A night of chaos ended with a scene of utter devastation.
The eastern sky gradually turned a pale white.
Salavira sat amidst the ruins, motionless, clutching a blood-stained bead in his hand, staring fixedly in the direction the demon had left. He seemed to have turned into a finely crafted statue.
Even though he had forgotten many memories from his past life, his intuition told him that Asmodeus taking his dagger was definitely not for any good purpose.
To be safe, he should go back to the Gate of Hell to check, but right now…
He looked at the golden-armored guards surrounding him, each holding a long spear blessed by the gods, and knew that he probably wouldn’t be able to leave easily.
He gritted his teeth, “crack, crack,” and straightened his deformed left shoulder, tightly gripping the holy relic in his hand. He stood up, warily surveying the enemies closing in around him.
Three squads of city-guarding golden-armored soldiers, more than a dozen stationed grand mages… Oh, there were even a few holy knights from the Court of Light.
Salavira sneered, holy knights usually stationed in the sacred site of Vancia—the Holy Cathedral—coming to such a filthy place, they must have known what they were here for.
These people must have seen him injured and dared to group up and surround him, but… heh, just a bunch of trash. Even if he was injured, they were still no match for him.
The shadows at his feet were already restless, and with a wave of his hand, a black long sword condensed in his grasp.
No one spoke on the ruins, and the atmosphere had dropped to freezing point.
But what broke this silence was not an attack from either side, but… a blue flame that suddenly flared up beside Salavira??
Even Salavira was startled, but upon seeing what appeared beside him, he relaxed and sighed helplessly.
His ally sure knew how to pick a time to send a message.
Salavira reached out to catch the object that appeared out of thin air, only to find it wasn’t a letter, but a palm-sized stone?
The stone suddenly spoke:
“Holy Son, my dear friend, can you hear me?”
“…??” Salavira was surprised that this little stone could transmit sound. After hesitating for a moment, he said, “Karl?”
“It’s me, it’s me, surprised? Miguel’s invention, this little gadget can actually transmit sound in real-time! How are you now? Busy? I was really surprised when you sent a message saying you wanted to give me a gift last time! My friend, you actually keep me in your thoughts, let me guess, what could the gift be…”
Salavira: “…”
He was amazed at his ally’s endless chatter.
But the soldiers around him, ready to strike, clearly didn’t have the patience. They charged at him with their long spears!
Salavira dodged and swung his sword, cutting through several spears, and the voice from the other side of the sound-transmitting stone quickly picked up a new topic:
“Friend, it’s so noisy over there, are you busy forging iron?”
“…” Salavira was silent for a moment, “Indeed busy, but it’s the kind of busy where someone has a spear at my neck, and a dozen mages are trying to crush me with magic orbs.”
“…” The other side fell into an eerie silence.
“But it’s okay, I can spare a moment to chat with you.” Salavira seemed not at all tense about his situation, even initiating a new topic, “Didn’t you want to know what gift I’m giving you?”
The voice from the other end of the stone quickly came through: “So what is it? My friend, don’t keep me in suspense.”
Salavira smiled, dodged a thrusting spear, reached out to grab it, and with a little force, snatched it from the holy knight’s hand! Then, with a sweep of the spear, the annoying guys around him fell to the ground.
Before him, Solent City at dawn unfolded.
“Remember Solent City?”
The person on the other end of the sound-transmitting stone was clearly taken aback.
“—That’s the gift I want to give you.”
With that, he didn’t care about the reaction on the other side, cut off the transmission, and focused on dealing with the golden-armored guards in front of him.
After all, if it was to be given as a gift, how could it still have dirty things on it?
These guys weren’t really a threat, but the problem was there were just too many of them, and he happened to be injured, his left hand almost unusable, which was why it was taking so long.
After a fierce battle, until the long night ended, the dawn sun gradually rose in the eastern sky.
Nearly two-thirds of the original three squads of golden-armored guards had fallen, and the remaining ones were barely holding on with the last bit of divine power in their spears. As for the grand mages and holy knights, except for those who fled after seeing the situation, the rest were all buried under Salavira’s long sword.
One could say the outcome was decided.
But the unexpected happened at this moment—
Early in Salavira’s fight with the golden-armored guards, he felt a slight itch in the hand holding the bead. But he was busy fighting and didn’t pay attention.
But now, that itch had turned into a stabbing pain.
Salavira frowned slightly, taking advantage of a gap in the fight to look down at his palm, only to see that the bead had somehow “melted” a bit, and the “liquid” that had melted was biting into his hand, trying to burrow into his flesh!
Upon closer inspection, this wasn’t a bead at all, but countless insect eggs clumped together!
Salavira felt his scalp tingle, wishing he could fling these things ten meters away!
But he forced himself to suppress the disgust, coating his hand with magic to block the insects trying to eat his flesh, forcing himself to examine them closely.
