{Chapter: 169: Infected With Plague II}
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.
Because he understood one hard truth: even if their forces could penetrate deep into the corrupted zones and cleanse the filth inch by inch, it would ultimately be meaningless. As long as the divine forces above hadn't destroyed the main army of the Abyss, the invasion wouldn't end. The teleportation rituals anchoring the abyssal energies to this world would remain active.
And the monsters would just keep coming.
Endlessly.
The only viable course of action—the only strategy that mattered—was to hold the line. To stabilize the world long enough for the gods to finish what mortal armies could not.
"May the gods win this war... soon," Henry whispered under his breath, his voice hoarse from years of silent prayers.
He hadn't always been a man of faith. In fact, decades ago, he'd considered himself a casual believer at best—offering token offerings during festivals, bowing politely during sermons, but never truly committed.
But this war had changed him.
The sheer helplessness of watching cities fall, watching comrades consumed by horrors beyond comprehension, had shattered his illusions of mortal strength. He had clung to something—anything—to make sense of the senseless.
And in that desperation, he had found religion.
He often reflected bitterly on that transformation.
"I used to believe that as long as I worked hard, a miracle would come."
But reality was cruel. The war had no room for fairytales. No tolerance for hope without power.
His efforts, no matter how determined, could not bend fate.
---
Elsewhere, amidst the chaos of battle...
The sharp edge of his enchanted blade met flesh with a sickening sound. The sensation of cutting through muscle and bone—once routine—sent a brief pulse of dark satisfaction through Emerson, the demigod of the dark elves.
A cruel smirk spread across his pale face.
It had been months since he last fought like this. Months of painful recovery, after his devastating defeat at the hands of Dex. The memory still burned in his mind.
His once-proud body had been left shattered, his arm torn off, his dignity trampled beneath the feet of a so-called "middle-rank demon." The humiliation had been unbearable.
But he was a [Demigod]—an elite among the races—and his status had ensured he received the best treatment imaginable.
Thanks to recent advancements in cross-racial arcane medicine and healing technology, even his severed limb had been regrown—a miracle once thought impossible.
Yet no amount of recovery could extinguish the seething hatred he held for Dex.
Just the thought of that grinning demon stirred a storm inside him.
Emerson clenched his jaw and drove his blade deeper into the demon's chest, then yanked it out with violent force. The runes etched along the edge glowed faintly, paralyzing the creature before it could scream.
With a single, savage slash, he cleaved the demon in half.
Still, the monstrosity refused to die.
It's twitching torso flailed weakly, black ichor bubbling from its ruined body.
Emerson's eyes narrowed in disgust. Without a word, he raised his foot and slammed it down onto the demon's head.
Splat.
The skull burst like an overripe fruit, painting the ground with gore. He spat out a bitter curse and muttered, "Waste of my time…"
And with that, he vanished again into the shadows, his lithe figure slipping between crumbling buildings and battlefield smoke like a phantom.
But what Emerson didn't know—what no one around him could yet comprehend—was that he had already become a walking plague vector.
Unseen to the naked eye, a swarm of virulent, mutated pathogens clung to his cloak, his weapons, and even his skin.
Had he been a mortal, the viruses would have already eaten through his skin. But his demigod body resisted the infection—at least for now. That resistance, however, didn't prevent the pathogens from using him as a carrier.
Wherever he walked, death followed.
Each movement he made, each monster he cut down, and each elf he passed unknowingly spread Dex's newest plague.
The battlefield—already a place of blood and fire—was quickly becoming the incubation chamber of a much greater calamity.
And the most ironic part?
Emerson thought he was winning.
He wasn't alone in his ignorance. Across the region, many warriors—indigenous elites, summoned heroes, and demigods alike—were unknowingly acting as agents of Dex's will, spreading the infection farther than any plague bomb ever could.
All according to plan.
---
A mountain hundreds of kilometers away from the defense line.
On a rugged seat fashioned from stone slabs, Dex reclined lazily like a salted fish basking in the sun, unmoving and utterly relaxed.
Ever since he had developed and deployed his infamous "poison gas bombs," he had made this remote mountaintop his idle sanctuary. Aside from occasionally getting up to slaughter a demon or two—just enough to satisfy his boredom and bloodlust—he rarely budged. Life was simple here, quiet, and blissfully free from direct orders.
In front of him, a massive arcane projection hovered in the air—a translucent spell-screen broadcasting the unfolding chaos of the magic tide in real time.
Despite the interference caused by the enormous barrier that protected the outer edge of the defense line, the detection spells managed to function. The images shimmered with static distortions, like an old television desperately trying to hold onto its signal—riddled with erratic mosaics, flickers, and glowing stripes. But even in their glitchy state, the visuals were more than enough to monitor the situation.
'177, 257, 394...'
Dex silently counted, his golden eyes flicking across the screen as he observed the rising number of indigenous warriors who had unknowingly become infected with the plague.
Due to their awakened nature and the magical energy circulating through their bodies, most native fighters possessed a natural defense that kept the virus at bay. This protective shell—born of mana and subconscious resistance—greatly suppressed the virus's spread. Only a few among them, those with weaker constitutions or spiritual fractures, had actually been invaded by the plague itself.
But those few were all Dex needed.
He could feel it—each host was like a candle flickering in the dark, its light pulsing with illness. Whenever necessary, he could trigger the viral seed hidden within their bodies, using them as weapons at key moments. A living army of plague timebombs.
Still, as effective as it sounded, Dex's plague was spreading faster among the abyssal monsters than the defenders.
Ironically, the first wave of infections was always his own side.
His mobile "poison gas bombs," designed to blend into the magic tide and reach the front lines, rarely even made it to the enemy. Long-range spells, siege weapons, and defensive barriers shredded most of them before they could close in.
And so, when the virus inevitably burst from their bodies, the only ones nearby to reach it... were other demons.
Dex had expected this, of course. He wasn't naïve.
As a precaution, the viruses within the abyssal forces were designed to decay rapidly after detonation. Without a host to carry them or an enemy to infect, the strain would simply collapse and die off.
It wasn't mercy. No one would ever call Dex soft.
He didn't spare his allies out of kindness. On the contrary, he saw them as disposable meat. But unnecessary losses drew attention, and too many missing soldiers would force higher-ups like Demon Lord Carto to start asking uncomfortable questions.
And Dex, despite all his genius and chaotic brilliance, had no intention of ending up on that kind of list.
Demon Lord Carto's little black notebook was infamous—he'd seen what happened to those written inside it.
A fate worse than death.
And Dex, bright, young, and full of future potential, had every intention of avoiding that outcome for now.
---
Several days later.
The battlefield reeked of blood, ash, and scorched earth.
Perched atop the hulking corpse of a fallen abyssal beast, Emerson the dark elf sat, breathing heavily, his slender body marred by cuts, bruises, and fresh wounds. His long hair, usually smooth and gleaming like obsidian, was matted with sweat and gore.
He was exhausted.
Utterly spent.
*****
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