"Captain. The military tents have been completed."
A mercenary approached to inform him that the tent installation was finished. Like Dong Bong-su, his entire body was covered in bright red blood. And even at this moment, it was becoming redder. Because blood continued flowing from the ear pouch slung over his shoulder, soaking his shoulder and back.
Probably all the other mercenaries were in the same state. It was something he could know without looking.
"Tell all mercenaries to wipe off the blood on their bodies well and go to sleep."
"Yes, Captain."
It's not only humans who like blood. Among insects, especially bacteria and viruses invisible to the eye, there are those that like blood very much. Such things are as vicious as humans. If you catch them wrong, no one can survive. Though the humans here wouldn't know at all.
Dong Bong-su passed the mercenary and headed to his tent.
His command tent to stay in was erected in the middle of the mercenaries' tents, as always. Though it was a bit larger and cleaner than the other things distantly surrounding it, it wasn't particularly special.
Click—
The first thing Dong Bong-su did upon entering the tent wasn't lying down, nor washing or eating.
It was opening the Stat window and Skill window. Because he had become Lv.30 in the earlier battle. As a result of checking, there was an increase in stats equivalent to 1 level rise, but no new skills were created, nor did any unusual events or different quests occur.
'The second class change isn't yet, it seems.'
He had wondered if class changes might happen at level 20 intervals, but apparently that wasn't the case. The next level where he could expect a class change was 40. Until then, there would be no need to pay much attention to class changes. Perhaps a second class change quest might suddenly appear at level 35, but that too wasn't something to worry about now at all.
Beep—
Dong Bong-su looked at the windows a bit longer before closing them. As expected, there seemed to be no significantly different changes from ordinary level-ups.
He simply washed off the blood on his body and laid down on the bed covered with tiger skin.
But was it because the tiger skin laid on the bed hadn't been washed for a long time? It was teeming with fleas. Noticing that prey had come of its own accord, the fleas climbed onto Dong Bong-su's body one by one, boasting their greed for blood.
Nevertheless, Dong Bong-su disregarded them and closed his eyes to sleep. Sleeping was, for him who had no recovery items, the only recovery technique besides cutting enemies to activate [Lifesteal]. Dong Bong-su wasn't one to give up such a thing over a few fleas.
Anyway, he couldn't hope for a cleaner bed on the battlefield.
Dong Bong-su, lying on the bed briefly retracing the day, gradually fell asleep. The squeaking of rats briefly disturbed his sleep, but soon he fell into oblivion.
Night deepened, and so another day passed.
***
Morning dawned.
Was he waiting for the scouts sent last night? Dong Bong-su stood at the foot of Manhan Mountain facing the bitter wind. Though it had taken some time because they infiltrated taking advantage of the darkness, they would have already completed reconnaissance to some degree. If early, they would be returning about now.
As if his thought was correct, before long the scouts began appearing one by one. Was it because they had suffered from the cold all night? Their faces were uniformly discolored to a bluish tint.
Even in that state, they ran swiftly up to Dong Bong-su and bowed their heads.
"Captain. This is serious! We should leave this place quickly."
The mercenary who had lived the Wanderer life longest among the scouts reported to Dong Bong-su in an urgent voice.
At this, Dong Bong-su tilted his head sideways crookedly. The bangs that had grown even longer during this Harvest period lay down with his head, revealing Dong Bong-su's colorless transparent eyes. A gray luminescence that might or might not be there circled in his eyes.
"Speak step by step."
At Dong Bong-su's low but powerful voice, the veteran mercenary straightened his back and spoke again.
"As a result of reconnaissance, all of Manhan Mountain is already dead."
"Manhan Mountain is dead? What does that mean?"
"Epidemic, an epidemic had spread. Not only in the Northern Ghost Group's stronghold, but the epidemic had also spread to the northern nomads' village on the mountainside, with groans ceaselessly throughout the entire village."
Epidemic.
A short word meaning infectious disease. But a word that succinctly determines the current situation just as much.
"...!"
Dong Bong-su finally realized what the identity of yesterday's unsettling feeling was. Why the Northern Ghosts' number had been so few. Also the reason why they abandoned the terrain advantage and met the mercenaries at the mountain's base.
