Chapter 715: Compassion
In the nonexistent dynasty’s territory within the fictitious history of Busairite, there stood a tall building in a valley where sand and wind blew.
This building originally belonged to a wealthy merchant. When this valley was still a mine, the businessman who bought the mining rights constructed this large building as his residence. After the minerals were exhausted, the place was abandoned until half a year ago when someone purchased it again.
At present, the building in the canyon had intact walls and clean surroundings. People in long robes frequently passed through it, and there were camels in front of the main gate, loaded with packages, clearly used for transporting supplies. These traces indicated that there seemed to be signs of long-term human habitation.
Deep inside the tall building, in a spacious secret room with no windows but exceptionally bright light, Vania knelt on a complex magical array. She tightly closed her eyes, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. Her exposed skin was covered with numerous rashes.
With a pained expression, Vania utilized the power of the altar and her own abilities to heal herself. Amidst a soft golden glow, the pain on her face gradually lessened, and the rashes on her body began to slowly disappear.
“Huff… Huff… How is it? Miss Dorothy, how was this result?” Vania, gasping for breath and obviously very weak, wiped her sweat while looking at Dorothy sitting in front of the experimental table. At the same time, Dorothy, wearing a white lab coat and glasses, turned around and spoke.
“It’s very good… This mutation has almost strengthened all the traits we need. It has reached the expected requirements,” Dorothy said while removing her glasses and smiling sincerely at Vania.
“All data has been met. Our experiment is complete. Now it’s time to return to reality.”
“Is that so… Finally… Finally completed. This means everyone will finally be saved…” Listening to Dorothy, Vania, feeling weak, let out a long sigh of relief and smiled with great joy. Her whole body relaxed, as if a heavy stone that had been pressing down on her heart had fallen away.
“Yes, you’ve worked hard during this period, Vania… Thank you…” Looking at the weakened nun, Dorothy said seriously, and Vania shook her head and continued.
“This is what I should do. If I have to thank anyone, I should thank Miss Dorothy for giving me this opportunity to save so many people. If I could do nothing while watching so many lives suffer from the pain of the cult disease, I would probably live in constant shadows… It was Great Akka who gave me this chance…
“Oh, and Sister Evi… Without the altar and equipment she provided, I wouldn’t have lasted this long. The Holy Church has also been supporting me all along…”
Vania earnestly told Dorothy, and listening to her words, Dorothy waved her hand in response.
“Alright… We don’t need to say much more now. Go rest well. Recover your state and then we’ll go out together, face that monster and the plague again in the ‘reality’…”
“Okay!” Listening to Dorothy, Vania in the magical array nodded seriously.
…
In the desert of Busairite at night, a battle between living organisms and steel, intense flames and decaying bacteria, destruction and regeneration, continued. After Dorothy and Vania left, Evi, remaining in the real history, continued to manipulate her steel body, continuously bombarding Arm yabah with a barrage of destruction.
At this moment, Evi was suspended about 1,500 meters above the ground. Below her, a vast green mist had formed. During continuous combat, the scale of the Zhi iron fungus released by Arm yabah had reached an astonishing level. The scale of the bacterial fog had expanded from factory emissions to meteorological fog levels. Enormous amounts of green fog continuously sank to the ground and extended upward, gradually reaching a height of a thousand meters, slowly approaching Evi’s altitude. From her ship, Evi could see a vast layer of fog resembling a sea of clouds, which made her feel a sense of urgency.
Currently, Evi was hovering about 400 to 500 meters above the fungal fog layer, intercepting more and more keratin arrows and flying explosive insects emerging from the fog while pouring energy cannon fire downward, suppressing the thoroughly monsterized Arm yabah.
Evi’s translucent virtual image floated above the Gothic spire of the bridge, staring solemnly at the sea of fog below. The increasing pressure from the anti-aircraft defense and the rising fungal fog layer increased Evi’s stress.
She could actually alleviate the pressure by rising higher, but she couldn’t do that because doing so would make it impossible for her to effectively suppress Arm yabah.
