Chapter 126. Failed Sales Pitch
Everyone panicked as some of their comrades suddenly developed tumors that exploded.
Among them, Catherina was the first to identify the cause, “Those people are all soaked with the demon king’s body parts!”
“Those who have touched the demon king’s body parts must clean themselves immediately! The body parts could be contaminated with viruses or germs that cause exploding tumors to grow.”
Everyone who came into contact with the demon king’s body parts ignored everything else and hurried to wash off. Those with water element blessed powers even summoned a water sphere that kept swirling around their bodies to ensure thorough cleansing.
At this point, the demon king is the last thing on everyone’s mind. Even the sense of grief over the loss of comrades hasn't set in yet. The only concern is to cleanse themselves, hoping they won’t be the next to explode.
While everyone is focused on cleaning, the bodies that had exploded start to twitch. The twitching quickly escalates into a jolt as the corpse, missing flesh from the tumor explosion, slowly rises to its feet.
Seeing this, everyone ceases cleaning. After a brief silence, they begin calling out to their friends' corpses.
“Serina? Thank the creator you're still alive!”
“Derlok? Derlok! I'll heal you! Don't move too much, or you'll worsen your injury!” One of the dwarven healers approached the dwarf who had just woken up. However, she was halted by the team leader.
“Wait a moment. They are acting strange! Why aren't they screaming after losing their skin? Even if they were unconscious from the pain, it's still very odd that they all woke up simultaneously.”
The leading dwarf explained his suspicion when suddenly, the bloodied bodies let out piercing wails that caused severe headaches for those nearby.
The wail, reminiscent of the demon king’s, heightened everyone’s tension.
The dwarf quickly commanded, "Water and ice blessed, freeze their lower bodies immediately! Earth element blessed, try to bury their bodies up to their necks."
The water and ice elements blessed regained their senses from the shock and used their powers to freeze the lower bodies of their bloodied allies.
Meanwhile, the earth element blessed opened the ground beneath the bodies, burying them up to their necks.
However, one of the blessed, who had developed tumors and exploded, suddenly moved while agilely evading being frozen or buried.
While endlessly wailing, the bloodied elf soon reached one of the nearby elves.
The elf seems surprised before shouting to the bloodied elf running toward his direction, “Serina, what's wrong? Why did you keep wailing?”
The moment the bloodied Serina came close, she suddenly pounced on the elf and madly bit into his body.
“Help! Help!” The elf screamed in fear while trying to push Serina away without heavily injuring her.
“Serena, what's wrong with you?” The male elf screamed before Serena suddenly punctured his throat.
Watching the scene, the leading dwarf pointed at Serena, who had just slain an elf and was now rushing toward another dwarf. “Everyone, kill her! We can't afford more casualties. She's basically become a monster!"
Then, he directed the ice, water, and earth element blessed individuals, saying, "Stay focused and keep those people soaked by the demon king’s body parts sealed in ice and soil.”
In the meantime, Catherina, who has a divine strength blessing, has arrived and punched Serena right in the stomach. The punch knocked Serena a few meters away, leaving one of her legs bent at a strange angle.
Even so, Serena soon stood up and walked limply toward the nearest elf.
Seeing this, the elf looked at Serena before firing a fireball in her direction.
As Serena’s body burns in the fire, the endless wailing she's been releasing slowly dies down.
After a few seconds, the fire also weakens, revealing the burnt corpse inside.
Smelling the acrid scent of burnt meat, the elf who'd released the fireball immediately bent down to vomit and occasionally sobbed.
Meanwhile, Catherina and the dwarf looked at the remaining bloodied bodies that had been releasing endless wails all this time.
Currently, they are either half frozen or mostly buried. Despite this, their enthusiasm persists as they endlessly release piercing wails.
When Catherina approached them, she was shocked by what she saw. “Is this… a zombie infection?”
The frozen or buried bodies have entirely white eyes and bloodied skin, with some bumps here and there from the exploded tumors.
Coupled with the seemingly high endurance and thirst for killing Serena has shown, Catherina immediately thinks of zombies.
In response to her muttering, a message from Cedric appears.
[You can think of it as a magical version of zombie viruses from Earth's fictions.]
***
A few minutes before.
Inside the Divine Space, Cedric watched as several people grew tumors and exploded.
Although he became panicked from seeing that the demon king had escaped. The combatant’s inexplicable death concerned him even more.
While keeping an eye on the demon king's escape route, Cedric also sent his mental power to directly study the bodies of those who had suddenly grown tumors and exploded.
After he thoroughly looks at the corpse, Cedric is 100% sure it isn't caused by a virus or bacteria.
The demon king's body did contain deadly viruses and bacteria. However, after copying them to the Divine Space and infecting the bodies he created for experimentation, Cedric observed that none of them led to tumor growth.
Thus, he placed his suspicion on something that shouldn't exist inside the body that has exploded - NE.
Indeed. After his thorough search, Cedric found that a few NE had actually infected the people who died.
Actually, everyone who fought the demon king has unknowingly been infected by NE at some point. It's just that the NE in their bodies is much lower than in those who've died.
“But, how?” Cedric scratched his head.
He couldn't understand how being infected with NE could cause someone to explode.
