Chapter 141 You Are a Bit Too Extreme

Deep below the Guild, in a secluded grand hall, a group of dignified, high-ranking gods sat gathered around a table.

Hestia stood beside the great doors outside the hall, staring anxiously into the distance as though waiting for someone to appear.

Beside her, Loki sat cross-legged and said irritably, “Stop pacing, you little shrimp. This disaster has only just begun to spread. Rescue won’t arrive so quickly. If you really don’t want to cause trouble for the children, then stay put.”

Although the disaster had erupted without warning, none of the gods invited to attend the divine council had been harmed. For one thing, the gods invited beforehand to discuss the Great Expedition were generally sound in both power and temperament. They were not the sort to make any particularly foolish mistakes.

When the first infected began to erupt, they had immediately entered the underground hall under the protection of the Guild guards.

The narrow interior had become an advantage at a time like this. After all, the zombies thought much like monsters did. Unless they made an especially great disturbance, they would not all come rushing in at once.

The occasional zombie that found its way into the passage was dealt with directly by the guards.

However, although the guards were high-level adventurers, their numbers were limited. Thus, after discussing the matter, the gods had decided not to break out immediately, but to use the terrain to hold out while waiting for rescue.

Beside Hestia, Hephaestus could not help urging her as well. “Calm down, Hestia. You’re letting your concern cloud your judgment. Your child should have no problem protecting himself, but you shouldn’t place too much hope in his coming to rescue us.”

“You think Roland can’t make it through the horde outside?”

Hestia raised an eyebrow, her cheeks puffing up in displeasure.

“Under normal circumstances, these infected adventurers wouldn’t be able to stop him at all. But things are different now.”

Hephaestus gave a wry smile.

“Even Loki’s children couldn’t rush here immediately. This outbreak covers all of Orario, and for the sake of our safety, relying on a single party would be far too risky. We need to find several parties of comparable strength and combine them.”

She was Hestia’s closest divine friend and the one who understood her best. She knew how deeply Hestia cared for the members of her Familia, but there were truths she still had to speak, even if Hestia did not want to hear them.

“You heard her, you little shrimp...” Loki waved her head casually toward Hestia, intending to make her settle down. But before she could say anything more, another voice interrupted.

“She’s right.”

The heavy doors thundered open. Under the tense gazes of the gods, a young man stepped out from the shadows beneath them.

“If this place weren’t so narrow, I wouldn’t have left so many of them behind, even if their numbers had doubled.”

The young man had tousled black hair and bright, keen crimson eyes in which flames seemed to burn quietly. Yet meeting his gaze did not make anyone feel heat. It brought only a cold, unsettling terror.

His features were handsome and well-proportioned, the sort of face that naturally inspired goodwill. That dangerous, mysterious air made him far more lethally attractive than mere beauty ever could.

He was tall and slender. Every step he took seemed to follow some hidden rhythm, as though he were not walking through a perilous sea of corpses to save people, but strolling leisurely through a nobleman’s private garden.

Behind him stretched a path burning with blood and fire.

“Roland!”

Hestia cried out and hurried over to inspect him. Only after seeing that, despite the burning bloodstains behind him, Roland himself bore not a trace of blood did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.

“Don’t worry, Hestia. None of this is mine. There were simply too many of them outside.”

Hephaestus stared at Roland in astonishment. It was one thing not to be injured; it was another entirely to emerge without even a trace of blood from battle. He did not even seem to have spent much of his stamina.

What had happened outside?

“I never expected you to be the first one to come rescue us,” Loki said.

The goddess, who had been visibly tense until now, secretly relaxed and walked toward Roland. Admiring his calm, unruffled appearance, she deliberately teased him.

“We’re wanting you more and more. If you joined the Loki Familia, then even if something really happened between you and Ais, we wouldn’t hold it against you. What do you say?”

“Flat-chest! Don’t you dare bring up that Wallenstein girl!”

At Loki’s words, Hestia’s eyes, which had only just been shimmering with tears, instantly flared up. She clung tightly to Roland’s arm like an enraged cat.