Due to Vania’s departure, Evi’s temple ritual lost its host, and Evi lost her effective and precise life detection radar. Although she had a powerful spiritual detection radar, it was only for spirits and not specialized for detecting life forms.
The vast area surrounding Arm yabah was filled with fungal fog with obvious spiritual reactions, severely interfering with Evi’s detection. Because every detection revealed spiritual reactions, it was difficult to distinguish them.
If Evi were too high above the ground, her spiritual radar could only detect static interference, making it impossible to tell who was who. Evi’s current altitude was the highest effective detection range for her spiritual radar.
At this height, Evi could rely on relatively close-range detection to judge the areas of dense spiritual reactions in the foggy region, identifying where the spiritual reactions were concentrated or sparse, thereby pinpointing Arm yabah’s relative position in the fog and launching attacks. However, this low altitude also made her more vulnerable to Arm yabah’s counterattacks, making her increasingly powerless.
“Only a few minutes… Almost there…”
Looking at the increasingly fierce assault below, Evi’s virtual image murmured seriously, silently recording the moment Dorothy and the others mentioned before their departure. When that moment came, they would return, bringing a solution to the monster.
During this wait and suppression, Evi didn’t just rely on secondary cannons to suppress Arm yabah. At this moment, the ramming spike at the bow of her ship opened again, revealing the muzzle of the huge main cannon installed on the axis line of the ship. A bright light was emanating from the muzzle, and a main cannon was being charged.
Evi’s main cannon was immensely powerful. Even if Arm yabah had transformed into this form, Evi had the capability to eliminate most of it in one shot. However, the problem was the rapid regeneration of Arm yabah due to the massive spiritual supply. As long as even a small portion remained, it would quickly recover, so Evi couldn’t completely solve the problem with just one main cannon blast. The key to defeating Arm yabah lay in the imminent return of Dorothy and Vania.
Just as Evi was charging the main cannon and continuing to suppress Arm yabah, her spiritual radar suddenly detected a significant spiritual reaction in the dense fungal fog below, indicating Arm yabah’s main body was rapidly moving upward from the bottom to the top of the fog, as if it had suddenly taken off!
“What…”
As Evi felt surprised, the sea of cloud-like fungal fog below suddenly parted, and a massive creature burst out. Upon closer inspection, it was clearly a giant flying insect!
Covered in brownish-yellow keratin armor, it had two pairs of semi-transparent membranous wings densely patterned with nets, flapping rapidly. At the rear end, there was a plump abdomen with countless holes that made one feel nauseous just looking at them. From these holes, countless flying wings burst out, spraying a vast amount of fungal fog.
At the front end of the long insect body, several pairs of appendages grew, with the foremost pair being incredibly large and measuring 30 to 40 meters in length. The front of the claws had saw-toothed blades like those of a mantis, built with exaggerated weapons made of sturdy keratin. At the very front of the insect’s body, there was a twisted, grotesque face, revealing Arm yabah’s distorted and sinister appearance.
During the time hiding in the fungal fog, Arm yabah had grown and mutated significantly under Evi’s cannon fire, transforming itself into a giant flying insect and directly flying up to launch a counterattack against Evi.
“Fall! Steel b*tch!”
With a full heart of anger and resentment, the transformed Arm yabah wielding its massive clawed appendages swung at Evi’s ship. Evi’s anti-aircraft system could handle the flying explosive insects and keratin arrows, but it was completely ineffective against such a massive aerial monster. The machine guns, small-caliber cannons, and flamethrowers on the anti-aircraft systems were unable to penetrate Arm yabah’s sturdy keratin armor.
Fortunately, Evi had already started maneuvering her ship when she realized Arm yabah was flying toward her. Before the clawed appendage struck, she had already activated the thrusters on her ship, shooting out intense flames from various nozzles. These thrusters, located on the stern and sides of Evi’s ship, provided additional propulsion, lifting her out of harm’s way and dodging Arm yabah’s attack, quickly creating distance.
