Chapter 81
I took a moment to assess the situation.
The cavalry beyond the horizon... should I call them a knightly order?
In any case, they had stopped their advance and were waiting.
Were they giving me time to assess things?
First, I spread Pride individuals in every direction to survey the area.
To my surprise, they transformed into forms specialized in gathering terrain information, making it easier for me to survey the surroundings, and spread out.
So they could be used like this...
Thanks to them, I got information about the area in an instant.
A map-like display of the castle's information appeared before my eyes.
“It's much bigger than I expected.”
At a glance, it looked like a city with a population in the hundreds of thousands.
On top of that, it had thick walls.
“If I play my cards right...”
Maybe stopping that huge number of knights isn't completely out of the question after all.
And no matter how much of a knightly order they are, how are they going to get over the walls?
Have they never seen The Lord of the Rings? How are they going to lay siege with just a knightly order?
... Just as I was thinking that.
Bwooooo!
A faint horn sounded in the distance, and massive siege engines appeared beyond the gorge, their rumbling shaking the earth.
... Ugh, I really should've kept my mouth shut.
So that's why the knights were waiting.
I need to get ready quickly.
First, I headed over to the extravagantly dressed general who was encouraging the people.
“Are you in charge here?”
“You are...? M-Mage, is that you?”
Mage? Well, technically, yes.
“That's right.”
“Good heavens! The Mage has returned!”
... Huh?
That wasn't the reaction I'd expected.
“I think there's been some misunderstanding...”
“What? You're not the Mage...”
“No, I am a mage, but... what exactly happened here? And who are you?”
“I am...”
To summarize what followed...
This was Constance Castle, the capital of the kingdom.
This man was Belisar, the kingdom's knight commander, but now he was effectively leading the capital.
The reason was... every member of the royal family had died.
And it wasn't just the royal family.
All the nobles who had been in the palace had died, too.
“The reason for that...”
“Yes. After the previous Mage disappeared, His Majesty the King coveted the various legacies the Mage had left behind.”
It wasn't strange for a king to covet a mage's belongings, especially the legacy of a mage so powerful that the country revered his possessions as national treasures.
Still, he had some nerve.
“Didn't he leave them behind? He only stepped away for a while, right? And they just took everything?”
“... I have no excuse.”
The king was trash.
“Sigh. So the king opened something like the Mage's treasure chest in the great hall to show off, and it...”
Was Pandora's box.
“... Yes. Everyone there died instantly, and it gradually spread until the entire city... I barely managed to contain it and prevent it from spreading throughout the kingdom.”
“But you couldn't stop the rumors, so the Holy Kingdom sent an expedition to eradicate the evil mage's curse, right?”
“... That's right.”
What a complete disaster.
But, could it be...
“... Was the mage's name Avicenna?”
“Ah, yes. I don't know his full name, but... that's what we called him. The fact you even know his name means...!”
... I had a feeling.
It was a legacy left behind by the ‘Constellation’ of my class, or whatever that guy was.
Which meant this Gate was...
Just as Segyun's alchemical legacy had been in the ‘Empire of False Gold’ Gate...
this was a Gate exclusive to my class.
That's why no one else had managed to clear it.
In that sense, the king wasn't trash.
He was a fucking bastard.
He died trying to gobble up my legacy? Serves him right.
But...
The people of the kingdom weren't to blame.
Besides, this had happened because of someone who was, in a way, my ‘master’...
So as his disciple, I had to clean up the mess.
“How are things?”
“... Honestly, not good. Everyone in the city is suffering from the plague.”
“Then I'll have to deal with that first.”
I gathered together the Pride I'd spread throughout the city.
And with that powerful thought wave...
─That's enough! Gather up!
I sent out a thought powerful enough to echo throughout the city.
The general's eyes flew open in surprise.
Whitish things also slipped out of his body and gathered together.
