Chapter 2550

2550 - Marid-3

Bang!

The marid raised its massive leg, then brought it down on Caesar.

"Damn it!!" Caesar sprang backward swiftly, using the support of his super armor.

[I told you to stay quiet!] Mortix's voice echoed in his head.

"It's too late for that now!!" Caesar drew his great Spear, then ignited a dark Black Flame upon it.

"....?" The marid's expression changed for a moment, as if it didn't understand what had happened, then it pressed down on the ground beneath it with greater force. Craaack!

The icy ground cracked and sank, and from beneath it a quantity of water burst forth, freezing instantly into a shape resembling a tree from the intense cold.

But the strange event came after that, as that ice tree began absorbing quantities of water from below, dripping it between its branches in the form of round fruits, then bam! Those fruits fell and shattered instantly, and what was inside them appeared.

They were humanoid, and somewhat demon-like.

They were nearly Caesar's height, blue in color, with two legs and two arms, four eyes and two mouths full of sharp fangs, and they had hair and beards resembling thorns as well... Those things spotted Caesar immediately and ran toward him!

"Suh—...!"

[Shut up already!] Mortix's voice echoed in his head. [Kill them with as little noise and movement as possible, and return to silence. The Marid has not received orders yet, and it will not attack you if you retreat quietly.]

"...?!" Caesar quickly stifled his voice and changed his plan from striking the marid's foot and leaping back; he stopped and gripped his Spear with both hands, then thought: [Silence Field.]

Doooom!

The dark flame transformed into something resembling a dome, then spread very slowly and steadily in all directions.

Poof!

Poof! Poof!

Every one of the fruits that touched the dome fell on its face, its eyes void of any life.

As for Caesar, he did not celebrate; he remained fixed in the same posture, his eyes barely watching the marid.

After about half an hour, the marid finally raised its head upward and dissipated into the darkness.

Gulp!

The sound of Caesar swallowing his saliva made him shudder, and he looked around in fear that the marid might return, but he breathed a sigh of relief and began retreating backward slowly. [I don't know how to curse you, Mortix, in this state of yours, but curse you for putting me in this confrontation!]

[You should have seen one of them and prepared yourself psychologically before delving deeper inside. This is a relatively weak ice marid, and its appearance with its followers on any planet means turning it into an icy hell like the one you see, but it is also the slowest of the marids in thinking and the most compliant with instructions... There are marids of gluttony, Destruction, and Hell hiding inside, and dealing with those will not be as easy.]

[Gluttony, Destruction, and Hell, that sounds familiar... very familiar... I'll ask anyway.] Caesar hesitated for a moment. [What is the connection between the marids and the Plague?]

[Their origin.] Mortix answered quickly. [The fallen devil transforms into a marid, and that marid uses its limited knowledge of the concept of Creation to make followers for itself, and those followers are called The Plague in this cycle.]

[The Plague is descended from the Jinn?!] Caesar's heart pounded hard. [Can individuals of The Plague become this size and this powerful?]

Caesar immediately thought of their Plague's body.

[Not exactly. If the marids are generals, then the Plague are soldiers, and no matter how powerful they become, they are still just soldiers. You could say they are an extremely distant lineage.] Mortix explained. [And from what I know of them, theoretically, a Plague individual must acquire true knowledge that enables them to evolve into a marid, not simply evolve through force alone. They climb the ladder in reverse... and from what I know, something like that has never happened before, as the rungs of the ladder are fixed downward only.]

[...] Caesar sighed at the missed opportunity. [Tell me more about the Plague, and why are they spread out like this when they are merely soldiers.]

[The Plague, or rather we should say the devil's soldiers, are not as you see them in the current universe—or more precisely, this is not what they are supposed to be.] Mortix slowed his pace of speech. [The devil's soldiers only appear in wars led by the marids under normal circumstances, but what is happening now with the spread of random outbreaks was caused by the Cosmic Elder.]

Then he continued: [His brutal assault on the Abyss of Destruction caused the death of more than half of the marids gathered there, which left a large number of their soldiers scattered across the universe. Since they had become leaderless, and with human armies attacking them, kings emerged from among them—each one leading a portion of the soldiers and fleeing in a different direction.]

[This caused a terrifying spread of the Plague, a spread greater than it had been before the destruction of the Abyss of Destruction. But at the same time, they became easier to deal with, and the academies began trading in them and using them as a scarecrow, even though they could have wiped them out with expanded campaigns in the beginning.]

[As for the appearance of the Crimson Plague and the Red—the soldiers of gluttony and destruction—randomly on planets, this happens because after they feed on an entire planet and it explodes, its rocks scatter carrying blood stains or accursed seeds, and those remnants and seeds strike any living planet, and the cycle begins anew.]

Then he continued: [It is said that the plague appears as a punishment for the Planet Spirit or a punishment for its people, but this is wrong—its appearance is mostly random, otherwise the Behemoth Galaxies and the forces of evil would be teeming with them... But if you look at it from the perspective that accumulating bad karma causes those creatures to be summoned, then that is possible.]

[So what lies in the inner region of the Fortress of Death...] Caesar's face began to twist as he connected the threads to one another.

Mortix's voice echoed: [All the marids who escaped from the Cosmic Elder are there, along with their soldiers, and there are new marids created with the help of the new sacrifices over the past seventy million years, of various kinds, and all of them are awaiting orders.]