919
The joints in his arm gave soft cracks and began to shift, as though the arm would fall straight off his shoulder the next second.
His sleeve was already soaked in pus and blood, and his arm grew heavier. Medici distinctly felt his body rotting again, but this time, the sensation was completely different from what he remembered. He stopped and looked at the sky, which had turned a dull gray. Suddenly, something occurred to him, and he understood.
The instant the answer appeared in his mind, two voices rang out from either side of his face:
"This is...!"
"Don't be an idiot. Run!"
Medici turned to look. The corpses lying on the ground had already rotted too. The foul blood and stench of decay were impossible to ignore, and stark white bones were even visible through the rotting flesh-they looked nothing like people who had just died, but like bodies left out in the wilderness for a week!
This was already beyond the scope of "disease."
At the same time, the city Medici had lived in for half a month suddenly became utterly unfamiliar. The sun was no longer visible, and the entire city was gray and filthy, looking dilapidated and riddled with damage. Though not a single living person was present, it inexplicably gave off a sense of tension and unease. As the city fell into disrepair, ruins appeared for no apparent reason. Some buildings that had been standing perfectly intact bizarrely collapsed, their wall coverings peeling away, while fire flickered in the distance.
An eerie atmosphere shrouded the city.
Medici had once walked through the entire city, taking in its layout. He had even checked a map he bought to confirm the locations of useful side streets and even sewers. It was fair to say that,