Ch.208208. Infection War (6)

His heart was pierced, spilling at least a bucketful of green-contaminated blood, while his body was cleanly split into upper and lower halves, with rotting entrails spilling out.

Though it looked horrific on the outside, as an apostle of “Plague,” he should have been able to endure and regenerate. Unfortunately, the weapon that had wounded him was the infamous soul-devouring demon sword.

Because of this, Ense-Pesgut was barely hanging on thanks to his tenacious vitality and bodily mutations, but he was literally one step away from death—

On the brink of death, he found himself puzzled.

He simply couldn’t understand how Bjorn Wolfson had not only survived unharmed but was completely fine despite being exposed to his trump card, the plague worm.

The worm, obtained by sacrificing the souls of 1,000 innocent children, was something that even he couldn’t think of a countermeasure against.

It was designed to exploit Bjorn’s ability to absorb and gain power from the souls of those he killed. The absorbed souls would become hosts for the plague, causing his self-destruction.

Of course, since Bjorn’s soul absorption worked by breaking down souls into their constituent soul particles and absorbing only the safe particles, crude tricks wouldn’t work against him.

That’s why Ense-Pesgut had devised a method to make the soul particles themselves—the basic units that compose a soul—function as plague pathogens that would kill Bjorn.

In real-world terms, it was similar to prion proteins.

Since each soul particle making up a living being’s soul was itself a pathogen, breaking them down wouldn’t eliminate their pathogenic properties.

Therefore, Ense-Pesgut had implanted this in his own heart and vital points, luring Bjorn to kill the plague worm and absorb its soul.

As a result, Bjorn had fallen perfectly for this deception, killing the plague worm along with the heart using his sword, and becoming infected with the plague.

Up to this point, everything had unfolded according to plan.

But from here on, significant variables began to emerge.

The plague, perfected by turning soul particles themselves into pathogens, was named Godslayer.

It would decompose all the soul particles making up the infected person’s soul and then completely destroy them. Even if the infected were a god, as long as infection was possible, death was certain.

That’s why when Bjorn was infected with the Godslayer plague, Ense-Pesgut rejoiced as he felt Bjorn’s body beginning to collapse.

But… what about now?

Somehow, Bjorn had suddenly recovered and had sliced Ense-Pesgut in half, turning him into Ense-Pe/sgut.

So as the warmth of the plague within his body gradually cooled, Ense-Pesgut squeezed air from his lungs and desperately asked Bjorn:

“H-how… how did you…?”

Bjorn heaved a deep sigh, glared at him with a furrowed brow, then approached Ense-Pesgut, stomped on his head, and—

“Who would tell you, idiot.”

Crunch!

After infusing his foot with aura, he exerted all his strength through his leg muscles, shattering Ense-Pesgut’s skull and crushing his brain.

Without a doubt, Ense-Pesgut died instantly.

That much, at least, was an undeniable truth.

“…Ugh.”

As he shook off the flesh fragments and brain matter stuck to his steel armored boot with aura, Bjorn couldn’t suppress the nausea rising within him.

Of course, as a veteran among veterans who had experienced all sorts of things, merely crushing someone’s head with his foot was nothing to Bjorn.

It was just that Ense-Pesgut, being an apostle of the Plague God, had a body contaminated with plague and a visibly filthy appearance that simply disgusted him.

Anyway, having vented his anger on Ense-Pesgut, who he’d been told was the main culprit behind this situation, Bjorn summoned pitch-black flames above his beautiful black gauntlet to incinerate the plague-contaminated filthy corpse.

This was the special holy fire unique to the Vengeance Order, commonly known as the Flames of Hatred.

Using this, Bjorn extended his hand and began to spew black flames to completely burn Ense-Pesgut’s corpse.

Naturally, Bjorn’s flames completely incinerated the body, leaving only a handful of ashes with no trace of plague whatsoever.

And Ense-Pesgut’s soul was also devoured by Bjorn, broken down into soul particles like all other souls, making resurrection impossible.

But even now, when Ense-Pesgut’s death seemed certain, Bjorn felt something unsettling in his heart.

According to Bjorn’s sense, developed from absorbing various souls, the total amount of soul particles absorbed was insufficient for someone who was supposed to be a god’s apostle.

After pondering briefly, Bjorn simply followed his intuition and reached a conclusion.

‘…That bastard is still alive.’

Somehow, by whatever means, Ense-Pesgut was still alive.

※ ※ ※

And that conclusion was correct.

“Grrraaargh!!!”

In the western part of the continent, the domain of the plague.

The castle there, once a governor’s palace built on the most fertile plains, had lost all traces of its former beauty since being occupied by the plague.

The beautiful white castle walls, which should have been covered with ivy, were completely enveloped in fleshy tentacles riddled with boils and blisters.

The corner watchtowers meant to spot and respond to approaching enemies had grown massive fleshy eyeballs that swiveled around, surveying the surroundings.

Additionally, the walls sprouted sharp teeth and horns, while contaminated wastewater flowed toward the moat surrounding the area.

This grotesque and bizarre place was, unsurprisingly, not a normal environment inside either.

Like the interior of some living organism, various organs grew throughout, alongside facilities for plague research established for the castle’s master.

The basic setup included devices for suspending living humans for plague cultivation, while plague cauldrons bubbled with nutrient and germ-rich liquids, boiling various ingredients to create all manner of terrible and vicious plagues.

Water pipes drew from the moat surrounding the castle, and it wasn’t particularly strange that the water supply and sewage systems were one and the same.

Thus, in this horrific space where an entire castle had been literally transformed into a living organism to serve as both laboratory and factory for Ense-Pesgut to develop plagues, killing and reviving countless lives—

“I-I’m a-alive… I survived…”

Ense-Pesgut, having barely crawled out of a tank filled with disgusting green sewage, babbled incoherently in joy about his survival, then—

‘…Whew, shall we move on to the next step?’

As he felt his body and soul gradually reconnecting as before, he regained his senses and began to ponder how Bjorn had managed to overcome the plague.

He himself had partnered with the “Apostle of Conspiracy” to counter Bjorn’s soul destruction, and after extensive research, had succeeded in creating a soulless version of his body.

Though somewhat weaker, it was connected to him and could use apostle powers, and even the divine power fused with his physical form.

Of course, it had only managed to hold out briefly before dying at Bjorn’s hands, and if the connection had been severed any later, he would have died along with his clone… but fortunately, Ense-Pesgut had survived through this desperate method.

However… such cloning would have been impossible for Bjorn.

If they could clone such beings, such existences, they would have conquered the world and everything else long ago.

Therefore, after much contemplation, Ense-Pesgut suddenly arrived at a conclusion that seemed absurd yet terrifying if true.

‘Could it be… he simply overpowered it through sheer strength?’

Yes. No matter how high-grade the Godslayer was as a disease, it was ultimately just a magical illness with an insanely high resistance difficulty.

In other words, someone overwhelmingly powerful could easily resist the plague.

He had judged it impossible to resist a plague cultivated directly by a god, but after this thought occurred to him, he became strongly convinced it was the truth.

And if this was indeed true—antagonizing Bjorn in the first place was nothing short of suicide.

The fact that he had directly resisted and overcome a plague created by the Plague God himself meant he had reached a level where he could withstand the Plague God’s attacks—essentially no different from saying he had risen to a position where he could contend with the Seven Evil Gods.

Therefore, Ense-Pesgut ultimately gave up on thinking about it further.

Such a formidable figure would surely be dealt with properly by the Plague God himself.