Episode 21. Plague God (3)
Rustle.
Isaac donned the thick robes worn by monks. With his height already close to an adult’s, and with his hood pressed down deeply, it was difficult to tell who he was. At his waist, he equipped the Sword of Judgment that he had yet to return to Isolde. From now on, what Isaac was about to do was something no one must recognize.
Isaac headed out into the corridor submerged in darkness. When he stared at one corner of the corridor, a Spawn of Chaos squirmed out from between the walls and revealed itself.
“Let’s go.”
Taking the Spawn of Chaos at the forefront, Isaac headed toward the source of the plague that it had found. For the past few days, Isaac had released the Spawns of Chaos to find the origin of the plague. Finally, that effort had borne fruit.
‘Was it two years ago when I first saw the plague boar?’
Back then, he had thought it was simply a regional endemic disease. But looking at the current situation, it was clearly no simple plague. Isaac smelled the scent of schemes and conspiracies in this plague. At the very least, something with intelligence had targeted the monastery continuously for several years. But it had been waiting because it lacked the strength to break through. And now, it was on the verge of seeing results. This time, the bastard would try to finish things for good.
The Spawn of Chaos that had been leading the way suddenly changed direction and headed inside through a gap blocked by wooden planks.
‘Hm?’
Isaac stopped in bewilderment. These planks were a false wall blocking off a sealed basement. Since the attack had started from outside the monastery, he had naturally assumed that the source of the attack was also external. But the Spawn of Chaos was clearly heading toward the monastery’s underground right now.
Isaac thought for a moment, then used his sword as a lever to bring the false wall down piece by piece. Whatever lay ahead, he had no choice but to check. Isaac stepped onto the stairs through the broken debris.
At that moment, a message descended from the Nameless Chaos.
[The Nameless Chaos gazes upon you.]
[The Nameless Chaos finds this sanctuary repulsive.]
[The Nameless Chaos desires the ‘purification’ of this defiled sanctuary.]
[A reward from Chaos awaits you.]
‘Sanctuary?’
Isaac pricked up his ears at the message. It was something he had never heard before. The Nameless Chaos hadn’t even batted an eye when Isaac prayed to the Codex of Light or studied scriptures in the chapel. Even when he cursed its tentacles or openly denounced it, the reaction had been the same. But now, the Nameless Chaos was more repulsed than ever by whatever lay beneath these stairs.
‘So there really is something.’
***
A lukewarm, sticky wind flowed from beneath the stairs. Isaac frowned at the subtle warmth he felt despite it being winter. It was a warmth that felt like being buried in fat, sweat-drenched flesh.
Then, Isaac felt the tentacles on his left hand squirm. His hand moved reflexively, swinging his sword.
Stab!
A rat leaping down at him from atop a pillar was sliced in half and fell. The severed rat was almost the size of a small puppy.
“What a pig-like—”
The tentacle squirmed again.
Thud.
A rat kicked by his foot squealed loudly and fled. As if responding to that scream, hunched red eyes began to emerge from the darkness. Having repeatedly hunted rats for years, Isaac recognized that they were all rats.
“Hah, these rat bastards. No matter how many I caught, they never ran out—and they were pouring out from here?”
Isaac finally understood why the rats had appeared endlessly. Something beneath the monastery had been continuously creating rats. Isaac and Gebel had been blocking the plague’s attacks all this time without even knowing it.
A rustling noise began to spread. Swarms of countless rats started moving all at once. Seeing the rat swarm sway like fields of grass, Isaac raised his sword straight.
The rats charged bravely, every last one of them. Rats are nothing when alone, but when their numbers grow, they mercilessly charge opponents larger than themselves. Moreover, they had already used the impenetrable darkness to prey upon wolves, bears, and boars. But this time, the opponent was different.
Thud, crack!
The moment Isaac swung his sword like a golf club, a gust rose and five or six rats flew away. The rats that bounced off crashed into the walls and became bloodstains. But swept up in frenzy, they couldn’t properly grasp what was happening.
Isaac calmly retreated, cutting, stabbing, and hacking the charging rats one by one. Even as red eyes surged toward him like waves, there was no hesitation or delay in his sword strikes.
Stab, screech!
Only when the smell of blood grew thicker than the mold and plague around them did the rats begin to falter. Despite so many charging at him, not a single rat had left a tooth mark on Isaac. Even if one occasionally climbed on him, he had tied the thick robe around his arms and legs like bindings, so they couldn’t dig inside. Isaac had already expected a rat swarm attack when coming to eradicate the plague’s source.
‘A rat swarm? No matter how many there are, it’s not a problem.’
Even after swinging his sword several times, Isaac’s breathing was hardly different from usual. He didn’t need to use proper swordsmanship or focus just to cut down rats.
This was thanks to the perk he had obtained at age fourteen.
[You may prey upon lowly beasts at any time.]
This didn’t simply mean he could eat rats using his tentacles. It meant the gap between Isaac and rats had become as wide as that between a lion and chicks. As a perfect apex predator. Whether there were a hundred or a thousand chicks, they posed no problem to a lion. Isaac’s eyes read the movements of the rat swarm in perfect detail, and he felt no fear at all despite their countless numbers.
Moreover, Isaac had other blessings.
[Manifesting monstrous strength through the ‘Predation’ perk of the Giant Plague Bear.]
