He called out in time, but Lynch forgot one thing: the language barrier.
Even if the farmers wanted to obey, they couldn't understand what he was shouting with a contorted face.
So, as he reached out his right hand and screamed for them to stop, he watched helplessly as the torches in several farmers' hands flew through the air, spinning in arcs before landing squarely on the piled grain.
The moment the dry grain touched the fire, roaring flames erupted with a loud whoosh.
Holy crap, that was fast.
Lynch felt his hair stand on end, deeply despising his own slow reaction. The enemy's intention was so obvious, yet he had only realized it just now. If he had thought things through more thoroughly, he wouldn't have let them succeed. It was truly an embarrassment to his profession as a detective.
Now, it was too late for everything.
Through the antennae of his mystery intuition, Lynch could directly sense the eerie, mysterious filth rising into the sky with the flames. Blocked by the city's inherent concept of isolation, it couldn't dissipate outward and could only accumulate inside the city in greater and greater quantities.
What a ruthless poison gas attack.
Lynch grabbed Terry's arm. “Put out the fire! Fast!”
Terry froze, not understanding why Lynch had suddenly changed his mind. But regardless of the reason, it was a tall order—extinguishing a fire immediately without prior preparation was easier said than done.
Lynch understood this as well, but he couldn't just stand by and watch the plague spread. He had to do something, even if it only bought a little time for Dr. Sven to prepare. Otherwise, if over eight thousand citizens were infected all at once, even if she worked herself to death, she couldn't possibly prepare that much medicine in just a few hours.
The trust built over the past few days played a crucial role. At this critical juncture, neither Terry nor his soldiers demanded an explanation from Lynch. With a single shout, a portion of the soldiers intercepted the farmers who were still setting fires, while the rest grabbed firefighting tools and set to work.
Being trusted by a group of story NPCs gave Lynch a strange feeling, but there was no time to feel touched, because the fire was not under control.
The dry wood and grain burned hotter and brighter by the second, perfectly demonstrating the meaning of trying to extinguish a forest fire with a cup of water.
This wasn't working—there wasn't enough water.
Lynch clenched his fists tightly. Facing a physical phenomenon like fire, the power of a few low-ranking Soul Severers was completely helpless. He had to think of something. How could they bring in a massive amount of water to put out the fire?
Lynch's brain spun rapidly as various thoughts rushed in. But none of them possessed an authority over water. If only that young Deep One were here, but unfortunately, they only had Judy.
Wait, who said fighting a fire required water?
Lynch suddenly grabbed Judy's arm. “Can you put out the fire?”
Huh? Asking someone who only knew how to set fires to put one out?
The women all wore bewildered expressions, wondering if the morning medicine had failed and Lynch had started losing his mind.
“You professional arsonists should have a way to control fire, right? The problem right now is that the flames are too big and raging, so pouring water on them isn't effective. If the flames could just be slightly... Hey, what are you doing?”
Halfway through his words, Judy suddenly yanked her hand free from Lynch's grip and began tracing eerie symbols in the air with both hands.
Two eerie clusters of fire instantly appeared to her left and right, floating in the air like twin ghost fires, radiating scorching temperatures. The surrounding people felt as if their lungs were filling with scalding air, forcing them to take several steps back.
Yet Judy seemed utterly oblivious to the heat. She effortlessly plunged her hands into the twin flames, which wrapped around her hands and gradually condensed on her skin into lines of fire. These lines were not random, forming a sinister pattern that emitted a heart-palpitating pressure.
The next instant, the already scorching temperature spiked dramatically. Invisible flames erupted around Judy as the heat soared higher and higher, until even the stone-paved square began to glow red under the extreme temperature.
Conversely, across the threshing floor, where the temperature had grown intensely hot under the roasting of the fierce fire, the ambient temperature suddenly plunged at an astonishing rate. The early summer day of May felt as though it had plunged into the harshest winter in an instant. The surrounding people shivered with cold, unable to draw even a sliver of warmth from the nearby flames.
【Authority: Scorching, Ability: Heat Theft】
Under the power of her authority, the surrounding heat converged toward Judy at a breathtaking speed. Heat from beyond the area couldn't transfer quickly enough, causing the surroundings to grow colder and colder until a fine layer of frost crawled across the ground beside the flames.
The loss of heat directly impacted the fire. The once raging flames grew weak and feeble, squirming sluggishly atop the grain piles as though a gentle breeze could extinguish them.
“What are you standing around for? Put out the fire!”
Lynch's shout snapped the slack-jawed, stunned soldiers back to reality. Though they couldn't understand his words, anyone with a brain could guess what he was yelling. Reorganizing themselves, the soldiers sprang into action once more, throwing bucket after bucket of clean water onto the rapidly dying flames.
Sure enough, deprived of heat, the fire lost its ability to sustain itself. In less than ten minutes, the fire was completely extinguished.
All that remained on the threshing floor was a pile of blackened, soggy grain, billowing dark smoke and emitting a scorched stench.
A portion of it had still been burned—at least half—so the situation was far from optimistic.
In his perception, the mysterious filth grew increasingly dense, rising with the dark smoke before blending into the air and spreading throughout the entire city. It only stopped expanding when blocked by the city walls, gathering within their boundaries until it formed a green canopy in the sky overhead, enveloping everyone below.
Ordinary people couldn't see it, but it couldn't be hidden from the eyes of Soul Severers.
The four exchanged looks. At this point, no further explanation was needed; the appearance of the invisible canopy was enough to explain everything.
Lynch was right. The contaminated grain wasn't meant to be eaten—it was meant to be burned. This was the final step in Old Sven's plan to contaminate the entire city.
Furthermore, this step seemed to require the citizens to light it themselves to take effect. Otherwise, Old Sven and his cohorts would have done it long ago instead of waiting until now.
In actual history, before things reached this stage, signs of the plague spiraling out of control must have appeared in the city, forcing Dr. Sven to activate the final defensive measure and purify the entire city. That was why previous testers had never experienced this plague canopy. This time, however, events had progressed far too quickly, fast-forwarding straight to the plague canopy enveloping the city.
Lynch let out a deep sigh. Damn butterfly effect—why did it have to flap its wings now?
The only silver lining was that the process had been interrupted at the final moment. What effect that would have remained to be seen, but perhaps everything wasn't over yet.
After explaining the current situation to Terry and leaving him to handle the threshing floor, the four quickly returned to the fortress.
Dr. Sven was currently swamped with work, pouring her prepared medicine into large barrels of water to distribute to the people.
Still, she took a moment to speak with the four of them.
Based on her judgment, their intervention had actually been quite effective. The concentration of the plague canopy had been greatly reduced. Originally, its effect would have been similar to eating the grain or being bitten, causing symptoms within three to four hours. But with the lowered concentration, onset would take at least twelve hours.
However, once the disease manifested, everything would spiral out of control, triggering the final failsafe. Although there wouldn't be an army coming to finish off survivors this time, the ghoul army would step in, taking less than twelve hours to purify everything—including Dr. Sven herself.
This timeframe...
The four felt a strange sensation. This timing coincided perfectly with the timeframe in the relic memory: at noon on the fifth day, the city would be completely purified. Regardless of joy or sorrow, everything would ultimately come to an end.
Everything was preordained.
Lynch smiled bitterly. Harvesting the fruit outside the city wouldn't happen until tomorrow, but the outbreak would spread en masse tonight.
They were out of time.
Rate on N.U.
