“The food they’re bringing to Kingsgate is not normal food,” Lena said.

“What do you mean?”

“It contains eggs. Some kind of parasitic monster. We captured a church messenger three weeks ago and made him talk. Based on what he told us and what we figured out on our own, the church has been breeding these parasites somewhere outside the region and placing the eggs in the rations.”

“Once someone eats the food,” Jake said. “The eggs hatch inside the body. The larvae take over the host, and after a certain amount of time, the person turns into a monster.”

Reidar sat in silence for a moment. The pieces clicked together in his mind, forming a picture that was worse than anything he had imagined.

<They’re going to feed the parasites to the people in Kingsgate.>

It was the kind of plan that only the church would come up with. Not a frontal assault, not a siege, not even a conventional infiltration.

They were going to destroy Kingsgate from the inside, using the very people the Aegis Phalanx was trying to protect as the weapon.

The church couldn’t beat the Aegis in a direct fight, so they were turning the battlefield into something the Aegis couldn’t fight without killing the people it was supposed to save. To what end was the real question. The Aegis didn’t just have bases here. Destroying this place would not make a difference. Certainly, it would undermine the Allied Worlds, though.

<Mara would have planned this. Even dead, her strategies are still poisoning everything.>

No, Reidar corrected himself. Mara might have laid the groundwork before she died, but someone else was executing the plan now. Someone with enough authority and intelligence to coordinate an operation of this scale across multiple locations.

<Jorik. It has to be Jorik. Or the Progenitor, if he’s still sane enough to give orders.>

The church was stockpiling food at the outpost, moving it through the teleportation circle to Kingsgate, and once enough of the population had eaten the infected rations, they would trigger the transformation. Thousands of people would turn into monsters at once, from the inside.

The Aegis Phalanx wouldn’t be fighting the church’s forces. They would be fighting the civilians; at that point the church would just sweep in and deal the finishing blow.

<Bastards…>

“They’re turning Kingsgate into a weapon,” Reidar said.

Lena nodded. “That’s what we think. The church doesn’t have the numbers to take on the Aegis Phalanx in a straight fight, and they are approximately on the same level as them. However, after we killed their elite at the outpost, they got severely weakened, so they must be resorting to this kind of tactic to level the field. But if they turn the entire population of Kingsgate into monsters, the Aegis would be overwhelmed once they joined the attack.”

“Have they started distributing the food already?” Reidar asked.

“We don’t know,” Jake said. “We haven’t been able to get inside Kingsgate. The monster field around the city is too dense for us. We tried twice, and both times we had to retreat.”

Lena added, “It might be that they already started, or it might be that they’re still waiting. The messenger said the transformation takes time, and they needed enough food to infect as many people as possible. If they do it too early with too few infected, the Aegis would be able to contain it. They need a critical mass.”

Reidar looked at Lena. “So, there are two ways to get to Kingsgate. The first is through the monsters, right?”

“Right,” Lena said. “And we can’t get through the first one. The monsters are level 400 and above, packed so tight you can’t take ten steps without running into one.” She looked at him. “However, as you are now, it should pose no problem to you since you’re level 557.”

But that puzzled Lena. “Why haven’t you done it already?”

Reidar sighed.

“It’s complicated; I will explain this in a minute, but first things first. The second method is the teleportation circle, right?”

“Yes. It’s inside the outpost. Guarded by church members at all times. Jake and I could fight our way through them, but you got here before us. We came here to take the portal.”

Reidar filed that information away. He would deal with the teleportation circle later. Right now, there was something more important to discuss.

He sighed again.

“As for your question, Lena, I simply do not trust the Allied Worlds anymore.”

“But wouldn’t this mean you should have rushed there to take your family out of the city even more?”

“Yes, but if I rush things, the Aegis Would figure out I know something, and they have a lot of people.” He paused.

“While I can deploy troops that would decimate them, most of them can be up only for a certain amount of time, and if I asked for help from others, they would not be strong enough to protect them.”

“The reason I didn’t rush there was that I didn’t want to stir up trouble. I needed the Aegis Phalanx to think I’m still on their side, and this brings the promise I made them that I would find a way to deal with the Church while they focused on the monsters. If I had gone to Kingsgate, the Aegis would have immediately known something was wrong. They already know I’m back and that I’m at level 557. I couldn’t risk it anymore.”

“So you’re putting on a face?”

“More or less. But I’m also monitoring them. While I’m still here in Sweetwater, I sent my summons to Kingsgate to check the situation there. I didn’t find my wife and son, but I have a general understanding of Kingsgate’s state.” He paused.

“We have two enemies now, not just one, but while fighting one is unavoidable, fighting the other is not. So I made them think I thought my family was safe with them by not going.”

Then he gave both Lena and Jake a serious look. “Plus, there is this.”

He reached into his inventory and pulled out the Ignis journal. The grey cover caught the light as he held it up.

“The Ignis were trying to build magic circles that could absorb ambient mana and crystallize it. If it works, it would reduce the mana density in the surrounding area and make crystals out of them, and these can then be used for various things. Lower mana density means slower mutation, weaker monsters, and time. Time for people’s bodies to adapt, to grow stronger at a pace their bodies can handle without incurring mutations and without turning feral.” He held the journal out to Lena. “The designs are on the last pages. They’re complex, but they work. The Ignis tested prototypes that reduced mana density by quite the margin.”

Lena took the journal and opened it, flipping to the back. Her eyes moved across the diagrams and equations, and Reidar saw her expression shift as she understood what she was looking at.

“This is a backup plan,” Reidar said. “If the Allied Worlds pull the system from humanity, these circles are the only thing that might stop us from turning into what the Ignis became. Which means I also need to keep things as quiet as possible in order to prepare this. Although, with the church doing what it’s doing here, I have a valid excuse to go to Kingsgate at this point.”

He looked at Lena again.

“Hope this answers your question.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep