Chapter 50
“Search every nearby alley thoroughly! If there’s anything strange about the walls or the floor, report it immediately!”
Eric stepped out of the inner city with a confident expression.
Hector followed, leading a few soldiers, reluctantly obeying his orders while keeping a wary eye on him.
“…Sir Gregorius, are we really supposed to trust that maniac?”
Watching Eric wander around as if searching for something, Hector turned to Gregorius with a worried look.
It was the cardinal himself. The one who everyone in the northern region deeply respected. That alone was reason enough to follow Eric’s request, at least for now.
But trusting the infamous maniac of the Ather family outright? His track record was far too notorious.
“Huh? Well… who knows? Even I only met him for the first time at the parish,” Gregorius replied.
“Excuse me? But…”
“Still…”
The old man shrugged nonchalantly at Hector’s question. Caught off guard by this unexpected response, Hector stared at him for a moment before Gregorius continued with a mischievous smile.
“He’s not as incompetent as the rumors say. If you watch him, he’s clearly smart enough not to say a word to an old man like me. Strangely enough, it’s hard not to like him.”
Gregorius knew exactly what rumors circulated about Eric. Yet the man he had personally seen at the parish was completely different from the supposedly incompetent maniac described in gossip.
If he were truly incompetent, that clever crow wouldn’t have bothered to push him into a hero’s position.
To deduce intentions in just a few lines of conversation was not something a maniac who wandered the streets chasing girls every day could do.
Moreover, in the inner city earlier, he had skillfully steered events according to his desires, leveraging his relationship with Gregorius and his title as “the parish hero.”
Whether Eric had been pretending to be incompetent all this time or had only recently begun to awaken his talents, one thing was clear: he was not someone to be underestimated.
“I understand your concern. But even if you’re a little unsure, just watch him for now. After all, there’s no other way to deal with the plague, is there?”
“That may be so…”
Hector nodded reluctantly, though he still felt uneasy being led around by the maniac. But as the old man said, there was no alternative to handling the plague.
“Sir, can he really solve the plague?”
“He can. But not here.”
“Eh? Then why…”
Leona approached cautiously, watching Eric as he observed the patrolling soldiers. Eric nodded toward Hector in the distance.
“I’m just looking for a reason that will convince that stubborn commander to open the pass to the highlands.”
Eric had known the cause of the plague from the start. There was only one disease capable of producing such symptoms in Protect Humanity.
However, his real objective was not to solve the plague within the fortress, but to escort Gregorius across the border to the Aridus Highlands, the site of the old parish. If a faster and easier route existed to achieve that goal, there was no need to take a detour.
Well, I’m not exactly lying, either.
“I’ve found it!”
After searching alongside dozens of soldiers, one of them suddenly shouted, seemingly discovering something.
“A hole here… really?”
“Is this… connected to the sewer?”
In the alley ahead, a small hole was visible in a corner of the ground.
“So, this hole is the problem?”
Hector glanced suspiciously at Eric, staring at the tiny opening barely big enough for a couple of fingers. It was hard to believe they had been struggling over just this small hole.
“Precisely, the problem lies inside the hole.”
“If you mean the sewer is contaminated, that’s impossible. We already checked the water source when we first suspected the plague.”
Hector frowned, even more skeptical as Eric nodded silently.
If there had been an epidemic, of course they would have examined the water supply. Yet now Eric claimed the sewer was the problem?
“The water might be fine, but in a remote border area with no other water source, if the only supply is contaminated, it wouldn’t just knock down one or two people, would it?”
“Then what exactly is wrong with the sewer?”
Eric extended his hand toward the energy that had been rippling beneath the hole. A faint aura flowed from his fingertips, slithering like a living snake into the hole.
—Squeak!
Something emerged, caught by Eric’s hand, causing Hector to blink in shock.
“…A rat?”
“Precisely, it’s the fleas on this little guy that are the problem. When rats begin roaming dirty streets, these tiny creatures spread the plague. But…”
The Black Death. The deadliest epidemic, taking countless lives both in-game and in reality.
Using Necromancy, Eric seized the rat’s corpse, the source of the deadly plague, and then looked around the surprisingly tidy streets of the city.
“How long has the plague been in the city?”
“…A month or two. The first few days were chaotic, but after confirming it was the plague, we’ve tried to keep the city as clean as possible.”
Eric narrowed his eyes, noticing the timing strangely coincided with other disturbances occurring across the continent.
“Aren’t you finding this strange?”
“Strange? How?”
The plague started spreading despite conditions opposite to those favoring rat infestations, coinciding with the time anomalies began to appear.
“We’ve cleaned the city to prevent the plague, yet rats keep appearing. Where are they coming from?”
The conclusion was obvious: someone was deliberately spreading the plague. And in Protect Humanity, only a certain individual could do such a thing.
“Lilian.”
“Yes, Sir!”
Whether she truly didn’t know or was pretending not to, Eric turned from the stunned Hector to Lilian.
“Here.”
“Eep!”
A rat suddenly flew toward her, making Lilian scream in shock.
“How about it?”
“How about it? I nearly jumped out of my skin! And you said this rat caused the plague, why are you—huh?”
She scolded Eric briefly, then narrowed her eyes at the unease radiating from the fallen rat.
“Sir, could this…?”
“A familiar. Right?”
Lilian nodded as if confirming what he had already guessed.
“A familiar… so someone deliberately controlled rats to spread the plague in the city?”
The soldiers nearby murmured in disbelief. A natural plague and one caused deliberately were entirely different matters.
“…Mage, go and confirm it.”
Hector, looking serious, summoned a mage to inspect the corpse.
“That’s right. I can sense magical energy. It’s faint, barely noticeable without full concentration…”
After examining the rat, the non-magic user mage silently marveled at Eric and Lilian. The faint magical residue indicated it had been a familiar. How the two noticed it so quickly was remarkable.
“Close the gates! No one leaves this fortress!”
“Yes, Commander!”
With the mage confirming, Hector drew his sword and shouted.
“And gather the other mages…”
“Tch, why waste effort on that?”
Hector seemed intent on questioning all the mages in the fortress, but Eric clicked his tongue in amusement.
“Do you think the culprit would act openly in the city? As soon as someone catches a rat with magic, they’d summon the mages to investigate.”
“…Then, do you know where the culprit is, Sir Eric?”
Eric pounded his chest impatiently. Hector squinted at him uneasily.
“Where did the rat come from?”
“The hole… ah!”
With Eric’s hint, Hector realized it was the sewer hole.
“Go in and investigate thoroughly. We assumed the water was the problem, so we overlooked the possibility of a rat hole somewhere.”
A hole through which rats could enter existed in some corner, possibly leading to the sewers. Eric had given them all the information they needed, then looked toward the high walls surrounding the fortress.
A mage using rats to spread the plague.
Many mages could control rats as familiars. But using them to spread the plague? Only one.
…Latenfenger.
Latenfenger. The Piper. A named monster under a demon king.
“Commander! Commander!”
Soldiers sent to inspect the sewers returned quickly.
“It’s true! There’s a hole leading outside the fortress! Just big enough for rats!”
Hector’s suspicion became certainty.
The minion of a demon king, something only appearing when a territory grows large in the game. And an item that the cardinal, already deceased in the original timeline, would risk everything to recover.
Eric’s gaze now reached toward the distant, towering Aridus Highlands.
