Chapter 743: The Plague Lord!

Chapter 743: The Plague Lord!

In the spacious cavern, dark red fumes reeked of putrid acidity, and grotesque monsters chanted in garbled cries.

They were massive in size, astonishing in number, and varied in shape and function. Some bore a single powerful arm on their chests, while others had many limbs like centipedes.

The only thing they shared was that most were covered in pustules, their limbs festering with sores.

The dark red fumes seemed to be squeezed from those pustules, and the enormous mosquitoes and flies that swarmed around them appeared to sprout from there as well, clustering around them like affectionate offspring.

These peculiar mutants called themselves "Plague Monks," worshipping the omnipresent and omnipotent "Plague," cherishing it as a treasure.

They were less mutants and more like stitched-together abominations born from countless mutants dismantled and reassembled, having completely departed from the concept of "human."

The monster at the center, surrounded by the chanting cries, was even more so.

His name was Sodo, the prophet of the Plague Monks and the chieftain of the Bloodhoof Clan.

He was as corpulent as Oron of the Rockaxe Clan, with two heads sharing three eyes. Rusted bells were embedded in the long horns growing from his skull, ringing ominously as he swayed his head in ritual.

His bloated form and sparse hair made him look like a diseased pig, and with his amiable smile, he appeared eerily strange.

Before him sat a pot of bubbling deep red broth, filled with pus squeezed from his own pustules.

Though no fire burned beneath the pot, bubbles constantly rose and burst into dark red fumes, like boiling water—except what boiled was not water, but some malevolent pathogen.

He called it the "Primordial Soup."

As the matrix nurturing the virus—or rather, the blessing—Sodo ladled a scoop of pus and, with a cackling howl, splashed it onto his chanting kin.

The mutants drenched in pus let out ecstatic moans, some shouting in euphoria, their twisted expressions of joy as if receiving divine favor.

Compared to those joyful madmen, the short figures weaving between the giants were far more pragmatic.

These goblins and the mutants' children scrambled on the ground, licking up the "Primordial Soup" bestowed by the prophet as if it were a delicacy.

Some goblins began to mutate, their bodies swelling like foam into balls. Others curled up, seeming to shrink even smaller, almost unrecognizable, before their bodies tore apart and were devoured by their kin.

Whether the giants' offspring or the naturally diminutive goblins, those who survived became the plague-spreading "Plague Monks," joining the chorus celebrating birth and death.

A "Feeder" carrying a large basket of flesh-red fungal chunks squeezed in from the cave entrance, flinging the filthy lumps toward the crowded faithful.

The newborn Plague Monks pounced like wolves, greedily stuffing the organic matter into their mouths to fill their hungry stomachs and draw the nutrients needed for growth.

Amid the garbled chants and echoing belches, the bloody, chaotic party continued endlessly, spreading diseased bodies like a plague.

Pleased with his latest batch of creations, Sodo nodded contentedly, then selected a larger pustule from his body to begin brewing the next pot of soup.

But just then, a commotion arose at the cave entrance. A dozen humans, stripped of their gear, were carried in.

Among them were men and women, most severely wounded and unconscious. A few were awake, staring at the cavern with obvious fear.

Grabbing one by the neck, a three-meter-tall, six-armed brute let out a sinister laugh, raising its longest arm high to flaunt the struggling "antelope."

These were members of an Alpha squad attempting to infiltrate the cave. After eating two brains, it had figured out the entire plan of these little mice.

Basking in the cheers of the Plague Monks, it fixed its gaze on the prophet, its eyes filled with worship, pride, and a craving for reward.

"Human thing! Transparent! Thought we couldn't see! Gah gah gah!"

A loving smile spread across Sodo's face.

But to that Alpha Tactical Operative, that smile was as terrifying as the demons described in old-world faiths.

His face twisted in terror, but with his throat crushed, he couldn't make a sound, only watching helplessly as he was brought before that repulsive creature.

Sodo stared into his eyes, then a slit opened in his bloated belly. Intestines as thick as buckets writhed like earthworms, coiled around him, and yanked him into his stomach.

The last shred of consciousness seemed to "hear" the sound of bones snapping, then his awareness plunged into darkness, becoming nothing but a burp from Sodo.

Watching their captain devoured alive, the remaining conscious squad members wore expressions of fear and despair.

Generously splashing a ladle of Primordial Soup onto the brave one who brought the captives, Sodo turned to the prisoners at the cave entrance and bellowed on.

"Take them to the incubation pool!"

