Talk and Laugh While Turning to Ashes

"Did this red dust accelerate the activation of the Zombie Potion in my body?"

Rein looked at his rapidly shriveling arm. How could he not understand that this was what it looked like when poison took effect?

Moreover, his eyesight was now astonishingly sharp. Those red threads, like sweat hairs, were clearly "Bloodline Worms" even finer than a strand of hair!

The Smart Brain also clearly indicated that a large number of life forms had been "activated" within his body!

"What the hell is going on?! The Zombie Potion isn't actually a poison, but some kind of dormant living organisms?"

In an instant, countless unbelievable thoughts instinctively flooded Rein's mind.

With only thirty seconds left to live, there was no time for deep thought. He unhesitatingly took out several potions from his folded space.

Advanced Antidote Potion, Advanced Healing Potion, Advanced Cure Potion. Without time to discern, he injected all the advanced potions he thought might be useful from his storage space into his thigh.

But it still had no effect; the red hairs continued to grow wildly.

Rein could clearly feel his life force draining from his body.

The dizziness intensified.

Those "Bloodline Worms," like blood-sucking leeches, were frantically absorbing the blood and moisture from his body, as if they wouldn't stop until he was completely dried out.

In just these one or two seconds, Rein's bodily fluids were reduced by another ten percent. His face was like a zombie's, withered and gaunt, and his consciousness was gradually blurring.

However, just as Rein felt he was about to die and transmigrate again...

A dramatic scene unfolded!

"Huh?"

As one of the needles pierced his skin, Rein instantly felt as if his soul had returned to his body, and his consciousness became clearer and clearer.

Upon closer inspection, the "red hairs" all over his body were visibly shrinking. They were actually injecting the extracted bodily fluids back into his body?!

"I'm saved!"

After a trip to the gates of hell, Rein felt a sense of lingering shock, his chest heaving as he gasped for air.

Looking again, the potion he was injecting, the one that was working, was actually the antidote to the Zombie Potion that he had previously concocted in Piscis's laboratory for practice.

[Ding! Unnamed swarm has fallen into dormancy. Estimated wake-up time: 1094 days.]

Phew.

Rein breathed a huge sigh of relief.

The activation period had been reset to three years.

Although the hidden danger remained, at least his life was saved for now.

At this moment, he also understood. This so-called Zombie Potion was actually a mysterious parasitic worm?

And the so-called "antidote" was actually a potion to put the parasite into dormancy?

And that red dust earlier was the catalyst that made the parasite awaken?

A lot of strange knowledge suddenly popped into his head.

"Huh?"

Rein didn't have time to think about the connection, but suddenly, a thought that made his scalp tingle flashed through his mind.

"Damn it, is Piscis a mole for the Oma royalty?!"

Rein was saved by the "antidote" he had used for practice when studying potion-making.

But those other people who had taken the Zombie Potion were not so lucky.

The moment those red "fireworks" exploded, it sealed the fate of tragedy.

The death rate among the Bandit Groups was already very high, with members being replaced quickly. For a large group like the Weasel Bandit Group, more than half of their members had taken the Zombie Potion.

It wasn't just the newcomers; even the old members who thought they had been "cured" were affected.

Ordinary gas masks couldn't block such fine dust. Once inhaled, thirty seconds was enough to be fatal.

And the First Prince's advisor had been planning this for three years. This poison had already spread through various channels, and it wasn't just the Weasel Gang that had been affected!

One could imagine, among these more than 100,000 people, how many harbored those red-line poisonous worms in their bodies.

Just as [White Wolf] Bazel was leading a group of bandits to surround Oma and his companions, screams suddenly erupted from the crowd.

"Brother, why do you have red hair growing on your body?"

"What's going on, what the hell is sucking my blood..."

"Damn it, hurry and help me pull out these red hairs and burn them with fire..."

"Ahhh!"

The heart-wrenching screams sent chills down one's spine.

At first, there were only a few isolated screams, then it was like a chain reaction, and waves of wails erupted one after another.

Companions who were just moments ago alive and kicking, shouting and fighting, suddenly turned into "red-haired monsters" and in the blink of an eye were sucked dry into mummified corpses, their deaths grotesque.

How terrifying was this scene?

It would be one thing if it were just one or two people, but seeing the people in front of him falling like wheat being harvested, wouldn't any normal person's legs turn to jelly from fear?

In just over ten breaths, half of the tens of thousands of bandits who had been surrounding and attacking the First Prince of Oma had fallen!

Killing tens of thousands of people with just a few fireworks, such a bizarre method made even top experts like [White Wolf] Basel break out in a cold sweat.

With tens of thousands of people vanishing in thin air while talking and laughing, at this moment, everyone looked at the black-robed aide beside the First Prince Quentin with a deep sense of dread in their eyes.

