Lord of Plague!

Inside the cavernous rock cave, a dark red mist reeked of sour rot, while grotesque monsters chanted babbling shrieks. They were massive in size, astonishing in number, and diverse in kind, differing wildly in form and function. Some bore a single, powerful arm protruding from their chests; others possessed a multitude of hands and legs, resembling centipedes. Their only commonality was that most were covered in pustules, their limbs rotting and festering with sores. The dark red mist seemed squeezed directly from those pustules, and the colossal flies and mosquitoes swarming around them appeared to have spawned from them as well, crowding affectionately beside them like their own offspring. These eccentric mutants called themselves "Plague Monks." They worshipped the omnipresent, omnipotent "Plague," revering it as a sacred treasure. Rather than mutants, it was more accurate to describe them as stitched abominations born from dismantling countless mutants and reassembling them into new permutations—having departed entirely from the concept of "human." This was even truer of the monster encircled amidst the babbling shrieks. His name was Suoduo, prophet of the Plague Monks and chieftain of the Bloodhoof Clan. His corpulence surpassed even that of Oulong from the Rock Axe Clan. Two heads shared three eyes, and the long horns jutting from his skull were inlaid with rusted bells, emitting an ominous chiming as he swayed his heads in ritual incantation. A bloated frame and sparse bristles made him look like a diseased pig, yet crowned with an affable, benign smile, he appeared unnervingly bizarre. Before him sat a bubbling cauldron of deep-red soup, brimful of pus squeezed from the pustules across his body. Though no fire burned beneath the cauldron, bubbles surged endlessly, rupturing into dark red fumes like boiling water. Only what boiled was not water, but some sinister pathogen. He called it the "primordial broth." As the matrix gestating the virus—or rather, the blessing—Suoduo scooped up a ladle of pus with a wooden spoon and, with a cackling howl, splashed it over his chanting kin. Doused in pus, the mutants groaned in sheer ecstasy. Some let out frenzied, manic shrieks, their expressions warped in bliss as though receiving a god's divine benediction. Compared to those euphoric madmen, the smaller figures weaving between the big guys' legs were far more pragmatic. These goblins and mutant children scrambled prostrate across the ground, ravenously licking up the "primordial broth" bestowed by the prophet as if it were a rare delicacy. Some goblins began mutating, their bodies ballooning into swollen orbs like expanding foam. Others curled into balls and shrank, becoming so diminutive their original forms were unrecognizable before their bodies tore open, quickly devoured by their kin. Whether the big guys' whelps or naturally stunted goblins, those who survived turned into plague-spreading "Plague Monks," joining the chorus celebrating rebirth and death. A "feeder" carrying a large basket of flesh-red fungal clusters squeezed in from the cavern's entrance, hurling the filthy clumps toward the crowded faithful. Like ravenous beasts, the newborn Plague Monks lunged forward, scrambling to stuff the organic matter into their mouths to fill their starving bellies and draw the nutrients required for their growth. Amidst babbling gibberish and rising belches, the bloody, chaotic feast carried on without end, spreading diseased flesh like an epidemic. Highly pleased with this freshly minted batch of creations, Suoduo nodded contentedly, then selected a larger pustule from his body to begin crafting the next batch of broth. Right then, however, a commotion stirred at the cavern's entrance as a dozen humans stripped of their equipment were carried inside. Both men and women, most were heavily wounded and unconscious. A few remained awake, watching the cavern's horrors with overt terror plastered across their faces. Gripping one by the neck, a three-meter-tall behemoth with six arms gave a wicked sneer and raised his longest arm high, parading the struggling "gazelle" in his grip. These intruders belonged to an Alpha Squad that had attempted to infiltrate the cave; after devouring two of their brains, he had unraveled all the little mice's plans. Basking in the cheers of the Plague Monks, he stared unblinkingly at the prophet, eyes filled with worship, pride, and a craving for reward. "Human things! Transparent! Thought we couldn't see them! Gwahahaha!" A benevolent smile spread across Suoduo's face. Yet to the Alpha Mobile Task Force operative, that smile was as terrifying as the demons described in old-world faiths. Terror seized his face, but with his throat clamped tight, he couldn't make a sound, forced to watch helplessly as he was brought before that sickening monstrosity. Suoduo peered into his eyes. Suddenly, his bloated belly split open, and intestines thick as water buckets wriggled out like earthworms, coiling around the soldier and yanking him violently into his stomach. The last vestige of the man's awareness seemed to "hear" bones shattering. Then his consciousness plunged into absolute darkness, culminating in a satisfied belch from Suoduo. Seeing their captain swallowed alive, the remaining conscious squad members succumbed to sheer dread and despair. Without hesitation, Suoduo splashed a generous ladle of primordial broth over the warrior who had brought the captives, then turned toward the prisoners near the cave entrance and bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Take them to the incubation pool!" "Offer