Chapter 29
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Chapter 29: Pest
The gas inside the car had no color, and the ghost next to it could only feel the airflow. A squirrel hurriedly ran through this area, not collapsing immediately as it passed by, making Tasha almost doubt herself.
But the watchtower, constantly watching the ground, noticed a problem.
The yellowish-brown color slowly climbed up the edge of the leaves, spreading like dye, causing the softly curved leaves to curl up and become distorted and fragile after changing colors completely. The speed was not fast, but visibly quicker than the normal wilting of plants, more than just twice as fast. The yellow plague spread from where several large cars had exploded, spreading from low to high, from one leaf to the next.
The withering of the weeds on the ground was the easiest, as the flourishing grass and flowers drooped their heads as the dry tide swept over, mingling with fallen twigs and leaves, forming a thick blanket on the ground. The decay of large trees would take more time, and when they eventually died, those with leaning trunks would crash down with a bang, with no roots left to hold them in place.
This is a slow-motion scene of dominoes falling, green dominoes turning into dark yellow, slowly but unstoppably. Tasha couldn’t stop the dominoes from falling, she directed the gnome to collapse the land around Oak Elder and then patch up the ceiling. This big oak tree was temporarily sealed in the dungeon, with soil on its roots, like a plant getting ready to be moved.
Until dawn, the widespread withering continued. Many areas lost visibility as the watchtower, completely disguised as trees, also fell victim to the same fate. The watchtower withered, collapsed, and turned into black smoke.
The Amazonians who took part in last night’s operation were placed in isolation rooms by Tasha. Even though they didn’t feel injured and didn’t think they needed rest, they still followed Tasha’s orders. The Amazonian who was the fastest in close combat to knock off the crow mask found herself catching a cold this morning. She felt a bit unwell, scratching her face and yawning. She didn’t grow anything strange or lose clarity of mind, she just felt a bit tired. With a different leader, this might not have been noticed at all, but the dungeon lady, who knew everything, tensed up immediately upon discovery.
The isolation rooms were even more carefully separated, each person having their own room, with food and water delivered by gnomes. Despite this, by the evening of this day, everyone in this Amazon team had varying degrees of onset of a cold. The first one to fall ill didn’t sneeze or have a runny nose, she just collapsed in bed unconscious at 8 pm that night – she was on the night patrol.
Tasha closed off all the passages leading above ground, at least for the next week, she didn’t intend to let anyone out.
The dungeon could sustain itself, but Oak Elder’s issue was troublesome. He was completely a oak tree during hibernation, not an herb, so the current Medicinal Herb Garden could not plant him. How long could a oak tree survive without sunlight, Tasha didn’t know, and didn’t want to witness it.
What did humans use, anyway? Some kind of poison gas or virus? But Tasha couldn’t figure out how the other side dares to engage in chemical warfare without a technology level including airplanes. Poison gas that can be dispersed by a gust of wind is not sufficient as a weapon, and if it is highly concentrated, like the one being carried out on the ground now, aren’t they afraid that a strong wind in the right direction will blow the gas back to them?
Ghosts wandered on the ground, watching as the Angaso Forest gradually fell. Tasha could only control a limited number of ghosts at the same time, with two being the limit after acquiring that body with a wolf head. The two ghosts followed the expanding decay of two defensive lines, this mysterious situation also spreading beyond the forest, with one ghost tracking the expanding withering line and discovering a distant trench.
Between the Angaso Forest and the human activity area, there was a long trench that couldn’t be seen to the end with the naked eye. This wide area of land, over two meters, looked charred, as if burned. The human garrison was on the other side of the trench, weapons pointed toward the forest on this side.
Tasha didn’t understand what this thing was for, until the withering line spread to here. The yellowish-brown color spread on the grass leaves, spread, and finally stopped in front of the ditch.
Is this a quarantine zone? Tasha thought in surprise, how can a quarantine zone block "toxic gas"?
"Blight Convention!" Victor blurted out, "Are they still around?"
"What is that?" Tasha asked.
"It’s a cult from the Druids, the archenemy of the Druids, their actions match their name," Victor said.
Apart from the Abyss and the Heavenly Realm, Druid’s archenemy is not the Necromancer force of the Bone Tower or the humans who destroy trees, but the Blight Convention, a degenerate faction from within themselves.
There are various factions within every group, and there are also different interpretations of the Druids’ doctrine of nature. One radical faction believes that all things have life and death, life is just a process, death is completion, so withering is the natural end. When this world starts to distort and decay, only complete and thorough withering can bring it new life – knowing how the Blight Convention interprets the doctrine in this way, one can imagine what they will do.
There is no worse enemy than a former teammate turned enemy, the former Druid of the Blight Convention has withering as their goal, their magic comes from the Druids and counters the Druids, supplemented by some high-level Necromancers, the products of their curses are the natural enemies of all nature-based spells and flora and fauna. When the Heavenly Realm and the Abyss were relatively peaceful, the Blight Convention actively participated, striving to play a major villain role on the surface.
Unfortunately, they declined before they could succeed.