These disgusting things shouldn’t have been swapped by Asmodeus on purpose. Although demons weren’t good things, Salavira had a gut feeling that this guy wouldn’t use such filthy things to disgust him.
Then there was only one possibility—
The so-called “holy relic” that was rumored to be miraculous was actually these insects!
In shock, Salavira’s peripheral vision caught a golden-armored guard’s spear thrusting at him, and he immediately sidestepped to dodge, but as his gaze shifted, he saw the eastern sky that should have been dawn—
It was gradually being replaced by darkness.
Soon, not just the east, the entire Solent City was shrouded in darkness, and the ground began to tremble violently!
The golden-armored guards present were terrified by this sudden change, dropping their helmets and armor, fleeing in all directions. But at this moment, the insects that had been gnawing at Salavira’s hand for so long without success flew out, landing on the fleeing guards, and quickly burrowed into their flesh.
In almost an instant, the golden-armored guards froze, but their bodies remained in their original postures, as if time had stopped.
Salavira sensed something was wrong, ran to one of the guards to check, and saw that the man’s eyes were dull, but his face was twisted in extreme pain. Soon, black spots began to spread from the exposed skin of the guard, rapidly covering his entire body!
“This is…”
Salavira’s pupils contracted, instinctively taking half a step back, as dark, oppressive, and bloody memories from the past swept over him, making it hard for him to breathe.
He had seen many people with the exact same symptoms.
Just two years ago.
At that time, there were two kinds of people most common on the continent of Vancia—
The dead.
And those who were sick and about to die.
The symptoms of those who were sick were exactly the same as the golden-armored guards in front of him.
People at the time, based on the symptoms of the patients and the terrible consequences of the epidemic, gave the disease a very fitting and terrifying name—
The Black Death.
But that plague had ended a year ago, so why was it reappearing in Solent City in this form?!
The insects… those insects.
Salavira grasped the key to the problem amidst the tangled clues—
He remembered seeing those insects in an ancient tome.
Mosu Insects.
These were parasitic creatures that fed on human souls. Although they sounded terrifying, in reality, whether larvae or adults, their attack power was very low, and even a slightly skilled mage could drive them away.
Moreover, according to epic records, these creatures had been extinct for a thousand years.
But… how could such an extinct and weak creature suddenly appear two years ago and cause such a catastrophe?
Thinking deeper, Salavira felt a chill down his spine.
“Boom—”
The ground beneath his feet began to tremble again, more violently than before, almost making it hard for Salavira to stand.
Then, he heard shrill screams coming from all directions in the city!
Salavira gritted his teeth, temporarily giving up on sorting out the increasingly chaotic clues, and turned to run towards the place with the most people.
It was a brothel.
Many patrons and slaves, either willing or forcibly taken, huddled together, closing the doors tightly, trying to block the oncoming disaster. But how could a door stop the tiny Mosu Insects?
Soon, those seeking refuge here became sheep penned in for slaughter.
People screamed in despair, resisted powerlessly, and prayed repeatedly to the holy icons on their chests.
Then, at some point, they discovered that the insects had actually disappeared, and a purple barrier had inexplicably risen outside the brothel!
The crowd exclaimed that the holy spirit had manifested, but before they could finish, the door was kicked open, and a blood-soaked silver god of death, as if returning from hell, walked into the crowd with a black sword.
He stopped in front of one person, observed the black spots covering almost the entire body, and without hesitation, swung his sword to decapitate the person!
Blood splattered!
Screams erupted from the crowd, people scattered trying to escape, only to find that the barrier that kept the insects out also trapped them in, leading to desperate wailing.
Salavira frowned, finding these people incredibly annoying. But he still patiently manipulated the shadows, killing those beyond saving on the spot to prevent them from spreading the disease to others.
After this one-sided “massacre” continued for an unknown amount of time, he finally confirmed that the remaining infected were stable and no longer a threat of contagion. He then cut his wrist, letting a few drops of blood fall into a pool.
“Those who don’t want to die, come and drink.”
Leaving those words, Salavira walked away without looking back, not caring whether the people behind him would listen.
After all, respecting others’ fates was the first principle he had learned on his own after coming into this world.
…
The earthquake continued.
And each time it was stronger.
At this moment, Salavira finally sensed a powerful force from the cracks in the ground, as if… something was about to break through the earth.
He looked up at the young Mosu Insects scurrying in the air, suddenly remembering—
Since these were all larvae, then… where was the mother insect?
The moment this thought emerged, Salavira broke out in goosebumps, looking down at the trembling ground.
He remembered the demon once said that somewhere in the castle, there was something with great power. What if… that existence wasn’t the “holy relic” made of insect eggs?
If so, were these larvae, devouring countless human souls, really growing for themselves? In the epidemic two years ago, countless larvae fed on human souls, yet not a single adult insect ever appeared.
Insects had a sense of offering.
Like an ant colony with a queen, a beehive with a queen bee.
So were these young Mosu Insects also offering the countless souls they devoured to nurture a powerful mother insect?