Chapter 264: Pooping Saved The Day?

Luca’s smile turned chilling as he said,

“What if someone everyone trusted, someone whose job was to heal came to you to treat your rash?”

“He tells you you it was contagious, dangerous even. He applies a ’medicine’ that would feel itchy and strange, then wrapped it tightly in bandages.”

“He then tells you not to remove the bandages, no matter what, or the infection would spread.”

He let the silence stretch.

“Do any of you remember something like that happening?”

Silence.

Then Nyx’s voice cut through in horrific realisation.

“I remember.”

Everyone turned to look at her. Her face was pale, her eyes burning with fury.

“A long time ago, while my father was still alive, everyone suddenly got this rash all over our bodies. It itched. It burned. And Julius went around healing everyone.”

Her voice trembled with rage. “He told us we had to apply ointment to the affected areas. On our hands, our arms, our feet. He gave us bandages and said we couldn’t take them off for a whole day.”

She stared at Julius with utter disgust.

“He must have put the parasites inside us back then.”

A chorus of voices rose from the crowd.

“I remember that!”

“I felt something—something crawling under my skin. But Julius said it was just the medicine working.”

“He wrapped my bandage so tight I couldn’t move my arm. I thought it was strange, but I trusted him.”

“We all trusted him.”

Leona clutched her daughters tighter, her face ashen.

“And when Luna and Lulu were born…Julius said he needed to run tests on them. He took them into a room for almost an hour.”

Her voice cracked.

“I was there, but I couldn’t see what he was doing. It looked like normal tests. But now…”

She looked down at her daughters, horror dawning.

“I think he pushed those worms inside my babies. Right there. W-When they were barely a day old.”

Luna and Lulu shuddered violently. The thought of those tiny, disgusting creatures being forced into their newborn bodies made them want to vomit.

They wrapped their arms around each other, holding tight.

Others in the crowd gagged. Babies were such pure, innocent creatures.

And Julius had been willing to violate them for the sake of his ambition.

They looked at him with pure disgust. With hatred. With the kind of contempt reserved for the worst monsters imaginable.

Julius lay on the ground, moaning, bleeding, defeated.

And no one felt an ounce of pity.

Luca then casually placed the worm back on his shoulder like it was his pet and clasped his hands behind his back.

“It’s as you said, Nyx.”

He glanced down at Julius with a mocking smile.

“In the past, Julius over here must have created a rash for all of you. He is a healer, after all. He would have had his ways of manufacturing an artificial illness.”

“And while treating you, he slipped those parasites into the bandages, wrapped them tight, and let them burrow into your skin.”

He gave Julius a light kick.

“Once again, you and the Patriarch planned this out perfectly.”

But shockingly, despite his broken state, Julius suddenly lurched upward with desperate energy.

He threw himself at Luca—not in attack but in raw, animal desperation.

Tears streamed down his face in torrents as he clutched at Luca’s legs, his voice fracturing between sobs.

“How…?” He sobbed, ugly and weak. “How did you find out?…How did you know about the worms?”

Luca looked down at him with pure disdain.

“You…You shouldn’t have been able to find out.”

Julius whimpered, shaking him weakly.

“That was the whole point! Me and the Patriarch chose that method so no one would ever discover it.”

“We made it look like a real curse. No one was supposed to figure it out!”

“So how? How did you do it?!”

Luca stared down with cold, unyielding eyes.

“Honestly, I have no reason to answer you right now.”

But then a cruel smile tugged at his lips.

He reached down and patted Julius’s head like a disobedient dog, fingers tangling in his sweat-matted hair as he gazed at the broken teeth and bloodied face.

“But since you’re begging so pitifully…I’ll give you a treat and tell you the truth.”

Julius and everyone else looked at Luca in tense anticipation. They already understood the cause and effect, how everything had come together.

But how had Luca, of all people, uncovered something so deeply hidden within their own bodies.

Ssomething they themselves had never detected?

Luca turned slowly, then pointed directly at Luna.

“Everything started with Luna herself.”

All eyes shifted to her. She blinked in surprise, her cheeks flushing.

“Luna brought me the test results I’d conducted on Esme at the very beginning.” Luca explained. “At first, she just wanted to learn some things and listed out a few details. I answered without thinking too much about it. But then…”

He paused and enjoyed watching everyone squirm.

“…I noticed certain readings. Readings that immediately caught my attention.”

“They weren’t simple variations at all. They were textbook indicators—classic, unmistakable signs of parasitic infestation living within the digestive system.”

Gasps rippled through the crowd.

“You see, whenever someone harbors parasites in their gut their blood work shows specific abnormalities.”

Luca continued, his scholarly tone making the horrifying information somehow more clinical, more real.

