“Not showing up.”
Kail was exuding murderous intent, yet the apostle of the Evil God Cult he sought didn’t appear. He thought to himself how tenacious they were.
Instead, renowned knights, sorcerers, or skilled mercenaries kept showing up in front of him.
The Evil God Cult he was searching for seemed to have burrowed deep into the shadows.
“Um… Kail?”
“What?”
“This… is it really working? It doesn’t seem like it…”
While the desired Evil God Cult members didn’t show up, Ruby, exhausted from dealing with knights and sorcerers heated by murderous intent, looked at Kail with a defeated expression.
Kail shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t expected success either.
“Well, people can’t always succeed.”
“…Haha, that’s true. That can happen.”
“Hmm. Oh, Saintess. I just had a good idea. How about trying this?”
“Hero, that’s absolutely not a good idea.”
The Saintess flatly rejected Kail’s suggestion and began searching for the Evil God Cult using very traditional methods.
Spreading holy energy, meticulously searching buildings, entering smelly underground passages—methods that took a lot of time and yielded no results.
Eventually, unable to bear the boredom, when Kail suggested smashing everything, the Saintess gave up and returned to the city.
“…We couldn’t find them after all.”
“That’s right.”
“I thought we would be able to find them.”
There was nothing to be done. They were a Saintess and a Sword Saint, not trackers. Even an Aura Master couldn’t do what they hadn’t learned.
When they heard that among the incoming Holy Knight Order, there were people formally trained in tracking skills, the three decided to wait for the Holy Knights to arrive.
“Nothing will happen while we wait, right?”
Kail waited for the Holy Knight Order to arrive.
And before the Holy Knight Order arrived, other things began to spread throughout the city.
***
The first to show signs of trouble were middle-aged men who hadn’t married despite their age—the main customers of the city’s prostitutes.
Drip, drip-.
“Huh? Suddenly, why is my nose bleeding…?”
In the middle of work, they started dripping blood from their noses and began collapsing one by one. Their colleagues, clueless, wiped their blood with their clothes while waiting for doctors and clerics.
After entrusting the patients to the belatedly arriving clerics, the people were bewildered by what had happened but finished their tasks.
Covered in sweat and blood, they returned home to kiss their families and engage in sexual relations. Hygiene concepts like washing hands thoroughly didn’t exist in this medieval fantasy world.
Even the fear of disease arising from such acts was extremely rare in this world. After all, wasn’t it a world where diseases were cured with a cleric’s prayer?
Moreover, to prevent residents essential to the city’s functioning from falling ill due to epidemics, medical treatment was supported as part of welfare.
“Dear? I think something’s wrong with me…”
“Go to the church. The priest will resolve it.”
“Yeah, it’ll be fine, right?”
People experienced pus forming on their genitals, tumors sprouting, and deformities occurring.
No one could remain calm experiencing such things. It wasn’t just any place—it was their genitals, the most sensitive area for both men and women.
As those afflicted with the disease came to the church, the problem accelerated even more.
“It’s not healing! Priest, what is this…?”
“We’re doing our best. But we don’t know why this is happening…”
“Aah, aaaah-! Do something, please!”
The disease spreads.
People die.
Corpses pile up.
By the time the Holy Knight Order arrived in the city, the situation had already spiraled out of control.
The Saintess began to despair upon realizing that the event foretold by divine prophecy had occurred, and despite her and Kail’s efforts, they couldn’t change the predetermined fate.
“…It must be the work of the Evil God Cult.”
“It certainly looks like it.”
“We must find them, we must.”
Watching the swaying Saintess struggling to stand, Kail cautiously supported her. With too few clerics compared to the number of patients, the Saintess overexerting herself was the issue.
Having prayed too much, her body had reached its limit in receiving holy power. If she tried to do anything more, the overflowing holy energy would destroy her body.
‘The first people affected were from the red-light district, right? Then…’
AIDS.
