At noon, the sky gradually darkened.
A foul wind carried an ominous sign.
It was not a portent of a storm—not within the Mage Tower's sphere of control. Even a real storm could be dispersed at will.
"—What on earth is that?!"
Inside the Mage Tower, the panicked mages cried out in alarm.
They were the first to see what it was.
What came roaring over with enough force to blot out the sky was a swarm of gathered flies!
But they were no ordinary flies. They were a strange insect species somewhere between flies and locusts.
They were black and yellow, with the red compound eyes of flies, the slender bodies and folded hind legs of locusts, and wings and mouthparts resembling both. Each one was roughly twenty or thirty centimeters long—larger than an adult's two fists pressed together.
As they flew past, fine dust like spores began to fall from the sky. The heavens turned a murky yellow, as though endless yellow sand were surging through the air.
The stench was a mixture of rotten meat and fermenting feces. Anyone whose body was touched by that "spore-like" ocher dust would begin to emit the same foul odor.
As the swarm advanced, the increasingly intense stench drew closer and closer.
When they flew over human cities, people collapsed amid violent vomiting and convulsions. After vomiting came unconsciousness and an instantly rising fever. Those who did not faint wept uncontrollably, their skin swelling with one transparent blister after another, followed by weakness and incontinence.
At the very center of the swarm was a strange being.
He looked like a gigantic humanoid fly, roughly three meters tall. He had a human body, but no discernible sex characteristics. His head was that of a fly, with a ferocious, pointed set of mouthparts.