them to the great Lord of Plague! Give thanks for His gift of evolution!" The voice buzzed like ten thousand cicadas vibrating their wings in unison, rustling and echoing endlessly throughout the vast, dark cavern. "Ooooh!" The horde of monsters contorted their manic limbs, their excited howling shaking the heavens and earth, as if the mountains themselves trembled alongside them. The Alpha Mobile Task Force operatives struggled to resist, but in the end, they were dragged forcefully to the place known as the incubation chamber. It was a bottomless abyss, faintly glowing crimson in the darkness like an extinct volcanic crater. The dark red mist drifting through the mountains seemed to originate right from there. Several wooden cranes stood along the rim of the abyss, chains coiled around winches, the ends strung with iron buckets still smeared with flesh-red fungal clumps. A female operative, pale with purplish lips, murmured through trembling teeth: "...A broodmother." It was actually a mutant slime mold broodmother! She had to get this intel back! Yet here they were, untold meters underground beneath countless meters of solid bedrock; ordinary electromagnetic signals could never penetrate it. What was more— Having fallen into enemy hands, they couldn't even save themselves. "Present the offerings to the great Lord of Plague!" The Plague Monk who had brought her here grunted solemn words, then hurled her down into the abyssal void. She felt a warm current surge through her body, as though falling into a scalding embrace. Immediately afterward, her consciousness snapped like a severed kite string, vanishing into the blinding darkness... *** At the same time, along the southern slope of Broken Blade Mountain. A line of fully geared soldiers wearing gas masks stood like statues upon the redoubt, gazing intently at the distant peak shrouded in crimson mist. That Blood Mountain stood like a halberd thrust down from the heavens, severing the eighty-li mountain pass straight down the middle. "Alpha Squad 13 has lost contact... Package failed to reach the designated location. No explosion detected." "Estimated KIA: all personnel." "Plan C13 failed. Initiating Plan B14... Move out." "Copy." Plan C13 entailed an invisible squad equipped with optical camouflage infiltrating deep into the caverns to plant explosives, collapsing key caves to destroy the fortifications built by the mutants inside the mountain. Evidently, that plan had failed. Even if only to determine the cause of failure and formulate a more meticulous offensive plan, they needed to recover the remains of the Squad 13 soldiers and delve into the caves to gather more battlefield intel. Their silent exchange concluded, the soldiers waiting on the mountainside moved out of the trenches in lockstep, forming ten-man squads and advancing toward Blood Mountain. Unlike Squad 13, these troops, equipped with heavy exoskeletons and electromagnetic weapons, were the backbone of the Alpha Mobile Task Force. On the battlefield, they typically served as the spearhead, tasked specifically with eliminating dangerous targets that the Academy's exploration teams couldn't handle. At the same time, deafening thuds echoed from afar as two 902mm railway cannons simultaneously belched jets of flame, propelling several barrel-launched rockets fitted with thousand-jin-class thermobaric warheads straight into the clouds. Within a dozen breaths, ear-splitting shrieks pierced the thin clouds, instantly erupting into mushroom-shaped crimson clouds. Scorching flames poured down like magma falling from the highest heavens, engulfing nearly the entire mountainous area and instantly vacuuming the oxygen within a radius of several kilometers. The eerie red mist hovering over Blood Mountain's summit was blown completely clean away. As it turned out, before sufficient yield, all monsters and demons were merely paper tigers. Of course, offense and defense were always relative; everything hinged on the word "sufficient." Minor landslides broke out across the mountain, massive boulders tumbling from the three-thousand-meter peak down to the base, yet the mountain itself remained standing immovable. Even though the rising waves of heat made it look as if the entire mountain had been roasted through. Within several minutes, the coalition had poured at least ten 902mm heavy rocket-assisted projectiles into the Blood Mountain area. These shells, enough to fill five train cars, swept nearly every reachable inch, leaving not so much as an ant behind. Meanwhile, two hundred-man companies of the Alpha Mobile Task Force had already pushed to the front line. Arriving alongside them were fully two hundred quadcopter drones mounted with caseless rifles and grenade launchers. Unlike the Alliance's drones, the Academy's drones not only featured a design closer to science fiction, but also integrated a dizzying array of functions. The moment the drone attack formations deployed, dazzling beams of light materialized beneath them, composing full-color human figures. Observing the battle from the airship Loyalty, General Lium stared wide-eyed, momentarily mistaking it for teleportation or some other black technology. However, he quickly realized it was nothing more than holographic projection, and that the soldiers appearing out of thin air weren't real, settling back into his chair. "Hmph, cheap parlor tricks." A scoff of disdain escaped his lips, yet a flicker of wariness flashed in his eyes. To be fair, the holographic projections were realistic enough to pass for genuine. If the drones and the decoys opened fire simultaneously, it was hard to