Within just a few minutes, the source of the infection that had afflicted hundreds of thousands of people gathered into a whitish, fog-like mass, despite its tiny individual components.
“How are you feeling?”
“... I do feel better.”
The pathogen—the cause of the disease itself—was gone, but that wouldn't restore the physical strength they'd lost in the process.
They were exhausted and barely able to stand... how could they possibly fight a war in that state?
I'd gathered them all together, but there was also the problem of taking control of these Pride individuals that I didn't control.
The total number of individuals I could currently control was about 30 trillion.
If I pushed myself temporarily, I could command nearly 100 trillion—an overwhelming increase.
Thanks to the ring Frost had given me, my maximum mana had doubled, and with various other improvements, I'd reached this level.
Even so, I couldn't bring all the infectious agents capable of infecting hundreds of thousands under my control.
“Even if I put some under control with Undead Rise...”
I had about 20 trillion individuals in my possession, which left only around 10 trillion slots.
The rest... I'd have to summon them and then dismiss them.
Bwooooo!
The horn sounded again, and the Holy Kingdom's army began preparing to advance.
Seeing that, I realized there wasn't time for that.
Damn it, but I couldn't just leave these Pride individuals here, either.
I'd temporarily gathered them through thought, but they were basically bombs outside my control.
“... Bombs?”
Why was I holding a bomb?
If they were bombs, couldn't I just throw them at the enemy?
My thoughts spun, and the moment I reached a conclusion, I issued an order.
“All Pride individuals, hold back the Holy Kingdom's army.”
If I did it this way, I didn't need to take control of them.
I could throw them at the enemy and just watch them run wild.
At my command, the Pride sent out thought waves, and at the same time, the whitish fog flew toward the Holy Kingdom's fanatics.
Pride.
The supreme pathogens bearing the name of ‘Pride.’
They would branch into hundreds or thousands of different strains and gnaw away at the human body.
The Holy Kingdom's holy knights and priests wouldn't go down easily, but...
these individuals hadn't even been strengthened by the influence of my control.
Even so, they'd be enough to hold them up.
In the meantime, I needed to think of another way to respond.
**
Leonhardt de Bretus, expeditionary commander of the Holy Kingdom of Thessalonica.
His heart swelled with emotion as he reached a spot where Constance Castle stood right before him.
“At last, Constance.”
It had once been the capital of a great empire that ruled the continent, but now it was merely the capital of a fallen kingdom.
Even that had been reduced to a wasteland by the calamity of an evil mage.
“I can't see a single person on the walls. Looks like one Smite Charge will break right through.”
“Don't let your guard down. We'll finish the purification before entering. Load the catapults with Purifying Fire.”
“Y-you mean the Purifying Fire?”
The deputy commander's voice trembled.
Purifying Fire.
It was a horrendous flame that wouldn't go out once it caught, unless you scraped away the flesh.
Even if you put it in water, it would die down briefly, then ignite again the moment it came out.
“Isn't that too much?”
“It's not too much. These are his traces. Even purifying the entire city with fire wouldn't be enough.”
“... Understood.”
The deputy commander let out a small sigh, then went to give the order to the engineers, grumbling.
“Purifying Fire is so expensive. It's not coming out of his pocket.”
He wasn't objecting because he was worried about the people in the city.
He was simply annoyed at spending so much money to occupy a city that had already fallen.
As a staff officer also responsible for war expenses, he found the expeditionary commander's unilateral decision irritating, but it wasn't entirely unreasonable, so he decided to obey without a word.
As he made his way to the rear...
“... Huh?”
What he saw was engineers lying on the ground.
And even as he watched, more engineers were collapsing one after another.
“Th-this...! Could it be the plague?”
He hurried over, then channeled mana into his throat and shouted toward the main force.
“It's the plague! Send the priests!”
At the same time, he began healing the engineers with the divine power he wielded as a Crusader.
Though weaker than a priest's, his own divine power was still quite potent.
