Chapter : 1077

  He slipped into the building, the air inside thick with the smell of old paper, sawdust, and the faint, metallic tang of stale ink. He made his way to the upper floor, a single large room containing a few dusty desks and ledgers. He cracked open the heavy wooden shutters of a window overlooking the square, creating a slit of darkness just wide enough for observation. The view was a grim panorama of the coming night’s stage.

  With his sanctuary secured, his next task was to gather more intelligence. The watchman’s story about a two-day latency period was a valuable piece of data, but it was unconfirmed. He needed to establish a more precise timeline of the plague’s progression and the subsequent reanimation. He needed to visit the dead.

  He left his perch and began a systematic, house-by-house tour of the red-marked cottages. It was a grim, soul-crushing pilgrimage through the ruins of a community. In each home, he found the same tragic story: families huddled together in their final moments, the dead lying beside the dying. With a cold, clinical detachment that was a mercy to his own sanity, he used his [All-Seeing Eye] to perform a series of rapid, non-invasive autopsies.

  He scanned each corpse, his perception a torrent of biological and spiritual data. He analyzed the viral load in their tissues, the extent of the organ damage, and, most importantly, the progress of the Abyssal Corruption that was coiling around their fading spiritual essence. He began to build a timeline, a horrifying flowchart of death and damnation.

  He confirmed the watchman's report. In the bodies of those who had died within the last 24 hours, the Abyssal Corruption was present but relatively dormant, a quiet, creeping mold on the soul. But in the older corpses, those who had been dead for 48 hours or more, the corruption was active, aggressive. He could see it beginning to reshape them from the inside out, its dark energy re-writing their very spiritual and biological code, preparing the vessel for its new, monstrous purpose. He had his timeline. The metamorphosis began approximately two days after death.

  The intelligence was critical, but it came at a profound personal cost. To see so much death, to witness the intimate, final moments of so many lives—a child’s hand still clutching a wooden toy, a wife’s arm draped over her dead husband—it began to erode the cold, hard walls he had built around his heart. For a fleeting, terrifying moment, the general and the doctor vanished, and he was just a man, standing in a house of the dead, drowning in a sea of silent, helpless sorrow.

  He felt a memory surface, unbidden and unwelcome. The face of Anastasia, his first wife from his first life, her smile as bright as a summer morning. He remembered the simple, profound joy of her presence, a warmth that had been brutally, senselessly ripped away. The grief, the old, sleeping giant, began to stir in its tomb.

  He ruthlessly, violently, suppressed it. He could not afford this. Not here. Not now. He was a soldier on a mission. Emotion was a liability, a weakness that could get him killed. He forced the memory down, locking it away in the deepest, coldest dungeon of his soul.

  He retreated to his sniper’s nest in the mill office as dusk began to fall, the gray light bleeding into a bruised, purple twilight. He was no longer just a soldier; he was a machine, an instrument of pure, cold observation. The vigil was about to begin. He was a hunter, and he was ready for the ghosts to rise. He only hoped he was ready for the horrors they would bring with them.

  The day was a grim, desperate race against a relentless and unforgiving clock. With every passing hour, the Red Blight tightened its grip on Oakhaven, its viral tendrils sinking deeper into the heart of the community. Lloyd, a solitary ghost moving through the dying village, heard the news in the ragged whispers of the few survivors who dared to open their doors to him. Four more had succumbed since dawn. Four more souls extinguished, their bodies now lying in the cold silence of their homes, beginning the horrifying two-day countdown to their monstrous rebirth.

  Each death was a failure, a small, sharp blade twisting in Lloyd’s soul. But his grief was a luxury he could not afford. He channeled it, transforming the raw, human pain into cold, analytical fuel. He spent the day in a state of intense, hyper-focused work, a man at war on two fronts.

  Chapter : 1078

  His first war was against the virus itself. In the grim, makeshift laboratory of the dead healer’s hut, surrounded by the ghosts of past failures, he worked on a miracle. His [All-Seeing Eye], the divine instrument of his power, was not just a diagnostic tool; it was a supercomputer capable of analyzing and deconstructing the very code of life and death. He had spent hours in a meditative trance, his perception plunged into the intricate, beautiful, and terrifying world of the virus’s genetic structure. He analyzed its protein spikes, its replication enzymes, its every weakness and strength.

  And in the heart of that microscopic enemy, he had found a desperate, fragile hope.

  The virus was a masterpiece of lethal design, but it was not perfect. Its rapid mutation, the very thing that made it so aggressive, was also a potential vulnerability. He identified a specific, stable protein on its outer shell, a structural component that did not change with each new generation. This was his target. He began to design a counter-weapon, not a cure for the sick, but a shield for the healthy. A vaccine.

  In the laboratory of his mind, he scripted a complex alchemical process. He designed a sequence that would isolate this stable protein, neutralize its harmful effects, and suspend it in a solution that, when introduced to a healthy body, would teach the immune system to recognize and annihilate the real virus on sight. It was a concept of immunology so far advanced it was indistinguishable from magic in this world.