say whether front-line troops wouldn't be fooled by the disguised targets and scatter their fire. Even seeing through the illusions as holographic deception was useless, since the drones themselves served as "cover" for the Alpha Mobile Task Force operatives. Firing at those lightly armed drones would play right into the hands of those slugs from the marsh. If engaging these people as hypothetical enemies, the direst situation his soldiers would face wouldn't be discerning real drones from optical camouflage, but distinguishing the few real targets amidst a horde of decoys. That was on the tactical level. On the strategic level, the trouble his officers would face was likely no less than that of the front-line combat troops. Although the Academy hadn't demonstrated it in this battle, in Lium's judgment, if they could provide tactical cover for front-line units using holograms, there was no reason they couldn't execute strategic misdirection as well. For instance, they could use a handful of drones to simulate a nonexistent division, creating strategic deception. Those slugs from the marsh might not excel at large-scale warfare, but their knack for intrigue and scheming was second to none on the wasteland. The more Lium thought about it, the more alarmed he became, palms involuntarily sweating. He resolved in his mind that once this battle concluded, he would draft a rigorous report to inform Triumph City of the situation here. Those folks in the north weren't as frail as they appeared; they might even prove far harder to handle than the good-for-nothings of Ideal City... While Lium was lost in his private unease, the Academy's Alpha Mobile Task Force had already advanced halfway up Blood Mountain. Having endured that unreasonable carpet bombing, the mutants on Blood Mountain seemed cowered, huddling inside the caves and refusing to emerge. Naturally, it was also possible they had intended all along to stage the battle inside the caverns and tunnels where fire support couldn't reach, using the terrain to stall and bleed the invaders. The Alpha Mobile Task Force soldiers wasted no time. Covered by drones and holograms, the vanguard charged into the cave entrance on the mountainside. Almost the moment they stepped inside, fighting erupted! Muzzle flashes illuminated the pitch-black cave like daylight. Tracers carved paths for the squads penetrating deeper into the cavern, while the explosions and shrapnel of rifle grenades continually harvested mutant lives. The grotesque, twisted appearance of these mutants was sickening, but that was all. Faced with dense webs of fire woven by assault rifles and Gauss rifles, the mutants resisting with flesh and bone were pushed back in shambles, unable to mount even decent resistance. Covered by optical camouflage, a four-man fireteam breached the Bloodhoof Clan's defenses like splitting bamboo, clearing two consecutive tunnels without a scratch, losing only five drones in the process. The four gas-masked soldiers fired in silence while communicating mutely over their comms channel. "Stinks." "Disgusting." "Canned herring." "Worse than that." "...How can you smell it?" "...?" All four instantly realized the gravity of the situation: their personal NBC protection systems had been breached! The stench permeating the cave grew increasingly suffocating, bringing not merely intense nausea, but mental haze and unnatural hallucinations. Belonging to the Science Committee, they were indeed equipped with certain body-enhancing cybernetics and augmentations, but those were generic components meant to boost combat efficiency—removable upon death or discharge to be reused by others. They themselves weren't wealthy enough to afford custom bionic immune systems like Academy researchers or Enterprise citizens. Realizing they might be infected with Na fruit hyphae or something similar, the squad leader decisively issued a retreat order. Yet the moment their assault faltered, the Bloodhoof Clan mutants bared their vicious fangs. They could see that the illusions woven by optical camouflage were merely disguises used by these human things. There was nothing wrong with that—they, too, had been pretending. Not only had they faked frailty and weakness, they had even lain on the ground playing dead. Watching the creatures clamber back up from the ground, the team leader and his three teammates felt their hearts sink in disbelief. Survival probability below thirteen percent. Making an instant judgment, he transmitted the combat logs stored in his brain chip to one of the drones and set it to auto-return. Almost the instant he finished the transfer, an ugly monster stepped out from straight ahead in the passage. Bloated and corpulent, with a vacant, idiotic gaze, its belly split open like a gaping maw, rings of fat intestines dangling outward like a mop dragged along the ground, concealing its stubby feet. In the Bloodhoof Clan, it was merely one of the Plague Monks, a devotee of the Lord of Plague, and a thrall of Prophet Suoduo. In its hands it lugged an oddly shaped large gun. It wore no armor, yet its body was plastered with scars resembling grievous wounds, so much so that the four Alpha soldiers couldn't discern where its weak points lay... *** The battle on the front line raged on. Meanwhile, atop Broken Blade Mountain in the distance, a group of Wilante watched the unfolding battle. General Modelin, myriarch of the Legion's 31st Division, held a pair of binoculars, watching intently toward the mountainside of Blood Mountain. Everything on the front line appeared to be proceeding smoothly. Yet what made him frown slightly was