Bathed in a faint light, the engineer commander managed to come to his senses and stood up with difficulty.
“What happened?”
“A-a fog suddenly enveloped us, and everyone collapsed with a terrible fever.”
“... Surely not.”
An ominous feeling swirled in his eyes as he looked toward Constance Castle.
“Has Maggis appeared again?”
The worst black mage, one who rejected the providence of God.
Even so, no one could deny his tremendous power.
“No, that can't be.”
If it really was ‘Maggis’ himself... probably no one breathing here would still be alive.
And hadn't he ascended?
They had come to attack Constance because they were certain he was no longer on the continent.
As he bit his lip...
Crusaders carrying priests arrived from the main force.
“Check their condition at once!”
At the deputy commander's shout, the priests approached and began driving the pathogen out with their divine power.
Seeing the engineers' complexions gradually improve, the deputy commander let out a sigh of relief.
“It's definitely not Maggis's work.”
If these were his strains, it would've been impossible to drive them out even with divine power.
The priest agreed, saying,
“It seems to have avoided the divine power and attacked the engineers in the rear. But... this is a truly wicked germ. I've never heard of anything like it.”
It kept mutating into different forms, constantly trying to find a balance between lethality and transmissibility.
It even avoided divine power and infiltrated various parts of the body.
“It reached deep into their brains in that short time. It will take several treatments with divine power to cure them completely.”
“How long will that take?”
“It looks like five days.”
The deputy commander squeezed his eyes shut.
Should they just abandon the engineers and attack?
“... What if we don't treat them?”
“They'll go mad and drop a catapult on our main camp.”
When the priest stopped treating them, the engineers trembled and tried to move like sleepwalkers.
“But we can't burn them all alive, can we?”
“... They're not the heretics of Constance. They're devout soldiers of our Holy Kingdom. We can't do that.”
They might have had no choice but to abandon them if they couldn't be cured, but since treatment was possible, there was no question of doing so.
Of course, knowing he'd have to bear all the commander's frustration over the delay in the campaign, the furrow between the deputy commander's brows only deepened.
**
“Oh, looks like they got held up pretty well.”
The bombs I'd thrown into their main camp seemed to be having a proper effect.
The attack they'd been preparing stopped almost immediately, and they started setting up camp.
Still, they wouldn't hold out for long.
Unless they were Pride individuals strengthened by my control, they were undead and therefore vulnerable to divine power.
It wasn't like Gluttony, who'd gobbled up... absorbed a ton of Nectar and gained the divine attribute.
In the meantime, I needed to prepare for the war.
The problem was that everyone had only just recovered, and they were still weak.
“Let's gather as many of the ones with some strength left as possible...”
“... Are there even any people with strength left?”
“Well...”
Everyone I could see looked completely feeble. How was I supposed to manage that?
They needed time to eat a proper meal and recover.
To speed up their recovery...
“Damn it.”
There was definitely a bacterium Segyun had made with gene-editing technology.
It had been part of a product line under development as a next-generation fatigue-recovery probiotic, designed to promote ATP production.
The problem was...
I hadn't brought it!
I cursed myself for not bringing it just because it was only a prototype.
“... No, wait.”
If I didn't have it, I could make it, couldn't I?
Pride could differentiate into any form, so there was no reason to carry individual strains around.
Right?
As soon as I finished thinking it through, I focused my thoughts through the Ansible Earring, reaching out to someone.
“Segyun, can you hear me?”
The Ansible Earring could transmit thoughts even from inside a Gate.
So when I sent a message...
─... What time is it?
Segyun answered in a very sleepy voice.
I really did feel bad...
“I'm sorry for waking you.”
─No, I was about to get up anyway. What's up? Is something wrong?
“Could you tell me the exact base sequence of that fatigue-recovery probiotic you made before?”
Segyun, who seemed to know every microorganism in the world.
Pride, which could differentiate into every microorganism in the world.
Put the two together, and... this is basically...
It's alive?