"Offer them to the great Plague Lord! Give thanks for the evolution He bestows upon us!"

The sound was like ten thousand cicadas vibrating their wings together, a rustling noise echoing through the empty, dark cavern.

"Ooh ooh ooh!"

The monsters writhed in frenzy, their excited shouts shaking heaven and earth, as if the mountains themselves trembled.

The Alpha Tactical Operatives struggled to resist, but were ultimately dragged to the place called the incubation chamber.

It was a bottomless abyss, a faint crimson glow seeping from the darkness, like an extinct volcanic crater.

The dark red mist that filled the mountains seemed to emanate from there.

At the edge of the abyss stood several wooden cranes, their winches wrapped with iron chains, the ends of which held a string of iron buckets still stained with flesh-red fungal chunks.

A female operative, pale-faced and blue-lipped, trembled and murmured.

"...The Hive."

It was a mutant slime mold hive!

She had to bring this news back!

But they were deep underground, with who knew how many meters of rock above, and ordinary electromagnetic signals couldn't penetrate.

Moreover—

Falling into enemy hands, they were now unable to save themselves.

"Offer a sacrifice to the great Plague Lord!"

The Plague Monk who brought her here grunted solemnly, then threw her into the abyss.

She felt a warm current surge through her body, as if embraced by a scorching heat. Then her consciousness, like a kite with a broken string, vanished into the unseeable darkness...

...

At the same time, on the southern slope of Broken Blade Mountain.

A line of fully armed soldiers in gas masks stood like statues on the position, staring intently at the blood-mist-shrouded peak in the distance.

That blood-red mountain was like a halberd fallen from the sky, splitting the eighty-li mountain road in two.

"Alpha Squad 13 has lost contact... Package not delivered to the designated location, no explosion detected."

"Judged all dead."

"Plan C13 failed. Initiating Plan B14... Execute."

"Roger."

Plan C13 involved an invisible squad equipped with optical camouflage infiltrating the cave to plant explosives, collapsing parts of the cavern to destroy the mutants' fortifications within the mountain.

Clearly, that plan had failed.

Even if only to understand the cause of failure and to devise a more thorough attack plan, they had to recover the bodies of Squad 13 and gather more battlefield intelligence deeper in the cave.

The silent exchange ended. The soldiers waiting on the hillside left the trenches in unison, forming ten-man squads marching toward the blood mountain.

Unlike Squad 13,

Equipped with heavy exoskeletons and electromagnetic weapons, they were the backbone of the Alpha Tactical Force, usually serving as the spearhead in battle, tasked with eliminating dangerous targets that the Academy's survey squads couldn't handle.

At the same moment, a series of deafening dull roars echoed from afar, as two 902mm railway guns spat tongues of fire in unison, propelling several rockets carrying thousand-kilogram thermobaric warheads into the sky.

A dozen breaths later, piercing shrieks tore through the thin clouds above, exploding in an instant into mushroom-shaped red clouds.

Blazing flames, like molten lava falling from the heavens, nearly swallowed the entire mountain range, instantly draining the oxygen for kilometers around.

The eerie red mist that had clung to the Blood Mountain peaks was blown away completely.

It proved that, given sufficient yield, all demons and monsters are nothing but paper tigers.

Of course, the concepts of offense and defense are always relative; everything hinges on "sufficiency."

The mountain suffered some landslides, with massive boulders tumbling from the three-thousand-meter summit to the foot, yet the peak itself stood unmoved.

Even the rising heat made it seem as though the entire mountain had been roasted.

Within minutes, the coalition had unleashed at least ten 902mm heavy rocket-assisted projectiles onto the Blood Mountain area.

These shells, enough to fill five train cars, scoured every reachable spot, leaving not even an ant behind.

Meanwhile, two hundred-man squadrons of the Alpha Task Force had pushed to the front lines.

Arriving with them were a full 200 quad-rotor drones, each armed with caseless rifles and grenade launchers.

Unlike the coalition's drones, the Academy's drones not only had a more sci-fi aesthetic but also integrated a myriad of functions.

Just as the drone attack formation deployed, a dazzling array of light projections suddenly appeared beneath the drones, forming colorful human figures.

General Lium, watching from the Loyalty airship, stared wide-eyed, thinking it was some kind of teleportation black tech.

But he quickly realized it was merely holographic projection—the soldiers appearing out of thin air weren't real—and sat back down.

"Hmph, playing tricks."

He sneered disdainfully, though a flicker of wariness shone in his eyes.

To be fair, the holograms were so lifelike they could pass for reality.