After distancing herself from Arm yabah, Evi aimed countless cannons on her ship at Arm yabah and fired a volley of shells. Since Arm yabah had broken through the fungal fog, Evi added a large number of solid rounds in this salvo. However, upon seeing Evi open fire, the numerous flying explosive insects hovering around Arm yabah exploded, and the holes on its body intensified the fungal fog spray. For a moment, Arm yabah’s entire body was once again enveloped in the fog.
Due to the interference of the fungal fog, the solid rounds fired by Evi became ineffective again. Only energy rounds managed to penetrate the fog and hit Arm yabah, but the damage was minimal. Soon, Arm yabah regenerated and continued charging at Evi, while Evi increased the output of her thrusters to dodge.
Thus, Arm yabah flew while constantly generating fungal fog, always wrapped in the fog while charging at Evi for close-range attacks.
Facing the massive flying collision of the fungal fog cloud, Evi demonstrated excellent maneuverability. The 400-meter-long airship was more agile than battleships 100 to 200 meters long at sea, dodging Arm yabah’s attacks with various unusual maneuvers and constantly retaliating. Many of these maneuvers were extreme and pushed the limits, and if Evi’s ship were made of ordinary steel, it would have already disintegrated from these movements.
Thus, two enormous objects over a hundred meters long and weighing tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of tons engaged in fierce close-quarters combat in the air, akin to old fighter planes dogfighting, albeit with much greater size and firepower.
In this series of aerial close-quarters combat, although Evi wasn’t directly hit by Arm yabah’s attacks, some of the Zhi iron fungus scattered onto her ship. Despite being made of high-strength extraordinary metal, her ship showed signs of rusting under Arm yabah’s pathogenic bacteria. This was the first time Evi sustained damage in her battle with Arm yabah.
Although she was beginning to rust, Evi was more concerned about her main cannon rather than her own condition. After Arm yabah’s main body flew up to h*rass her, Evi’s main cannon, which had been accumulating power, became difficult to aim. Evi’s main cannon was an axial cannon installed on the central axis of the ship; the direction the ship faced determined the direction the cannon fired. There was no turret to turn the cannon. While the axial cannon was effective against fixed targets or ground targets, aiming at Arm yabah, which was rapidly moving and constantly engaging in close combat, was extremely challenging. Evi’s axial cannon was nearly ready to fire, but it was difficult to aim at Arm yabah.
“This is tough…”
Facing Arm yabah’s changed tactics, Evi frowned slightly. Not only was she constantly engaged in combat with Arm yabah, but she also had a mental timer ticking, marking the moment when the predetermined time would arrive.
“I hope you’ve developed the ability to change all this…”
Just as the timer approached its mark, Evi began adjusting the nozzles on her ship and rushed toward an aerial coordinate with great speed. This point was not ideal for tactical evasion, and Arm yabah immediately spotted Evi’s vulnerability.
Without hesitation, Arm yabah charged toward the exposed Evi. Although Evi narrowly avoided Arm yabah’s impact, she couldn’t dodge the two explosive insects that burst near her left side, causing a large splash of highly concentrated green fungal liquid. These liquids corroded Evi’s ship upon contact, producing a fine, sizzling sound. Many of Evi’s secondary cannons on the left side malfunctioned, leaving extensive rust marks on the corroded areas.
“Haha! You got what you deserved! Steel b*tch!”
Seeing that she had caused significant damage to Evi, Arm yabah excitedly taunted in the air. However, Evi ignored its words and felt relieved rather than displeased despite the severe damage to her left side.
Just then, Evi passed the agreed-upon point at the agreed-upon time. In the moment her ship was hit by Arm yabah’s fungal bombs, a figure suddenly appeared inside the chapel within her ship. It was a young girl dressed in a white nun’s robe—none other than Vania, who had recently vanished from the ship.
“How is it? Was the experiment successful?”
Looking at Vania appearing inside the ship, Evi’s virtual image appeared in front of her and asked, while Vania, whose demeanor had matured noticeably, clung to a nearby pillar to adapt to the high-speed environment inside the ship and smiled softly.
“It went very well… We succeeded!”
“So what are the results?” Evi continued to ask Vania seriously, and Vania responded immediately.
