Chapter 78 - Black Plague (1)

"There were many black spots on the corpses. In particular, their nails and the tips of their noses had turned pitch-black, and the stench of rot was unbearable. Some of those still suffering from the disease had boils all over their bodies."

An exact match. The symptoms were no different from those of the worst infectious disease in the history of the other world, as Dong Bongsu knew it.

Despite the mercenaries watching him, he opened his Status window with a small gesture. They could neither see the hologram nor hear its sound effects anyway. Only the gesture itself would look unusual.

It was a little different from the Status window he had seen last night. The moment he opened it, an unusual message window appeared—one he had never seen before.

[The player has been poisoned. The poison's name is ??? and its effects are ???.]

He had opened it just in case, and the system had notified him of [Poisoning].

As the host of the Myriad Poison Gu, Dong Bongsu could not be poisoned. Yet the system was telling him that he had been. That meant either he had been poisoned by something the Myriad Poison Gu could not neutralize, or the system was "mistaking" "something else" for poison.

"Many of those still alive were vomiting and suffering from high fevers. They looked as though they would all be dead before long. And..."

The scout paused and took a rolled-up sheet of oiled paper from inside his clothes. He immediately unfolded it and dropped its contents onto the ground: someone's hand, its fingernails turned pitch-black.

"I cut off one of the dead men's hands and brought it with me, just in case."

Dong Bongsu lowered his head to examine the hand closely. It looked exactly like the hand of a patient he had once seen in a science magazine.

There was no need to hear any more of the report. It was the latter. The system of New Murim Online must have classified infection with the plague as poisoning.

As he reached that conclusion, the squeaking of rats that had lingered in his ears until he fell asleep last night replayed in his mind. At the same time, he became acutely aware of the fleas still crawling all over his body.

'The host was the rat flea. I'm certain of it.'

The words Paitan had spoken during yesterday's battle overlapped with the squeaking of the rats.

["Heh heh heh... I suppose none of that matters when we're all going to die."]

Was this what he had meant? That they were all going to die?

Paitan must have brought every fighter still capable of moving. There would have been plenty of carriers among them...

'They were just still in the incubation period.'

Dong Bongsu had never anticipated this. Never imagined he would utter this word at such an unexpected time and place.

"I never thought I would catch the plague."

"... Pardon?"

He did not answer the mercenary's puzzled question. There was no particular reason to. Besides, he was already too deep in thought to do so.

The Black Death.

Another name for the plague. Perhaps it had another name here as well, but historically, the Chinese-speaking world had not given epidemics individual names. A pestilence was simply a pestilence. They could not cure it anyway.

There were only highly contagious pestilences and less contagious ones. Without knowledge of bacteria or viruses, such diseases were difficult to treat, so there had been little need to bother naming them.

Dong Bongsu, however, was different. He had a general understanding of all this, and knew perfectly well that there was no way to cure it here. Even on the Earth he had lived on, millions had died when this disease swept through China in the nineteenth century, when medicine had already made some progress.

Penicillin? Antibiotics? Vaccines? There was no chance any of those existed in this world yet. Those words themselves could hardly have been coined already.

Catching the plague did not necessarily mean death.

Bubonic plague, septicemic plague, pneumonic plague, and so on.

There were several forms, each with a different fatality rate. Dong Bongsu had not studied medicine, so he did not know the details. He knew only a little of the broad picture.

Perhaps.

'I might survive.'

But viewed another way, he might die. Records said that the starving and unhealthy, those with weakened immune systems, had died first, but those were merely records. Someone who had not lived through that era could never know the whole truth of what had happened. This was real, and he was already contaminated with plague bacteria.

In other words, there was now at least a small chance he could die. No—was that chance really small? No one knew. Dong Bongsu was human too. Any human could suddenly die at any moment.

Perhaps he had contracted the most severe form of plague, and his chances of survival were already slim.

For now, however, he set that possibility aside. In that case, he could only leave his life to chance, so there was no point considering it now.

Excluding that possibility, he would do everything he could to survive. As ever, that was his overriding priority.

Then what did he have to do to ensure his survival?

'Simple. Cure the disease. But how?'

