"Phase Summary: It can currently be confirmed that BS61-1, commonly known as the causative agent of the Wasting Decay, is a man-made, highly technical artificial Extraordinary plague involving very deep mysteries of the ""Cup"", most likely originating from southern evil cults."
"BS61-1 can spread through various forms including water sources, respiration, and blood. Symptoms are primarily weakness and fatigue, often accompanied by nausea and systemic severe pain in the later stages. The probability of death and inducing complications is very low. The causative agent has a significant advantage in microscopic biological competition, with virtually no natural enemies, including the human body's resistance."
"BS61-1 possesses extremely strong and rapid autonomous adaptive mutation and evolutionary capabilities. Its infectivity, pathogenicity, and adaptability can rapidly increase over time. Among these, the adaptability of the causative agent can strengthen more quickly in the process of confronting the human body's resistance, even against resistance enhanced by Save the World power."
"The microscopic causative agent of BS61-1 has an extremely efficient structure, in which almost all components are effective and contribute to BS61-1's three major functions: infectivity, pathogenicity, and adaptability. There are virtually no redundant or useless structures. This situation does not exist in naturally evolved epidemic causative agents."
"BS61-1 features super-spatial unity, which is key to its rapid evolutionary speed. BS61-1 as a whole is suspected to possess a certain degree of unified intelligence. This intelligence can at least identify the three major factors: infectivity, pathogenicity, and adaptability, thereby continuously adjusting the mutation direction of BS61-1."
"The direction of the causative agent's mutation is random. As the vast number of BS61-1 causative agents continuously mutate individually, whenever an individual mutates to exhibit characteristics beneficial to the three major factors of infectivity, pathogenicity, and adaptability, it will be selected by the collective consciousness of BS61-1 and used as a blueprint to influence other causative agent individuals, causing all existing causative agent individuals to rapidly mutate and evolve towards the blueprint individual, eliminating all individual differences through a collective assimilation."
"Because all causative agent individuals contribute to the overall evolution, the evolutionary speed of BS61-1 is positively correlated with the number of causative agents. The more infected individuals there are, the faster BS61-1 evolves."
"The main symptom of BS61-1 is fatigue. Based on observation, the primary reason for fatigue is that the causative agent of BS61-1 extracts the infected individual's 'cup', constantly consuming the patient's vitality like a tumor. In an infected person, the 'cup' extracted is greater than the 'cup' BS61-1 needs to maintain its own existence and proliferation. The destination of the excess extracted 'cup' is unknown, and it is highly likely being sent elsewhere through the unique super-spatial link mechanism of BS61-1."
"According to research, the will of BS61-1... or rather, its'spirits', seems to exist within all individuals of its population, and there is no single dominant subject holding absolute leadership. It is unlikely that someone is remotely controlling BS61-1 through their will, guiding its evolution and infection. The infection process of BS61-1 is no different from a typical plague, while the evolutionary process proceeds autonomously following a set of mechanisms."
"The will of BS61-1 has a low level of intelligence but strictly adheres to several predetermined mechanisms to drive the overall evolution of BS61-1."
"Mechanism one: The autonomous evolution of BS61-1 will not stop. Mechanism two: There are indeed differences among the vast number of BS61-1 individuals due to natural mutation, but because BS61-1 undergoes overall assimilation every 24 hours, the assimilation process screens out excellent traits from all causative agents, eliminating other traits. After one assimilation, BS61-1 is equivalent to having undergone an evolution, and all differences between individuals are erased. The purpose of this mechanism is to ensure that all causative agent individuals of BS61-1 remain in an excellent state."
"Mechanism three: BS61-1's judgment of excellent traits is based on infectivity, pathogenicity, and adaptability. Mutated traits that enhance the capabilities of these three factors can be classified as excellent traits. Among these three factors, there is a priority mechanism. Adaptability is the factor with the highest priority. BS61-1 will preferentially select mutated traits with strong adaptability and strengthen them in all causative agents, followed by infectivity and pathogenicity."