“In three seconds!”
Hardly had Vania’s voice faded when, outside the ship, Arm yabah, preparing to launch another attack, suddenly paused. Its control over its spiritual energy became extremely chaotic, causing some of the fungal bombs that were about to be launched to explode in its mouth. The strange creature let out a sharp scream in agony.
“What’s happening! My… spiritual energy!”
Arm yabah’s strange, shrill scream echoed in the night sky. Far away on a dune, Dorothy, dressed in a cloak, stood here, looking at the chaos in the sky and examining her palm.
In Dorothy’s hand was a small petri dish. Inside it, she could feel the countless microscopic lives rapidly dying.
“d*e… perish at the endpoint of your evolution… BS61-1… Your mission is over…”
Looking at the petri dish in her hand, Dorothy murmured quietly. Inside the dish were not anything else but the pathogens of the Plague, rapidly dying in the unseen microscopic world. Not only the viruses here, but all similar viruses everywhere in the world, regardless of location.
In Bastis, in the more distant Busairite tribe, in the far-off Adus refugee camp, all the patients suffering from the Plague were experiencing a simultaneous alleviation of symptoms. Their pain was diminishing as the virus within them was dying.
“The ultimate synchronous evolution brings the ultimate synchronous extinction… This is the end of BS61-1. I wonder if you can see all of this, Gemarha…”
Feeling the situation in Bastis, Dorothy sighed. Her experiment had succeeded. BS61-1 was collectively dying, and both Vania and the Savior Faction’s relief provider, Gemar, had contributed to this success.
Dorothy’s experiment to solve the BS61-1 virus was based on Gemar’s research findings. Through a series of studies, she discovered several key characteristics of BS61-1.
First, BS61-1 had the ability to rapidly evolve autonomously. Second, its evolutionary direction followed the sequence of adaptation, transmission, and pathogenesis. Third, BS61-1 exhibited periodic synchronous evolution phenomena.
Knowing these three points, Dorothy designed her experiment. First, she introduced BS61-1 into the fictitious world, where the introduced BS61-1 was isolated from the main group in the real world. The BS61-1 in the fictitious world became a separate group, and its evolution did not synchronize with the real world.
Next, Vania injected herself with BS61-1, allowing the virus to reproduce within her body. Using her abilities to strengthen her immune system, she killed the virus. During this process, she trained the virus, accelerating its mutation and evolution.
The virus’s evolution followed the principle of adaptability first, meaning adaptability was the primary focus of viral evolution. Viruses prioritized strengthening their resistance against other microorganisms to survive under the attack of enhanced immune systems.
Vania allowed BS61-1 to reproduce within her, then killed it, and then repeated the injection and killing cycle, continuously repeating this process. This kept BS61-1 in the virtual world under constant survival pressure, constantly evolving its adaptability.
Until, during the ritual-enhanced healing process, Vania could no longer use her immunity to k*ll BS61-1 after multiple self-evolutions. Vania then injected other pathogens and used her abilities to enhance them, subjecting BS61-1 to additional survival pressures from external pathogens.
Dorothy’s goal was to continually put BS61-1 under survival pressure, forcing it to evolve adaptability, immunity, and resistance to other pathogens. If BS61-1 was playing a game, Dorothy, as the game’s creator, was forcing the “player” BS61-1 to allocate all its “skill points” to adaptability.
However, biological evolution isn’t entirely unrestricted. Viral evolution has its limits. BS61-1 was a virus with limited volume and couldn’t evolve all its “body” structures to adapt to the environment. Once a person held a sword in each hand, they needed to use their mouth or feet to hold additional weapons, but using feet meant losing the ability to walk.
Under the infinite survival pressure from Dorothy, BS61-1 evolved its redundant structures to the extreme, turning them into “weapons” to fight other microorganisms and enhance its adaptability. But if the survival pressure didn’t disappear, BS61-1 would continue to evolve. When it lacked sufficient space to evolve adaptability and equip more “weapons,” it would have to take structural functions from other parts of its body, using them for adaptability and “weapons.” This would also cause BS61-1 to lose the functions of those structural regions.