Kail realized why people were suffering and why the clerics’ miracles weren’t working on the disease.
The most famous and representative venereal disease, AIDS, wasn’t exactly a disease. It was simply the collapse of the body’s immune system.
There was no way to cure something that wasn’t a disease. What if they tried to heal the collapsed immune system with healing magic?
The broken body would absorb excessive vitality, turning normal cells into cancerous ones. In other words, leukemia would break out.
This was also a difficult disease to treat.
‘Cancer cells are ambiguous to call a disease. After all, they’re ultimately part of one’s own body.’
If the clerics had knowledge of cancer, they might have found a way to treat it.
But technology was lacking, and Kail didn’t know much about cancer either, so he couldn’t figure out a treatment method.
One thing was clear: they might need to purify the entire city.
‘No, we absolutely must.’
It was already a city overrun with various diseases and venereal infections. Though they couldn’t help those already infected, they had to ensure others wouldn’t get sick.
Even with purification, one problem remained.
“We must catch the Evil God Cult.”
The Saintess spoke. Kail agreed. Without removing the root cause, purifying the city repeatedly would be meaningless.
They had to crush the Evil God Cult. Conveniently, a grand justification had arisen: the Evil God Cult was causing people to die.
“Let’s go with the Hero’s proposed method.”
“…Are you serious?”
“Yes, of course, we won’t kill them. I’ll definitely save them.”
Kail looked at the Saintess with a baffled expression. It was a preposterous method he had suggested, and thinking about it again, it still felt absurd.
Threatening every person in the city individually, assuming that those who resisted were part of the Evil God Cult—a ridiculous method indeed.
At this moment, it was also the surest way to find the Evil God Cult.
“Fortunately, because of this situation, we no longer need to search every single person.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most ordinary people are suffering from the disease spread by the Evil God Cult. We only need to check those who aren’t infected.”
“How many are there?”
“Only 500.”
Considering they had almost checked tens of thousands of citizens individually, this was a drastically smaller number.
Kail smirked and began stretching his body.
“We might finish within today.”
Praying that innocent citizens wouldn’t die, Kail set off with the Saintess to search for the Evil God Cult.
Soon after, horrifying screams echoed throughout the city.
***
“Hmph-hmm~”
The city was drenched in pain, screams, and terror.
Lucía, feeling a sense of fulfillment, hummed a tune while slicing her steak.
Though an epidemic had made it difficult to procure meat recently, money solved everything, and she earned enough as the financial overseer of the Evil God Cult.
“Mmm, delicious!”
The fear of death she had felt just days ago was gone now. Whoever had been chasing her seemed to be busy dealing with the epidemic spreading through the city.
They had no time to search for her while treating the epidemic.
Even after the Holy Knight Order arrived, the situation remained the same. Instead of fulfilling their role of punishing the Evil God Cult, they focused on treating patients.
“This might let us swallow the whole city.”
Even if the city filled with corpses, it didn’t matter.
The Evil God didn’t discriminate against corpses.
People’s corpses could also be converted to the Evil God Cult.
Or rather, they could make it so.
‘Once that happens, the Evil God will value me even more. As soon as I return, I’ll replace that wretch Agni first─.’
Lost in various thoughts while eating, Lucía frowned as her secretary barged in without permission.
“What?”
“M-Master, Domang…”
Thud-! Seeing her secretary collapse, Lucía realized the gravity of the situation and tried to flee. At that moment, her ankle was suddenly severed.
Losing balance and falling, she clutched her ankle in agony. Someone approached and grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, lifting her up.
“Gyaaah-!? W-What are you doing!”
“You were trying to run, so I cut it off.”
Cut it off? Glancing sideways, Lucía noticed the man carried no sword.
Confused, she stared wide-eyed as the man, seeing no need to explain, met her gaze and spoke.
“Anyway—you’re the last one. Spawn of the Evil God Cult.”
Kail smirked, looking at the parasite he had captured. The man’s expression began to crumble.
