After I died, my personal maid rebelled.

[Host, host, wake up!]

The man wrinkled his nose, feeling as if something soft was pressing down on his body. He slowly opened his eyes and found himself still on the chair on the balcony last night. Alini, disguised, was wrapped in a blanket and fast asleep in his arms.

Oswald looked up; the sky was just beginning to lighten, and the city was unusually quiet.

He dared not move, adjusting his breathing and communicating with his system in his mind.

(Sir, what happened?)

[Host is warned of toxins and harmful substances in the air. Someone was burning corpses last night, and the concentration of undead magic in the air is currently dangerously high.]

(Could it be that thing we saw when we arrived?)

Oswald quickly picked up Elene, carried her into the room, gently placed her on the bed, and then tightly closed the doors and windows.

If I'm not mistaken, it's probably those high-ranking officials in the capital city starting their internal struggle again.

Initially, incineration was found to solve the problem, but it was immediately stopped after discovering that the gases produced by incineration were harmful. Later, various other methods were tried, but none of them were effective, so the incineration plan was simply resumed.

For them, they couldn't afford to be stubborn and end up with problems on both sides. They had to solve at least one of the issues first, otherwise how could they explain it to the king?

(What are the magicians doing? Can't they use wind magic to disperse the poison gas?)

[It can temporarily disperse some of the toxins, but these toxins will adhere and accumulate, and because the concentration is too high, it is likely to cause greater harm due to its spread.]

Oswald was speechless. It seemed he had to go and see for himself so he could change his plans if a bigger crisis broke out.

Elena woke up in bed, stretched, rubbed her eyes, and noticed that Oswald's expression seemed a little off.

Could it be because of what happened last night when I was on top of him?

She was a little nervous, clutching the blanket and asking timidly, "Sir, what's wrong?"

"Something's not right outside the city. Let's wash up first, and you can touch up my makeup. After breakfast, we'll go check it out together."

Alene breathed a sigh of relief. "Yes, sir."

After changing her hair color with Jenny's potion, she also learned a disguise technique from Count Peter. While not flawless, it was difficult for others to recognize her without careful observation.

The two arrived outside the city. Elene stubbornly clung to Oswald's arm, and even from a distance, Oswald saw the indescribable "Cthulhu" in just one glance.

Hundreds of meters long tentacles coiled around and crawled ashore. The mages, wearing wet cloths to cover their mouths and noses, dodged the tentacles while continuously casting fire magic with their staffs, burning the mass of flesh and blood in the river into black mist with a thunderous roar.

The magician's whirlwind spells on the city wall never stopped, blowing the black mist away from the wall. In the distance, there was also a cloud of black mist that kept rising into the sky.

"This thing actually came to life..."

Oswald deployed a wind shield, enveloping himself and Elene within it, protecting them from the poisonous fog outside.

Black fog gathered the dark clouds, and black ash kept falling from the sky, staining trees and houses with spots of black ash.

The two stayed close to the city wall, trying to stay as far away from the crowd as possible. Not far away, the papacy staff had set up a makeshift clinic, where John and Maria were. Whenever a mage with black pustules on their body approached, they would immediately use goddess magic to treat them.

Maria, who could become a saint, was naturally no ordinary person. Her efficiency in dealing with the corpse poison was even faster than that of the archbishop.

Elene seemed unable to bear the disgusting scene any longer and frowned. "My lady, should we evacuate the capital first?"

Oswald squeezed her fingers, comforting her, "Hmm... don't worry, I have a feeling something's not right."

They came here to determine whether to use the last Wishing Star; everything else was secondary.

But this calamity, spreading from the southern territory to the western territory, then to the northern territory, and finally erupting in the capital of the central region, made him feel that there was some pattern he had overlooked...

Whether it was a consequence of the time distortion or something else, he didn't know for the time being.

Moreover, speaking of the plague, first the cattle in the Southern Territory died in large numbers, and now the cattle in the Central Territory have also died. Is this also a coincidence?

Black ash fell to the earth like snow, tentacles made of flesh and blood were in front of him, and the city behind him was bustling again, probably because the "witch hunters" had started their operation again.

The flesh glowed green, and John turned sharply, meeting Oswald's gaze once more.

"Who goes there!"

A strange figure rushed out of the city gate. It was one of the critically ill patients Oswald had seen yesterday. These patients, who should have been unconscious, were now running wildly toward the river, and with a splash, they knocked down the soldiers maintaining order.

"Stop! Stop! Don't go any further!"

The fully armed soldiers turned their long spears around, but the next moment, a thunderous sound came from the earth, and more and more deformed and bloated patients rushed out of the city gate, charging frantically without avoiding the sharpness of the spear tips.

"Quickly! Close the city gates!"

Clap!

The bloated, blood-soaked body shattered the moment it struck the gun barrel, spraying large amounts of blood and bits of flesh into the air. In the soldiers' panicked eyes, one patient after another rushed forward, disregarding death, like a blood-red torrent sweeping through the ranks of soldiers.

