LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 25: Death to the Settlement
Mila
The Nightmare challenge Death to the Settlement is now starting.
Your goal is to kill as many humans over the next 27 days as possible.
Trial Points will be rewarded based on the number and power of the dead, irregardless of how they died.
Your role for this challenge is that of a human-shaped spirit of energy, but you can die just as easily as a human.
Finally, you have the following options for this challenge, but you can only choose 4 points worth.
- The language of the settlement is set to English (4)
- A detailed dossier about the settlement (2)
- Your form will be considered attractive by the settlement citizens (1)
- You start the trial with a sword (1)
- You start the trial with fitted armor (1)
- The teleportation point of the settlement will be broken upon your arrival instead of being down for 25 days 1 day after you arrive (3)
“Aalam, can you hear me?” Mila sent through their bond.
“Yes.” Aalam’s telepathic voice sounded excited. “The bond works even when we’re in different instances of the trial.
“What are you thinking about choosing from the options?”
“The detailed dossier and to be considered attractive.” As she stood in the void, the System waiting for her to make a choice, Mila continued. “If you don’t want to choose anything, I can probably translate for you. I think the chances are high our instances of this trial will be the same.”
“No.” She could almost imagine Aalam rubbing his hands together. “For trials like this, the instances are always the same, even across tutorials.
“I’ll choose no options and you can go with your choices. There will almost certainly be bonus points at the end as a result.”
Mila chose the dossier and to be considered attractive and the void around her faded. Then she arrived on a platform covered with detailed magical sigils along with twenty-three other people, and three armed guards—the sword and armor kind—guided them into the settlement proper.
There was a sun in the sky which was starting to head below the horizon; the air was cold, feeling like winter in the US’s northeast; and the small city, housing about a hundred thousand people, was mostly gothic in design, almost everything pointy and made of stone.
The three guards then explained the teleportation platform would be deactivated during the night and then turned on one more time the next morning for those heading out. Due to an astrological phenomenon the guards didn’t understand, the platform would then be unable to work for 25 days, so they were all advised to find housing for the long haul.
She and the twenty-three others were then left to their own devices in a city square and the same happened in Aalam’s instance as well, so Mila was able to confirm for herself that the instances were likely exactly the same.
For further proof, both she and Aalam headed to an alchemist shop in the city’s northeast, one specializing in water purification and medicine. Then she wrapped herself in her high grade Law Egg of Obfuscation to look around in the dark, finding the alchemist, his two apprentices, and the alchemist’s wife all already asleep in the house above the shop. The alchemist was F rank, but her sense of him was his physical stats were terrible, so there wasn’t much threat.
According to Nana Xara, most F ranks were level 1, as advancing further almost always involved either killing things or resources generally monopolized by powerful forces, so, given the alchemist likely wasn’t much of a killer, his stats were less than even Mila’s.
Mila directed Aalam to an unlocked window and his high stats and new training allowed him to silently enter. Then she guided Aalam into the kitchen, where he picked up a knife, and into the three bedrooms, where he pretty easily slit all four throats.
Aalam then got to work in the lab behind the shop in his instance, which, due to the influence of their Luck on the tutorial, had all the tools necessary for creating variant magical bacteria, just as Nana Xara had expected.
While he did that, in her instance, Mila left to do her own thing.
First, she headed back to the teleportation platform and, using her high grade Law Egg of Obfuscation and the stealth skills she’d learned on Earth, she managed to look around for over thirty minutes without the guards in the area being any the wiser. She then consulted with Aalam on the design of the platform and, using his expertise and her ability to read low-magic runes, they came up with a way to jam the platform’s effect for a day, which was all she needed.
Then she snuck away and broke into an enchanter’s shop, took a few tools, and traveled back to the teleportation platform where she spent the next two hours quietly opening up an access panel on the back of the platform and another hour using one of the enchanter tools to quietly channel mana backwards through a small circuit.
She then closed the access panel, left the area of the platform, and returned the tools to the enchanter shop before spending the rest of the night sneaking through the city, looking for secrets.
One of the secrets she found, on one of the desks in the guardhouse near the teleportation platform, was the name list for who would be leaving the city through the platform the next day and, using the dossier, she quickly figured out where each of them would have spent the night.
The next morning before dawn, she guided Aalam in where to use his Molecular Acceleration Law Egg to start a fire in the alchemist shop. Then she led him to where she’d found a dead homeless man in the slums and Aalam changed into the man’s clothes and stole an empty bottle of alcohol.
She then led him to the edge of the slums to the home of one of the twelve people leaving through the platform, the servant of a merchant, someone weaker than most humans on Earth before the integration, and Aalam emptied two of the four vials he’d made during the night into the bottle, containing a magically enhanced plague.
In her instance, Mila snuck into the servant’s home and watched him get ready, staying out of his way so he would do the exact same actions as in Aalam’s instance, and, when he was about to leave through his front door, she signaled Aalam. Then, in Aalam’s instance, Aalam dropped the bottle in front of the man’s house with enough force to cause it to shatter and walked away.
The man walked out and was infected, causing the end of the city to begin.
In Mila’s instance, on the other hand, the results weren’t so decisive.
She followed the servant and caused repeated delays in his progress. She tripped someone else into spilling something nasty, seemingly used to clean bathrooms, on him so he had to go back home to change. She stole his wallet, with the identification he’d need at the platform, and he spent 15 minutes looking for it. Then, when he gave up and headed for the platform anyway, she manipulated his environment so he would trip twice, slowing his walking speed due to the pain.
She managed to delay him almost an hour without ever being seen and his boss, one of the most powerful merchants in the city, delayed the activation of the platform to wait for him. Then, only when he finally did arrive, did they try to activate the platform and realize it was broken, but by that time it was too late.
They only had half an hour before the astrological phenomenon started and they were no where close to fixing it in time.
Mila and Aalam were both operating under the assumption that killing every single person in the settlement would provide a large bonus, so they had to either stop anyone from leaving or kill them if they did.
Aalam’s strategy, as he could make an extremely deadly plague over the course of a single night, was to infect those going through the teleportation platform. The strongest of those traveling through was the merchant, only on the high end of F rank, so none of them would survive.
Given Aalam’s extensive knowledge of the human body and the advancement of his Law Egg of Bacteria to high grade, the plague he’d made was far more effective against humans than Creeping Death had been against Rollie-Pollies or Insectoids. And, given he was an energy life form during this challenge, not a human, he’d had no reason to build an antidote, allowing him to make the plague extremely hard to cure.
The hope was many more would die on the other side of the teleportation as well, leading to bonus points.
Mila, on the other hand, couldn’t create a plague on a whim, so she instead just settled for trapping everyone in the city, allowing none to escape.
Aalam had things easier once their first task was done. He headed back to the dead body of the homeless man, found the warm clothes he had started with, and changed back into them. Then he made his way to two other locations in the city and dumped the contents of the other vials of his plague. And, finally, he headed to the home of one of the other men who’d left through the teleportation platform and broke in through one of the back windows, using his strength to break the latch.
Then he started a round of meditation on the man’s bed.
Mila, on the other hand, openly moved around the city. Mostly, she listened in on conversations to try and learn the language, but she also confirmed several pieces of information the dossier had been lacking, like the locations of the largest stockpiles of food and the sources of the city’s water.
