Chapter 78. Black Death (1)
It was not that if you caught the plague, you would definitely die.
There were the bubonic plague, septicemic plague, pneumonic plague, and so on.
There were many kinds of plague, and their fatality rates were all different. Dong Bong-su was not a medical scholar, so he did not know the details of such things. He only knew a little, roughly speaking.
Maybe.
'Maybe I'll live.'
But if he thought about it another way, maybe he would die. There were records saying that those who were starving, unhealthy, and whose immune systems had weakened died first, but that was only records. What it was really like, people who did not live in that era could not know everything. Right now, this was the real situation, and he himself was already in a state of being contaminated by the plague bacteria.
In other words, it meant that even a small probability of death had appeared. No, was that probability really small? No one knew. Dong Bong-su was also human. Any human could suddenly die at any time.
Maybe he had caught the most severe type of plague, and his chances of survival were already slim.
However, he set that possibility aside for now. In that case, he would have no choice but to leave his life to luck, so it was not worth considering at the moment.
Excluding that case, he would do his best to survive. That was, as expected, his supreme task.
Then, how should he survive no matter what?
'It's simple. I have to cure the disease. Then how?'
Dong Bong-su, one clear method flashed through his mind. In this uncertain world, there was no treatment more certain than that.
That was...….
'Level up!'
The system could not detect the existence of bacteria, but it recognized it as poison. Then it meant it could remove it. If he achieved level up to 31, at the same time he would recover from the status abnormality.
Whether the cause of [Poisoned] was the plague, or some other bacteria, or truly some unknown poison, it would not matter to the system. The moment he leveled up, the system would simply remove whatever was the source of the status abnormality from Dong Bong-su's body, or if that was impossible, it would reconstruct his entire body and get rid of the plague bacteria anyway.
A solution had come out. More precisely, only the solution had come out, and many problems still remained.
Dong Bong-su went back over the knowledge he had piled up beyond those memories and continued to think.
The incubation period of the plague was, at shortest, a few days, and at longest, about half a month to a month. Within this time, he had to level up no matter what.
Then, what was the way to level up?
Dong Bong-su raised his head and looked at the mercenaries. With his long bangs hanging down, his eyes were hidden even more deeply, so the mercenaries could not read his expression at all. If they could see those eyes, the mercenaries would not have dared to look straight at them. Because those were the eyes of a predator judging whether eating these things would fill his stomach or not.
Dong Bong-su slowly swept his gaze over the mercenaries around him, one by one.
'About a thousand of these mercenaries. Then....'
"It's impossible."
" ...? "
The mercenaries could not understand what he was saying. Even more so that with just that one sentence, their lives had been saved.
Dong Bong-su judged that even if he killed mercenaries like these now, it would be difficult to level up. He instinctively knew that even if he killed everyone here, it would not amount to much experience.
He had to find enemies that were stronger and gave more experience. And those enemies had to be nearby.
They had already come very deep into the grasslands. If he went back to Datong now, the plague might break out in the meantime and kill him. Moreover, in Datong, there were almost no strong people who could help Dong Bong-su level up. Even if there were, it would only be the master craftsman of the Eight Directions Armory. Dong Bong-su could not guarantee whether he could kill him or not. In the worst case, the master craftsman might be much stronger than him. If that was so, going back to Datong was not a very good option.
If he could not return to Datong...…
'I have to find another place where enemies with a lot of experience are densely gathered, and soon.'
It did not take long for Dong Bong-su to think of one place.
That place was.....
Crunch, crunch.
At that moment, a slightly distorted sound of horse hooves stepping on sand reached his ears. None of the mercenaries were riding horses. And it was a sound he had already heard once before. Considering that the pattern of the sound was not very different from what he had heard back then, there was a high chance it was the same horse and the same person.
'Lee Ja-song's messenger.'
Sure enough, just as Dong Bong-su thought, the one who appeared was that messenger he had seen in Tiancheng Village. This time, unlike last time, he came down from his horse at a place a little distance away from Dong Bong-su.
Then he walked toward Dong Bong-su.
He slightly bowed his head, took out a letter from his chest, and held it out to Dong Bong-su.
"This is a message from His Excellency the Governor-General."
Dong Bong-su immediately took the letter and unfolded it. In the letter, there was writing that was as short and concise as the order given when they attacked this place.
[Come to Guisui.]
Dong Bong-su rolled the letter back up, handed it to the messenger, and said.
"What happened to Liangcheng?"
"It fell yesterday."
The messenger's tone was extremely respectful, as if speaking to a superior. It was not only because the mercenary captain called Ear Ghost standing in front of him had achieved merits greater than most generals. It was also because of Dong Bong-su's own emotionless atmosphere that unknowingly made people shrink back.
Hearing the messenger's answer, Dong Bong-su turned his body toward the direction of the army tents and said.
