The infected were all madmen—lunatics controlled entirely by their appetite.
They would only mindlessly chase down living flesh to devour, incapable of thought and certainly incapable of hiding. Unless there were no living people around, they would only momentarily quiet down; the instant they spotted a living human, they would lash out to harm them, just as Leonard and his mother had done two days ago.
Now that quite a few people had been injured, the infected should have been right behind them. Even if soldiers went over, the infected would have lunged at them. How could they not have crossed paths?
Unless they had fled before the soldiers even arrived.
Infected that knew how to run away?
In that moment, Lynch picked up a scent of something deeply sinister.
“Let's go take a look first,” Lynch explained to Dr. Sven. “I suspect this anomaly is related to that corpse. Those infected seem to be controlled, and the one controlling them is very likely their mother plant.”
“So?”
“For one thing, we might be able to trace this back to the corpse. On the other hand... why did they suddenly run out and bite people in different locations, as if they were desperate to make their presence known?”
Indeed, why? The others stared at Lynch, waiting for his explanation.
“I don't know either. Something is clearly wrong here, which is why I need to go check it out.”
“Alright then. You guys go, and I'll stay behind,” Dr. Sven said. “Terry, have your men bring all the injured people here. I've already brewed the medicine, so they don't have to die. That includes your men—they don't need to worry about being injured anymore.”
Terry froze for a moment before bursting outside like a madman. Following a volley of wild roars in a dialect Lynch couldn't understand, a wave of cheers erupted from outside.
Lynch sighed. These professional soldiers were human too, and they had been under immense pressure over the past two days. Fortunately, they had contained the spread of the infection in the barracks right from the start, with only six soldier casualties in total. Otherwise, their morale would have collapsed long ago.
“Take these with you.”
With that, Dr. Sven handed over several potion bottles. The liquid inside was a ghastly shade of green, looking spine-chilling to behold. Lynch really wanted to draw a black skull on them to better fit the mood.
Even so, he took them gratefully. With these in hand, he felt much more confident facing the infected.
Following Terry, they headed straight for the scene of the incident.
Though the incidents were said to be scattered across different parts of the city, they were actually all spread around the threshing floor. As soon as Lynch's group of four arrived at the threshing floor, they saw a crowd of citizens and surviving travelers gathered in the open area, creating a noisy commotion. Surprisingly, the mad old man wasn't shouting; instead, he was lying across a stack of wheat stalks, watching the drama unfold. Seeing Lynch arrive, he grinned at him, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth.
Having no time to bother with the gloating fellow, the group quickly approached the noisy crowd. Before they could even squeeze their way in, curses and shouts echoed from within.
“Beat him! Beat him senseless!”
“He's the one who did this!”
“Inhuman scum! Giving up his humanity just for money!”
“Kill him! Beat him to death!”
Of course, Lynch and his companions couldn't understand the local dialect, so Judy translated for them.
Fortunately, soldiers were accompanying them. The group of rough soldiers forcibly parted the crowd, allowing Lynch and the others to squeeze inside. Only then did everyone see a man surrounded in the center, his face covered in blood as he clutched his head and wept hysterically.
He looked somewhat familiar. Upon closer inspection, he seemed to be the tavern owner who had just lost his tavern—the very same man they had seen last night.
“It's him! The biting madmen from earlier all bought white bread from him last night! He must have poisoned it! He ruined so many lives—he deserves to be beaten to death right now!”
Hmm?
Lynch gestured for Terry to take control of the situation and rescue the tavern owner, who was rolling on the ground, so they could question him. The tavern owner was hesitant and reluctant to speak, but the moment he saw Lynch motioning for the surrounding citizens to carry on with their entertainment, he broke down crying and blabbed everything.
In reality, he truly was the culprit.
Last night, those few unlucky infected individuals had brought their own flour and asked the tavern owner to bake bread for them. However, the greedy owner had secretly mixed in some low-quality white flour, nearly doubling the yield, and then surreptitiously sold the extra loaves to several other customers.
Not just travelers, but local citizens as well.
When last night's outbreak was brought under control, Terry, Lynch, and their group had not disclosed that the source of contamination was the flour. Thus, it was only now that the citizens realized the biting madmen plaguing the city over the past few days were caused by a problem with the grain in the barn—just a small amount of refined flour was enough to drive so many people mad.
No one linked the issue to the city lord. Once they realized something was wrong, the citizens focused all their attention on the grain inside the barn. Terrified by its terrifying effects, they spread the word, causing more and more citizens to gather around the threshing floor.
Earlier, Lynch and his group hadn't worried too much and left the new grain untouched, but the citizens weren't nearly as reckless.
Something this dangerous absolutely could not be kept. Otherwise, setting aside the danger if humans ate it, if even rats ate it and started biting people, it would be a disaster.
Burn them.
With everyone agreeing, a large crowd of citizens rushed into the barn and hauled out the remaining grain onto the threshing floor. Before long, several piles of golden wheat ears rose like small mountains across the threshing floor.
Faced with this situation, the soldiers couldn't just leave immediately. Terry asked Lynch's group with concern, “We don't need to stop them, right?”
Seeing that the barn was almost emptied out, the four of them discussed it briefly: “Probably not. Although burning it won't actually solve the problem—after all, there's still so much out in the countryside—keeping it here is indeed a hazard. Burning it is fine, since we've already secured our samples anyway.”
Only then did Knight Terry relax, offering a bitter smile: “Let's wait a moment. I'm worried they might lose control and let the fire spread; a fire broke out here just last night. It's a good thing we sealed off the information last night and didn't let them know the grain was contaminated. Otherwise, they would have acted last night—using the tavern's fire, they might have burned down the barn as well.”
Mm.
Huh?
Lynch, who had been listening absently, suddenly froze and looked at Terry in surprise. “Because we sealed off the news tightly, they only acted today?”
“Yeah, is there a problem?”
A flash of insight hit Lynch as he suddenly realized what was wrong.
In fact, right from the four South Gate guards, the enemy had never disguised the fact that they were using grain as a vector of transmission.
If their side hadn't controlled the situation ahead of time and allowed those people to go wild, it would have been very easy to discover the special food in every household. With Dr. Sven present, tracing it back to the barn's contents wouldn't have been difficult. Even if it hadn't been discovered then, as the plague spread after the flour was sold, connecting it to the new grain would have been even easier.
This grain was supposed to have been burned long ago. It was only because Lynch's side had repeatedly contained the outbreak before it blew up that people hadn't destroyed these dangerous goods.
Was that why the enemy used such a high-profile method of attacking people everywhere?
So, they had intended all along to use the citizens' hands to burn this grain?
At this moment, Lynch recalled numerous jokes from his past life—stories where burning illicit substances in public resulted in all the onlookers getting affected.
Damn it! If burning it could spread it too, then this is actually the fastest method of transmission!
In a flash, everything became clear to him. However, the citizens had already finished hauling the grain and were raising their torches nearby.
“Stop! Don't burn them!”
Rate on N.U.