"The preferential strengthening of BS61-1's adaptability can be seen as the plague designer prioritizing the survival of the causative agent. This consideration is clearly aimed at healers like us who possess Save the World power. It can now be confirmed that when dealing with BS61-1, the process of continuously killing the causative agents with Save the World power stimulates its mutation towards adaptability, causing BS61-1 to continuously evolve against Save the World power, rapidly reducing the effectiveness of our Save the World power. The southern evil cult's deliberate release of BS61-1 in Buserite seems to have a deeper purpose..."
"BS61-1... This is the most powerful and troublesome plague I have ever encountered. It is far beyond my ability to solve. Not only me, but perhaps even Save the Worlders of the Crimson Tier would have difficulty dealing with this plague. The more I study it, the more I feel despair..."
"But even so, it is not yet time to give up completely. With the Mufah unreliable now, Buserite can only rely on me. Even if there's no way now, I must find a way..."
...
In the ancient city of Bastis, within the underground library of the burnt-down former library, Dorothy's Corpse Puppet sat in the laboratory that once belonged to Jemarr, a Save the Worlder of the Savior Descends Faction, looking at the stacks of laboratory logs and personal diaries placed on the table.
Through the dense text on these documents, the distant Dorothy learned about how the healers of the Savior Descends Faction had fought against this Extraordinary plague in the past few months. Afterwards, she couldn't help but sigh.
"These people... it wasn't easy for them either..."
Sitting in her tent, Dorothy whispered with a sigh. In her opinion, the Savior Sect healers led by Jemarr had done their best in fighting against the Wasting Decay, but unfortunately, they ultimately met a tragic end.
'With internal sabotage from teammates, it was truly not easy for her to achieve this much in the face of such a powerful Extraordinary plague. It's quite remarkable that this Jemarr could research the Wasting Decay so thoroughly in the end; her abilities are truly outstanding. I personally feel her quality is much stronger than the Church's Chalk Holy Mother's Path... Of course, not counting Vanya's kind.'
Dorothy thought to herself. Among the Shining Light Church's three conventional branches, the Holy Mother's Path... or rather, the Save the World Path, can be said to be the most difficult to utilize. This is because Extraordinary individuals on the Save the World Path need to deeply understand the workings of the human body to effectively use their abilities and successfully heal illnesses and injuries. In other words, they require profound medical knowledge as assistance.
Studying medicine is difficult. To reduce the learning cost for Extraordinary individuals, the Church uses a method that allows Save the Worlders to assist their healing by praying to the Holy Mother, letting prayer guide the release of their abilities. Therefore, generally speaking, Extraordinary individuals on the Save the World Path at the Chalk and Black Earth levels within the Church system don't understand much medical knowledge. Only after reaching Scarlet do they seriously study this area.
The Church has a method to save its Save the Worlders learning costs, but this method cannot be used by the Savior Descends Faction because it requires praying to the Holy Mother, and the Savior Descends Faction's doctrine denies the Three Saints. Therefore, their Save the Worlders must genuinely and diligently study medicine to use their abilities normally. This resulted in a much smaller proportion of Savior Sect Save the Worlders compared to the Church, and their treatment effectiveness was highly variable, unstable, and inefficient.
Chalk and Black Earth Save the Worlders can only control their abilities by diligently studying medicine. While this situation severely impacts the number of Savior Sect Save the Worlders and their treatment efficiency, it can also foster a group of Save the Worlders with extraordinary research capabilities. For example, Jemarr, whose medical biology knowledge, experimental skills, practical abilities, and research capabilities far surpassed those of her peers in the Church. This is also why she was able to research the Wasting Decay so thoroughly.
But unfortunately, with her abilities, even if she thoroughly researched the Wasting Decay, she couldn't do anything about it.
'Putting aside whether Jemarr could do anything about this BS61-1, I'm getting a headache just looking at it...'
Scanning through Jemarr's stack of lab logs, Dorothy thought to herself. She had originally hoped to glean some ideas from these logs to research a vaccine or specific medicine for this Wasting Decay, but now it seemed almost impossible.