  The ingredients required were as complex and esoteric as the theory itself: powdered Sunstone for its purifying energy, the heartwood of a hundred-year-old Ironwood tree for its stabilizing properties, and, most critically, a drop of blood from a Transcended-level spirit to act as the magical catalyst. He transcribed the list onto a small, coded scroll, the alchemical terms a language only a master would understand. He then used a subtle, untraceable pulse of his Void power to send a mental summons to the one man in the world he trusted to fulfill such an impossible request. Ken Park. He knew his loyal operative, his ghost in the world, would receive the message and would move heaven and earth to procure the ingredients. But he also knew it would take time. Precious, agonizing time they did not have.

  With the hope of a vaccine now a desperate message on the wind, he turned his attention to the second, more immediate war: the one against the coming night.

  As the sun began its slow descent, painting the sky in bloody shades of orange and crimson, a new, somber ritual began in the village. A handful of the remaining healthy villagers, their faces grim masks of grief and resolve, emerged from their homes. They went from house to house, collecting their dead. They wrapped the four new corpses in simple linen shrouds and carried them with a heavy, shuffling gait to the center of the village square.

  There, a large, hastily constructed pyre of logs and timber awaited. They laid the four bodies reverently upon it, a final act of respect for their fallen neighbors and family. It was a heartbreaking procession of the living burying their dead, a ritual as old as humanity itself.

  Lloyd watched from the dark, narrow slit of his second-story window in the mill office. His hand rested on the cold, familiar hilt of his practice sword. He was a silent, invisible sentinel, a god watching a tragedy he was powerless to stop, for now. He was not a healer. He was a soldier, and his post was here, on this lonely vigil.

  The villagers finished their grim work. They murmured a few simple prayers, their voices lost in the vast, empty silence. Then, one by one, they retreated back to the fragile safety of their homes, barring their doors against the coming darkness and the horrors it might bring.

  The village square was empty once more, save for the four shrouded figures on the pyre. The sun dipped below the horizon, and a deep, purple twilight bled across the sky. The world held its breath.

  The vigil began.

  Lloyd waited, his body perfectly still, his senses stretched to their absolute limit. He was a predator waiting for the prey to emerge from its den. An hour passed. Then another. The silence was absolute, profound, a living, breathing entity.

  And then, in the eerie, silver light of the rising moon, he saw it.

  Chapter : 1079

  One of the bodies on the pyre, a still, shrouded form, began to twitch. A single, spastic jerk. Then another. It began to convulse, the movement growing more violent, more unnatural. It was not the gentle stirring of life, but the frantic, horrifying thrashing of a puppet being pulled by unseen, malevolent strings. The harvest of the dead was about to begin.

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  The convulsion was a spark in a tinderbox of horror. The shrouded corpse on the pyre began to writhe with an unnatural, bone-snapping violence that defied all known laws of biology. The linen shroud, which had been a symbol of respect and closure, now became a grotesque veil for a monstrous birth. Lloyd watched, his mind a cold, clinical recorder, as the thing beneath the cloth contorted. He heard the sickening, wet-cracking sounds of bones breaking and re-setting themselves into a new, unholy configuration. The shape beneath the sheet was elongating, sharpening, its human form being brutally, violently rewritten into something alien.

  This was it. This was the moment of transformation he had risked everything to witness. The gruesome, agonizing, and absolutely vital intelligence he needed.

  Before he could even fully process the horror of the first transformation, a horrifying chain reaction began. As if triggered by the first one’s metamorphosis, three more of the shrouded corpses on the pyre began to twitch, then to convulse. The somber ritual ground of the village square had become a charnel house, a birthing chamber for nightmares. Four new monsters were about to be unleashed upon the world.

  The general in him made a cold, instantaneous calculation. Four hostiles. Newborn, but their potential was unknown. His objective was no longer observation. It was extermination. He could not allow a single one of these creatures to escape the village and spread the demonic taint further.

  He did not hesitate. He did not wait. In the dark, silent confines of his sniper’s nest, a silent, brilliant, and multi-hued cataclysm erupted. He reached into the unified, supercharged core of his being and called forth his army.

  A flash of pure, brilliant azure light filled the room as Fang Fairy, his storm goddess, materialized, her silver hair crackling with contained lightning, her golden eyes blazing with cold, predatory focus.

  A wave of incandescent, oppressive heat followed as Iffrit, his demon king of annihilation, emerged from a vortex of crimson flame, his nine-foot form a monument of magma and fury, his flaming zanbatō already humming with destructive intent.

  Then came the new, stranger entities, the tools he had acquired for a different, more subtle kind of war. From the deepest shadows in the corner of the room, a formless, shifting being of silver light and darkness coalesced into existence. Echo, the Doppelganger, a living, silent question mark, awaited its command.

  And finally, the air itself seemed to liquefy, a swirling vortex of hyper-pressurized water taking the shape of a ten-foot Great White Shark. Abyss, the concept of oceanic death, hovered silently, its soulless eyes fixed on its master.

  In the space of a single, silent heartbeat, the humble mill office had become a council of war for gods and monsters. The four spirits stood in silent, perfect readiness, their combined power making the very air in the room thrum like a plucked string.

