After knocking Serika unconscious, Murphy expertly stuffed her into the trunk.
"Waddiwasi!"
The trunk shot straight into the sky as if hurled by a catapult. Yet after it reached a certain height, its speed suddenly slowed, and no matter how Murphy poured in more magic, the trunk would not rise any farther.
Sure enough, things would not be that simple.
Murphy lowered the trunk, and after taking Serika out, he found that the girl looked very wrong.
Her face was bluish-black, and the blood vessels around her neck had been dyed the same dark cyan by something.
That bluish-black color seemed to have originated from her chest, and was now retreating back toward it.
Murphy hesitated for a moment, but in the end, the noble sentiment of healing the sick and saving lives defeated that tiny bit of shame. He undid Serika's clothes.
There, slightly above the center of a pair of big rabbits, was a black patch the size of a yellow apricot. It looked like a bruise, but far more ominous.
"The plague?"
But why had it suddenly flared up?
He glanced at the sky, then flew up again with Serika. As their altitude increased, Serika's complexion rapidly turned ghastly. It soon went from blue to black, and in the blink of an eye she was almost turning into an African girl.
This...
Could it be that the "Seed of the Mind" was not entirely psychological in effect, but could actually restrict the modified subject's movements through bacteria or something similar?
Murphy put Serika back down and tried Finite Incantatem, curse-breaking potions, and the like, but none of them worked.
Just as the diary had said, ordinary methods simply could not remove the Seed of the Mind.
Dual control of mind and behavior, and resistant to counter-curses!
As