'This BS61-1 evolves too quickly, and it prioritizes adaptability. Antibodies in people who have just been infected and cured can't even resist this virus for three days. What kind of vaccine would be effective against this? What kind of specific medicine could cure it? Fighting this thing in the field of medicine is simply as difficult as ascending to heaven.
'I originally thought... since this virus has something similar to a'spirits' and possesses a certain will, perhaps I could find the subject carrying this'spirits' or will. By eliminating this subject, the entire virus population could collapse. But Jemarr's later logs say that this virus has no such subject; its consciousness exists within the entire population, and all individuals are part of the consciousness... This makes it even more difficult. You can't capture the leader first to capture the bandits; these are all leaders...'
Frowning slightly, Dorothy thought to herself. She had originally thought this plague was controlled by some Order of Rot big shot, and solving him would solve the plague, but now it seemed that wasn't the case. This BS61-1 has a high degree of autonomy, and killing anyone wouldn't solve it.
"Ah... Problems that can't be solved by just fighting are really troublesome..."
Scratching her head, Dorothy muttered somewhat troubled. Thinking it over and over, with her current abilities, she really had no way to deal with this super plague. There was absolutely no problem if she wanted to protect herself and those around her from being affected by the plague, but solving the entire plague on a societal level was too difficult.
'Phew... It seems this mess in Buserite is hard to fix. So, I should still find a way to locate Heopolis, get the promotion ritual, and leave. Don't get involved in these matters here.
'Vanya's promotion ritual... I'll figure out a way to do it somewhere else. I'll stay here for a few days first, try my best to treat the patients, work hard to spread the faith or something, while maintaining a good attitude. I can also do some research on the Wasting Decay, provide Holy Mountain with a preliminary report on the situation, and remind them. As long as Holy Mountain sees that Vanya didn't come here to slack off but did practical work, there shouldn't be any major issues...'
Dorothy thought to herself. Having decided to temporarily ignore the Wasting Decay, she controlled the Corpse Puppet to leave Jemarr's laboratory and enter the underground library, looking at the pile of books in the library and the large stack of manuscripts on the Stone table.
'So now, it's time to get down to business, to truly search for Heopolis... 'Heopolis only exists in history.' Well, I hope I can find some clues from history...'
Dorothy thought this, and then she controlled many Corpse Puppets scattered in other areas of Bastis city, making them gather towards the library. Flipping through so many historical books in a short time was still a significant project that required multiple people to complete.
...
During the daytime in Bastis, the scent of decay spread everywhere. Listless people continued their daily lives in their weakness.
On the tall city walls of Bastis, the bloated, bald-headed Jawadin stood there. This person in charge of the Order of Rot in Bastis stood there, gazing seriously into the distance. His gaze fell upon the Church delegation's camp on the edge of the oasis lake.
"Priest Jawadin, those followers of the evil Light god still don't seem to be leaving. Are they preparing for a siege?" Beside Jawadin, a follower of the Order of Rot holding a weapon looked at the scene in the distance and spoke with a worried expression in a strange tribal language. Jawadin replied silently.
"If they wanted to fight, they would have already. Our strength here cannot withstand their attack. The only reason they haven't acted is because they have those commoners as shields. If that Sister wants to continue displaying her hypocritical 'benevolence,' she absolutely cannot make a move."
Jawadin said in a deep voice. Listening to his words, the follower spoke again.
"Then, we'll just keep this standoff with them? Until they can't bear it anymore and retreat?"
"No, since these evil god followers have entered our territory, we cannot let them leave easily. Great Chieftain Amyaba is already taking action; he has carefully prepared some small tests for that evil god's little Sister." Jawadin said this. After hearing his words, the guard follower beside him spoke again, puzzled.
"Tests? What tests? Why would I test the enemy?"
"As for the specific reasons, I don't know. Great Chieftain Amyaba only said he is very curious how long that Sister's boundless benevolence can last in this test..."