Location: The Obsidian Enclave, The Infirmary.
Time: 08:00 (Day 2 of the Siege).
The sun rose over the Enclave, but it brought no warmth. It was a pale, cataract eye staring down at a city under siege. The green glow on the horizon had dimmed, but the silence from the horde was worse than the drums. It was the silence of a predator holding its breath.
"They stopped," Havoc said, peering over the ramparts through high-powered binoculars. "They're just standing there. Waiting. It's creeping me out."
"They are dead," Valerius noted, sharpening his obsidian spear with a rhythmic shhhk-shhhk. "They have infinite patience. They can wait until we starve. Time is a weapon they have in abundance."
THWUMP. THWUMP. THWUMP.
The sound echoed from the base of the canyon. Wet, heavy impacts.
"Incoming!" Silas yelled from the watchtower. "Catapults!"
"Shields up!" Dante roared.
The Onyx Guard raised their obsidian shields, locking them into a phalanx. They braced for the crushing impact of granite boulders or the searing heat of pitch-pots.
But when the projectiles hit the walls, they didn't shatter stone. They splattered.
SPLAT.
It was wet. It was soft. It smelled like a grave opened after a humid summer rain—sweet, cloying, and rotten.
Dante looked at the ground near his boots. It wasn't a rock. It was a bundle of rotting meat, stitched together with grey intestine.
"Meat?" Havoc asked, confused, lowering his rifle. "They're throwing... lunch?"
The bundle twitched.
Then it burst open.
It wasn't filled with blood. It was filled with flies.
Millions of them. They were iridescent green, bloated, and humming with a sound that drilled into the teeth—not a buzz, but a high-pitched static scream. They erupted from the meat-bombs like a cloud of pressurized smoke.
"Masks!" Valerius shouted. "Cover your skin!"
It was too late.
The flies swarmed the defenders. They didn't bite; they burrowed. They crawled into ears, noses, tear ducts, and open wounds.
A guard near Dante screamed, dropping her spear. She clawed at her face, her nails tearing skin.
"Get them off! Get them off!"
She collapsed, convulsing. Where the flies touched her skin, black veins spread instantly like ink in water. Her flesh turned grey and necrotic in seconds.
"It's not just bugs," Dante realized, activating his mechanical eye. The red overlay highlighted the cloud. "It's a delivery system. They carry a necrotic pathogen. It accelerates entropy. It ages the cells to dust."
The Outbreak
Within an hour, the Enclave was a quarantine zone.
The Infirmary was overflowing. Hundreds of women lay on cots, their skin turning black, their breath rattling. The smell of rotting fruit filled the air, choking the ventilation.
Matriarch Nyx stood in the center of the room, looking helpless. Her healing magic—usually potent enough to knit bones—did nothing. Every time she poured violet mana into a patient, the infection ate it and grew faster.
"It feeds on life," Nyx whispered, her hands shaking as she pulled them away from a dying girl. "My magic just makes it stronger. I am feeding the fire."
Aurum was in the corner, wearing a full-body hazmat suit he had improvised from mining gear and gold foil.
"We have lost 30% of the combat force," Aurum reported through his mask, his voice tinny. "At this rate of infection, the entire population will be liquefied by sunset. Dante, I can't manage logistics for corpses! Dead people don't pay taxes!"
Dante stood over a dying soldier. He placed his hand near her wound without touching it.
Analysis:
Pathogen: Necrotic-A (Magical Construct).
Effect: Cellular apoptosis triggered by mana-resonance.
Cure: None known.
"It's designed to kill high-mana targets," Dante said. "The stronger you are, the faster you rot. That's why the Onyx Guard fell first."
"So we die," Valerius said grimly from the doorway. He was uninfected, his Chimera biology likely confusing the flies. "We can fight skeletons. We cannot fight a plague."
"We don't fight it," Dante said, his eyes narrowing. "We out-evolve it."
He tapped the white runes on his arm.
"Prime. Wake up."
The Cure
The air in the infirmary dropped ten degrees. The lights flickered.
