Chapter 150

"Didn't the heretics take the body away?" The iconic ring symbol was present, but without wings—clearly left behind by a heretic.

According to Martin, by the time they noticed something was wrong and reached the scene, at least a night had passed; even if the enemy were the slowest fools, there was no reason to leave a corpse that exposed their identity on the spot.

This is the core territory of the kingdom, where noble and church power is strongest—who would want to expose themselves and stand against them? If they truly had such capability, they shouldn't be called heretics; they should break away and rename themselves a new sect.

"Diego didn't give them that chance. That was the one thing he did right." Martin stared at the corpse in the box, more precisely at the sword wound on its chest. "He was the most important among them. Among a pile of cowardly corpses facing away, Diego was the only one who turned his sword toward him."

"I want to know why a man unarmed could scare off soldiers armed with weapons—and why my friend had to kill him so desperately."

He knelt halfway, his armored hands deliberately avoiding the wound, tugging at the cloth soaked and hardened in red-black stains. After several attempts, he tore open the corpse's chest garment, revealing the wound more clearly. "So I found this. Though I never studied at the Medical Academy, I know something's wrong here."

Kraft squatted beside him, pulled out a mask and gloves, and stared at the fatal wound.

From the outside, the wound's entrance wasn't large—a neat, horizontal slit about one finger's length, parallel to the ribs, located in the fourth intercostal space near the left sternum. Unsurprisingly, it was literally a wound to the heart, with massive bleeding.

The scene must have been grotesque: blood pumped violently from the still-contracting heart, causing a catastrophic drop in volume. These liberated fluids sprayed from the wound or pooled within the pericardial and thoracic cavities, robbing him of consciousness within seconds.

That wasn't surprising. What was noteworthy was the white substance on the wound. It wasn't abundant, merely an unusual color amid the red-black, catching the eye at first glance—perhaps thought to be dirt accidentally smeared during transport. But nothing seemed so thin, mist-like.

Like spider silk in some forgotten corner, but denser and hazier, irregular yet strangely patterned, as if some plant had grown randomly across the earth.

These interwoven white filaments, centered precisely on the wound, thickened toward the center and thinned outward—their shape clearly didn't match external contamination. Rather, they resembled something emerging from within?

Kraft gripped the coffin's edge, leaned close to examine the strange filaments. They weren't merely on the surface—they were deeply embedded within the wound's cut surface, forming attachments to the chest wall tissue, many so fine they hung like gauze from their supports.

These strange substances spread like solidified smoke within the wound, blocking the view beyond the web.

"When you found him, was the sword still stuck in the wound?" Kraft wanted to pry open the wound, but hesitated to touch it with his gloves. Instead, he snapped a grass stem and slowly rotated it around the edge of the web. The white filaments, seemingly as fragile as they looked, were slightly sticky and easily coiled up.

The sword's removal could easily shatter such a delicate structure—yet this appeared only after the body had been packed into the box.

"Some of it clung to the blade when you pulled it out. There must be more inside." Martin shook his hand in disgust, brushing off invisible revulsion and discomfort. He always felt something crawling on his skin during contact, slipping into the gaps of his armor.

"It's growing."

"Yes. When we tossed him into the box, I remember there weren't nearly this many." Even for someone accustomed to death, this was too horrifying—it was as if the human body had become soil for a plant. Martin couldn't imagine what it felt like to have something alive take root and sprout inside.

"Have you ever seen anything like this? Any disease, or curse?"

"I don't think so." Kraft answered uncertainly.

【Yes】

A voice inside his mind gave the opposite answer—it had no origin, no traceable source, like other insights born from colliding fragments of information: fleeting, gone before he could grasp its cause.

"What about the others?"

"All dead—including the heretics. No fatal wounds on any of them. They're in the other boxes." Martin rose and walked to the other chests, prying open their lids one by one, revealing corpses that looked as if asleep, their faces frozen in the same contradictory expression of hope and suffering.

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He lowered his voice, whispering beside Kraft: "I can only handle these heretics. No offense—but I've often heard the Medical Academy has methods to examine the insides of corpses?"

"What about the others? I mean, those who went with Diego." Kraft didn't deny Martin's implication. "Same as these?"