The Blight Convention was aimed at the Druids, but it affected more than just them. The noble unicorn tribe of the good camp protected the natural life of their habitat, the Forest Elves of the neutral camp coexisted with the forest, and even the evil-leaning Orcs hated the Blight Convention. When the grass-eating animals ran out of grass, where would the meat-eating animals go? The unicorn tribe was greatly admired by good races, the king of the Forest Elves was a half-god himself, and the Orcs worshipped a beast god who was the least reserved of all the gods in the Heavenly Realm. They would wreak havoc without hesitation when angered. Before losing contact with the ground, Victor, the Blight Convention, was already being chased from all sides and had almost disappeared.
"The curse of the Blight Convention could be spread through the air, first infecting life forms in direct contact, then spreading through plants. If not stopped, it could spread for tens of kilometers. The land covered by these plants would be unable to grow crops for years. The watchtower wouldn’t be in trouble normally, but since you have the Natural Aura, a watchtower covered by it while camouflaged with trees would basically look like a tree," said Victor. "I thought they had been dealt with long ago. Even if not, humans shouldn’t be with such universally hated evil group…"
The long trench and grassless rocky wall on the forest side combined to prevent the curse from spreading to the human town. For over a hundred kilometers towards the forest, there was no sight of human presence, only their enemies.
Victor explained the long history to shift blame and to justify why he remembered it only now. But Tasha, after listening to him, started to have doubts about something else.
Where were the races that once chased the Blight Convention?
With the Heavenly Realm and the Abyss losing contact with this land, without the beast god, perhaps the Orcs were defeated by humans in battles, dispersed like nomadic tribes in history, disappearing or falling into slavery. The Druids, separated from the Heart of Nature for reasons unknown, lost their heritage, struggling to survive in hiding. But what about the respected and powerful unicorn tribe? Their archery skills surpassed the Amazonian, and the long-lived elves with a half-god leader?
Tasha realized she may have misunderstood Aryan in the past.
She made a contract with the supposedly millennia-old former great demon, Victor, listened to the memories of the hundreds-of-years-old Oak Elder, and witnessed the signing of the Aryan Declaration firsthand. By piecing together the information provided by these individuals and events, along with what she had seen in movies and shows, Tasha had this impression of Aryan now —
The various races on the Primary Material Plane united to cut off the path to the Heavenly Realm and the Abyss. Subsequently, the powerful races retreated into seclusion, leaving the rest to their own devices. The alliance of races with similar strengths broke apart, each pursuing their own interests and alliances or conflicts. Eventually, humans emerged victorious, driving away other races, vilifying them, leading to the current dominance of the human empire and the oppression of other races within its borders.
However, upon closer thought, this idea seems a bit too taken for granted.
If you look at it as the backdrop of a movie, Tasha wouldn’t find it strange. When the screenwriters and directors on Earth are all humans, what’s so strange about humans winning? But here is another world, where humans are neither the most populous nor the most powerful race.
Tasha used to be part of the human race, and she was quite happy being one. The evolution of human civilization is enough to make everyone proud. If Tasha were to see more advanced technology here than on Earth, she wouldn’t be surprised that humans ended up as the ultimate winners. However, it seems like the common people here are still living in a pre-Industrial Revolution era, and the military standards here are far below World War I level, with soldiers having a few strange pieces of high-tech from the 16th and 17th centuries.
What happened between the united races on the ground and the human empire becoming dominant? Where did those more powerful races go? Did they really retreat into seclusion? If so, why? If not, why are they turning a blind eye to everything now?
Tasha used to think that chasing Craftsman Dwarves and Worgen girls, attacking Amazons, and so on, were just actions of mutual aggression for local interests, with no one being right or wrong, no extermination, just chasing after benefits. She thought this was a fantasy world with superpowers, and speculated that what Victor said about wizards, sages, and so on were all like the wandering adventurers she had seen in her dreams, controlled by Aryan’s government, settling near the capital. So it was not surprising that such remote places were unseen – it wouldn’t be hard to imagine stabilizing society and controlling these exciting yet dangerous people.
In the end, Tasha was still bound by the ideas of the past world. This world cannot be measured by previous scientific principles.
Humans are willing to use the destructive Magic Cannon to eliminate the Amazons. They would even use this poison-like deadly weapon to eradicate them completely, even though it would only result in a barren land after their victory. This is absolutely not like the relatively peaceful, interest-driven relationship between modern countries on Earth. Nowadays in Aryan, it seems like between humans and beings identified as Hybrids by them, it’s a matter of life or death, reaching a point where they would rather harm others than benefit themselves.
The situation is much worse than Tasha thought.
However, humans have also misunderstood the situation.
They used weapons improved by the Blight Convention spell, but they themselves did not have the resistance to not be infected like Blight Convention members, that’s one thing. Another thing is, Tasha is not really the Druid they thought she was, Natural Aura is just a tool for her, she doesn’t mind using nature at this time.
She is not as compassionate as a Druid, her principles are not in that aspect. When it comes to whether or not to harm others for personal gain in war, Tasha’s answer is the same as most humans.
Gnomes waved their claws, the dungeon kept expanding towards human towns, all the way to the bottom of the trench. The watchtower that mimicked weeds quietly grew over the trench, these dungeon creatures with Natural Aura, just as Victor said, are similar to ordinary plants.
The withered yellow spread from one end of the trench to the small watchtower, expanding to the latter before the former dissipated. Like a bridge collapsing quickly, these plant watchtowers connected the curse of the Blight Convention to the other side of the trench.