Cairo.
Blood stained every street red, and a foul stench spread unchecked. High Priest Imhotep was dead, but the curse of the Ten Plagues of Egypt he had left behind continued to spread.
Frogs with poison-secreting skin crawled over the stone walls.
Flies carrying the plague buzzed overhead.
Whoosh—roar!
The British bomber formation had gone completely out of control. Shrouded in the black mist of the undead, its pilots reduced to withered bones, the primitive bombers flew on instinct, diving toward the city and haphazardly dropping bombs along the way.
BOOM!
BOOM~
Bricks and sand exploded. The Bone Legion, Plague Warriors, Desert Soldiers with jackal heads and human bodies, the Pharaoh's Royal Guard, and members of the East Sea Team were all caught in the indiscriminate area attacks and wounded.
"Kazan."
At the ochre city gate, Kobayashi Yoshito gripped his sharp Kodachi. Kalla of Gloom swirled around him, and faint purple ghost energy shielded his body.
As the power of the orange-red Blade Soul spread beneath his feet, its enhancement enveloped him.
"Gene Lock, open for me!"
"Die! I'll cut you down with one strike!"
Strength surged through his previously aching wrist. With a slight twist, he brought the Kodachi down in a precise slash.
Sizzle! Dark ghostly power coated the weapon, cleaving an onrushing plague-stricken resident in two.
He followed with an Uppercut, sending the corpse flying into a group of skeletal undead charging from behind.
"Everyone, hold on!"
A cool female voice rang out from a corner. Kitagawa Nacai wore Life Heavy Armor. Gritting her teeth, she drove the cross into the ground.
Golden Holy Light burst out at once.
The Nature Prayer Domain spread outward from the cross. Within a ten-meter radius, the wounds of any ally began to heal, and their stamina slowly recovered.
A supply point had formed.
"The downside is that I don't have a decent heavy weapon anymore."
A gentle glow shone at her fingertips as Slow Heal repeatedly fell upon the injured descendants of the Royal Guard around her.
Seeing the healer give up her trusty weapon, several sharp-eyed newcomers among the Reincarnators moved in to protect her.
Beyond the main battle.
A slender figure darted through the undead army like a lone wolf. It was Zhao Yingkong.
A basic-level assassin who had unlocked the First-Stage Gene Lock, she made the most of her agility. Moving like a phantom, she skimmed over corpses and walls, leaping with the grace of a cat and repeatedly dodging the bone blades of sand-shrouded Jackal Warriors.
Along the way, she used the properties of her Runic Scimitar and Guardian Stone Talisman to strike at the vital points of lesser enemies, reaping lives with brisk efficiency.
But as time passed, the talisman at her waist grew warm. The power engraved upon it had been pushed to its limit and could fade at any moment.
At last, black undead mist from a plague-ridden skeletal soldier curled around her ankle. Zhao Yingkong murmured a rune:
"Nile-duat Mert, Amentikhe m!"
The Power of the Underworld River appeared, forming a gray barrier that held back the corrosive undead aura.
The instant she pulled back, Zhao Yingkong instinctively activated the Protection of Horus.
Golden light rose around her, shielding her from the poisonous swelling caused by the plague. All the while, her blade never stopped moving as she reaped more lives!
Thud.
The talisman hanging at her waist crumbled into sand.
--No matter how agile she was, facing an endless tide of undead meant that her wounds gradually multiplied, while her stamina and condition steadily declined.
She bit her lip and glanced at Kobayashi Yoshito, not far away, unleashing the power of Kazan. Then she looked at Kitagawa Nacai, who was maintaining the Holy Light Domain. A hint of awkwardness crossed her usually aloof face. She turned away, intending to ask for help.
But she didn't need to speak up.
A qualified healer had to keep the big picture in mind and always watch the main damage dealer.
"Slow Heal." Kitagawa Nacai had begun chanting as soon as she noticed the talisman starting to crack. Green light shimmered in her hands.
A moment later, a moving magic circle appeared beneath Zhao Yingkong's feet.
"Holy Purification."
