The dark green liquid crept slowly across the floor until it touched Luther's boots, snapping him out of his stunned state. He jerked his foot back instinctively, his heart pounding as disbelief washed over him.
Trembling, he approached Dr. Joseph's lifeless body, kneeling down beside his mentor. With unsteady hands, he removed Joseph's bird-beak mask, revealing the full horror beneath. Joseph's face was mottled with dense green patches, each the size of a broad bean, clustered across his pallid skin like a macabre rash. Dark green fluid continued to trickle from the corners of his mouth, his bloodshot eyes fixed in an empty stare. Joseph's breathing had stopped, his body lying eerily still.
Luther's stomach churned. Watching someone he respected, someone he knew, die like this; so close and so helplessly, left him feeling a hollow, bone-deep sense of powerlessness.
He reached out, almost instinctively, wanting to examine the strange patches that marred Joseph's skin, to understand the disease that had claimed him. But his hand paused halfway, the white glove hovering over the lesions, when he heard a low, rattling noise from Joseph's throat.
"Huuh… huuuh…"
It was the wet, congested sound of phlegm caught in a dying man's throat. Except… Joseph was already dead. The sound lingered, filling the room with an unsettling presence. Luther felt a chill crawl up his spine. A death rattle was common in the dying, but hearing it in a corpse felt wrong, almost unnatural.
Straightening up, Luther steeled himself and began gathering tools from around the clinic: two iron surgical knives, a rusty tray, some old linen cloth, a bone saw, a bundle of hemp rope, and a few sturdy oak sticks. Guilt tugged at him; he had never performed anything remotely close to this on someone he had known, much less his own mentor. But an old memory surfaced, a fragment from a faded, yellowed page he'd once read in the clinic's archives.
In that forgotten note, written by a previous doctor who had faced the blood plague, he'd come across some rudimentary information on the disease; descriptions of its symptoms, theories on its transmission, and even a few experimental procedures. Most had been dismissed as outdated folklore, but if there was any chance the note held useful insights, Luther had to try.
With grim determination, he looked down at Joseph's body, knowing he had to begin by stripping away his clothes. Joseph, bound in hemp ropes to keep his limbs still, lay exposed, the green patches marking his body in various stages of swelling and discoloration. Luther took a deep breath.
"Dr. Joseph… thank you," he whispered, his voice barely audible. Maybe it was to ease his conscience, or maybe it was his way of honoring the dead. Either way, he had work to do.
His hand tightened around the knife as he carefully sliced into one of the swollen patches on Joseph's left calf. Dark green pus oozed out immediately, thick and foul-smelling. Luther fought down the bile rising in his throat, using the second knife to scrape away the viscous liquid, his gloved hands moving with clinical precision.
He kept digging, carefully searching beneath the diseased tissue, hoping to find something that matched what he'd read—a strange, parasitic organism or some sort of crystallized structure that the records had hinted might be at the root of the plague.
But after minutes of painstaking work, he found nothing. Each patch he opened was just another festering pocket of decay, leaking the same foul green liquid. Frustration grew within him, but he pressed on, methodically cutting and examining each lesion on the lower half of Joseph's body. Still, his search yielded no answers.
Then he heard it again; the sound from Joseph's throat, growing louder, more persistent. Luther's hands paused, his eyes shifting to the clock on the wall. Forty-eight minutes had passed since Joseph's death. According to the notes he had read, he had exactly one hour before something… irreversible happened. That left him twelve minutes.
He exhaled, steeling his nerves, and his gaze settled on the largest swollen patch; a fist-sized mass on Joseph's abdomen. This was his last chance.
"Just once more," he murmured to himself, his voice barely steady. "If this doesn't work, I'm leaving."
Taking a deep breath, he pressed the knife against the swollen patch and sliced it open. The mass burst with a sickening 'pop', releasing a spray of greenish pus that splattered across his gloves and the floor. Luther's stomach twisted as he watched dark green maggot-like creatures writhing in the viscous liquid. They were small, almost worm-like, their bodies squirming and pulsing as they emerged from the wound.