“Elevated levels of certain enzymes, unusual spikes and dips in various metabolic markers. In my world, physicians use these readings to screen for parasitic infections. They then conduct follow-up tests to confirm the diagnosis.”

He looked at Luna with genuine warmth.

“In that moment, when I recognized those markers, it was like a bomb detonating in my mind.”

“So many pieces suddenly clicked into place. So many inexplicable aspects of this village’s suffering suddenly made sense.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, a smile played at his lips.

“I wanted to kiss Luna all over for unknowingly providing me with the key to understanding everything.”

Luna’s blush deepened to crimson, and she looked away, flustered.

Leona smiled warmly at her daughter, pride evident in her expression at how her child had inadvertently helped solve the mystery.

Lulu squeezed her sister’s hand in silent support.

“But of course.” Luca continued, his expression becoming more serious. “I couldn’t allow myself to become too excited too quickly. It could have been a coincidence. Esme might have been an outlier—one unique case among many healthy individuals.”

“So I decided to conduct more comprehensive testing.”

He gestured broadly. “That’s why I went around collecting blood samples from so many of you. I needed data from a broad cross-section of the village population.”

Everyone nodded as memories resurfaced. Lulu blushed particularly hard, recalling her own contribution.

“I took those samples back to my old world, ran the analyses…” Luca clapped his hands together sharply. “And fortunately—it was exactly as I suspected. Every single one of you I tested had parasites in your bodies.”

The villagers gulped. Horrible news, yes—but it was the key to everything.

Julius, meanwhile, sank deeper into despair.

“After that, it wasn’t really a big deal.” Luca shrugged. “The hardest part was figuring out what the problem was.”

“Once I knew that, everything else was easy.”

“First…” He held up a finger. “I built a setup for myself, a mini surgery room.”

“Luna was my first test subject. I ran a bunch of tests on her, and using certain devices from my world, I even managed to find the exact spot where the parasite was hiding.”

Luna thought back to all the strange procedures

Luca had put her through—ultrasounds, X-rays, other imaging technologies she had learned about only recently.

“Once I’d mapped the location.” Luca continued. “I administered a series of medicines. These weren’t poisons or aggressive treatments.”

“Rather, they acted as tranquilizers specifically targeted toward the parasites. The medicines essentially put the worms into a dormant, sedated state.”

He looked directly at Luna, his expression serious.

“Once the worm was sedated and no longer actively latching onto the intestinal walls, it naturally loosened its grip. With nothing anchoring it in place, the parasite would eventually be expelled from the body through…”

“…natural means.”

The villagers began to understand what he was describing, and their faces started to flush.

“Once that happened.” Luca said with complete clinical detachment. “I naturally couldn’t allow Luna to simply go about her day. I needed to retrieve the parasite for examination and preservation.”

“So I had her…produce the sample into a plate, which I then analyzed to extract the worm.”

Luna completely covered her face with her hands, her embarrassment reaching truly staggering proportions.

The blush that had been creeping up her neck now consumed her entire face.

Around her, the other villagers shifted uncomfortably, already understanding what this meant for them.

“Then I dug through the sample until I found this little guy…”

He held up the writhing worm and revealed,

“…the same parasite that was inside Luna.”

Luna shuddered, horrified that was the thing had been living inside her.

“But once I figured out how to remove them safely, it was just a matter of scaling up.”

He let out a care-free chuckle.

“One by one, I brought elf after elf into my shed, ran the same tests, gave them the medicine, and made them…expel the worms.”

The crowd’s collective embarrassment was palpable.

Every adult elf remembered that experience with vivid, traumatic clarity.

The bitter medicine, the humiliating demand to defecate on a plate, the mortifying moment when Luca would immediately start digging through their waste like a prospector panning for gold.

Several elves had cried. Some had tried to refuse, but Luca had made it impossible to say no.

Even Nyx, who was usually fearless and unshakable couldn’t help but be haunted by that memory.

It was probably the most shameful thing she had ever done.

Several elders blushed deeply, clutching their butts as if the memory physically pained them.

They had all thought the Hero was strange—maybe even perverted. They had wondered why he was doing such bizarre things. But now…

“Who would have thought.” One elder murmured. “He was doing such important research? It was necessary.”

“He saved our lives.” Another added. “And we didn’t even know it.”

Luca nodded. “One by one, I went through the entire village and managed to purge all the worms from your bodies.”

He glanced at the children.

“As for the little ones, I didn’t have to do anything at all. They were born after Julius stopped implanting worms, so they were never infected. Luckily for them, they escaped this treatment.”

The children looked confused. They didn’t fully understand what was happening, but they sighed with relief, sensing they had avoided something terrible.

But then—Leona suddenly paled.

“Luca…what about me?” She pointed at herself. “You never tested me. Don’t tell me…”

She looked down at her belly in horror.

“Is the worm still inside of me!?”

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