"All goodness has always been paved upon suffering, hasn't it?"
The festering growths on Vegapunk's face writhed grotesquely, arranging themselves into vivid, lifelike expressions, as though they were masks mimicking human emotions. He spoke to Roya in the tone of an old friend sharing insights: calm, detached, almost philosophical.
His voice was unnervingly tranquil, as though the horrific plague-ridden corruption consuming him, and the agony that wracked his flesh, did not exist at all.
But this very composure only made Roya's heart sink further.
The power of faith could not drive back the corruption devouring Vegapunk's spirit!
Not only did it fail to repel the infection, or awaken his true consciousness as it had with Ro, but it instead caused the corruption to erupt even more violently, utterly warping Vegapunk's mind!
"Praise to Father Nurgle! Ah… this long-lost, fragile, yet utterly real gathering of flesh and blood!"
The fiery particles once flickering in Vegapunk's eyes gradually extinguished, replaced by a pair of turbid, clouded human eyes.
They were eyes that seemed nearly blind—yet now they gleamed with rapture, overflowing with fulfillment.
Vegapunk lifted his head skyward, savoring the sensation of every inch of his newly corrupted flesh writhing in agony. His lips parted in sighs of purest satisfaction.
Nurgle.
From the strange cadence of Vegapunk's chant, Roya finally discerned this name—a name laced with dreadful power.
At last, the true enemy began to reveal itself!
"Praise to Father Nurgle!"
Thousands of civilians, their bodies covered in corruption and boils, suddenly erupted in a deafening chorus.
One could hear that their praise was no hollow cry—it was a roar from the depths of their hearts.
It was as though, beneath their swollen, rotting flesh, there no longer flowed pestilence and plague that should have brought unbearable torment, but instead the sweetest nectar of paradise. Their voices trembled with joy.
With each cry, the corrupted tore away their cloaks. Their bodies—already bloated and decaying—began to swell further, like grotesque balloons inflating at unnatural speed!
The belts that had restrained their swollen flesh snapped one after another, unable to withstand the explosive pressure surging from within.
Now reduced to swollen, festering meat-spheres, the corrupted stumbled forward on their short, compressed legs, rolling and staggering toward the defensive troops that stood between them and the civilians.
It was inevitable: their bodies could not withstand such horrific, accelerating pressure. They would burst apart from within, exploding outright!
And with their detonation, the filth and plague festering within would become swarms of pestilence bombs, bursting forth amidst the densely packed crowd in the square!
Vegapunk screamed in a shrill, ecstatic voice:
"Come! Let us all enter Father Nurgle's garden together, and savor the most exquisite, agonizing plagues of this world!"
At his call, the demonic insects crawling over his body suddenly dispersed, swarming outward toward the civilians who still prayed desperately.
Meanwhile, the pus erupting from Vegapunk and the corrupted ones took on a ghastly will of its own—flying, writhing, and hurling themselves toward the helpless masses.
The grand carnival feast of plague and disease was about to begin!
But Roya had already foreseen this moment.
With a cold snort, he triggered the threads of perceptive radiance he had secretly planted upon the corrupted.
Those who had only just begun their charge were instantly bound. Their swollen, rotting bodies became wrapped as though in layers of unbreakable preservation film.
In an instant, they lost all ability to move. Their corrupted flesh and pus were forced back, compressed and fused together within their own bodies.
The swarming demon-insects and the writhing, pus-like Nurgle-spawn were likewise ensnared by the vast net of perceptive threads, denied any chance to spread their plague.
At the same time, Roya completed the separation and protection of Vegapunk's spirit.
The corrupted fragments of will and spirit were entirely severed from his slumbering true self.
It was only because Vegapunk was long accustomed to working through his cloned researcher bodies that Roya was able to exploit this method of separation to preserve his self-awareness.
Correspondingly, twelve of Vegapunk's cloned researchers collapsed into unconsciousness, falling into deep sleep. Roya had already wrapped them in layer upon layer of protective threads.
Then, weaving yet another vast net of perceptive radiance, Roya completely sealed Vegapunk's body—now inhabited only by corruption and plague.
Thus, the possibility of Vegapunk spreading Nurgle's pestilence was cut off, allowing Roya to begin parsing and tracing the corruption's source.
The thousands of corrupted civilians, too, were ensnared and dragged together, heaped upon Vegapunk's corrupted body, forming a grotesque mountain of pus and decay.
"Tsk, tsk… splendid! We've played in the material world for so long, yet this is the first time we've seen such a novel way of dealing with one of Nurgle's Great Unclean Ones!"
A mocking voice rang out from within the dense crowd of civilians.
With every syllable, the speaker changed.
Each person uttered only a single sound—alone meaningless, but when woven together across the noisy square, they formed words. Phrases that sent icy dread crawling across the scalp, carried flawlessly and clearly to Roya's ears.
"What do you call this? Consciousness division and transference?"
"Doesn't matter. You're amusing—the most amusing pawn I've ever seen, bar none."
"I have many followers, yet unlike the other three, I've never been one to bestow such grandiose but useless so-called 'God-Chosen' champions."
"But you… you feel different. If I were to make you my chosen, now that would be truly entertaining."
Roya's perceptive threads chased the source of the voice relentlessly, until at last they converged—
—upon Lucci.
But Lucci should not, could not, have been present here.
His eyes were now shrouded entirely in a haze of violet mist.
Clearly, the will inhabiting this body no longer belonged to Lucci at all.
"Who are you?"
At the question, Lucci's lips curved into a sneer.
"I go by many names. My two favorites? The Weaver of Fate… and the Heavenly Exalted Treasure."
"Yes, you guessed correctly. The first name embodies my power. The second expresses the honor and importance I bestow upon you."
Roya's brow furrowed. He had only fleetingly, unconsciously parsed the meaning of those two names in his mind—yet this being had already perceived his thoughts completely.
The fact was undeniable: the strength of this one's psychic power was far beyond anything Roya could hope to contend with.