Chapter 77. Black ...
"The camp has been completed, captain."
One mercenary approached and reported that the installation of the camp was finished. Just like Dong Bong-su, his entire body was smeared with bright red blood. And even at this very moment, it was becoming even redder. That was because blood kept flowing down from the ear pouch he was carrying, soaking his shoulders and back.
The other mercenaries were probably all in the same state. It was something he could tell without even looking.
"Tell all mercenaries to thoroughly wipe off the blood on their bodies and go to sleep."
"Yes, captain."
It is not only humans who like blood. Insects, especially bacteria and viruses that cannot be seen with the naked eye, include many that love blood very much. Those things are as tenacious as humans. If you are unlucky, no one can survive. The people here do not know that at all.
Dong Bong-su passed by the mercenary and headed toward his own tent.
The command tent where he stayed was, as always, set up in the middle of the mercenaries' tents. It was a little bigger and cleaner than the others surrounding it at a distance, but it was not particularly special.
Click-.
The first thing Dong Bong-su did after entering the tent was neither lying down nor washing or eating.
It was opening the status window and the skill window. Because he had become Lv. 30 in the battle earlier. Upon checking, there was an increase in stats equivalent to one level, but no new skills appeared, nor did any special events or unusual quests occur.
'So the second class change is not yet, huh.'
He had wondered if a class change would happen every 20 levels, but it seemed that was not the case. The next level at which he could expect a class change was 40. Until then, there was no need to care much about it. Of course, a second class change quest might suddenly appear at level 35, but that was also not something to worry about right now.
Beep -.
Dong Bong-su looked at the windows a bit more and then closed them. As expected, there seemed to be no major change compared to an ordinary level-up.
He briefly washed off the blood on his body and then lay down on the bed covered with tiger hide.
But perhaps because the tiger hide laid on the bed had not been washed for a long time, fleas were swarming. The fleas, having noticed that prey had come to them on its own, climbed onto Dong Bong-su's body one by one and showed off their greed for blood.
Even so, Dong Bong-su did not care and closed his eyes to sleep. Sleeping was, for him who had no recovery items, the only recovery method besides cutting enemies and using [bloodsucking]. He was not someone who would give that up just because of a few fleas.
Anyway, on a battlefield, he could not hope for a cleaner place to sleep than this.
Lying on the bed, Dong Bong-su briefly looked back on the day and gradually fell asleep. The squeaking of rats briefly disturbed his sleep, but soon he fell into a state of nothingness.
The night grew deeper, and thus another day passed.
***
Morning dawned.
Was he waiting for the scouting unit sent last night? Dong Bong-su was standing at the entrance of Manhan Mountain, facing the biting cold wind. Since they had infiltrated under cover of night, it would have taken some time, but they should have already finished a certain amount of reconnaissance. If early, they should be returning around now.
As if that thought was correct, before long the scouting unit began to appear one by one. Perhaps because they had suffered in the cold all night, their faces were all bluish and discolored.
Even in that state, they quickly ran to Dong Bong-su and bowed their heads.
"Captain. Something terrible has happened! I think we must leave this place immediately."
Among the scouting unit, the mercenary who had lived the longest as a wanderer reported urgently to Dong Bong-su.
At that, Dong Bong-su tilted his head slightly to the side. As his bangs, which had grown longer during this hunting period, fell along with his head, Dong Bong-su's colorless transparent eyes were revealed. A vague gray light was flickering in his eyes.
"Explain it step by step."
At Dong Bong-su's low but powerful voice, the veteran mercenary straightened his back and spoke again.
"As a result of reconnaissance, the entirety of Manhan Mountain was already dead."
"Manhan Mountain is dead? What does that mean?"
"A plague, a plague has spread. Not only the North Ghost Group's mountain fortress, but also the northern barbarians' village halfway up the mountain had the plague spreading, and groans did not cease throughout the village."
A plague.
A short word meaning an epidemic or infectious disease. But it was also a word that concisely decided the current situation.
" ...! "
Dong Bong-su finally realized what the unpleasant feeling from yesterday was. Why the number of North Ghosts had been so small. Why they had abandoned the advantage of the terrain and faced the mercenaries at the foot of the mountain.