Golden light followed seamlessly.
The purifying power swept through, washing away the negative energies that had been slowly eating into her body.
"What was that haughty act for, you idiot? Couldn't you have come over sooner?" Kobayashi Yoshito thought snidely, stepping out of the Blade Soul of Kazan's enhancement field and rushing over to help.
"Ghost Step."
His body turned translucent, while Kalla's afterimage helped block the attacks.
The three of them began to work in sync.
"Take this. I've strengthened my Soul Bender power, so I'm naturally highly resistant to negative effects."
The stone traced an arc through the air and landed neatly in Zhao Yingkong's hands.
As the group tightened its formation, it held back a large number of Jackal Warriors and Undead Soldiers, preventing them from leaving the city and spreading the plague curse--
Kitagawa Nacai held the center, keeping the Holy Light Domain active as she alternated between healing and purification.
Relying on her extreme agility, Zhao Yingkong weaved through Kazan's magic circle, activating the new talisman to speed up her decapitations.
Level 25C Kobayashi Yoshito took hits and dealt damage at the same time. More than a hundred elite soldiers from the Pharaoh's present-day Royal Guard closed in around him.
Though they had clashed over life and death in the real world, they could put everything aside on Cairo's cursed battlefield.
The battle went on.
"Dammit, I can't cut them anymore. Face the sun!"
The East Sea Team's new Reincarnators relied on their talismans and scimitars to fight desperately alongside the Native Guard Legion. But there were simply too many undead, and despair began to creep over them again.
"Time to charge, my Vampire boss."
At Kobayashi's urging, the middle-aged, stiff-backed man who had remained silent all along, carrying two nuclear backpacks, finally moved.
"East Sea Team, banzai!!!"
His voice brimmed with a deranged fervor.
His physical abilities surged to twice those of an ordinary person. A healing circle followed him, and the talisman activated, allowing him to keep pushing forward through the tide of undead.
One thousand meters.
Two thousand meters.
Before long, the artificial human could advance no farther. He pressed the activation button where he stood, and a flash bright enough to blot out the sun erupted. The two nuclear backpacks detonated in a directed blast with the force of a hundred tons of TNT.
BOOOM!
A mushroom cloud rose.
A scorching shock wave swept outward. The cursed were caught in the blast first, their bones vaporized on the spot without a trace.
The sand-covered Jackal-Headed Warriors surging forward in waves had their sand armor melt and crack under the extreme heat. The shock wave tore their cursed bodies apart.
Sand was flung a hundred meters into the air!
Radiant heat and shock waves spread in layers, instantly evaporating and dispersing the chilling black mist that the undead relied on to survive.
Calling a nuclear explosion a tiny artificial sun wasn't wrong~
"Well, next it's my boss's turn."
"At the Battle of Nagashino in 1575, facing the Oda Clan's matchlock troops, the Takeda Clan's Red Cavalry charged forward. That was Japanese courage.
I admire that spirit. Now it's your turn. Charge! Charge bravely!"
As she spoke, Kitagawa Nacai patted the man beside her on the shoulder.
Every overworked employee had reason to hate capitalists, especially Kitagawa, a former model who was always rushing between jobs and hardly ever got time to rest.
Zhao Yingkong: "..."
The girl, who had been led astray, couldn't help wondering if she should also go to America to stock up.
It seemed to work pretty well.
BOOOM~
The city wall shook again. Within three hundred meters of the nuclear blast's epicenter, every undead creature had been wiped out, and the pressure eased considerably.
The surviving soldiers, whether locals or Reincarnators, would just have to deal with the radiation now.
At that moment, on an inconspicuous stretch of battlefield at the edge, the old man Jingu had led a guard squad in a greedy advance and was quietly surrounded by Undead Soldiers.
The crushing pressure of imminent death hit him. His pupils contracted as power surged within him.
The First-Stage Gene Lock opened.
But his foundation was too weak. The instant he released a flicker of power, the swarming Cursed Legion devoured him. He didn't even manage to scream.
A faint pulse of soul energy was quietly drawn away.