Amid the droning chants of the black-robed man and his followers, the platform of flesh beneath them began to expand and twist at a terrifying speed. It swelled and reshaped itself as though it possessed a will of its own.
Rotten trees burst through the pulsing surface of meat, and indistinguishable liquids gathered into pools. Before Aldric and Vittoria's eyes, a nauseating ecosystem was taking form—an entire living nightmare built of blood and decay.
The steps beneath their feet had turned a thick, muddy brown. The portraits along the walls hung crooked, their frames splitting apart. The railings had become piles of rotted timber, and the inlaid ornaments were corroded beyond recognition.
Moss hung down like the beards of old men, crawling over bent and twisted trees that looked like wizened elders themselves. Fat flies droned lazily, their buzzing almost hypnotic. They sang their sickly lullabies as they landed heavily among decaying flowers, each thudding impact followed by withering petals and shriveled stems. They took no pollen—only death.
Across the pond floated mats of algae and rank weeds that spewed poisonous vapors. Severed, half-rotten heads dangled like fruits from orchard trees whose pale branches were as soft and bloodless as the skin of drowned corpses. In a few untended vegetable plots, diseased hands sprouted from the soil, slapping feebly at the swarms of flies that came to feed on them.
A filthy creek trickled through a damp meadow thick with black reeds. Whispering voices drifted from its banks—strange and sibilant, belonging to no creature Aldric could name. Small, bloated animals glared at him from the shadows, growling with thinly veiled hostility.
From the void above, black birds swooped down, dripping some venomous ichor that hissed when it touched the ground. Their cries echoed through the entire space, shrill and maddening.
And still, the cultists chanted their hymn of corruption:
"Impurity is our armor. Immortality is our reward."
A rustling rose among them as spores and molds rooted into their flesh. The cultist' bodies were festering and rotting; acid seeped through the tatters of their robes as the fabric sloughed away.
Several of the archers, once clad in leather armor, now stood nearly naked—what little clothing they had left had already dissolved to dust. Aldric and Vittoria could see their flesh and muscle melting into putrid slurry, leaving behind nothing but gleaming white skeletons.
Yet even with no tendons to bind them, their jawbones still moved up and down in time with the black-robed leader's chant.
Inside those bones pulsed a strange dark-red light that knitted together into cysts and clumps of diseased tissue, quickly filling the gaps in their frames.
The three armored warriors were no better. Beneath their cracked gray armor, their flesh had swollen grotesquely. Extra limbs and bulbous tumors bulged through the gaps, spilling out like overripe fruit. The armor plates were corroded and split, revealing pus-ridden bodies covered in ulcers and festering sludge. Every few seconds came the wet pop of bursting blisters. Even at a distance of dozens of meters, Aldric could smell the vile stench of decay.
Only the one-eyed black-robed leader retained his human shape. He seemed utterly uninterested in the two intruders. With a dismissive wave of his hand, he sent his rotting underlings to attack, then turned away to chant a new incantation in a language Aldric had never heard before.
The mutated zealots stopped praying. Their clouded eyes turned toward the outsiders, and they began to move.
"Tell me we're not actually going to fight those things," Vittoria muttered with disgust as she eyed their grotesque enemies. "They're even more nauseating than those bio-weapons the Libertians cooked up. Back then at least I had a handgun. Now you expect me to smash those rotting skulls with my beloved flail?"
No matter how tough or brash the warrior woman usually acted, even she couldn't help showing a trace of feminine squeamishness in the face of such horror.
"To be honest," Aldric said grimly, "whether you want to or not, we're probably going to end up covered in their guts either way. But if we survive, I'll pay to give your flail a nice long spa treatment."
Vittoria grumbled under her breath, but before she could reply, the sabers in Aldric's hand began to glow faintly with a golden light.
The approaching chaos creatures shrieked as the light touched them. Their warped flesh sizzled and cracked like meat on a hot pan. The air filled with the stench of charred flesh mixed with the reek of disease—a smell Aldric knew he would never forget for as long as he lived.
His talent, [Enemy of Chaos] clearly did more than its in-game description suggested. When that golden radiance appeared, the black-robed cultist's single enormous eye snapped toward him. The pupil, large as a fist, shrank sharply, locking onto the glow emanating from Aldric's body.
From the very beginning, this was never meant to be a pleasant battle. Blood and flesh flying—that was the only fitting description.
The mutated archers, now little more than red clumps of meat vaguely shaped like men, lunged forward. Vittoria swung her spiked flail in a wide arc, crushing through a swath of them. The scarlet mass wailed in pain as it scattered across the ground like piles of raw gore.
Aldric darted aside from three incoming weapons slick with poison, his blade flashing like lightning.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Three strikes landed on the same spot on a mutant warrior's neck. His hands went numb from the force. The first blow burst a tumor at the impact point, but the next two felt like hitting rubber—thick, resistant, and jarringly solid. It was like fighting a herd of armored rhinos, with none of the satisfying feel of cutting through bone.
Meanwhile, the creatures Vittoria had smashed aside were already writhing upright again. Their exposed muscles seemed unnaturally resistant to blunt force. The holes left by her spiked head healed visibly within seconds. She might as well have been battering lumps of clay.
"Damn it, these things make Grimers look dignified!" Vittoria hissed, carefully avoiding the splashes of their blood. "And they spread disease! I just made a Constitution save for infection—thank God I passed."
"'Impurity is our armor, immortality our reward,'" Aldric muttered, recalling their chant. Looking at the bulbous gelatinous creatures before him, he couldn't help but grimace. This mission's enemies weren't just visually revolting—they combined everything players hated most: poison damage, high regeneration, and sheer disgust.
If not for his and Vittoria's exceptionally high Constitution stats—and his own witcher talent, [Immune to All Diseases] this fight would have been impossible.
Farther away, the black-robed leader's chanting grew louder. The flesh platform kept expanding, spreading toward the magic circle entrance through which Aldric and Vittoria had come.
Now he finally understood their goal: they were trying to extend this plague-ridden domain into the material world. Their supposed ally—the young count—probably had no idea of their true intentions. If Aldric and Vittoria hadn't stumbled in by accident, then by tomorrow, this entire city would have turned into a plague-ridden necropolis. No wonder that shadow assassin had fled in such a hurry—he must have realized that if he stayed a moment longer, everyone here would die, leaving no one to pay him.
"Vittoria!" Aldric shouted over the din. "We don't have time to waste on these things. The leader is the key—we have to stop him before he drags this abomination into Port Anthony!"
He knew well that if even a fraction of this plague touched the city, the result would be like releasing a biological weapon. Within a single day, every ordinary citizen would be infected.
The female warrior struck another undead abomination aside and called back, "Got it! I'll hold them off—you've got ninety seconds to take him down!"
With a roar, Vittoria's eyes burned red. She had activated her Rage ability.
[Rage]
Once per day, you may enter a berserk state. While enraged, Strength + 2, Constitution + 2, and you gain temporary immunity to most negative effects—but you take an additional 30% damage.
Duration: 90 seconds. You may end Rage early, but when it ends, you suffer Weakened Status: Strength – 2, Constitution – 2, and your movement slows, the duration determined by your Constitution.
(End of Chapter)