"Same. Shameful deaths—facing away from the enemy. Too bad they didn't get far. Died without value." Disgust and mockery of deserters were deliberately amplified, masking the hidden, lurking fear beneath.

He vaguely realized Diego had encountered something that shattered an entire unit's morale, disregarding conventional defenses—even full armor couldn't make him feel safe before this long-dead shell, for inside still lived "something."

"All of them?"

"After verification, a few are still missing—including one of Diego's retainers. Maybe he fled during the attack, or died somewhere we don't know." Martin was equally helpless. In the Vestermin region, vast forests were the norm. Tracking the party's path was easy, but searching blindly across the entire area was asking too much.

Standing among the corpses with their frozen, strange expressions, Kraft pondered.

He needed a little more evidence to catch the slippery insight, to transform it from an amorphous notion into structured, logical information.

As for reasons, he could find dozens: prior involvement, project funding needs, infiltration into circles. But none could hide the persistent, restless thought in his mind—he truly wanted to know what had happened.

There was a connection, like the faint sweetness of chewed rice grains spreading—compelling him to keep going, to chase that elusive feeling and seize it.

"Find a convenient place. Go to the workshop and find my retainer—he knows where I keep my tools." He squatted beside a heretic's corpse, studying the ordinary farmer's face, devoid of distinguishing features. "Too bad these tools can't be used on living people anymore."

"You'll have a better set soon," Martin promised, selecting a lucky soldier from the uneasy guards, and leaving the eerie courtyard to fetch the tool kit.

A typical Vestermin solution. Kraft nodded in satisfaction, pulling from his chest pocket a flat wooden bar with blunt ends—just taken from the workshop yesterday.

"I'll look here first."

Skillfully inserting the bar into his mouth, he pried open his jaw, pressed down his tongue, and observed the interior under daylight. The most direct way to explain Martin's description was inhalation of something lethal—start with the mouth and nose.

Beneath the tongue depressor, he felt an unusual resistance—a membrane-like or viscous substance between tongue and wood, almost making him feel the tongue muscle was slipping from his grip, or coated in secretions.

As sunlight entered, Kraft saw what blocked him: a layer of "tongue coating"—cloudy white, covering most of the tongue's surface. The palate and cheeks were similarly covered in spreading, blanket-like white growths.

Thick white masses extended into shadowed depths, crossing the palatopharyngeal arch, turning the uvula into a rotting fruit with decaying branches. On the posterior pharyngeal wall, the density doubled, oozing from a Rongbai throat lined with barely visible mushroom-like protrusions.

Kraft discarded the stick, pulled out a new one, and pried open another heretic's mouth—the scene inside confirmed this wasn't an isolated case.

"Where exactly did you find them?"

"A forest—so dense you'd get lost after a few steps." Martin leaned over, blocking the light; all that could be seen was a slightly swollen outline inside the mouth.

"Any special features?"

"Hmm—if I must say, there were a lot of mushrooms there." He made a "big" gesture, then deemed it insufficient, spreading his arms wide to convey the impossible quantity. "Though mushrooms are common here, never have I seen so many—like they were everywhere."

"Mushrooms?" Perhaps his mind was overactive, assembling possibilities—until a ludicrous thread formed, so absurd he wanted to immediately expel it.

The Duke's lung lesion—occupying most of the tubercular cavity, leaving only a narrow crescent—ignoring all inexplicable symptoms—matched perfectly the standard radiographic presentation of a certain complication.

【Aspergillus】

And the "white blanket" spreading through the heretics' airways reminded him of a rare oral infection—but amplified countless times, to the point of being unrecognizable.

【Candida】

"And mushrooms… are there mushrooms everywhere in Vestermin?" The climate here was perfect for their proliferation—lawns, forests, even stone crevices—nowhere was inaccessible. They freely entered every corner of nature and human life, and even proudly appeared on dinner tables.

The intricate, gauze-like filaments clinging to airways and meninges wove together an irrational connection.

Absurd insights and inspirations surged, briefly shattering the rigid frameworks of knowledge, forcibly presenting a logical chain—irrational consciousness accepted its validity.

"Fungi? What kind of fungi is this?"