From his experience, which might not be extensive but is still considerable, the only result of being infected by NE is becoming a demon.
Just when he thought so, Cedric saw the corpse that had just exploded rise from the ground.
Then, as the familiar prologue to a zombie apocalypse began to unfold in the Crystal Cube World, Cedric panicked.
Thankfully, the dwarf that led the team has quick thinking. Thanks to his command, only one of the zombie-like corpses successfully moved.
That’s right. Cedric called it corpses, because no matter how he saw it, those people should’ve died.
Just like the demon king, what moved those bodies now is just the NE that has infected and killed them.
Still, Cedric asked the System something he was concerned about: “Hey, this zombification won’t spread, will it?”
[The System doesn’t want to break this bad news, but there’s a high chance those zombies could indeed infect others and turn them into new zombies.]
“What?!”
[If those zombies collected enough NE from other creatures they killed, it’s highly probable that they can spend those excess NE to raise other corpses by infusing the NE in their bodies into the target.]
“Damn it! And here I felt glad that this demon king seems like a dumb one-trick pony that specializes in regenerating itself like a punching while occasionally shooting water and wind.”
[Actually, there are other things you should be concerned about. For example, where the demon king is heading.]
Since the demon king had been moving in a straight line, Cedric quickly realized that the demon king was heading toward an area that had not yet been evacuated.
Along the way, it caused destruction, killing, and merging anyone foolish enough to remain in the city into its body.
Although there are Level 0, 1, 2, and even a few Level 3 blessed helping with the evacuation, they’re simply placed too far apart. Once the demon king reached them, it would be a bloody slaughter.
He clenched the Divine Intervention: Word in his hand and prepared to tell Catherina to gather her team and hold the demon king, especially after reading another message from the System.
[For information, the higher the life level, the more resistant creatures are to this kind of forceful NE infection. If those at Level 3 could be infected simply by having their whole bodies soaked in the demon king’s body parts, then those at Levels 2, 1, and 0 will have even weaker resistance. Those at Level 0 might even be infected simply by touching parts of the demon king.]
[Also, the demon king will become more powerful by collecting the NE from the people it killed.]
Cedric nodded and immediately sent a message to Catherina.
Currently, Catherina has just guessed that the person in front of her might be infected with the infamous zombie infection.
Cedric could hear her softly mutter, “Is this… zombie infection?”
To make Catherina realize how serious the current situation is, Cedric first affirmed Catherina’s guess.
[You can think of it as a magical version of zombie viruses from Earth's fictions.]
After hearing Cedric’s affirmation, Catherina’s eyes twitched slightly.
She then focused on reading another message that Cedric had just sent.
[The zombie infection spreads either through contact with a specific amount of the demon king’s body parts, or by being infected by zombies that have killed enough people and gained enough energy to spread the infection. The individuals buried and frozen by your team have already died and now only exist as living corpses. Please eliminate their bodies to prevent the demon king from defiling them further.]
Catherina repeated Cedric’s message to the team leader, who then went to kill the zombies himself.
While the dwarf leader was killing the zombies they had sealed, Cedric sent another message.
The demon king is close to entering the unevacuated area. Please deploy most of your team to attack it. If it kills enough people, it might regain its strength or even become stronger.
While watching the dwarf team leader lead Catherina and most of their combatants to follow the demon king’s trail, Cedric kept watch to prevent them from straying.
During this, the System’s black hearted merchant mode reactivated, displaying a screen promoting an item to Cedric.
[Don’t you think asking them to fight the demon king in their current situation is simply inhumane? How about buying several ‘Level 4 Automatic Barrier (Technological)’ from the store and setting them to automatically block anything from the demon king? This way, Catherina and her team can focus on the fight without worrying about getting infected.
Although he knew it was just one of the System’s schemes to earn points, Cedric still gave it a look. Especially since he still had some free time before Catherina’s team started another battle against the demon king.
He was familiar with the Automatic Barrier. It was one of the items he purchased on his first visit to Earth. Because it hadn’t been used on his first journey to Earth, he actually still kept it to protect himself during his second and third visits to summon Catherina and Elisa.
Still, the one he bought is the Level 1 variant. He never took a look at its Level 4 variant.
[Level 4 Consumable Divine Item, Automatic Barrier (Technological).
Cost: 50 GP
Description: an automatic barrier that allows the user to defend against any Level 4 attack for 10 seconds per use. 3 uses remaining.]
“This thing is too expensive!”
After deducting the number of people who have died and those who stayed to manage the zombified corpses, Catherina’s team has sent a total of thirty people to fight the demon king.
Including a few reinforcements that seem to be moving toward them, he’ll need around forty Automatic Barriers, which amounts to 2.000 GP.
He indeed has that much money, but that doesn’t mean he can just spend it all on barriers.
Furthermore, spending a lot of GP isn’t the only problem. Sending Divine Items to the world or activating Divine Items that target the world will decrease its stability. God knows whether a disaster will break out after he sends 2.000 GP worth of items at once.
[...]
[Well, a disaster will indeed break out. In fact, your world might even collapse because it isn’t stable enough to receive 2.000 GP worth of items at once.]
“...” This time, it’s Cedric’s turn to fall silent.