"I AM AWAKE," Prime's voice resonated from Dante's arm, vibrating the floorboards. "THE BIOLOGICAL INEFFICIENCY OF THIS SPECIES IS DISAPPOINTING."
"Save the critique for the review," Dante snapped. "The Necromancer is using a magical pathogen. I need a counter-agent. Something that eats necrosis."
"ANALYZING... PATHOGEN IDENTIFIED. STRAIN: GRAVE-ROT. VULNERABILITY: PURITY."
"Purity?"
"THE PATHOGEN ATTACKS COMPLEXITY. IT CANNOT INFECT A BLANK SLATE. TO CURE IT, YOU NEED A SOURCE OF GENETIC MATERIAL THAT HAS NEVER KNOWN DEATH."
Dante remembered.
The Crown-Class Embryo. The one he had traded to Prime in Chapter 21. The clone of the Old King.
"You have the Embryo data," Dante said. "Can you synthesize an antibody?"
"AFFIRMATIVE. I ARCHIVED THE GENETIC SEQUENCE BEFORE TRANSMISSION. I AM A LIBRARIAN; I KEEP COPIES. HOWEVER, I LACK A PHYSICAL MEDIUM TO DEPLOY IT. I AM DATA. YOU ARE MEAT. WE NEED A CATALYST."
Dante looked around the room. He saw the suffering. He saw Nyx's despair.
He looked at the War Engine pulsing in his soul.
"I am the catalyst," Dante said. "The Second Axiom controls conflict. Disease is just a war on the cellular level. I will impose the Authority of the Cure."
He turned to Silas, who was frantically checking his own skin for spots.
"I need the ventilation system," Dante ordered. "The geothermal vents that heat the city. Can you reverse the flow? Pump air out instead of in?"
"Technically, yes," Silas stammered. "But what are you going to pump?"
"Me," Dante said.
The Synthesis
Dante stood in the central geothermal control room. He stood directly over the main intake fan, the heat rising around him.
He activated the white runes on his arm (The First Axiom connection).
He activated the red glow in his eyes (The Second Axiom authority).
"Prime. Transmit the Embryo Data. Target my blood. Rewrite me."
"WARNING. INTEGRATING PURE ORIGIN DNA INTO A CORRUPTED HOST WILL CAUSE EXTREME PAIN. PROBABILITY OF GENETIC REJECTION: 40%."
"Do it."
ZAP.
White lightning arched from his arm into his chest.
Dante screamed. It felt like his blood was boiling, turning into acid. He fell to his knees, retching. But he didn't vomit bile.
He vomited a cloud of White Mist.
It was the antibody. Synthesized from his own mana, rewritten by Prime's data, and expelled as a biological aerosol.
"Silas! Turn it on!"
Silas pulled the lever.
WHOOSH.
The massive fans spun up. They sucked the white mist from the room and blasted it into the ventilation grid of the Enclave.
The Cleansing
In the infirmary, white fog poured from the vents, smelling of ozone and sterile snow.
The patients gasped as the mist hit them.
It didn't heal the rot instantly. It stopped it. The black veins turned grey, then faded. The flies buzzing in the air dropped dead mid-flight, their necrotic magic neutralized by the absolute purity of the mist.
Nyx watched as the soldier in front of her took a deep, shuddering breath. Her skin was scarred, but pink. Alive.
"A miracle," Nyx whispered.
In the control room, Dante collapsed. He was shivering, his skin pale as chalk. He had burned massive amounts of life force to synthesize the cure.
When he looked up, the black hair at his temples had turned stark white.
Aurum helped him up.
"You are a terrible CEO," Aurum muttered, checking Dante's pulse. "You spend your own assets too freely. You're depreciating."
"Did it work?" Dante wheezed.
"Casualties have stabilized," Aurum confirmed, checking his datapad. "The plague is neutralized. The flies are dead."
Dante grinned, blood staining his teeth.
"Good. Now the Necromancer knows."
"Knows what?"
"That we don't just have walls," Dante whispered, his eyes closing as exhaustion took him. "We have an immune system."