If the drones and the decoys opened fire simultaneously, it would be hard to tell whether frontline soldiers would be deceived by those fake targets, thus dispersing their firepower.

Even seeing through the illusory targets as holographic camouflage was useless, since the drones themselves served as cover for the Alpha Task Force members.

Firing at those drones, which carried limited ammunition, would only play into the hands of those swamp slugs.

If they were to engage these foes in combat, the gravest challenge his soldiers would face might not be distinguishing real from fake between drones and optical camouflage, but identifying real targets among a crowd of decoys and a handful of actual fighters.

That was the tactical level.

On the strategic level, the officers under his command would face no fewer troubles than the frontline soldiers.

Although the Academy hadn't demonstrated it in this battle, Lium judged that if they could use holographic light to provide tactical cover for frontline troops, there was no reason they couldn't achieve strategic deception.

For instance, they could use a few drones to masquerade as a nonexistent army, creating strategic misdirection.

Those swamp slugs might not excel at large-scale warfare, but their skill at scheming was second to none in the wasteland.

The more Lium thought, the more alarmed he became, his palms even sweating with tension.

He silently resolved that once this battle ended, he would write a thorough report to inform Triumph City of the situation.

The northerners weren't as weak as they seemed; they might even be far harder to deal with than the fools in Ideal City...

Just as Lium's heart raced, the Academy's Alpha Task Force had already advanced to the midslope of Blood Mountain.

After the earlier indiscriminate bombardment, the mutants on Blood Mountain seemed cowed, hiding in caves and refusing to come out.

Of course, they might have planned from the start to fight in caves and tunnels beyond support fire's reach, using terrain to their advantage.

The Alpha Task Force soldiers wasted no words; the vanguard, shielded by drones and holograms, charged into the cave entrance on the midslope.

Almost the moment they entered, battle erupted!

Muzzle flashes lit the dark cave like daylight, tracer rounds carving a path for the advancing squad, while grenade explosions and shrapnel reaped mutant lives.

The mutants' twisted, ugly forms were hair-raising, but that was all.

Facing the dense fire net of assault rifles and Gauss rifles, the mutants, resisting with flesh and blood, were beaten back, unable to mount any real defense.

Under optical camouflage, a four-man squad broke through the Blood Hoof tribe's defenses, capturing two tunnels without a scratch, losing only five drones.

The four soldiers in gas masks fired silently, communicating in the comm channel.

"So stinky."

"Too stinky."

"Like canned herring."

"Worse than that."

"...How can you smell it?"

"...?"

They instantly realized the gravity: their personal NBC protection had been breached!

The stench in the cave grew stronger, bringing not just nausea but mental fog and unnatural hallucinations.

As members of the Science Committee, they had installed some prosthetics and implants to enhance physical performance, but those were just standard combat upgrades, removable after death or discharge for reuse.

They weren't wealthy enough to customize a bionic immune system like Academy researchers or corporate residents.

Realizing they might be infected with Nago mycelium or something similar, the squad leader immediately ordered a retreat.

But the moment their attack stalled, the Blood Hoof mutants bared their vicious fangs.

They could see that the optical camouflage illusions were just disguises for these human things.

That was understandable, since they too were disguised.

They had not only feigned weakness but even played dead.

Seeing those rising from the ground, the squad leader, with his three teammates, felt shock and a sinking heart.

Survival odds under 13%, he judged instantly, transmitting the combat footage stored on his brain chip to one drone and setting it to auto-return.

Almost as he finished, a grotesque monster stepped out from the tunnel ahead.

It was obese and bloated, with a vacant stare, its belly split open like a mouth, loops of intestines spilling out like a mop dragging on the ground, obscuring its short legs.

In the Blood Hoof tribe, it was just one of the Plague Monks, a follower of the Plague Lord, a servant of Prophet Sodo.

It carried a bizarre large gun, wore no armor, yet was covered in what looked like grievous wounds, leaving the four Alphas unable to pinpoint its weakness...

The frontline battle raged on.

Meanwhile, on distant Broken Blade Mountain, a group of Vlandians watched the front.

General Modlin, the ten-thousand-man commander of the Legion's 31st Cohort, held binoculars fixed on the midslope of Blood Mountain.

The front seemed to be going smoothly.

But what furrowed his brow was that the red mist, earlier dispersed by thermobaric bombs, seemed to be creeping back...

His adjutant, standing beside him, couldn't help twitching his mouth and muttered.

"So what's the point of that long-numbered operation plan? In the end, it's just like ours."

