A change of faith, prayers to Pestilence

Beneath a deathly gray sky, a flock of black carrion birds perched atop the statue of Cthulhu in the church.

"Gagaga~"

The piercing cries drifted into the distance on the foul-smelling breeze. As if they had discovered something, they immediately flapped their wings and flew towards a corner, completely covering it.

"Da da da~"

A faint sound of footsteps came from the street, and a thin child, clutching a bag, walked unsteadily forward.

As it passed the corner, it startled the flock of carrion birds, who flapped their wings and flew back to the Cthulhu statue in the church.

And where they had just covered, a pile of rotting, foul-smelling corpses was now exposed.

The Little Boy was already numb to it all, and walked towards the church expressionlessly.

Pushing open the door, one finds the church floor littered with people, all of them appearing disoriented and dazed.

Many of them also had festering sores, pustules, or blisters on their bodies.

The Little Boy walked up to a middle-aged woman lying in the corner, opened his pocket, and quietly took out a glass bottle containing a pale yellow liquid.

"Mom, this is a bottle of medicine I found that cures Dark Erosion Syndrome. There's still some left in it, so I diluted it with some water. Drink it; it might make you feel better."

The middle-aged woman looked at her child with a pale face, her eyes reddening, and stroked his face with her hand.

"Xiao Ge is so sensible. You drink it. Mom is fine, almost better. Look, I have more strength to speak now!"

The child nodded as if he understood, and under his mother's repeated insistence, drank the pale yellow liquid.

"Xiao Ge, Mommy's going to sleep for a bit."

After speaking, the mother turned her back and quietly lifted her clothes, revealing her already rotten and festering abdomen.

The Pestilence infection had already begun to decay her body, and the medicine for treating Dark Erosion Syndrome could not cure the Pestilence.

A few tears finally welled up in her eyes, and suppressing her trembling body, she closed her eyes.

And people infected with the Pestilence are everywhere here.

This is a remote town far from any city, and one of the first towns to experience the Pestilence.

In order to further curb the spread of the Pestilence, the city had long since severed ties with their towns.

In other words, this place is now an abandoned land.

Nearly half of the population has died from the Pestilence. At first, the bodies could be disposed of, but now no one cares about them anymore.

They were all carelessly left in street corners, left to rot or be eaten by carrion.

As for the possibility of further spread of the Pestilence?

It doesn't matter anymore. Those who could have contracted the Pestilence had already done so, and those who hadn't were just a matter of time.

All the humans who were still alive gathered in churches belonging to different factions.

The reason they gather in these places is that they want to gain the protection of their faith, or those without faith hope to end the Pestilence under the protection of these unknown Eldritch Beings beings.

They don't have that ability; they don't care about their own lives or deaths, or perhaps they even enjoy their own desperate and painful state...

There are many possibilities, but they all point to the fact that their prayers were ineffective.

Even those who gained some power from the existence of faith and were able to manipulate Magic Energy to become Potions became carriers of the Pestilence.

They endured the torment of illness, watching themselves slowly walk towards death, gradually sinking into the abyss of despair.

Their existing beliefs have become unstable, or rather... they were never stable to begin with.

They simply want to gain superhuman strength from faith, so they can solve all kinds of crises in this world on their own.

But when you're in crisis and your beliefs can't solve the immediate problem, then it really doesn't matter.

They all hoped so, because the large number of corpses piled up here would directly attract the legendary Abomination.

After all, they all knew the rumors about Abomination, that when it appeared, it brought not only death, but also endless life.

They couldn't know exactly what this meant, or whether it was true or false.

But at least it can end their suffering directly and cleanly.

Unfortunately, perhaps because so many places were suffering from the Pestilence, Abomination Abomination appeared in other places, but they didn't come to them.

In the despairing church ravaged by the Pestilence, the doors were pushed open once more.

Some people who were in relatively good condition led in a Magic Energy powered loading machine loaded with food.

"Everyone, come eat! Wake up, everyone! Call out to each other!"

Some people dragged their weary bodies over, while others opened their dazed eyes from their slumber.

And some people... will never wake up again.

"Mom, wake up! Dinner's ready."

"Mom, wake up!"

"Mom?"

"Mom! Waaaaah~"

The child named Xiao Ge pushed his mother's body and shouted loudly, but gradually he turned into lying on his mother's body and crying loudly.

Although he was young, he had seen many similar situations in recent times.

There's no one who can't be woken up... unless they're already dead.

Crying is a common occurrence here; no one cares about your emotions, and people have long since become numb to them.

Every mealtime was also a time to check if anyone had died.

Including the child's mother, five more bodies were born in the church.

Some people began to move the body to dispose of it, which naturally involved dumping it in a corner of the street outside the church.

At these times, it is also the moment when everyone is most silent and despair is at its peak.

No one knows if they will be the next corpse thrown out to rot and be eaten by carrion.

Some people began to pray silently, and the object of their prayers was naturally not the being they had previously believed in, who could not offer them any help.

Instead, they shifted their focus to the Pestilence and disease itself.

Since we are trapped by Pestilence and disease, let us pray that the Pestilence and disease stay away from us, or that we can survive the infection.

I won't be the next one to die.

This is similar to how, when humanity first began to believe in those Eldritch Beings and eerie tales, it was done under the influence of fear and despair created by those tales.

They hope to be spared from disaster, or to gain the strength to protect themselves.

It began with a belief in Pestilence and diseases, and that's where it all started.

As one person begins to pray, more and more people begin to join in.

And such incidents are not limited to this one town.

More and more people are joining the ranks of those who are beginning to pray about the Pestilence and the disease itself.

At the same time, an invisible force slowly gathered together during this prayer.