“Stop joking around. I don’t want to spend every day cleaning up after you.”

Roland ignored Loki’s teasing and turned to look outside.

“Although I’ve cleared out all the zombies outside, we should leave at once. Unless you gods find a secure base, you’ll only be dead weight.”

“What a cold way to put it. That was terribly harsh. You’ve hurt me.”

Loki followed casually at Roland’s side, completely without suspicion, as though she had entirely overlooked the unbelievable fact that he had exterminated every zombie alone.

Yet Loki, one of Orario’s de facto rulers, trusted him so completely that the other gods did not question anything at a time like this. They followed him out as well.

Only after they emerged from the underground palace and returned to the Guild did the gods understand the source of Roland’s confidence.

The horde that had previously prowled through the Guild like beasts patrolling their territory had vanished without a trace. Even their armor and weapons were gone. All that remained were purple crystals scattered across the ground, each burning with crimson flames like a torch.

The Guild was immaculate, as though it had just been cleaned.

Following the number of torches, it was easy to see the route Roland had taken. The gods followed that broad, clear path and walked straight out of the Guild.

What met their eyes was an Orario from hell.

Faced with such a sight, even the proud gods could no longer look down upon it from on high. Orario was their home, a monument that preserved the history of the gods. Yet now, most of the stories passed down from mouth to mouth had vanished with the deaths of its people.

“How could this happen?”

“Orario... This can’t be real...”

Even the well-traveled gods could not help crying out at the devastation. Hestia’s eyes filled with tears, and she instinctively covered her mouth.

“Tch...”

Even the usually carefree Loki clicked her tongue in displeasure. She instinctively turned toward Roland, only to find him tilting his head slightly, without a trace of negative emotion in his eyes.

It was as though he had been born for this very moment.

Hero and disaster. Despair and hope. They were the perfect pairing.

Looking down at the adventurers and carriages beneath the Guild, along with the scattered groups of zombies, Loki had to admit that the Guild’s decision to put Roland forward—although made without any ulterior motive—had been an incredible stroke of luck. He had risen a step ahead of everyone else at the most critical moment.

“Where do we go next? The high-level adventurers can’t all have been killed. If we want to retake Orario, we first need to find a suitable base with supplies and use it as a banner to draw the children toward us. Sword Hero, you’ve already thought of somewhere, haven’t you?”

Roland glanced at Loki in surprise. He had not expected her to call him a hero of her own accord, but he did not conceal his answer.

“Babel Tower.”

There could be no more suitable base. As the final supply point for every adventurer, it contained abundant provisions of every kind: weapons, armor, food, medicine, and water.

It was also the most conspicuous building in all of Orario, standing at the city’s center. Once a signal was sent, it could be seen clearly from anywhere in the city.

“Then let’s get started.”

Loki nodded and slowly closed her eyes.

“Don’t let your guard down, hero. What happened in the Guild was only an appetizer. The true hell will begin when we have to deal with every zombie in Orario.”

Roland did not answer. He waited until all the gods had boarded the carriage before taking the lead and clearing the road ahead.

During the brief lull, he had conducted an experiment. The Horse Talisman’s healing power had no effect on zombies who had lost their human will and been covered in crystals.

This left Roland puzzled. Although the zombies could no longer be called human, their transformation was clearly caused by the Apocalypse Virus rather than the T-Virus from Resident Evil.

And while the virus still remained attached to the body, the transformation could be interrupted or even cured.

When he had previously worked with the Guild to locate Orario’s infected, Roland had secretly tested this. There had been people whose infections were no less severe than those of these zombies, yet the Horse Talisman had still cured their symptoms. Why had it failed today?

If this had been the Apocalypse Virus in its complete form—if the victim had reached the terminal stage, with the entire body crystallized and consciousness beyond recovery—Roland could have understood. After all, the Horse Talisman expelled external forces from within the body. It had no effect on changes to the fundamental form of life itself.

It could dispel petrification, for example, but it could not restore an adult who had been transformed by magic into a child, because from the perspective of divine power, that person’s condition had not been damaged or injured. Their form of life had simply changed.

