Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Their skin was pale, with an unnatural gray tone and the sclera of their bulging eyes was yellow, the color of pus. With hunger in their sick eyes and spittle flowing from their growling mouths, they struggled against their bonds, trying to charge at them.

"What is going on?" Ortega exclaimed in shock. The guard captain's face had turned to stone. He had more experience in these situations and had already made the connection.

"*****" he cursed in a tongue even Seth couldn't understand with <Universal Translation>.

However, the captain was not even most disconcerted about the situation. It was the spirit blacksmith who failed to see their souls. They were people he had seen just yesterday, and now they looked like nothing more than human objects.

Seth didn't know why exactly he felt this disturbed, but it was almost like a primal threat he could not suppress. Still, he didn't take his eyes off of the creatures that were once human.

"We believe it's a disease that is transmitted through direct injuries by the infected."

"You mean a zombie plague?" Ortega commented bluntly.

"...Yeah, if it makes you feel better to call it that," Roark admitted.

"Wouldn't it be better to put them out of their misery?" Anga, the healer of the team of Oathguards, asked hesitatingly.

"It wouldn't work. At first, we suppressed and bound those that turned in case there was a cure. Some tried to end their lives out of their own volition, but it didn't work, they simply turned quicker and healed back."

"Did you call Delta and report about this? Has anyone used Hone Call to return to Delta?" Seth asked when he finally managed to pull himself together.

Roark had mentioned that they fled, this meant somewhere out there was a big group of high-level ...things hunting for prey. If they reached Delta... But even worse if someone returned to the city and turned there, this would be

"We understood the risk, so we deliberately didn't use Home Call, in case we still turned later. However, I can't guarantee nobody used it in the chaos. We couldn't call Delta, since our phones don't work out here." Roark answered

"****, you have no communication orb?"

"We have nothing that fancy..."

Seth ignored his comment and quickly called Leana with his orb. It took a while before someone answered.

"Seth! What is going on?" she asked in a hectic tone.

"Just calling to warn you about a rabid crowd of human-shaped beasts possibly coming your way."

"Too late. The border fort has already engaged in battle with a group of people that look suspiciously similar to the guild teams we send out. What happened?" she asked when she heard Seth and the other curse the moment she said that they were already engaged in combat.

The blacksmith handed the orb to Roark and asked the man to explain it the same way he had explained it to them. Leana's face in the orb turned visibly serious as the member of the Boulder guild explained.

"I will take the appropriate steps. You guys stay where you are for now. Please tell Captain Gardy to follow Order 44," she finally said seriously, but she looked really tired.

With that, she ended the call. When the captain, Gardy, heard the order his face turned pale, but he nodded seriously. He excused himself and went back to his men.

"Say, which of them were the ones that rather wished to end it?" Seth finally asked when Roark attempted to return with them to the gorge.

"Why do you ask?"

"I want to try and give them the peace they sought after."

This sounded nice, but what Seth really wanted to do was to experiment and try to find a way to effectively and these things before they could harm anyone he actually cared about. Their existence also really irked him. It was better for everyone and his peace of mind if he found a way to kill them effectively.

Slightly hesitant, Roark showed him a group of people that were bound slightly differently. They had been hastily bound once Roark and his people saw that they regenerated after death. Once he had shown the place, Seth asked the others to return first, so he could concentrate on testing things.

With that Roark, and the Oathguards returned to the camp of the Boulder Guild, while Seth tuned to the bound people and look for a way to grant them peace.

…

--Delta--

The lights illuminating the nightly battlefield suddenly turned from a bright white to a sickly orange. Curses could be heard from the soldiers locked in battle with the former adventurers turned rabid beasts.

They all knew what the orange light meant. An announcement echoed from the walls of the fort in the back over the battlefield for everyone to hear.

"To all combat personnel. Please note that Protocol 44 is now in effect. Cells for the immediate self-isolation upon return have been prepared."

Protocol 44, Measures to be taken when facing a highly contagious disease in a foreign world. The fact they prepared isolation chambers meant they were currently facing an enemy afflicted by a disease that was immune to ordinary system skills.

From one moment to the next, the soldiers knew that they might be just moving corpses. Depending on the disease and its effects, there was little chance of a cure or survival. However.

"To all combat personnel: Please note, infection is assumed to be caused through wounds. It is advised to avoid injuries at all cost or amputate any injured area as soon as possible, if possible."

There was a slight hope, for some of them. The announcements had an obvious effect on the battlefield. About a third of the soldiers started fighting much more carefully, slowly retreating to the wall. The other two-thirds became wilder, fighting with reckless abandon.

They had already been injured. At this point, they knew there was little hope for them. This was why they fought harder, to protect the comrades that still had a chance and take revenge for their own sealed fate.

Order 44, one of the most dreaded announcements as it could mean the wipeout of a whole population and could even threaten the pathworks. They rather chose to die in this battle, than to suffer whatever symptoms an Order 44 disease had.

The battle raged all night long. At dawn, the field and highway leading out of Delta, past the Fort, was covered in blood and dismembered bodies. The rays of morning light fell on the few soldiers still standing.

Only then exited a new team of people from the fortified gate of the fort. Clad in white overalls, not unlike modern hazmat suits, and wearing various versions of beaked masks, came the executives of Order 44, the Doctors.

Using magic and items, they bound the last soldiers so they would be unable to move. On the other hand, a vast number of them started hurriedly collecting the corpses that had finally stopped regenerating.

They did not put them in their inventories, but in huge jars, as big as a person, that were sealed with powerful spells once filled. Even if the corpses could reanimate and regenerate, they would be unable to assemble and get out of the reinforced containers.

It didn't stop with collecting the body parts, there were even doctors that used spells and abilities to collect the blood and bodily fluids that had tainted the earth.

After the bloody and chaotic battle of the night, seeing the people in white professionally and quickly cleaning the battlefield in a matter of hours was calming and disturbing for any onlooker. It was calming because they felt reliable. But it was disturbing how practiced they were in cleaning the battlefield in this manner.

The people on the walls were simple soldiers, some recruited from Delta, but most had received the blessing of the system god and were only stationed here temporarily. This was the first time they saw the Doctors in action, but it filled them with fear to think about how often the Doctors had to take action like this.

The Pathworks had a myriad of worlds, each with its own plethora of dangerous diseases. While the few ori humas of Delta were shocked by just this disease, the soldiers who had seen many worlds knew how terrifying Order 44, measures to deal with a disease that could threaten the Pathworks, really were.

Seeing the Doctors this practiced, made them question how often they or their home world had evaded total extinction because these people did their job right.