Even the heavy artillery that projected firepower was sent by the Southern Corps.

General Modlin, however, remained silent, merely gazing at the front lines in silence.

It was said that the Academy's battle plan totaled dozens of gigabytes, and the action codes alone filled a dozen pages of the table of contents—the preparations were quite thorough.

Not to mention his adjutant, even he himself was curious about what exactly was written in those dozens of gigabytes of data.

Unfortunately, the Academy had no intention of making the battle plan public; it was submitted to the Allied High Command, that is, to Chu Guang, under the premise of secrecy.

For this reason, he could only use his own eyes to confirm what means the Academy intended to employ.

This was a rare opportunity to understand the enemy, and he did not want to let it slip by so easily.

As luck would have it, atop Broken Blade Mountain, the Spring Commander of the Storm Corps was just like him, staring intently at the direction of the front lines.

Unlike General Modlin, who was an NPC, as a player, he could see the entire content of the Alpha Task Force's battle plan on the official forum of "Wasteland OL."

But that stuff left him utterly bewildered—to the point of being completely dumbfounded.

It wasn't that the Academy people weren't speaking plainly, or that their descriptions were too abstract.

On the contrary, they had written it in too much detail!

These guys had made categorized statistics for every type of mutant on Blood Mountain, and used a battlefield analysis AI to parse their attack methods and weakness information.

Not only that, they had even designed, based on these statistics, meticulous tactics and equipment for frontline soldiers encountering mutants of different sizes, weights, and characteristics.

The entire dozens of gigabytes of data were like an exhaustive game guide, even instructing which skills to use against which minor monsters.

In itself, this behavior wasn't really a point of criticism; the pamphlets issued to soldiers by various national armies also included some battlefield "tips," requiring recruits to memorize them to improve their survival chances on the battlefield...

But no matter what, it shouldn't have been as tediously detailed as "how many shots to fire at what target."

For a moment, the Spring Commander couldn't tell whether this was the unique formalism of the Wandering Swamp, or if their commander truly believed such an overly lengthy plan could actually be useful.

But considering that the soldiers of the Alpha Task Force, like those of the Corporation, were equipped with bionic prosthetics and had received more professional training than Corporate recruits, perhaps they had their own understanding of combat.

"Good grief... does it really take that much ammunition to take a single hill?"

Standing beside Spring, the onlooker Edge, who had come to the front lines for the excitement, couldn't help but complain.

Unlike what Brother Spring was focusing on, his attention was more on the earlier barrage of 902mm heavy artillery.

The fireworks were certainly thrilling, but the density of fire seemed a bit excessive.

With such a round of heavy artillery crashing down, he couldn't help but feel sorry for A-Guang over the wasted ammunition.

The Spring Commander frowned and said, "If they can take this position, even doubling it would be worth it."

Edge Slacker gave him a strange look. "You think they can't take it?"

"Let alone them, even we'd have a tough time."

Looking at Edge's stunned expression, the Spring Commander paused for a moment, then stared at the blood mist that was once again spreading over the mountain, and continued with a grave tone.

"...I have this feeling that thing up there is probably not the 'pseudo-hive' we saw in Jinchuan Province."

The so-called pseudo-hive was the core of the Nago.

According to the Alliance biologists' research on "Paradise," that thing was a "Nago Nest" modeled after the hive in Clearwater City, similar to a hive. Its main function was to dominate the Nago mycelium within the Paradise domain, urge it to release spores, and interfere with the will of the infected.

Before Paradise entered the "Fourth Stage," destroying the "Nago Nest" could prevent Paradise's descent.

But this thing didn't seem like Nago.

After all, in his impression, mutants could rely on their powerful immune systems to directly negate the effects of Nago; they couldn't serve as a seedbed for Nago mycelium reproduction.

In other words, Ten Peaks Mountain didn't actually have the foundation for Paradise to descend.

But if those spores were produced by a mutant slime mold hive, then everything made much more sense.

Edge Slacker's expression shifted slightly. "You mean... that thing is the real deal?!"

The Spring Commander nodded, raised his binoculars, and continued watching in silence.

Every hive they had encountered was almost different.

He had reason to believe that this one before them was the same—it had its own understanding of "evolution" and had made choices on the path of evolution that were completely different from the hive in Clearwater City.

However, a hive that could "coexist" with such frenzied creatures as mutants sounded too bizarre. How could two such aggressive entities achieve peaceful coexistence?

And if his speculation was accurate, then this thing's setting was far too similar to "Xiao Yu"...