that the red mist dispersed earlier by the thermobaric bombs seemed to be gradually creeping back... Beside him, his adjutant's mouth twitched, muttering under his breath: "So what was the point of that operational plan with a mile-long code? In the end, they do it just like us." Even the artillery hurling heavy fire had been supplied by the Southern Legion. General Modelin remained silent, merely observing the front line without a word. He had heard the Academy's operational plan totaled dozens of gigabytes, with operational codenames alone filling a dozen pages of table of contents—thoroughly prepared by any standard. Let alone his adjutant, even he was curious about what was written in those dozens of gigabytes of data. Unfortunately, the Academy had no intention of making the plan public, submitting it strictly under conditions of secrecy only to the allied supreme command—meaning Chu Guang. For that very reason, he could only rely on his own eyes to see what tricks the Academy intended to pull. This was a rare opportunity to understand a rival, and he had no desire to let it pass. Coincidentally, atop the crest of Broken Blade Mountain, Commander Spring, leader of the Storm Corps, was doing the exact same thing, staring intently toward the front line. Unlike an NPC like General Modelin, as a player, he could read the entire contents of the Alpha Mobile Task Force's operational plan on the official Wasteland OL forum. Except reading that stuff had left him thoroughly baffled—bewildered to the point of utter stupefaction. It wasn't that the Academy folks spoke in riddles or were overly abstract. Quite the contrary—they were far too detailed! Those people had categorized and compiled statistics for every single mutant variant on Blood Mountain, using battlefield analysis AI to dissect their attack patterns and vulnerability profiles. Not only that, based on these statistics, they had designed meticulous procedures detailing what tactics and equipment front-line troops should employ against mutants of differing sizes, weights, and traits. The entire dozens of gigabytes of data read like an exhaustive game walkthrough, going so far as to instruct which skill to pop when encountering which specific trash mob. Honestly, the practice itself wasn't unreasonable; armies of various nations issued handbooks to soldiers with battlefield "tips" for recruits to memorize, boosting their survival rates... Still, it shouldn't have been nitpicked to the convoluted extreme of "how many shots to fire at what kind of target." For a moment, Commander Spring couldn't tell whether this was Wandering Marsh's unique brand of formalism or if their commanders genuinely believed such an overly tedious plan was actually useful. Then again, considering that Alpha Mobile Task Force soldiers were fitted with bionic prostheses just like Enterprise troops, and had undergone more rigorous training than Enterprise rookies, perhaps they simply had their own philosophy on combat. "Good grief... does taking one mountain really require that much ammo?" Standing beside Brother Spring, Edge, who had come up to the front line just to watch the show, couldn't help chiming in. Unlike what Brother Spring was focused on, Edge's attention lingered more on the volley of 902mm heavy artillery fired earlier. Those fireworks were certainly thrilling, but by any metric, that fire density seemed like massive overkill. With heavy artillery pounding down like that, clatter and boom, he couldn't help wincing on Ah Guang's behalf over all that wasted ammunition. Commander Spring frowned and said, "If they can take this position, it'd be worth it even if they doubled it." Brother Edge gave him a strange look. "You think they can't take it?" "Never mind them—even we'd have a tough time." Seeing Edge's stunned expression, Commander Spring paused for a moment. Looking at the blood mist gathering over the mountain once more, he continued with a solemn expression: "...I just have this gut feeling that whatever's up there is probably not the 'pseudo-broodmother' we saw in Jinchuan Province." A pseudo-broodmother was the core of the Na fruit. According to Alliance biologists' research on "Heaven," that entity was a "Na Fruit Nest" modeled after the Qingquan City broodmother, primarily serving to control Na fruit hyphae within Heaven's domain, spur them to release spores, and interfere with the wills of infected hosts. Before Heaven reached "Stage Four," destroying the Na Fruit Nest would prevent Heaven from descending. However, this thing didn't resemble Na fruit. After all, in his recollection, mutants possessed robust immune systems capable of completely ignoring the effects of Na fruit; they couldn't serve as breeding grounds for Na fruit hyphae. In other words, Ten Peaks Mountain lacked the foundation for Heaven to descend. But if those spores were produced by a mutant slime mold broodmother, everything made far more sense. Brother Edge's expression shifted slightly. "You mean... that thing is the real deal?!" Commander Spring nodded, raising his binoculars to watch in silence. Almost every broodmother they had encountered was different. He had reason to believe the one before them was the same, possessing its own understanding of "evolution" and having chosen an entirely different evolutionary path from the Qingquan City broodmother. Still, a broodmother that could "coexist" with frenzied creatures like mutants sounded utterly absurd. How on earth did two hyper-aggressive entities achieve peaceful coexistence? And if his speculation was accurate, then this thing's design was eerily similar to "Xiao Yu"...