The enemies had mobilized all available forces yesterday!
The enemies weren't scheming anything at all. No, more precisely, the Northern Ghosts couldn't have done so from the start.
'Was an infectious disease spread throughout all of Manhan Mountain?'
Martial World people weren't non-human. Martial World people were just a bit faster and a bit stronger than others, but still merely people. Even they had no way to block the invisible enemy called bacteria.
'Even so...'
If they were Martial World people, their basic immune system should be stronger than ordinary people's, yet an infectious disease could drive such people to death...
Several names of infectious diseases came to mind in Dong Bong-su's head.
'No way...!?'
Among them, a memory of the worst infectious disease sprang out from deep in his mind where it had been hiding. Simultaneously, he also clearly recalled its symptoms.
Those symptoms were...
"The corpses' bodies had many black spots. Especially the fingernails, toenails, and nose tips were discolored jet black, and the smell of rot was very terrible. Also, among those whose disease was progressing, there were those with boils all over their bodies."
Accurate. The worst infectious disease in that world's history that Dong Bong-su knew, and its symptoms were no different at all.
Click—
Despite the mercenaries watching, Dong Bong-su opened the status window with a light hand gesture. Anyway, this hologram wasn't visible to them, nor could they hear its sound effects. Only the hand gesture looked peculiar.
"...!"
It was slightly different from the Status window he had seen last night. The moment he opened the Status window, a peculiar message window he had never seen before appeared.
[Player has been poisoned. The poison's name is ??? and its effect is ???.]
He had opened it with a 'just in case' feeling, and the system notified Dong Bong-su of [poisoning].
Dong Bong-su was the host of Ten Thousand Poison Gu, so he doesn't get poisoned. Nevertheless, the system told Dong Bong-su he had been poisoned. That meant either he had been poisoned with a poison the Ten Thousand Poison Gu couldn't detoxify, or the system was 'mistaking' some 'other thing' as poison.
"Among the living too, there were many suffering from high fever and vomiting, and they looked like they would all die before long. And..."
The scout paused briefly, then took out a rolled oil paper from his bosom. He immediately unfolded the oil paper and dropped the object inside onto the ground—it was someone's hand with fingernails turned jet black.
"Just in case, I cut off and brought one hand from among the dead."
"..."
Dong Bong-su lowered his head to examine the hand closely. It looked no different from the hand of some patient he had once seen in a science magazine.
There was no need to hear more of the report. New Murim Online's system must have judged catching an epidemic as being poisoned.
Having figured that out, the rat sounds that had circled his ears until he fell asleep last night replayed in Dong Bong-su's mind. Along with that, he felt in detail the presence of fleas even now roaming all over his body.
'The host was rat fleas. Definitely.'
And.
What Paitan had said during yesterday's battle overlaid on the squeaking rat sounds.
[Kekeke... Well, what's so important about such things when we're all about to die anyway.]
Was that what it meant? That we're all dying?
Paitan had surely brought out all combat personnel who could move. Among them, many carriers would have been included...
'They were just still in the incubation period.'
Dong Bong-su hadn't anticipated it. That he would unexpectedly utter this word aloud at a completely unexpected place and time.
"I never thought I would catch the disease."
"...Pardon?"
To the mercenary asking what he meant, Dong Bong-su didn't answer. There was no reason to. And Dong Bong-su was already deeply sunk in thought and couldn't anyway.
Black Death.
Another name for the disease. Perhaps here too there might be another name related to this, but historically in the Chinese cultural sphere, no special different names were given to epidemics. An epidemic was just an epidemic. Anyway, it couldn't be cured.
Just highly contagious epidemics, weakly contagious epidemics. Only that existed. If one didn't know about the existence of bacteria or viruses, treatment was difficult so there was no need for names and such.
However, Dong Bong-su was different. He knew roughly about all this, and knew well there was no way to cure it here. Even on the Earth where he had lived, in the 19th century when medicine had developed to some degree, when this disease spread in China, millions died.
Penicillin? Antibiotics? Vaccines? There was no way such things existed in this world now. From the start, such words couldn't have been created yet.