{Chapter: 168: Infected With Plague}
Feeling dizzy and disoriented, he slowly pushed himself up from the cold, rocky ground.
His head throbbed, vision still blurry from the impact, and before he could fully gather his bearings, a strange rustling sound echoed around him—low, like shifting gravel or the scrape of claws against stone.
Instinctively, he turned his head.
What he saw made his pupils narrow in disbelief.
A multitude of grotesque, monstrous forms were crawling out from the ground—emerging like insects from cracked soil after a storm. These creatures—demons like him—wore expressions of confusion and disarray. Their movements were uncoordinated, as if they too were recovering from a blow, and none of them seemed to understand what had just happened.
Yat clenched his fists tightly. As a demon of the [Upper Rank], he had not felt this kind of weakness in ages. It was rare—unnerving. Something had disrupted him, deeply and abruptly. His mind, still groggy, scrambled to reconstruct the events leading up to this moment.
Then he remembered.
With a grimace, he touched the back of his head. His fingertips brushed against a ridge of tender, torn flesh. Blood smeared his palm as he brought it down in front of his face.
A wound.
A blow delivered not long ago.
The memory of the ambush returned in fragments—Dex. That damn lunatic humanoid demon with a handsome face.
He remembered the strike now. The pain. The crack of his skull. Judging by the rate of his regeneration, the fracture had partially healed, though parts of it remained open. Yat narrowed his eyes and made a rough calculation based on his body's natural healing speed. It told him how long he must have been unconscious.
He closed his eyes for a moment, reaching inward to assess his physical condition. His demonic essence still flowed smoothly. His magical flow was unbroken. No foreign energy was detected. And yet, a sense of unease still lingered.
"What did that madman do to me…?"
His voice was low, hoarse with suspicion.
Suddenly, without any warning, his right arm transformed. Muscle and sinew twisted violently into the shape of a gleaming sickle. In a flash, he lashed out and struck the demon standing beside him.
The unfortunate creature never had a chance to react.
Its head was severed cleanly, rolling across the dirt.
Blood sprayed in the air, and the others around him recoiled in stunned silence. Yat paid them no mind. He bent down and began to dissect the corpse—calmly, clinically, and with ruthless precision.
His claws tore through flesh and bone.
His senses delved deep, searching not just through the physical remains but into the very soul of the slain demon, trying to find traces of a curse, a spell, or any residual contamination.
There had to be something.
That demon would never just knock them out and leave.
But after several tense minutes of meticulous inspection, Yat frowned and tossed the remains aside in disgust. His hands were covered in blood, but they held no answers.
Nothing.
He had found absolutely nothing.
Unbeknownst to him, Dex's transformation had improved his already terrifying abilities in plague manipulation to an entirely new level. Unless one was a highly specialized expert in magical pathogens, even a [Higher Demon] would not be able to detect the microscopic infestation. Dex's handiwork was surgical—silent, invisible, and utterly undetectable until it was far too late.
It was like comparing a savage with a club to a master assassin wielding poison-tipped needles. They simply weren't in the same league.
Despite his failure to uncover the truth, Yat had no choice but to suppress his anger for the time being. He turned away from the mutilated corpse and sat cross-legged on the ground, beginning the process of fully restoring his strength.
He knew very well that if he hadn't been caught off guard—if he had arrived fully recharged—Dex wouldn't have succeeded so easily.
The humiliation was unbearable.
A proud [Upper Rank Demon] brought low by a [Middle-Rank Demon]?
It was outrageous—even if that "Middle-Rank Demon" clearly possessed combat strength far beyond his designation.
Yat's rise to the upper echelon of demon society hadn't been by luck. He had clawed, bled, and crushed his way past countless others, proving his worth through sheer brutality and cunning.
He would not let this insult stand.
---
Far away, in a different part of the battlefield, Dex—had his clawed hand wrapped tightly around the throat of a screaming [Higher Demon].
Suddenly, his gaze shifted.
Something had tugged at his senses. A faint presence. He looked toward the distant direction where Yat had awoken.
But only for a moment.
"Hmph."
With a dismissive scoff, he turned his attention back to his current opponent.
In Dex's mind, anyone who couldn't challenge him now would never be worthy of concern in the future. That was the confidence born from absolute strength—a dominance so complete that even potential threats were treated with casual disdain.
He hurled the unconscious body aside like trash.
The unfortunate victim, of course, had already been injected with one of Dex's viruses—a living time bomb waiting to detonate.
Dex, with a subtle smile, nodded in satisfaction.
"The number of poison gas bombs is nearly complete now," he whispered to himself, eyes glittering with a dangerous gleam.
Over the last several hours, he had personally assaulted thousands of demons—individually knocking them unconscious with precisely calculated blows, injecting them with a wide variety of custom viruses, and implanting subtle mental suggestions that would drive them to join the next demon tide.
Each infected demon had become a living bioweapon.
In his logic, it was far more difficult—and more rewarding—to incapacitate a demon than to kill one. Their bodies were inherently resistant to loss of consciousness, making this approach a personal challenge.
That's why most of the demons he targeted were newcomers—fresh arrivals from Abyss plane of existence. They hadn't yet adapted to the local energies, and their guard was down. And bore the full blunt of world consciousness. They were the perfect victims.
To some, this may have seemed like bullying the weak.
To Dex, it was simply efficient resource management.
And besides…
He was bored.
So if the cost of his entertainment was a few thousand infected comrades? So be it.
In his mind, that was a small price to pay for what could potentially become one of the most devastating biological attacks in the history of the Mi Ling World.
---
Several dozen days later...
From his vantage point atop the high command tower, General Henry Moore quietly watched the distant horizon. As always, the monstrous tide surged forth from the edge of the skyline, an unstoppable force of corrupted flesh and raw abyssal energy. The sight no longer startled him—he had seen it countless times. But that didn't mean he had grown numb to it.
Without hesitation, he began issuing orders.
Strategic resources were swiftly allocated, and seasoned troops were dispatched to each critical defense point along the wall. It was a routine he knew by heart—calculated, effective, and time-tested.
It wasn't that Henry Moore lacked the creativity to innovate. Quite the contrary. He had once been known for unconventional battlefield strategies and maneuvers that had turned the tide of many conflicts. He had studied warfare not just through experience but through theory, history, and relentless practice.
But innovation meant uncertainty. Uncertainty meant risk.
And in this war, risk was a luxury he could not afford.
He understood the weight of his position. The nations beyond the great defensive line—the fragile world clinging to a semblance of normal life—relied on him and his forces to hold the line against the endless horde. It was the only reason they still stood.
To Henry, nothing mattered more than stability. Predictability. Control.
So long as they could maintain the front, the civilian world could continue to breathe, to hope, to survive another day.
Stability, taken to the extreme, was his creed.
And before that goal, everything else had to yield—ambition, pride, even dreams of victory.
*****
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