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Once the data was plotted out, the situation became crystal-clear.
Anyone with working eyes and normal color vision could tell something was seriously wrong beneath this land.
"This is where the corpses were processed."
"But judging by the look of things, both sides that fought here already cleaned up the bodies pretty thoroughly."
"Doesn't that just prove our earlier idea was wrong?"
Warrod didn't care how powerful the Super Archive's detection was, all he wanted was to find the plague's source.
Weston thought for a few seconds. "Let's check the nearby river."
The river was some distance from the battlefield.
When the two finally located the spot marked on the map, the sight before them left them stunned.
The water that should have been crystal clear now glowed an eerie, dark green.
A thick green mist drifted above the surface and along both banks. Along the banks, nothing grew, and birds and beasts steered clear.
It looked exactly like some chemical plant had exploded, releasing toxic waste that was eerie and extremely dangerous.
"As I suspected."
"The problem is in the water!"
Half the mystery seemed solved.
But the other half was the crucial part.
"So what's wrong with this river? Did germs breed on the corpses from the battlefield? But the bodies were disposed of, weren't they?"
Warrod was sweating bullets.
Just looking at that green water made his heart race. A few breaths of the mist left him dizzy. If downstream towns, villages, and farmland were soaked in this for long, how could plague not break out?
Weston's gaze grew heavier as he took it all in.
"This isn't from corpse-borne germs. It's deliberate poisoning."
"Deliberate?!"
Warrod froze, his mind blank for several seconds. When Weston's words registered, every hair on his body stood on end.
"Who could be so cruel as to harm people this way?!"
Who did it?
And for what purpose?
Weston had no answer.
"Let's search the area and see if we can find any clues."
"Uh, right."
They set off again.
A dozen minutes later they found a patch of messy footprints on the bank.
Weston crouched, examining the ground carefully.
"The prints are fresh, no more than three days old."
"From the back-and-forth pattern, whoever made them spent quite a while here."
"Using the Super Archive's environmental analysis and magic power detection, there's a thirty percent chance we can track the person."
Warrod scratched his head.
"Tracking them down would be great, but does this add up?"
"It's been almost a month since the plague started."
"If these prints are only three days old, whoever left them might not be the poisoner at all."
"They could be investigators like us, or even just passers-by!"
"I get your point, but following the footprints is the only lead we have."
"Right, collect some river water first."
"If we hit a dead end, at least we can take the water back. Maybe Doctor Grisha can analyze the toxin and develop an antidote."
"Got it!"
They had left in a hurry without waterskins, but that didn't stop Warrod.
He used magic to shape wood into small barrels, then grew slender vines so he could sling them across his back like a pack.
Following the trail, they entered a nearby valley.
The farther they went, the stranger Warrod felt.
"Weston, are we going the right way?"
"Feels like we're heading deeper into nowhere."
But Weston felt the opposite.
No unease, only the thrill of closing in on the truth.
"I trust the Super Archive's calculations. We're not lost."
"But, what law-abiding citizen wanders into a valley for no reason?"
"Exactly. Whoever was by the river is probably no innocent. Our haul might be bigger than expected!"
Inside the valley, signs of people grew clearer and denser than on the bank, confirming to Weston he was on the right track.
Suddenly, a commotion sounded ahead.
Weston and Warrod exchanged glances, then crept forward.
Up close, the scene was horrifying.
"What in the—?!"
Beads of cold sweat the size of soybeans rolled down their faces; their eyes bulged.
In the open space rose a mountain of corpses over ten meters high.
Around it lay twenty huge bodies.
Scores of black-robed mystics knelt before the heap, chanting an ancient, obscure spell in unison.
"So many corpses!"
"They're performing some kind of rite with the dead?!"
"Wait, are those soldiers killed in the earlier war?!"
It was a reasonable guess.
Weston saw the armor on the corpses matched what the armies had worn.
There was no other way to obtain so many bodies.
What stunned him was that, months after the war, the corpses were remarkably well preserved, showing little decay.
As he watched, a priest-like elder stood.
The man stepped to the heap, raised his staff, and began another incantation while gathering magic power.
Dark green light blossomed from the staff, and cold magic power filled the air.
Under its influence, the mountain of corpses dissolved into a cloud of dark-green magical particles that poured into the twenty huge bodies.
In an instant the corpse mountain vanished, while the twenty corpses swelled, growing so muscular they burst their armor.
Then, as if given life, they rose, eyes glowing the same dark green.
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