119 Purpose Behind Guards' Infection
Eren was shocked when he realized the kind of stunt Ariadne had pulled on him.
He also understood that he shouldn’t underestimate the tricks the demonic rankers had up their sleeves just because they were of lower ranking status than him. Their unique spells seemed more potent than most spells used by normal rankers.
Eren saw the corpse of an unknown person lying in front of him. She was a normal mortal woman who seemed to be from the nearby region judging from her clothes.
Eren was about to destroy her body into nothingness with his spell to give her the last rites when something grabbed his attention. The corpse had the same signs of rot that the guards of Pointlet town had developed before the antidote was given to them.
‘This is…’
Eren had a grim premonition all of a sudden.
He quickly cast the Blitz Shards spell and covered the corpse with lightning shards all over it. He created a distance between himself and the corpse before detonating the shards, resulting in a distinct lightning surge blooming in the middle of the battleground.
“Skreeeeee!”
The corpse released a sharp voice as lightning tongues danced all over its body. The worn-out clothes it was wearing disappeared and it started writhing as if it was feeling uncomfortable by the treatment Eren had subjected it to.
“Skreeeee!”
“Skreeeee!”
“Skreeeee!”
Eren looked around himself with absolute shock when he heard multiple sources of high-pitched voices coming from various directions. He soon realized that Ariadne was not the only one who had pulled a corpse out of her storage.
The demonic rankers had multiple corpses stored in their storage space. They started pulling these corpses out of their storage at the same time after Ariadne started the whole thing.
These corpses were moving their limbs and writhing in unknown agony as they came back to life at the same time. In contrast with Ariadne, the demonic rankers who had pulled these corpses from their storage stayed to protect these abominations from being attacked by rankers.
“Hahahahahaha!”
Bulal’s Blood’s laughter was heard from a distance when he executed the spell he was known for. Miranda, Kiara, and Roland also stopped fighting Bulal and his forces when they sensed an anomaly happening in the surroundings.
Flesh golems!
Bulal had started creating flesh golems out of the corpses that the rankers had taken out. The corpses grew in size and stature as the death-like mana was injected into them.
The flesh golems started losing the earlier visage they had and started turning into hideous creatures. These hideous creatures grew extra sets of arms and limbs. Some even grew multiple heads while others developed tails and long nails.
Some of the flesh golems had multiple eyes on their face while the others had some other horrible features. All flesh golems looked different from each other. But they had one thing in common. They were giving off a threatening sensation.
All the flesh golems had festering muscle fibers that seemed to suddenly multiply in numbers. The muscle fibers were so dense and overwhelming that they had ripped off the deathly pale skin of the corpses.
The flesh golems didn’t seem to be the harnessers of mana as their mana cores were destroyed in the transformation. That is if the corpses belonged to rankers before their death in the first place.
However, all the flesh golems seemed to have exceptional body stats values. Plus, they seemed to be resistant to mana-based elemental attacks.
The flesh golem transformation prevented the creatures from using their mana. But in return, they had gained tremendous raw power and physical strength.
Eren could see that the flesh golems wouldn’t be able to sustain their existence for long. Their bodies would crumble in a few hours even if left to their own devices. But in the meantime, they had the power to cause huge damage to the rankers if they did not deal with them swiftly.
“Those signs of rot…”
Roland mumbled to himself when he saw what kind of signs the flesh golems showed before their activation. He then looked at his own arms that had those signs not too long ago.
The guards had already recognized some of the corpses that had turned into flesh golems. They were the same mortal townspeople and ranker guards that Bulal Blood had kidnapped a few days back.
Roland’s eyes turned red in wrath and anguish. He had come to realize that Bulal Blood had no plans to release the prisoners he had captured.
It looked like he was planning to subject the people who had been infected with the rot to the same fate the prisoners were currently suffering through– being turned into flesh golems.
Roland and his guards that were currently alive and present on the battlefield were spared from the same fate, thanks to Eren retrieving the antidote. The guards’ captain would have turned into a flesh golem himself had he counted on Bulal to honor his end of the deal.
“This fucking asshole! I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him no matter what. Aargh!”
Roland was about to charge at Bulal Blood recklessly without worrying about the consequences. The demonic rankers’ head was standing at a distance from him, chuckling at Roland, Miranda, and Kiara to mock them.
But suddenly, Roland’s face was met with a sudden water ball that was conjured right in front of his eyes. This attack that was launched at him didn’t contain any ill will. It was only supposed to stop him from taking any reckless action.
“Get a hold of yourself. You are the guards’ captain. Now, if you falter and lose yourself in your anger, your soldiers would follow you.
Tell me what would suit you the most now. Would you rather be turned into a flesh golem and let Bulal Blood escape? Or keep a calm head and deal with him once and for all?
Especially now when you and your town have paid such a heavy price.”
As she looked at Bulal Blood and his two Awakened-ranked companions with grim expressions, Miranda said to Roland.