A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 595 Slackness

This army, which lay dormant and developed before suddenly rising to power, caught everyone off guard.

It's like waking up to find a mouth ulcer or a breakout of acne on your face. Often, by the time they're noticed, they're already beyond repair; only pain and pus are enough for the body to detect their presence.

Unfortunately, this legion was mobile, leaving behind a large number of mutations that needed to be cleaned up in the areas it passed through. Theoretically speaking, the pollution it left behind did not even originate directly from the Mother Goddess, nor was it at the level of infecting planes or laws; it was merely the spread of infectious substances that caused disease and mutations.

Such secondary disasters have claimed many lives and have a dangerous tendency to escalate, requiring the alliance to allocate resources specifically to quell them.

Fully covered in gear similar to what they wore in space, the Sky Knight Hazmat Edition flew over the village. Below were three parallel constructs, having exhausted their transmutation dust ammunition. Each machine had three pillar-shaped cores carved with [Blazing Ray] circuits, and each circuit was now severely worn and on the verge of being scrapped.

This team, with the Sky Knight as their wingman, scouts out routes and targets for the constructs in the air. The cleanup work is carried out by the constructs. After completing the mission, the team leader reports to his superior: "West Side Infection Zone 3 has been cleared."

The cleanup strategy is the same as that of the fire-carryers: burn everything clean. However, the advantage of constructs is that no one will be infected during the process, and they can freely use their steel bodies to fight monsters hand-to-hand.

Tanya reminded him after receiving the squad's report.

For the Sky Knights, the new enemies are extremely troublesome. These monsters generally have superb regenerative abilities; ordinary bullets that enter their bodies will only embed themselves in their fibrous or carapaceous skin, and even if they penetrate flesh, the shattered tissue will quickly regenerate.

The repair of a monster's flesh is disordered; after growing thicker, tumor-like scars, a new layer of armor is formed. Until its stored flesh and the blessing of the Mother Goddess are exhausted, any attack with light weapons will only make it more and more resilient.

Fortunately, the monsters that can fly are often small scouts with pitifully thin wings. What poses a threat to the air knights is their high mobility and sudden group actions.

"This corrupt legion's unit distribution is highly irregular; unexpected enemies could appear in any contaminated area. When there are buildings or forests nearby, must we continue feeding? Calling Squad Four, please respond, please respond!"

Tanya wanted to remind the other party not to slack off just because the cleaning work was finished, but she didn't expect that all she could hear on the other end of the communication device was a busy signal.

"Send two squads. No, I'll go to Area Three myself."

The main battleground was even more intense, with cunning "ground flies" commanding their chaotic creatures and constructs to fight on the ground. When their numbers reached a certain scale, ordinary flames could no longer burn them out, because the Mother Goddess could twist these flames and transform the charred parts into a viscous, tar-like pus while maintaining their biological activity.

Gradually, the first batch of constructs equipped with [Fireball] and [Blazing Ray] were completely engulfed. They were clung to and surrounded by fearless monsters. Even when they were burned to a crisp, the black pus seemed to have a life of its own, clinging to their surfaces, corroding metal, and destroying joints, circuits, and spell-casting devices.

The symbionts within the "Biohydraulic System" are also captured by them, and then, with their tattered skin and mechanical remains, they are reassembled into ugly but still effective hybrid monsters.

The battle line was only stabilized when the second batch of constructs were all equipped with lightning magic.

The swarms of flying monsters resembled a swarm of locusts blotting out the sky. They came in various forms, flapping their thin, insect-like wings or wing membranes, and filthy feathers. Although the Earth Mother's domain did not include the sky, they were like a sandstorm rising from the ground, threatening to engulf the airship and its escorts.

At this point, the Sky Knights had been scattered into small groups to clear the flanks and clean up the aftermath, because only spellcasters could handle such a situation.

Just as the "Corruption Legion" in the central region was on the verge of losing control, another day that covered the night descended. Suddenly, the mutants and monsters in the legion were weakened. Their regeneration rate began to slow down, and their chanting of blasphemous hymns to the Mother Goddess became weak and listless. Those tender, vibrant chunks of flesh began to shrivel and shrink.

Another emergency meeting.

Luo Xia didn't understand why people from both worlds loved holding meetings so much—big meetings for small matters, small meetings for big matters. Perhaps there were just too many things to deal with.

Since the beginning of spring, the corrupt legions have posed a serious threat to the Alliance and the Empire. Fortunately, the "Long Day" has descended again, suppressing the Mother Goddess's arrogance once more at its peak, allowing both the Alliance and Imperial armies to maintain control of the situation.

"Based on observations over the past month, these countries or alliances are insufficient to control the crisis," Feuerbach, who had been monitoring the battlefield, reported to the elders at the meeting, rubbing his temples.

"The individual strengths of monsters vary greatly, largely depending on the degree of blessing bestowed upon them by the Mother Goddess. The most threatening are the 'ground flies,' which are often transformed from high-ranking monks of the original order and retain their intelligence."

"There are other monsters with various functions. According to incomplete statistics, there are at least 67 types, each with a different form. Rather than a division of labor based on military significance, it is more like an evolutionary result based on ecological niches."

"They destructively devour and expand, internally with a tendency to concentrate their power, producing powerful individuals through mutual devouring, and drawing upon the power of the Mother Goddess to penetrate into the real world to strengthen them."

"It's like several piglets vying to suckle at their mother."

"This is a meeting, be serious!" Feuerbach interrupted the pointless remarks of a certain chief of the Tower of Stars and continued, "The most serious problem is that neither the Empire nor the Alliance has a rapid response mechanism. Cities, with their magic guilds and telegraph offices, can issue early warnings of disasters unless it is a sudden outbreak."

"However, in the vast rural areas, many people are still living in the era of decades or even hundreds of years ago. Their connection with the city is slow, and they have no vigilance or resistance to the harm caused by the religious order and the Mother Goddess. They often become the source or food source of the corrupt army, and by the time they are discovered, it is too late."

During this period, the Senate was consciously conducting cruel experiments—intentionally allowing the corrupt legion to expand, on the one hand to test how many kinds of monsters it could spawn, what their behavioral patterns and ways of spreading were, and on the other hand to examine the resistance of ordinary people.

Rorschach opposed this approach, but he couldn't possibly monitor the entire central empire and ensure that Byrne's military forces were engaged in combat and the development of new weapons while other elders were either intentionally or unintentionally observing or providing reinforcements without contributing their full efforts.

He himself focuses on the already sizable army, and will take action when necessary to eliminate the possibility of large-scale sacrifices to the Mother Goddess and the disruption of the main plane.

Ironically, this behavior gave other mages the confidence to let things escalate, since Rorschach was there to back them up.

"After spring arrives, you all should increase your reinforcements. Be careful not to play with fire and get burned." Luo Xia's words were full of resentment.

Feuerbach agreed: "That's right. The mages in the Arcane Tower and the Forest Tower are nearing their limits and need more support to curb the spread of pollution in the central region of the Empire."

However, the responses from other regions were not as proactive as in the Opfer incident. Some urged the rapid development of the Sky Ladder system, while the mages of Istani stated that the pollution in the far north of the continent was also a cause for concern.

"Anyway, that area is currently unclaimed territory. The Empire is about to abandon the land east of the central region. They're going to use anti-magic devices to seal off the areas they still control. I think the guild can secretly support this plan and see if it's effective," the chief of the Istani Storm Tower said slowly, his virtual avatar projected through the communication system appearing to be drinking tea.

(End of this chapter)