  Lloyd looked at his assembled legion, his loyal, terrifying, and magnificent family of divine weapons. The exhaustion, the grief, the human frailty he had felt earlier—all of it was burned away, replaced by the cold, exhilarating certainty of absolute power.

  He was no longer a doctor. He was no longer a healer. He was a commander. He was a harvester of the dead.

  “Targets acquired,” he whispered, his voice a low, dangerous hum that was barely human. “Initiate cleansing protocol. No survivors.”

  With a single, unified thought, he and his four spirits vanished from the office, becoming a silent, multi-vectored wave of death that descended upon the village square. The battle for Oakhaven, the true battle, had just begun.

  The battle for the village square was not a fight; it was a symphony of annihilation, a perfectly choreographed ballet of elemental fury and spectral violence. Lloyd descended from the mill office not as a man, but as the conductor of an orchestra of gods, his every thought a command, his every intention an act of war.

  Chapter : 1080

  The four newborn Curse Knights, their gruesome transformation complete, tore themselves free from their linen shrouds. They were skeletal, emaciated things, their bones still slick with the fluids of their profane birth, their movements jerky and uncoordinated. But the malevolent red light that burned in their eye sockets was ancient and full of hate. They let out a chorus of high-pitched, grating shrieks, a sound that was a violation of the natural order, and began to shamble forward, their rusty daggers held aloft.

  They were an army of nightmares, born from the bodies of honest men. But they were facing a legion of myths.

  Lloyd’s strategy was not one of defense, but of overwhelming, instantaneous, and multi-vectored assault. He and his four spirits materialized in the square, not as a single unit, but as five separate points of death, surrounding the nascent horde before it could even take a single, unified step.

  Iffrit was the anvil. The nine-foot-tall demon of fire simply appeared in the path of the first Curse Knight and, without a word, brought his colossal, flame-wreathed zanbatō down in a single, vertical cleave. The impact was not a clang of steel, but a deafening boom that shook the very foundations of the surrounding cottages. The Curse Knight was not cut in half; it was simply obliterated, its form and the section of the pyre it stood on vaporized in a column of incandescent crimson fire. One down.

  Fang Fairy was the storm. She became a blur of silver and azure lightning, a living thunderbolt that moved with conceptual speed. She appeared behind the second Curse Knight, her hand, now a claw of solidified lightning, plunging through its ribcage and shattering its corrupted spiritual core from within. The creature froze, the red light in its eyes flickering out, before its skeletal form crumbled into a pile of super-heated dust and ash. Two down.

  The other two spirits, the stranger, more esoteric weapons, executed a more complex, and far more terrifying, maneuver. Echo, the Doppelganger, the formless being of light and shadow, drifted silently toward the third Curse Knight. As the creature raised its dagger to strike the shimmering phantom, Echo surged forward and made contact. In a flash of silver light, it transformed, its shifting form solidifying into a perfect, ethereal replica of the Curse Knight itself. The creature froze, its rudimentary intelligence short-circuiting as it found itself facing its own ghostly twin.

  In that single, perfect moment of confusion, the fourth spirit attacked. Abyss, the great shark of hyper-pressurized water, surged forward not as a swimmer, but as a living battering ram. It slammed into the distracted Curse Knight with the force of a locomotive, its body of swirling, hydrodynamic force not just hitting the creature, but enveloping it. The Curse Knight was trapped within the shark’s form, its bones groaning and then cracking under the immense, crushing pressure of a thousand atmospheres. With a final, sickening crunch, its form was reduced to a slurry of bone fragments suspended in the swirling water of the shark’s body. Abyss then spat out the remains, a cloud of bone dust that settled on the cobblestones. Three down.

  The final Curse Knight, its twin still locked in a phantom battle with the Echo, was left for Lloyd.

  He moved through the chaos, a river of calm in a storm of elemental violence. His practice sword, a simple, unadorned piece of steel, was in his hand. He flowed around the spectral duel, his movements a fluid, deadly dance. As the final Curse Knight turned its attention to him, its dagger lashing out, Lloyd’s own blade became a silver blur.

  He did not block. He did not parry. He simply… moved. His sword wove a complex, intricate pattern in the air, a series of precise, surgical strikes that were too fast for the eye to follow. Each strike targeted a specific, critical joint in the creature’s skeletal structure: the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder, the knee, the ankle. With each silent tink of steel on bone, a joint was not just struck but shattered, its corrupted energy dispersed.

  In the space of three heartbeats, the final Curse Knight was not defeated; it was dismantled. It collapsed to the ground, a helpless, twitching pile of disconnected bones, its malevolent red eyes still burning with impotent fury.

  Lloyd stood over the pathetic ruin, raised his sword, and brought it down in a single, clean, and final thrust, piercing the skull and extinguishing the last spark of unholy life. Four down.

  The entire, brutal, and flawlessly executed engagement, from the spirits’ materialization to the final killing blow, had taken less than thirty seconds. The village square, which moments ago had been a birthing ground for monsters, was now a silent, smoking, and utterly cleansed graveyard.