It was like a player allocating skill points, putting all the points into strength, finding it insufficient, and then having to withdraw agility, intelligence, and endurance points, stacking everything into strength.
To make room for adaptability evolution, BS61-1 initially degenerated its pathogenicity, making infections mostly asymptomatic and losing its ability to draw spirituality. Then, it degenerated its transmissibility, making it almost impossible to spread between people. Next, it degenerated its reproductive ability, making it unable to replicate and spread within the human body.
The cruelest part was that after nearly half a year of experiments, Dorothy had BS61-1 degenerate its survival ability. BS61-1 couldn’t absorb or use nutrients to sustain its survival. Vania used her abilities to “heal” BS61-1, providing these viruses with her “cup” to allow them to survive. This transformed the virus from one that actively drew spirituality to one that needed to actively provide spirituality to survive.
Such a virus, with degenerated survival ability, split and mutated at birth, like a severely deformed newborn without respiratory organs, should d*e quickly. It had no chance to reach the synchronization evolution timing. However, after birth, these viruses were immediately “healed” by Vania. She used external force to prolong the lives of these deformed viruses, allowing those with stronger adaptability to survive. In subsequent synchronization times, the virtual world’s BS61-1 was synchronized with this version, becoming heavily deformed and requiring laboratory conditions to survive. Outside the laboratory, they would d*e immediately, but this deformed virus’s adaptability—or biological resistance—was extraordinarily high, fitting perfectly with BS61-1’s priority for evolution.
BS61-1 evolved synchronously every hour. Therefore, after Dorothy and Vania brought the virtual world’s BS61-1 back to the real world, the virtual world’s BS61-1 re-established contact with the main group in the real world. At the synchronization moment, it shared its highly adaptable “advanced” version with all BS61-1 pathogens in the real world, turning them into heavily deformed entities that couldn’t survive without extra spirituality or in non-laboratory environments.
Ordinary patients couldn’t provide these viruses with extra spirituality, and their bodies weren’t comfortable laboratory environments. Thus, upon synchronization completion, all viruses began to d*e in batches. Within seconds, the epidemic-causing BS61-1 virus was eradicated worldwide, ending the plague instantly. Arm yabah hadn’t even reacted to what happened, and her massive spiritual supply was abruptly cut off, leading to a direct loss of control over her spirituality.
Across Busairite, countless people suffering from the Plague suddenly felt their pain vanish. Those who had fallen inexplicably stood up, looking around in disbelief in villages, streets, and tents. Everyone’s faces lit up with smiles.
“It disappeared… No pain! What’s going on? Is it over? Am I okay?! Unbelievable, what exactly happened? Lord, did you save us?”
“Ancestors… thank you for your blessings.”
“God! Thank you for your relief!”
In Busairite, millions of people rejoiced, celebrated, and expressed gratitude. Though their expressions of gratitude varied, everyone’s grateful sentiments seemed to resonate in Vania’s heart at that moment.
“Everyone… are you all healed? That’s great… All of this was worth it…”
In the chapel inside Evi’s ship, Vania closed her eyes, clutching her chest, feeling myriad voices whispering within her. At the same moment, another sharp howl echoed in the night sky outside the ship.
“What have you done? Steel b*tch!”
Angry and enraged, Arm yabah charged at Evi at high speed. Seeing this, Evi said to Vania,
“Sister Vania, please immediately go to a safe cabin. I will engage that thing. Our fighting distance is very close, and it’s not safe here.”
Hearing Evi’s words, Vania opened her eyes and looked into the distance. A faint golden light emanated from her eyes, as if she could see through the steel walls and the rapidly approaching Arm yabah in the sky.
“Evi… Now is not the time for me to retreat. Please allow me to join you in eliminating the source of this disaster.
“In the name of the Compassionate Saint Messenger…”
Accompanied by Vania’s words, a sacred and gentle light burst from her body, illuminating the entire chapel.
Having saved millions of Busairite people suffering from the Plague, Vania finally completed her relief mission and the promotion ceremony.