[Enhancing weakness-tracking ability through the ‘Predation’ perk of the Plague Wolf.]
The plague beasts Isaac had devoured until now had instead become his strength. Isaac used his weakness-tracking ability to probe the gaps in the rat swarm and culled them en masse with inexhaustible monstrous strength. He didn’t even feel the need to display proper swordsmanship against such lowly beasts.
Normally, Isaac should have started coughing or showing signs of weakness by now after entering a plague nest. But perhaps thanks to his resistance to plague, he felt nothing.
‘They’re starting to falter.’
The rat swarm realized that the number of corpses around them had already exceeded their own. Rats are cunning animals. When their numbers gather, they charge mercilessly at even stronger opponents, but the moment they think they can’t win, they abandon comrades and flee. Soon, fear and panic spread among them. At that moment, the gaps in the rat swarm became visible in Isaac’s eyes.
Boom.
Isaac surged forward in one breath and swung his tentacles. The tentacles split into several branches and wrapped around the rat swarm like a rake.
Pwack pwack pwack!
Rats pinned against the walls burst like mosquitoes. The tentacles voraciously preyed upon and devoured the rats. The Spawn of Chaos that had come with Isaac also took the opportunity to eagerly catch rats and suck their bodily fluids.
At the sudden banquet of slaughter, the rats fell into complete terror and fled into the gaps between walls. But Isaac had no intention of leaving them be.
‘I have to finish this completely today.’
Isaac implanted parasites into the rats still wriggling on the floor. The infected rats convulsed before splitting apart with a pop. From their corpses, five or six Spawns of Chaos were born.
“Eat every last rat.”
The Spawns of Chaos born from rats weren’t very strong. But they had enough power to handle around ten rats with ease. Their lifespan was at most one week anyway. The Spawns of Chaos that Isaac had already released on the mountain also began moving under the same command.
As the Spawns of Chaos disappeared into the wall crevices, only a thick, sticky scent of blood and silence remained.
Isaac felt a sudden, intense hunger. When using the tentacles’ abilities, just like a ‘Flesh Storage,’ they quickly digested what had already been consumed. And if he used their abilities without sufficient predation, it consumed his own stamina. For the past few days, Isaac had been devoted to quarantine and treatment, leaving him unable to feed properly. He had managed to endure only because the tentacles had previously gorged on wolves and bears until their stomachs were fit to burst.
Of course, this hunger didn’t mean the beasts he had consumed were depleted. It was the emotional emptiness he felt as everything digested each time he used his abilities.
‘That’s enough.’
Step.
Then, a rat appeared from the darkness. It was a half-rotten rat with two heads. Isaac instinctively realized it was no ordinary rat.
[Follow me.]
A message rang in Isaac’s head. Then the two-headed rat turned around and disappeared into the darkness. It was neither the voice of the Nameless Chaos nor the voice of a Spawn of Chaos. Isaac smiled, thinking his prediction had been correct. He had found out what being was spreading the plague and controlling the infected beasts.
Isaac obediently followed as instructed. He licked his lips in anticipation of the opponent who would soon appear. Already, fierce hunger was gnawing at him.
***
The path going underground grew increasingly rough and crude. Before he knew it, Isaac noticed the surrounding architecture had changed. It was no longer the neat, solidly built structure of the monastery, but a crude style that felt quite old. Examining the pictures and patterns carved on the walls, Isaac confirmed that the monastery had been built atop some ancient structure.
‘Just as I expected.’
Isaac had been here before. To be exact, he had come here while playing *Nameless Chaos*. And to the point where it felt intimately familiar.
Tap. Isaac reached the last step of the stairs. There was a fairly large space in the basement at the very bottom. Though it was now a ruined wasteland on the verge of collapse, one could tell from its scale and the size of the altar that something quite worshipped had once resided here.
And upon that altar lay one who had once enjoyed glory in this place.
It was a giant rat. The rat was as large as the giant bear Gebel had fought. But its torso was too large and its limbs too short, making it look difficult to move. Only its belly was grotesquely swollen, squirming while emitting a bluish-green light.
The giant rat stared at Isaac, its green pupils shining.
[To dare use a lowly creature to obstruct a great one’s plans... what manner of being are you?]
Isaac scoffed at the giant rat’s words. The moment he tried to speak, the giant rat roared.
[Silence, creature. I am not asking you. A frail creature like you could never have detected and obstructed my plans. Surely there is one who controls you from behind. Come out and hide no longer.]
“You sure are cocky, you rat-pig bastard.”
The dungeon fell into silence for a moment. The giant rat stared at Isaac and spoke.
[Do you know to whom you speak? I am...]
“Mother Rat Jihillet.”
Mother Rat Jihillet. The God of Plague and Mother of Myriad Rats. The nickname the players had given her was ‘Rat-Pig.’
Only now did Isaac realize the true nature of this place. The monastery where Isaac had lived for the past several years was actually a quite famous dungeon in *Nameless Chaos*. A den swarming with the unholy God of Plague and her apostles. In other words, originally, two years after the Dawn Army began, the monastery was supposed to be annihilated by the plague or become a ruin after everyone left.
‘But not anymore.’
Isaac leisurely gazed at Jihillet, whom he had slaughtered hundreds of times while grinding in the game, and thought.
‘If I eat all of that, my stomach will burst.’