The Apocalypse Virus worked by the same principle. Once complete crystallization occurred in the terminal stage, the victim’s form of life had already changed. Their soul became crystal, allowing them to continue existing in this world by a special means.

Roland could understand why such a state could not be cured. But before the balance between body and soul was broken, it should have been nothing more than an ordinary virus. There was no reason for the Horse Talisman to be ineffective.

This direct alteration of the contract spirit itself reminded Roland of an unexpected discovery he had made in the Type-Moon world.

In one world, there might be far more than a single contract spirit, just as there were the Demon Sorcerer’s soul and Izuru Kamukura. The appearance of contract spirits followed no discernible pattern.

His previous experiments with talismanic divine power had once again confirmed his hypothesis.

“There’s a second contract spirit.”

Unlike the situation in Type-Moon, however, the natures and powers of these two contract spirits were probably extremely similar, which was why such an effect had appeared.

This disaster may indeed have been triggered by the Virus Queen, but the spectacle of zombies gathering in hordes had probably not been her work. It seemed to be the handiwork of another contract spirit, exploiting the first one for its own purposes.

A mind-based contract spirit had combined with the Apocalypse Virus to produce such a perfectly compatible result? And the zombies’ state was so identical to that of dungeon monsters...

Roland faintly felt that he was on the verge of grasping the truth, yet some crucial evidence was still missing.

More experiments were necessary.

Before that, however, if this disaster truly could not be controlled, then so be it. The scope of the Divine Wine had already spread across most of the world. At worst, he could assume the identity of humanity’s evil and initiate the Apocalypse first, overturning the entire table.

If he was not allowed to consume souls, then humanity might as well perish altogether. No one would get to eat anything.

With that thought, Roland pushed open the doors of Babel Tower after a brief dash.

Although Roland had done nearly all the fighting, the gods looked far worse off than he did. Several of the goddesses collapsed directly onto the floor, abandoning every shred of dignity as they panted and stared in disbelief.

For gods, weaving through a blood-soaked horde of zombies had been a terrifying and perilous experience in its own right.

Without waiting for Roland to give orders, the adventurers remaining in the tavern began clearing out the zombies still inside. They also sent signals from the tower to notify the survivors.

By the time they had eliminated the remaining threats, the first adventurers to receive the signal had arrived.

They were the core members of the Loki Familia.

After briefly checking on their goddess, Finn walked over with a solemn expression.

He was not particularly tall, but he always seemed utterly dependable. At that moment, however, his face was weighed down by gravity.

“Compared with the rest of Orario, the situation in most districts is relatively manageable. But the arena has completely fallen out of control.”

Finn paused, his expression twisting with struggle.

“It seems the source of the infection emerged from there. The Ganesha Familia tried to maintain order at first, but eventually they could no longer contain it. They had no choice but to flee with several gods and whatever remnants of their Familia they could gather.”

“The horde there has already piled up from people crushing against one another. They’re also far stronger than ordinary zombies. Since they were among the first to come into contact with the infection, quite a few level-two and level-three adventurers were unable to escape.”

“They’re currently being held back by the barriers the Ganesha Familia set up before leaving. The arena is close to the city gates. With so many of them, the horde may spread beyond Orario directly. If that happens, this disaster could become endless.”

“So, Finn, what do you intend to do?”

Roland raised an eyebrow, seemingly aware of what Finn was about to say.

“The Loki Familia’s magic unit is right here with us. With Riveria’s magic, we can annihilate the main horde in a single strike and resolve this crisis before it spreads further.”

Finn’s face tightened painfully.

“But the attack may affect survivors still trapped inside the buildings. If we don’t do it, however, we’ll suffer far greater casualties—and may not have enough strength left to deal with the threat from the dungeon.”

Faced with this choice between reason and emotion, he clutched his golden hair with one hand and anxiously bit his thumb with the other.

“That’s why I want your advice.”

Hearing this, Roland waved dismissively, looking faintly exasperated.

“Finn, you’re being a little too extreme.”

End of Chapter.