"This red dust accelerated the outbreak of the 'Zombie Serum' inside me?"
Watching his own arm rapidly shriveling up, Ryan understood all too well — wasn't this exactly what a poison outbreak looked like?
And now, with his uncannily sharp eyesight, he could see that those hair-like red threads were actually thin, worm-like filaments — thinner than a strand of hair — "blood threadworms"!
The AI Core also clearly indicated that a massive number of living organisms had been "activated" inside his own body!
"What the hell is going on?! The 'Zombie Serum' isn't a poison at all — it's a bunch of dormant living parasites?"
In an instant, Ryan's mind reflexively spun through countless unbelievable thoughts.
With thirty seconds left before he keeled over, there was no time to think it through carefully — without hesitation, he pulled several serums out of his folding space.
[Superior Antidote Serum], [Superior Healing Serum], [Superior Cure-All Serum]... with no time to sort through them properly, he grabbed every superior-grade serum in his storage space that seemed like it might be useful and jabbed them all into his own thigh in one go...
Still, none of it made the slightest difference — the red fur kept growing wildly.
Ryan could clearly feel his life force draining away from his body.
The dizziness grew more and more intense...
Those "blood threadworms" were like bloodsucking leeches, frantically absorbing the blood and moisture from his body, showing no sign of stopping until they'd drained him into a dried-out husk.
In just a second or two, another tenth of his bodily fluids had been drained away, his face taking on the withered, mummified look of a corpse as his consciousness gradually blurred.
But just as Ryan felt himself about to keel over and cross worlds all over again...
A dramatic turn of events unfolded!
"Huh..."
The instant one particular injection went in, Ryan suddenly felt as if his soul had snapped back into place, his mind growing clearer by the second.
Looking closer, he could see that the "red fur" covering his body was visibly shrinking back down. The worms were actually pumping the fluids they'd drained back into his body?!
"Saved!"
Having just walked through hell's front door, Ryan felt shaken to his core, his chest heaving with ragged breaths.
Looking again at the exact serum he'd just injected, he realized it was the [Zombie Serum] antidote he'd mixed up back in Pisces's lab for practice.
[Ding! Unnamed worm swarm has entered dormancy. Estimated reawakening time: 1,094 days...]
Phew...
Ryan let out a long breath of relief.
The dormancy window had reset to three years again...
The threat hadn't been eliminated, but at least, one way or another, his life was safe for now.
At this moment, he also came to understand something — was this so-called [Zombie Serum] actually some kind of mysterious parasite?
Was the so-called "antidote" actually just a serum that put the parasite into dormancy?
Was that red dust from earlier a catalyst that woke the parasite back up?
A flood of strange new knowledge suddenly surfaced in his mind.
"Huh..."
Ryan didn't have time to think through the connections before another thought suddenly flashed through his head, sending a chill down his scalp.
"Holy hell — is Pisces an Ormar royal mole?!"
...
Ryan had had the "antidote" he'd made while practicing his serum-craft to save his life.
But the others who had taken the [Zombie Serum] weren't nearly so fortunate.
The instant those red "fireworks" burst, tragedy was already sealed.
Bandit gangs already had a high mortality rate, with constant turnover of members. In a large gang like the "Weasel Bandit Gang," more than half the members had taken the [Zombie Serum].
It wasn't just the new recruits, either — even veterans who thought they'd already been "cured" were caught out.
Ordinary gas masks couldn't filter out such fine dust particles — once inhaled, thirty seconds was more than enough to kill.
And that First Prince's aide had been planning this for three whole years. This poison had already been spread through countless channels — it wasn't just the "Weasel Gang" that had been hit!
Who could say how many among these hundred-thousand-plus people had those red threadworms lying dormant inside them?
...
Just as [White Wolf] Basil was leading the bandits in a charge against the small group of Ormar royals, screams suddenly began erupting from the crowd...
"Brother, why is red fur growing all over you?!"
"What's going on, what the hell is sucking my blood..."
"Damn it, help me pull off this red fur... burn it off..."
"AAAHHH..."
The heart-wrenching screams sent chills down everyone's spine.
At first it was just a scream or two, and then, as if a chain reaction had been triggered, waves upon waves of wailing rose up one after another.
Comrades who moments ago had been standing there full of life, shouting for a fight, suddenly transformed into "red-furred monsters," and in the blink of an eye were sucked dry into desiccated corpses, dying in gruesome, twisted poses.
How horrifying was this scene?
If it had just been one or two people, that would be one thing — but watching the people around you fall like stalks of wheat being cut down, who wouldn't have their knees go weak with fear?
In the span of a dozen or so breaths, tens of thousands of bandits who had just been charging to surround and kill the Ormar First Prince's group had instantly dropped by half!
A few fireworks had wiped out tens of thousands of people — the sheer eeriness of the method left even a top-tier expert like [White Wolf] Basil breaking out in a cold sweat.
Tens of thousands of lives gone in a laugh — at that moment, everyone turned their gaze toward the black-robed aide beside First Prince Quentin, a deep, thick dread etched into their eyes.
