Debridement

"Buck!"

Rovi spun around and barked, "Notify Priest Alpha immediately—seal off all water sources around the admin building, including the rainwater collection tanks!"

"Huh? But Advisor, that's just rainwater..."

"Execute the order!"

Rovi's voice was harsher than ever.

"Order all Defense Force personnel to put on their Gas Masks. Without my permission, no one takes them off—not even to eat!"

His gut told him the real attack had already begun.

Not guns, not poison.

But something far more insidious, far deadlier.

The moment his words fell, a commotion erupted outside the window.

Rovi rushed to the window.

By the rainwater collection tank, an Old Servitor who had been sweeping up dropped his broom, clutching his throat in agony.

His body began to convulse violently.

His skin turned a ashen gray before the naked eye.

Then.

His belly swelled like an overinflated balloon, bulging rapidly.

"Boom!"

A dull thud.

The Old Servitor's abdomen burst open.

No gory spray of blood and flesh.

What spilled out from his gut wasn't organs either.

But tens of thousands of... Greenbottle Flies.

They buzzed, a black cyclone that instantly engulfed the crowd nearby.

In that moment, screams, wails, and alarms tore through the morning calm!

Rovi watched it all, the quill in his hand snapping in two.

"Here it comes."

He murmured under his breath.

No fear in his eyes.

Only the cold, resolute acceptance of an inevitable fate.

"All personnel, enter First-Level Combat Readiness."

He pressed the red button on his desk, his voice booming through the loudspeakers across the entire Granary.

"This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill."

"For the Emperor, for survival... prepare for battle!"

The black cyclone of Greenbottle Flies didn't spread immediately.

They paused midair for an instant, as if possessing some collective intelligence.

The sound of their wings stacked together.

No longer an irritating buzz.

It became a low murmur.

As if countless voices were whispering in everyone's ears.

These sounds drilled into eardrums, bringing not just noise but nausea.

Making stomachs cramp involuntarily.

Then, they scattered.

Not in chaotic flight, but in purposeful "seeding."

They charged at the nearest crowd.

Those Laborers who had just been queuing for soup, now screaming with mouths wide open in terror.

The flies burrowed into their nostrils, ears, and straight into their gaping, horrified mouths.

"Seal the doors and windows, activate the positive pressure ventilation system!"

Rovi's voice blasted through the broadcast system.

"All Defense Force, open fire!"

"Target isn't the flies—it's the people who've been parasitized!"

"Don't let them near the defensive line!"

On the square, a young Laborer clutched his throat and collapsed to his knees.

Countless tiny worms writhed beneath his skin.

His once gaunt body rapidly inflated, swelling up.

He lifted his head—the terror in his eyes was gone, replaced by a blissful, vacant look.

"Heh... heheh..."

A bizarre, idiotic laugh escaped his lips, yellow-green pus dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

"Boom!"

A large-caliber Boltgun round precisely blew apart his upper body.

Buck stood on the second-floor balcony.

Smoke curled from the muzzle of his Boltgun.

This one-eyed commander hadn't hesitated for a second.

His prosthetic eye spun wildly, locking onto every target showing signs of mutation.

"Don't just stand there—open fire!"

Buck roared at the stunned soldiers below.

"Those are the Lord of Pestilence's walking corpses! If you don't want to turn into rotting meat, pull the damn trigger!"

Jolted awake by their commander's shout, the Defense Force soldiers finally squeezed the triggers of their Heavy Logging Guns.

"Brrrrrrt."

A dull, rhythmic roar tore through the air.

The "Machine Spirit appeasement" Rovi had spent the entire night performing proved its worth.

These aging killing machines didn't jam or explode.

They spat half-meter tongues of flame, pouring a dense metal storm into the crowd.

This wasn't war—it was slaughter.

And a necessary surgical cleansing.

The freshly mutated corpses, still sluggish in their movements, fell like wheat under the heavy machine gun fire.

Large-caliber rounds easily shredded their swollen limbs.

Unhatched eggs and pus exploded into foul clouds of blood mist.

Rovi stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, hands clasped behind his back, his expression grave.

He watched the falling figures—

Just ten minutes ago.

They'd been thanking him for that steaming bowl of Green Soup.

"Esteemed Advisor," Priest Alpha said, puzzled. "The data model has deviated."

"According to standard corruption rates, these hosts should have completely lost motor function within thirty seconds of contact and turned into vectors."

"But..."

The Priest extended a Mechanical Tentacle.

Pointing at a few mutants below who, despite being shot, were still stubbornly crawling.

"Their physical resilience is higher than predicted. The transformation process seems to be encountering some kind of... resistance."

Rovi narrowed his eyes.

He'd noticed it too.

Those laborers who'd had flies burrow into them—their bodies were mutating.

Yet in those first few dozen seconds, many still managed to retain a shred of clarity.

Some even tried to dig the foreign objects out of their throats with their fingers.

That didn't add up.

For the underclass, chronically malnourished with nearly collapsed immune systems.

The plague virus should have been an instant kill.

Unless...

"It's the Green Soup."

Rovi quickly found the answer.

"The Green Soup is rich in protein, calories, and contains trace antibiotics."

"Even though they'd only eaten one meal, that 'full belly' had activated the immune functions long dormant in their bodies."

"Even if it was just a final flicker, it bought them time to react."

At this moment, Rovi couldn't help but feel a stir of emotion.

This was the strength of mortals.

Even as lowly as ants, give them just a little nourishment.

And they would struggle for a single second of life in the face of annihilation.

In truth, the agri-world of "Fertility II" was no pastoral, golden Granary.

It was a colossal millstone forged from flesh and steel.

On the horizon loomed the cancerous, bloated spires of a Hive City.

They belched sky-obscuring poison smoke, staining the heavens a sickly gray-yellow.

And beneath the shadow of the Hive City.

Lay endless farms and fungus cultivation chambers.

Like blood vessels, they were driven into the planet's barren crust, draining its nutrients day and night without cease.

Every inch of land here was forced into cultivation.

Every drop of water was cycled and filtered countless times.

The harvested grain filled the towering, cloud-scraping warehouses of the Imperial Tithe.

Enough to stuff the bellies of the sector fleet.

And even be sent far away to the tables of Holy Terra.

Yet these Laborers, toiling day and night in the depths of the Hive City, cultivating crops in toxic wastewater, could not claim a single grain for themselves.

To them, it was the God-Emperor's tribute, the private property of the nobility.

Untouchable by common mortals.

They could only huddle in the shadow of abundance.

Gnawing on recycled corpse-starch, filtered industrial residue, and Green Soup.

Living in the very heart of a Granary, yet surrounded by famine.

This was the grand, holy Empire...