One sure method flashed through Dong Bongsu's mind. In this uncertain world, there was no more reliable cure.

It was...

'Level Up!'

The system had failed to identify the bacteria, but it had recognized them as poison. That meant it could remove them. If he reached level 31, his status ailment would be cured at the same time.

Whether the cause of [Poisoning] was plague, some other bacterium, or truly an unknown poison would not matter to the system. The instant he leveled up, it would simply remove the source of the status ailment from his body. If that proved impossible, it would eliminate the plague bacteria even if it had to reconstruct his entire body.

He had found a solution. More precisely, all he had found was a solution; several problems still remained.

He continued thinking, retracing the knowledge stored in the far reaches of his memory.

The plague's incubation period ranged from a few days at the shortest to fifteen days or a month at the longest. He absolutely had to level up within that time.

Then how could he level up?

Dong Bongsu raised his head and looked at the mercenaries. His long bangs hid his eyes even more deeply, leaving them unable to read his expression at all. Had they been able to see his eyes, they would not have dared look straight into them. They were the eyes of a predator judging whether eating these creatures would be enough to fill its belly.

He swept his gaze over the mercenaries around him, one by one.

'About a thousand mercenaries of this caliber. Then...'

"That won't be enough."

"...?"

The mercenaries had no idea what he meant. Much less that those few words had saved their lives.

Dong Bongsu judged that killing mercenaries like these would now do little to help him level up. He knew instinctively that even killing everyone here would not yield much experience.

He needed to seek out stronger enemies that would give him more experience. And they had to be nearby.

He had already come deep into the grasslands. If he headed back to Datong now, the plague might manifest and kill him along the way. Besides, Datong had almost no powerful opponents who could help him level up. The only one who came to mind was the smith at Eight Directions Armory, and Dong Bongsu could not be certain he could kill him. In the worst case, the smith might be far stronger than he was. Returning to Datong was therefore not a particularly good option.

If he could not return to Datong...

'I need to find somewhere else soon, somewhere packed with enemies worth plenty of experience.'

It did not take him long to think of a place.

That place was...

CRUNCH, CRUNCH.

Just then, he heard the slightly uneven sound of hooves treading on sand. None of the mercenaries traveled on horseback. And he had heard that sound once before. Given that its rhythm was much the same as it had been then, it was likely the same horse and rider.

'Lee Jasong's messenger.'

Sure enough, the man who appeared was the messenger he had seen in Heavenly Lake Village. Unlike last time, he stopped some distance from Dong Bongsu and dismounted, then approached on foot. Bowing his head slightly, he took a letter from inside his clothes and held it out.

"A message from His Excellency the Governor."

Dong Bongsu immediately accepted and opened the letter. Its contents were as brief and concise as the order to attack this place had been.

[Come to Guishui]

Come to Guishui.

Dong Bongsu rolled the letter back up and handed it to the messenger.

"What happened to Liangcheng?"

"It fell yesterday."

The messenger's tone was as respectful as if he were addressing a superior. It was not merely because Ear Ghost, the mercenary captain before him, had achieved more than most generals. It was because of Dong Bongsu's peculiar, emotionless air, which intimidated people without their realizing it.

Upon hearing the answer, Dong Bongsu turned toward the tents.

"Go and tell him. I have annihilated the forces on Mount Manhan, and will leave for Guishui at once."

Strictly speaking, a few Northern Ghosts still remained on Mount Manhan, but there was no need to deal with them. They had already become prey for the plague anyway.

"Understood. I will inform His Excellency."

The messenger tucked the letter back inside his clothes and mounted his horse. Just then, Dong Bongsu's flat voice reached him again.

"Have the soldiers moved into Liangcheng?"

The messenger hesitated at the question before answering.

"... Yes. Why do you ask?"

"It's nothing."

With that, Dong Bongsu headed toward the tents where the mercenaries were gathered. As he walked, he thought it over again.

Lee Jasong's massive army had entered Liangcheng, where the plague had probably been rampant for some time already. That meant his army was already finished. At this point, Lee Jasong had only two choices: retreat, or attack Guishui even as the epidemic raged.