Basil finally understood why this man called "Metternich" had struck him as so bone-chillingly unsettling.
With methods like that, he'd already won seven-tenths of the battle without even fighting!
Faintly, he sensed that the man's earlier words about "wiping every last one of you out" might just come true after all...
Because Basil had just thought of an even worse possible outcome!
...
"Huh... we're fine?"
"Ha ha... seems like this poison only affects the new recruits?"
"Damn it, this is the work of the gang's own Serum Masters! There must be worms hidden in the serums they gave the new recruits..."
"It's a mole! So it turns out those Ormar bastards had already infiltrated us..."
"..."
Some of the sharper bandits had probably already pieced together the cause and effect of what had happened.
The various gang leaders felt a measure of relief as well — while this "fireworks assassination" trick had been beyond anyone's expectations, the elite core members of the major gangs hadn't been hit hard.
The tens of thousands who died were mostly non-transcendent recruits, or newly-Awakened members who had just broken through the first stage of the Gene Lock.
These people weren't the core strength of any major bandit gang, and their combat power had been quite ordinary anyway.
Dead is dead — the lives of new recruits weren't worth much, they could always recruit more.
But before long, the leaders' relief turned to despair.
...
"Not good! The mechanical cities have stopped moving!"
"Damn it, where are the boiler crews, get more coal in there..."
"Boss, it's bad — the boiler crews are all dead..."
"..."
The uproar began anew as the gang leaders, who moments ago had been relieved, now realized... disaster was upon them!
What jobs did new recruits do in the bandit gangs?
Boiler crews, gunners, mechanical control operators!
With them dead, that meant no one was left to operate the mechanical cities.
And a mechanical city with no one to operate it was just a heap of scrap metal!
The dust had spread unhindered into the control cabins of every major mechanical city, and yet more "red-furred monsters" died there too...
The larger the mechanical fortress, the more coordinated crew members it required. In the blink of an eye, over ninety percent of the ground-level operating personnel were dead!
The surviving gang leaders, even if they wanted to operate the machinery themselves, simply didn't have the manpower.
The result was that, in an instant, cannon fire fell silent across every major gang's mechanical city; with no one stoking the boilers, the steam power output grew weaker and weaker, gradually grinding to a halt...
In the blink of an eye, the thousand-plus mechanical cities that had just been nimbly scattering to escape were all dead in the water.
And then the truly despairing news arrived, one after another.
Far off on the horizon, clusters of dark shapes could already be seen — the Ormar Empire's massive mechanical legion, closing in the encirclement...
Without their mechanical cities, the bandits had lost their greatest means of escape.
Now, total annihilation was truly at hand.
...
"Damn, that is one hell of a move!"
Watching the scene unfold before him, four words flashed instantly through Ryan's mind: caught in a jar.
Even though he himself had been one of the ones schemed against, he couldn't help but admit the sheer brilliance of whoever had orchestrated this plan.
But then another thought hit him, and he froze on the spot as if struck by lightning.
"If Pisces was an Ormar royal mole, could the secret of 'Baron Morin's legacy' have already been leaked to someone else?"
At this moment, looking at this battlefield that resembled a scene straight out of purgatory, Ryan's expression grew grimmer by the second.
He'd originally figured that getting himself clear of the center of the battle and keeping himself alive was the top priority.
If it came to it, even if he were captured by the Ormar Empire's army, his status as a "physician's apprentice" and "serum master's apprentice" would probably spare him execution.
No matter where you went, those two professions came with special privileges.
Besides, he'd only been a new recruit among the bandits, hadn't been placed on any wanted list — his crimes weren't severe enough to warrant death.
Once captured, maybe he could even switch sides, shed his identity as a bandit for good, and join the Ormar Empire...
But now, with Pisces revealed as an Ormar mole, all of that had become nothing but a pipe dream.
He was currently carrying a great treasure on him — and even though Pisces was dead, if any outsider learned this secret, they wouldn't let him off the hook.
Oh... he'd almost forgotten.
There was also the mastermind who'd hired Quinn to wipe out that whole household!
If Ryan were captured as a "Weasel Bandit Gang" recruit, that mastermind would surely be able to track him down through their own methods...
And if he were caught, he almost certainly wouldn't escape a soul-search interrogation.
"Baron Morin's legacy" meant, to Ryan, a monumental opportunity to change his own fate.
As for handing over every secret in exchange for a chance to live out his life as a nobody?
Ha — no way.
He'd already spent an entire previous life as a nobody; this time around, he planned to play things differently!
...
"I have no choice but to run for my life..."
Thinking this through, Ryan took a deep breath.
At least with the "AI Core" on his side, his odds of escaping weren't bad.
[Ding! Trajectory analysis in progress. Direction →...]
The trajectory analysis identified the weak point in the Ormar mechanical legion's encirclement — southwest, the only real chance...
Without any further hesitation, he darted toward the edge of the battlefield, swift as a leopard.