As if welcoming a new life, they embraced the tentacles and plunged into the flesh and blood in the river with a splash.

The crowd swept past their line of sight, and through a glimmer of clarity in John's cloudy eyes, he recognized... this little guy opposite him. When did he arrive in the royal city...?

"Stop them! Stop them!"

The magicians were also thrown into panic. Visibly, the moment the shattered human bodies entered the river, the previously shriveled flesh quickly filled up and began to spin again.

The water was turbulent, and the central whirlpool was extremely turbulent and was constantly accelerating.

The staff pointed at the dense crowd, but the magic that was about to be unleashed was interrupted by the suddenly enraged tentacles, which swung wildly along the vortex and suddenly slapped at the magician.

The city gates finally slammed shut, as if cutting off the flood, but it didn't last long before the patients overwhelmed the guards, climbed the city walls, and leaped heavily, crashing to the ground one after another.

The world seemed to lose its rationality in that instant. Magicians took to the air one after another, and all kinds of powerful magic bombarded the vortex. Tentacles climbed high, as if to drag them into hell.

With his arm around Eleanor's slender waist, Oswald vanished from his spot in the blink of an eye and reappeared on a large tree.

(Please tell me, what exactly is this thing?)

[Looks like a corrupted slime. Congratulations, host, you've unlocked a new entry in your encyclopedia. And you're increasingly showing villainous traits, triggering high-difficulty calamity events wherever you go.]

(...)

The shattered corpses on the ground seemed to have been given a mind of their own, crawling towards the river. The earth turned crimson, and the soldiers finally could not resist, being swept into the vortex of boiling flesh and blood one after another.

The sudden catastrophe triggered panic throughout the city. The situation was out of control both inside and outside the city. Black snow drifted in the howling wind. Medivh could no longer care about the remaining flesh and blood in the deep pit and flew to the front of the vortex like a shooting star.

Oswald looked up and saw a blinding white light flashing from Medivh's staff.

Above the sky, an enormous lion's head, formed from condensed light, burst through the dark clouds, its thunderous roar resonating in the hearts of everyone present.

White light illuminated the earth, and the mountain-like lion's head overwhelmed the tentacles, crashing heavily into the vortex.

The river was severed, the earth shook, and in the instant the lion's head disappeared, the whirlpool shattered with a deafening roar, spraying blood hundreds of meters high, and the resulting wind pressure blew the still-running patient backward.

Oswald hugged Elene tightly and immediately stepped back, the large tree beneath their feet overturning and falling in the turbulence.

However, the next second, the blood and flesh scattered in mid-air suddenly paused, and as if time had reversed, it shot towards the center of the vortex. The river surged back into the channel, which had been widened several times over. The corrupt slime finally completed its fusion, revealing its enormous true form.

"Ring the bell, assemble!"

Medivh roared. To him, the sight of a giant, blood-red jelly with countless disgusting tentacles was actually a more desirable situation, at least much easier than dealing with the poisonous flesh.

The soldiers on the city wall immediately rang the large bell, its clear, ringing sound echoing throughout the city.

John walked toward Medivh, glancing once more at Oswald not far away. Oswald, realizing his identity had been exposed, simply smiled at him.

Soon, the mage Sophia arrived at the scene, followed by the adventurer Dane who jumped off the city wall and the royal guard's sharpshooter Charles.

The five-person expedition team assembled, their sharp eyes simultaneously fixed on the giant scarlet slime whose surface was covered with hair, human skin, and rat skin.

The corpses on the ground, the surviving soldiers were pulled into its body one by one by its tentacles. The translucent slime body could be clearly seen inside, the body was instantly dissolved, and then a hideous skin floated on the slime's surface.

The flesh-and-blood slime wriggled its way toward the royal city, moving slowly, washing away the blood from the ground.

The city gates reopened, and the remaining faculty and survivors quickly evacuated, leaving only the punitive squad and Oswald watching from a distance.

"Stop its advance first, then find its weakness!" Medivh, sword in one hand and staff in the other, stepped forward first, then turned to John and shouted, "You're old, stay away from the center of the battle and come to our aid at the crucial moment."

Medivh's spell was cast, providing Oswald with a rare opportunity to observe the battle between the great mages.

The staff trembled slightly, and a beam of light shot up from the ground and into the sky. In an instant, more than a dozen huge, ancient and exquisite magic circles appeared above the slime's head.

"Gravity spell, activate!"

An unparalleled force, emanating from the fluctuations of space, plummeted at high speed from the sky towards the magic circle. The distorted gravity tore the magic circle apart, but the force increased several times over. The gravity continued to accumulate, completing the entire acceleration process from slow to extreme speed in a single second.

The terrifying acceleration instantly crushed the magic circle, transforming it into a massive gravitational force that slammed into the ground and the slime's body.

The ground collapsed dozens of meters in an instant, without even raising a speck of dust. The slime's body shattered once more, sprawling into a flat mass of flesh.

Behind Medivh, the powerful warriors of the royal city mobilized in unison, thus beginning the punitive expedition.