Ding! Devoured low-grade mutant. Gained +15 EXP.
Evaluation: Awful texture. Malnourished.
"Tch. Tastes terrible. Nothing but radiation flavor. Not even as satisfying as ore," Zhou Yuan commented with disdain.
Before long, the mutants realized something was wrong.
Their companions were disappearing one after another right beside them.
"Who's there?! Get out here!" the mutant leader shouted in terror.
The only answer he got was a lump of blue slime dropping from above.
"Rat-tat-tat-tat!"
Bullets rained down on Zhou Yuan like a storm, but all they produced were dull, muffled thuds.
Once the rounds sank into his gelatinous body, they instantly lost all momentum, then were broken down and digested.
Ever heard of physical damage reduction? Zhou Yuan snickered to himself.
Under the mutants' despairing gazes, Zhou Yuan swallowed the rest of the bandits into his body.
And just like that, the meal was over.
A few minutes later, silence as dead as the grave returned to the mine entrance.
The surviving miners cautiously poked their heads out, only to discover that aside from a few leftover weapons and scraps on the ground, all the mutants had vanished without a trace.
"Did the Emperor work a miracle?"
Though utterly baffled, the miners did not dare linger after barely escaping with their lives. They quickly lifted the wounded and supported one another as they retreated toward town.
As for Zhou Yuan, who had hidden his merits and fame well, he had already slipped deep into the mine.
Heh. Taking a little protection fee isn't too much, right?
In high spirits, Zhou Yuan opened up his stomach and began gorging himself on the rare-metal-rich veins of ore.
The buffet left him thoroughly satisfied. Only after belching contentedly did he slowly ooze his way back out.
By then, the people who had come from town as reinforcements were busy carrying away the injured.
Zhou Yuan was just about to find a crack in the ground and crawl back in for a nap when his field of vision caught two suspicious figures.
The two grown men were not heading back toward town. Instead, carrying a crude stretcher, they were hurrying toward the reeking garbage mountain.
Lying on the stretcher was a boy of about fourteen or fifteen, covered in blood and breathing weakly.
"Hm? Isn't that my cafeteria over there?"
Puzzled, Zhou Yuan tossed an Appraisal at him.
Target: Human youth (Will)
Status: Severely wounded (dying), excessive blood loss, but no fatal viral infection.
Evaluation: He'd live with a single heal. Kind of a waste to bury him.
If he could clearly be saved, then why dump him in a garbage heap?
Out of curiosity—and also that uniquely transmigrator-style urge to meddle in things—Zhou Yuan turned into an inconspicuous stream of fluid and quietly followed them.
Their conversation drifted into his "ears" with the wind.
"Do... do we really have to leave Will behind? He's still breathing," said the man carrying the rear end of the stretcher, his voice trembling with reluctance.
"Shut up! You want to bring this jinx back and get everybody killed?" the man in front spat viciously. "Ever since we took in that outsider brother and sister, that plague broke out in town for no reason! Don't you remember how many people died? It must've been the bad luck they brought with them!"
"B-but..."
"No more buts! This is for the good of the town! Once this brat's gone, that sickly little sister of his probably won't live much longer either. Once both of those bad-luck stars are dead, our town's fortunes are bound to turn around!"
The man in front had clearly made up his mind. He quickened his pace.
"Hurry up. Toss him into the dump before anyone sees."
Listening from the shadows, Zhou Yuan felt a wave of helplessness.
This was the reality for most people at the bottom of the Warhammer world.
Ignorant. Superstitious. Cruel.
He could understand the logic of abandoning the weak in order to survive, but that did not mean he had to like it.
More importantly, what really caught his attention was a single keyword:
Plague.
At this point in time, in this star system that was soon to be visited by Nurgle's forces, any word connected to plague was enough to put his nerves on instant alert.
"Great Sage, these two little siblings... they're not carrying some Nurgle deluxe gift pack, are they?"
"Answering host: unable to determine from long range. However, based on probability analysis, if this were truly a Nurgle plague, this town would already have become a paradise of walking corpses. It would not have died down after killing only a few people."
"Yeah, that makes sense. Still…"
Since he had already stumbled onto this, he could not exactly watch the boy die.
He would save him first, then go see the sister and find out what was really going on.
"Alright then. Looks like today's buffet comes with takeout service."
Before long, the two men carried Will to the garbage mountain and dumped him into the trash heap, intending to leave him there to live or die on his own.
Just as they were about to leave, Will suddenly woke up and grabbed one of them by the foot.
"Help... help me... I... I can't die yet. My sister... my sister is still waiting for me..."
"Tch. Bad luck. Damned outsider."
The man kicked Will's hand away in disgust.
"Don't blame us. Blame your rotten fate."
After tossing out that line, the other man turned and left as well. Neither of them looked back.
Their silhouettes quickly vanished into the night, leaving Will alone on the foul-smelling garbage heap.
Wave after wave of pain washed over him, but he had no time to care.
"No... can't sleep..."
His vision was already blurring, but he still desperately stretched out a hand, trying to crawl back toward town.
"Claire is still waiting for me..."
At that moment, memories of the past began replaying in his mind like a lantern show.
The peaceful village they once had. The mutant thugs who had suddenly broken in. The horrific sight of his parents being torn to pieces while covering his and his sister's escape...
After fleeing to this town, he had thought it would be a new beginning.
He had worked like his life depended on it. Even in the deepest and most dangerous parts of the mine, he was always the first to step forward.
He thought that as long as he worked hard, as long as he became a good person, as long as he became a citizen useful to the Emperor, he would be accepted.
And what was the result?
One inexplicable plague had turned all that effort into nothing.
Rumors and whispers had severed the fragile thread of trust between him and the townspeople like a knife.
In the end, all he received was betrayal and abandonment.
"Why...?"
Will stopped crawling.
He had no strength left.
"God-Emperor... please..."
The boy's voice was faint.
"I... I can offer you everything... my soul, my flesh, everything... just please... let Claire live..."
But the only response was the cold wind howling across the garbage mountain, and the distant, heavy rumble of the hive city's factories.
That tower on the horizon, symbol of the Emperor's majesty, still stood there in indifferent silence, as though it had never once looked upon a life as insignificant as his.
Just like when his parents had died.
No matter how devoutly he prayed, a miracle had never come.
A tear of despair slid down from the corner of his eye.
"It was all a lie... all of it..."
In that instant, something called faith collapsed inside him.
And in the shadows of the Warp, it seemed that some indescribable existence had sensed that despair and was greedily turning its gaze toward him.
If they had been one second later, this boy might have fallen completely into Chaos.
But right then—
Squelch. Squelch.
A strange wriggling sound broke the silence.
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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