what happened after trying it.
The magic beasts exposed to it would thrash around as if fighting for their lives, then leap out of the rift before they died.
ㄴ Head Mod*) How would you use it?
ㄴ Can't we grab it like a grenade and throw it at a magic beast?
ㄴ Head Mod*) How are you going to grab it?
ㄴ What, can't we somehow grab it?
ㄴ Ah, the Head Mod's lost it.
ㄴ Come on, release some and clean out all the magic beasts lol.
“Ah, how am I supposed to explain this?”
Apparently, the Gallery still didn't understand the danger of chemical weapons.
I wondered how I should explain it, but there was no need.
Time would explain it for me.
It was one week after the chemical weapons had been used.
[Title: Update on the Northern Plains...jpg]
(Meme of all the plants and animals rotted away)
(Meme of a vast plain covered with nothing but corpses)
It feels like I'm looking at hell...
Should I say it's making me think a lot?
It's kind of—no, very creepy.
Head Mod, what the hell did you bring over?
- Why do they die just because an animal passes by?
ㄴ It looks like its blood barely touched it, and it still died.
ㄴ Was life really this easy to kill?
- We really shouldn't mess with the Head Mod.
ㄴ They kept calling the Head Mod an archmage, and now I really understand what that means...
The area did not recover even as time passed.
The one fortunate thing was that the VX only spread a few hundred meters around the rift.
That was because the rift disappeared after spewing out the wave.
“I will never recklessly release chemical weapons again.”
Never go into the chemical weapons tab in the Marketplace.
This was beyond anything I could handle.
Even if I ever used one again, I'd have to thoroughly seal off the area around the rift first.
“At least I should do something about the cleanup.”
I couldn't simply relax because the rift had disappeared.
If I left it like this, it could kill even people who knew nothing about it.
“But who's going to do that?”
Still, this was on a completely different level from the Gallery doctors during the Black Death.
Even that mighty steel golem had died painfully without lasting an hour—no, twenty minutes.
Go into an area like that and clean up something called VX?
“Still, I should at least post a recruitment ad...”
Just in case, I wrote a recruitment ad.
The Gallery was that terrified of chemical weapons.
- It kills you just by touching your skin?
ㄴ You die just from breathing.
ㄴ Fuck, say something that makes sense lol. Even a dragon couldn't do that lol.
ㄴ Fact) It's official from the Head Mod.
ㄴ Fuck, something like that really exists?
In a medieval world where physical attacks were the norm, something that killed you just by touching you—or merely breathing?
It was almost amazing that rumors about a demon's curse or divine punishment hadn't already begun circulating.
Still, I posted it just in case, but...
[A total of 152 applications have arrived.]
“What the hell?”
In less than a minute, applications flooded in, easily surpassing a hundred.
*
The ground turned ash-gray.
It had been a week since the corpses were left there.
They should have decomposed by now, but there were no flies buzzing around the corpses.
“If hell exists, maybe it looks like this?”
“I think it'd be even worse than this.”
All of this was the Head Mod's handiwork.
A few days earlier, the Head Mod's recruitment ad had been uploaded to the Gallery.
[Recruitment: Looking for People to Work.]
Requirements: Having arms and legs is enough.
Provided: Chemical protective suits, gas masks, and so on.
Job description: VX-contaminated area cleanup crew.
The recruitment notice was extremely concise.
In fact, it was so short that it barely qualified as concise.
But the people selected for this site had applied without even reading it properly.
Because it paid a lot.
“But I didn't expect we'd be doing this kind of work.”
When one of the men talking with him pressed the ignition button, a flamethrower belched out a fierce stream of fire.
The long-reaching flames began devouring the corpses and the surrounding plants and animals.
The work they had been given was simple.
Burn everything in this area.
“This is creepy...”
If this really was hell, as the youngest man had said, then perhaps everyone would go to heaven.
If they showed people the scenery of hell even once, everyone would want to live and become devout believers.
Yet even after learning what a horrifying job this was, none of those selected ran away.
“So why did you come to do this work?”
“Yeah, you look young, too. Aren't you scared?”
One of the workers asked the boy a question.
But the boy was impassive.
He didn't seem to be doing it against his will.
“Being hungry is scarier.”
“That's true.”
“I was forcibly dragged into the Great War without getting paid a penny, so what's a little work like this...”
If anything, he even felt proud.
At least the Head Mod never made them do anything they couldn't handle.
Even these strange clothes they were wearing were protecting them perfectly, weren't they?
More than anything...
[4,000 mana dumplings have been deposited.]
“Hwakkiyat-hoo!”
The enormous payment boosted their spirits.
Amid the workers happily going about their job, one of them suddenly raised his head and took in the scenery.
The Head Mod was the one who had wiped out in an instant the magic beasts that had left the entire country at its wit's end.
The Head Mod was also the one protecting them from within it all as if it were nothing.
The man, once a believer in the Head Mod cult, chuckled to himself.
“And you still say the Head Mod isn't a god?”
*
The aftermath of the chemical weapons gradually settled down over time.
Whenever similar corpses occasionally appeared from other rifts, the part-timers unfailingly did the hard work.
“Hopefully it never reaches any people.”
Fortunately, there had been zero cases so far.
But there was no reason to let our guard down.
I was reading each post uploaded to the Gallery and keeping a close eye out for anything unusual.
[Title: My Eyesight Keeps Getting Worse]
(Meme of a frog sobbing)
That's not all.
My hands are trembling like crazy, and I keep completely forgetting things that happened.
Weird things keep breaking out on my hands, too...
I take and apply my medicine properly, so why is this happening?
“No way?”
Could this be a side effect of the chemical weapons?
Maybe a minuscule amount, diluted from the dead magic beast corpses, somehow entered through an unknown route.
Otherwise, there was no way their body could have deteriorated so rapidly when they were taking their medicine properly.
- Head Mod*) What medicine are you taking, then?
I immediately left a comment on the post, and soon found an unexpected answer.
ㄴ Author) ㅠㅠ Mercury.
ㄴ Head Mod*) ?
“Oh, for fuck's sake.”
The second thing that commonly came to mind when thinking of the Middle Ages: mercury.