Basel finally understood why this guy named "Metternich" had given him such a chilling feeling.

With such means, victory was already seventy percent secured without even a fight!

Vaguely, he felt that the words "catch them all in one net" that this guy had just spoken might just come true.

Because, Basel also thought of an even worse consequence!

"Huh? We're okay?"

"Haha... it seems this poison only works on the newcomers?"

"Damn it, it was the Alchemists in the gang! They hid bugs in the potions they prepared for the newcomers..."

"It's an inside job! So those guys from Oma had already infiltrated..."

"..."

Some of the smarter bandits had probably already guessed the cause and effect of the situation.

The leaders of the bandit groups were also somewhat fortunate. Although this "firework killing" had exceeded everyone's expectations, the damage to the elite members of the major gangs was not severe.

The tens of thousands who died were mostly newcomers who hadn't awakened their supernatural abilities, or Awakened who had just broken through the first stage of Gene Locks.

These people were not the core members of the major bandit groups, and their combat power was very ordinary.

It didn't matter if they died; the lives of newcomers weren't valuable, and they could just recruit more.

However, before long, the leaders' fortune turned into despair.

"Not good! Mechanical City has stopped operating!"

"Damn it, where are the stokers? Hurry up and add coal..."

"Leader, it's bad, all the stokers are dead!"

"..."

The commotion resumed. The bandit leaders who had been feeling fortunate just moments ago now realized that disaster was imminent!

What was the job of the newcomers in the bandit groups?

Stokers, gunners, and mechanical control operators!

With their deaths, it meant that there was no one to operate Mechanical City.

A Mechanical City with no one operating it was just a pile of scrap metal!

The dust spread unimpeded into the control rooms of the major Mechanical Cities, and then a large number of "red-haired monsters" died...

The larger the Mechanical City, the more people were needed for coordinated operation. In the blink of an eye, over ninety percent of the grassroots operational personnel had died!

Even if the surviving bandit leaders wanted to operate them, they were powerless.

The result was that in the blink of an eye, there were no more cannons firing from the Mechanical Cities of the various bandit groups; the steam boilers, with no one to add coal, provided less and less kinetic energy, and gradually ground to a halt...

In the blink of an eye, all the thousand-plus Mechanical Cities that had been flexibly evading just moments ago were immobilized.

And the despairing bad news continued to pour in.

From the far distance of their vision, they could already see clusters of dark shadows appearing on the horizon. Those were the large mechanical legions of the Oma Empire closing in...

Without Mechanical Cities, the bandits had also lost their greatest reliance for escape.

This time, they were truly going to be annihilated.

"This method is f***ing awesome!"

Rein looked at the scene before him, and four words instantly flashed in his mind: trapping a turtle in a jar!

Even though he himself was one of the people being calculated, he had to admit the brilliance of the person who had laid out this plan.

But then he thought of something else and let out a "Holy crap!", standing there frozen as if struck by lightning.

"Piscis was a spy for the Oma royalty, so could it be that the secret of 'Baron Morin's Relic' has already been leaked to someone else?"

At this moment, Rein looked at the battlefield, which resembled a purgatory, and his expression grew even more grim.

Originally, he had planned to be the first to escape the center of the battlefield and save his own life.

Even if he were captured by the Oma Empire's army, with his identities as a "doctor's apprentice" and an "alchemist's apprentice," he would most likely not be killed.

Wherever he went, these two professions had preferential treatment.

Moreover, he was just a newcomer bandit and wasn't on the wanted list, so his crimes weren't capital offenses.

After being captured, perhaps he could defect and completely abandon his bandit identity, joining the Oma Empire...

However, because Piscis was an Oma spy, all of this became a pipe dream.

He was now carrying a great treasure. Although Piscis was dead, if an outsider knew this secret, they would definitely not give up on causing him trouble.

Oh. I almost forgot.

And the mastermind who hired Quinn to wipe out the clan!

When Rein is captured as a newcomer to the Weasel Bandit Group, that mastermind will surely find him through their own means.

If caught, he'd most likely not escape soul-searching interrogation.

Baron Morin's Relic meant a heaven-sent opportunity to change his fate for Rein.

As for handing over all his secrets to exchange for a life of being a salted fish?

Hah, spit!

He'd had enough of being a salted fish in his past life; this life, he planned to do something different!

"I can only fight my way out."

Rein thought of this and took a deep breath.

At least with the Smart Brain, his chances of escaping weren't small.

[Ding! Ballistic trajectory analysis calculated, direction →.]

The ballistic trajectory analysis revealed the weak point in the Oma Empire's mechanical army encirclement, to the southwest. That was the only chance.

He didn't hesitate any longer and darted to the edge of the battlefield, swift as a leopard.

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