Swallowing his disgust, Luther grabbed one of the oak sticks he had set aside, forcing himself to stay focused. He pressed the stick against Joseph's abdomen, pushing through the thick, infected flesh until he felt the tip hit something solid, something that resisted his pressure.
His heart raced. This was it; the hard object he'd read about, the so-called "core" described in those cryptic notes.
Luther wasn't certain what he'd found, it could have been a mineral or a stone-like deposit, but its hardness matched the description from the record. Excitement flared within him as he realized this was likely the "core" mentioned in those ancient notes.
He quickly picked up the saw, working meticulously to extract the object from Joseph's abdomen. After 33 tense minutes, he held the strange, fist-sized stone in his hand. It was dark green, jagged, and irregularly shaped, pulsing with a strange, unsettling aura. Was this truly the fabled "plague core"? He couldn't be sure, but he didn't have time to dwell on it.
The sound emanating from Joseph's throat grew louder, turning into a disturbing, wet gurgling, like something was clawing its way out. Luther glanced at the clock. He'd used up nearly all the time he had. Gripping the stone tightly in his left hand, he snatched Joseph's key and the saw with his right before sprinting out of the room.
He'd barely closed the door when a horrifying, gut-wrenching noise came from inside, an awful combination of muscles ripping, bones snapping, and a guttural growl that no human should be able to make. Luther locked the door, his hands trembling as the creature inside thrashed against its bindings, the walls rattling with its rage.
Feeling his legs go weak, Luther leaned against the wall, breathing hard, his heart pounding in his chest. He took a moment to steady himself, then slowly moved toward the clinic's window. Through the glass, he could see into the treatment room where Joseph's corpse; now something far less human, was twisting and straining against the restraints. His mouth had stretched into a monstrous, jagged maw, his skin taut and mottled with dark patches. The body was now in a frenzied, animalistic state, driven by a new, terrifying purpose.
This was the dark truth he had read about in that forgotten record.
The blood plague didn't just kill, it transformed its victims. An hour after death, the infected returned to life, but as something twisted, something monstrous. They became zombies, creatures driven by an insatiable hunger for flesh.
A sense of dread washed over Luther as he understood the enormity of what this meant. This wasn't just a disease; it was an unstoppable force, a calamity. A town infected with the blood plague was doomed; it would only be a matter of time before authorities decided to erase it entirely, to sacrifice it to save the surrounding regions.
Quiet, peaceful Eternal Night Town would become another grim entry in the annals of history, a place forever marked as a graveyard of the living dead.
But Luther didn't feel the despair or fear he might have expected. No, a strange sense of excitement coursed through him. His mind felt electrified, his pulse racing with something beyond terror. His cerebral cortex was flooded with dopamine, numbing his fear and filling him with exhilaration. A flicker of hope glimmered within him; a chance, however slim, to study this phenomenon, to understand the blood plague and possibly even harness it.
Then, as if responding to his thoughts, a message appeared before his eyes:
[System repair completed]
[World data loading completed]
Farming System Binding Successful]
[Host: Luther]
[Ability: Immunity – Note: Immune to all attacks from the Old Ones]
[Pet: None]
[Huntable Pets: Source of Plague - Naiwenser. Note: A creature among the Old Ones, hidden within a human in Eternal Night Town, capable of spreading plagues at will. Weak and cunning, Naiwenser finds amusement in sowing disease. Track him down to learn the origins of the blood plague.]
[Plague Stone: 1/100 – Note: Collect 100 fragments to obtain the Plague Stone, which contains crucial clues about the blood plague.]
Luther's eyes widened. Immunity to the Old Ones… a creature named Naiwenser hiding in human form… and this stone he held, the first of many pieces to something called the Plague Stone, a key that could unlock the secrets of the blood plague. He felt a surge of purpose, of renewed determination.
The blood plague had unleashed terror upon Eternal Night Town, but Luther now had an edge, a mysterious immunity, and the beginning of a path forward. In his hands lay the chance to study this scourge firsthand, to collect the stones, and to discover the hidden truths behind this nightmare.
Luther tightened his grip on the stone, a steely resolve settling within him. This wasn't just a battle against disease; it was a hunt, a quest for answers, for survival, and perhaps, for salvation.
The blood plague had marked him, but he would mark it back.