"Go and report. Tell him that Manhan Mountain has been wiped out, so I will head to Guisui immediately."
Strictly speaking, there were still a small number of North Ghosts left in Manhan Mountain, but there was no need to deal with them. In any case, they had already fallen to become prey for the plague.
"Understood. I will report that to His Excellency the Governor-General."
The messenger put the letter back into his chest and mounted his horse.
At that moment, Dong Bong-su's flat, emotionless voice reached him again.
"Have the soldiers entered Liangcheng?"
At Dong Bong-su's question, the messenger hesitated and answered.
" ... Yes. Why do you ask?"
"No reason."
With that, Dong Bong-su headed toward the army tents where the mercenaries were gathered. As he walked, he thought again.
A large army of Lee Ja-song had entered Liangcheng, where the plague must have been rampant from long ago. If that was so, it meant that Lee Ja-song's army was already finished. At this point, what Lee Ja-song could choose was either to retreat, or to attack Guisui even amidst the outbreak of the epidemic.
And Lee Ja-song already seemed to have chosen the latter. Even though this case could be divided into many possibilities, it did not matter to Dong Bong-su.
What was important to him now was heading to Guisui. If Lee Ja-song had chosen the former...
Dong Bong-su would have killed all the mercenaries here and headed to Guisui alone. Because that was the side with at least a thread of higher chance of survival.
Already, there was nowhere in these grasslands that could avoid the shadow of the Black Death. Then what should he do?
Wasn't it obvious?
Dong Bong-su would personally sweep away that shadow. For that, he headed to Guisui.
In his head, a passage from a book he had read before was being automatically replayed.
"Every day and night, hundreds of people died..... Soon, the entire land will be covered with graves. I, Agnolo di Tura, also buried my five children with my own hands. ... Witnessing these countless deaths, people believed that the end of the world had come."
The title of the book was
***
"Fire!"
At the order of the adjutants, all the whirlwind artillerymen pulled with all their might on the traction ropes (the ropes that serve as the switch of the artillery). Then the upper parts of the launch poles (the pillars that launch the projectiles) rose, and rocks were fired.
Boom! Koo-boom!
The rocks flew powerfully and mercilessly battered the walls and the gate of Guisui Fortress.
Crack, crack...…
A part of the wall showed slight signs of damage, and stone powder scattered. But it was only a very minute amount. Overall, Guisui Fortress still stood firmly in place, unmoving like a thousand-year monolith.
The gate was even more so. The Guisui Fortress gate, made of steel plates over three chi thick, looked perfectly fine no matter how you looked at it. It was probably also because Guisui Fortress itself was a semi-mountain fortress, slightly leaning on a hill, so the stones from the catapults could not reach it well.
"General! At this rate, we don't know when we'll be able to break the gate!"
"Keep firing! No matter how much of a lump of iron it is, it will break someday."
"But, General! The epidemic is already spreading widely inside the camp. Even now, it would be better to withdraw...."
"Withdraw? Did you just say withdraw? Where? Where in the world do you mean to withdraw to?"
" ... "
Deputy Dang's answer was cut off.
Lee Ja-song was right. They had already lost the place to return to.
When they attacked Liangcheng a few days ago, about twenty thousand cavalry had appeared near the rear of Lee Ja-song's main force. At first, Lee Ja-song thought they were reinforcements that had come to save Liangcheng. So, he temporarily lifted the siege of Liangcheng and rearranged his formation to face the cavalry.
However, the moment Lee Ja-song's troops finished preparing for battle, the cavalry suddenly turned their horses' heads to the southeast and disappeared.
That direction was, without even needing to ask, the road that Lee Ja-song and his fifty thousand troops had walked until now.
At the end of that road?
Of course, without needing to consider or say more, there was Datong. In other words, the enemy had gone to the Datong Grand General's Office.
Seeing that, several adjutants thought that supplies and rear support would be cut off, and in the end, Datong might fall. Because of that, some generals even submitted petitions to Lee Ja-song, saying they should retreat immediately.
However, Lee Ja-song rejected that opinion in a single sentence. Even though only farmer-soldiers were left defending the Grand General's Office, Datong, as the greatest fortress of the north, was not a place that would fall easily. On top of that, retreating now would be the same as admitting his own failure, so he absolutely could not do that.
The opportunity given to him was only this one time. Retreating was the same as throwing that opportunity away, and that meant that going back to Datong again was no different at all from putting a blade to his own neck.
Thus, Lee Ja-song continued the attack on Liangcheng as it was, and finally succeeded in occupying it.
But....
That was now tightening its grip around the necks of the entire expeditionary army.
After occupying Liangcheng, they found that a serious epidemic was spreading there, and without any time to deal with it, the epidemic spread to the occupying forces...…
The pitch-black epidemic.
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