The enemies had mobilized all the troops they could use yesterday!
The enemies had not been plotting anything at all. No, to be more precise, the North Ghosts could not have done so from the beginning.
'Has the epidemic spread throughout Manhan Mountain?'
Martial artists were not inhuman. Martial artists were just a little faster and a little stronger than others, but they were still just people. There was no way for them to block an invisible enemy like bacteria.
'Even so....'
If they were martial artists, their basic immune systems should be stronger than ordinary people's, yet an epidemic severe enough to drive such people to death...
Several names of epidemics surfaced in Dong Bong-su's mind.
'Could it be ...!?'
Among them, the memory of the worst epidemic came popping out from deep in his mind. At the same time, its symptoms also came to mind clearly.
Those symptoms were...…
"There were many black spots on the bodies of the corpses. Especially, the fingernails, toenails, and the tips of the noses were pitch-black and discolored, and the stench of decay was extremely severe. Also, among those in whom the disease was progressing, there were some whose entire bodies were covered in boils."
It was exact. It was no different at all from the worst epidemic in the history of that other world that Dong Bong-su knew, and its symptoms.
Click -.
Even though the mercenaries were watching, Dong Bong-su opened the status window with a light hand gesture. Anyway, they could neither see this hologram nor hear the sound effect. To them, only the hand gesture looked strange.
"...!"
It was slightly different from the status window he had seen last night. The moment he opened it, a strange message window that he had never seen before appeared.
[The player has been poisoned. The name of the poison is ??? and the effect is ???.]
He had opened it just in case, and the system informed Dong Bong-su that he was [poisoned].
Dong Bong-su was the host of the Thousand-poison Insect, so he was not poisoned by toxins. Even so, the system said he was poisoned. That meant either he was poisoned by something the Thousand-poison Insect could not detoxify, or the system was 'mistaking' some other 'something' for poison.
"Among the living as well, many were suffering from high fever and vomiting, and it looked like before long they would all die. And ..."
The scout paused for a moment, then took out an oil-paper bundle rolled up from his chest. He immediately unfolded it and dropped the item inside onto the ground. It was someone's hand, with the tips of the fingernails turned pitch-black.
"Just in case, I cut off the hand of one of the dead and brought it like this."
Dong Bong-su lowered his head and examined the hand closely. It looked no different at all from the hand of a patient with some disease he had once seen in a science magazine.
There was no need to hear more. It was the latter. The system of New Murim Online must have judged being infected with the plague as being poisoned.
Having figured that out, in Dong Bong-su's mind, the rat squeaking he had heard before falling asleep last night replayed again. Along with it, he could keenly feel the presence of the fleas that were even now roaming all over his body.
'The host was rat fleas. That's right.'
And.
The words Paitan had said during the battle yesterday were overlaid on top of the squeaking rat sounds.
[Hehehe ..... well, when you're all about to die anyway, what does that kind of thing matter?]
So that was what it meant? That everyone was going to die?
Paitan must have brought out all the combat personnel who could still move. Among them, there must have been many carriers....
'It was just still in the incubation period.'
Dong Bong-su had not expected this. He had never imagined that he would speak this word out loud in such an unexpected place and at such a time.
"I never thought I'd get the plague."
" ... Yes?"
Dong Bong-su did not answer the mercenary who asked what he meant. There was no need to. And Dong Bong-su was already deep in thought, so he could not have answered anyway.
The Black Death.
Another name for the plague. Perhaps there was another name related to it here as well, but historically, in the Chinese world, they did not give special separate names to epidemics. A plague was just a plague. Since it could not be cured anyway.
There were only highly contagious plagues and less contagious plagues. If one did not know about the existence of bacteria or viruses, since it was difficult to treat, there was no need for names.
However, Dong Bong-su was different. He knew the rough details of all this, and he also knew well that there was no way to cure it here. Even on Earth, where he had lived, in the 19th century when medicine had developed to some extent, this disease had spread in China and killed millions.
Penicillin? Antibiotics? Vaccines? There was no way such things existed in this world right now. In the first place, there was no way such words had even been created yet.
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