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{Chapter: 223: Release of Disease}
Dozens of Days Passed.
Dex was no longer in Mides.
He had exhausted every useful avenue of information the city had to offer. There was no reason to linger among distractions, so he left, as he always did—quietly, and without sentiment.
Now, he sat in a high-class carriage rolling across the wilderness, bound for the most prosperous nation in the region—a powerful country famed for its concentration of magicians and mages. The circulation of knowledge and magical theory there far exceeded anything Mides had offered. It was a treasure trove for someone like Dex.
After all, he had already bought up most of Mides' rare resources, using them for countless magical experiments like an insatiable beast devouring gold and stone alike.
As for the choice of a carriage over faster magical transport, it wasn't because he enjoyed the discomfort. No—he wanted the journey, the view, the stillness between destinations. The slow, rhythmic shaking of the carriage reminded him he was still in motion, still a part of this world… even if only loosely.
Eventually, the carriage rattled to a halt. A respectful voice came from outside: "My lord, the team needs to rest. You may disembark and stretch your legs."
"Got it," Dex replied lazily as he stepped down from the carriage.
The grooms were already unhitching the saddles and leading the horses away to graze.
Even the horses here bore signs of magical refinement. Their muscular frames and tireless endurance were legacies of magical bloodlines cultivated for generations. These were not mundane beasts—they were engineered for stamina, bred for war.
Even a civilian carriage horse could gallop for hours without fatigue, pulling heavy loads at speeds that would shame a war-charger from Earth. And as for the elite warhorses in this world, they were monsters in their own right—capable of running for days without sleep, charging through enemy lines like living battering rams.
Such creatures were why cavalry remained relevant, even in an age dominated by magic.
Dex looked up at the sky, letting the wind kiss his face for the first time in hours.
He didn't know what he would find in the mage nation ahead.
But he knew this:
The more knowledge he gained, the closer he came to unlocking what little humanity still flickered inside him—or extinguishing it forever.
---
When Dex stepped down from the carriage, the rest of the convoy instinctively shifted aside, creating a clear path for him without a word being exchanged.
Most of those in the group were commoners—merchants, travelers, and farmers—with only a scant few bearing the mannerisms or attire of nobility. Yet even among those few, their status was questionable.
In this world, true power and wealth rarely traveled in such humble conditions.
The truly elite—the demigod-tier beings, high-ranking dignitaries, or those closely affiliated with divine churches—did not traverse long distances in wooden carriages along dusty roads. Instead, they soared across the skies on powerful beasts, glided on enchanted platforms, or simply vanished and reappeared through advanced teleportation spells.
Even if such figures were forced to use carriages, they would do so in grand private convoys reinforced with magical wards and heavily armed escorts, exuding unmistakable status. To be caught in the company of commoners, jostling for space on the road, was nothing short of disgraceful in the eyes of the upper crust.
Thus, the few nobles accompanying this convoy were clearly not of high standing. They were most likely impoverished gentry clinging to faded family names, or minor lords whose dwindling influence couldn't afford even a single personal knight.
Though they lived better than commoners, their actual social status was not much higher than that of a well-off merchant.
To better understand the hierarchy of this world, one could break it down as follows:
Gods → Divine churches, demigods, avatars, ancient beings
High Nobility → Archmages, warlords, archbishops, supreme merchants
Mid Nobility → City lords, successful mages, landowners with magical resources
Low Nobility → Fallen nobles, merchants with titles, moderately powerful adventurers
Commoners → Traders, artisans, peasants
Destitute → The poor, beggars, vagrants
There had once been a class beneath even the poor—slaves. They provided a sort of buffer, a bottom layer that kept the rest of the pyramid stable. After all, no matter how wretched one's life became, they could always say, At least I'm not a slave.
But that entire layer had vanished following the Abyssal Invasion.
When the monstrous forces of the Abyss came crashing through the world's borders, everything changed. Entire populations of slaves were conscripted en masse and hurled at the frontlines to stall the advancing horrors—cannon fodder in a war no one wanted to remember.
As a result, slave markets collapsed. Owners lost their "property." Gladiator arenas once filled with blood-soaked cheers were repurposed into extravagant inns, auction halls, or simply razed to the ground. Only the faintest echoes of their brutal pasts remained, buried under layers of commercial reinvention.
Dex, as always, paid these shifts in society little mind.
When the caravan came to a stop in a quiet clearing off the road, Dex dismounted with an air of practiced indifference. Without fanfare, he found a small patch of grass shaded by a crooked tree and sat down cross-legged.
To any onlooker, it merely appeared that he was taking a break, perhaps resting his legs like anyone else.
But something far more subtle and sinister was happening.
From Dex's body, an almost imperceptible mist began to rise—translucent, faintly glimmering in the sunlight, but invisible to the naked eye. It danced gently with the air currents, drifting lazily outward like the exhale of a sleeping beast.
If one had access to an impossibly powerful microscope, or a detection spell fine-tuned to biological and molecular scale, they would see that this mist was composed not of mana or vapor, but of living organisms—bacteria.
Each one had been carefully cultivated by Dex. They carried within them a strain of engineered illness—a benign plague.
The symptoms were designed to be subtle: mild coughing, a slight fever, shortness of breath. In essence, they mimicked the common cold.
But that was the brilliance of it.
Dex didn't want a monstrous epidemic that would wipe out cities in a week. He didn't want devastation or mass death. Not yet.
What he wanted was subtlety. Ubiquity. A plague that people wouldn't fear, wouldn't even think about. Something that would slip through city walls, dance past healers, and rest quietly in the lungs of millions.
Even those with poor health could usually recover with a few potions or a few days of bed rest. Most wouldn't even seek help. It was just a sniffle, a seasonal illness. Nothing to worry about.
And that was the point.
Because for every hundred who recovered, there would be one or two who didn't. One or two who would burn with fever in their sleep, whose souls would loosen quietly in the night—unnoticed, unremarked.
And those souls would be his.
He had painstakingly reduced the lethality of the strain, refining it again and again until it reached just the right balance between survivability and inevitability. A slow trickle of death, gentle and unseen.
To the world, it was a seasonal cold.
To Dex, it was a harvest.
This was only the beginning. The current strain was one of dozens he was preparing. Some would be inhaled. Others would be waterborne. A few would even use touch or parasites as vectors.
As long as one in ten people on the continent eventually encountered even one of his strains, the numbers would accumulate. Given the vast population of this world and the deceptively low but constant fatality rate, Dex estimated he could reap over a million souls annually. A silent, steady current of power.
If he were a native, he could've started preparing to ascend as a god.
But for now, this would do.
This was a long game. And Dex was very good at long games.
After all, missionary work—spreading faith and belief through preaching and devotion—was far too slow and unreliable compared to the efficiency of his biochemical expertise. Religion required time, patience, followers, and a convincing doctrine. But Dex? He preferred something more direct, more controllable, and far more insidious.
With his method, all the hard work was done upfront. He would toil once, meticulously crafting his microbial weapons, and then sit back, arms folded, as the rewards trickled in like a river of souls. It was the ultimate passive income scheme, and he couldn't help but admire the elegance of it.
Work hard at the beginning, and then just lie back and wait for the harvest.
Wasn't that the dream of every ambitious schemer? The thought alone made Dex feel smugly content.
If, in the distant future, everything went according to his grand vision, and he successfully embedded his custom-designed disease system into the very fabric of the multiverse, then those germs wouldn't just be confined to one world. No—he would transform mundane illnesses such as colds, fevers, diarrhea, and even organ failure into universal constants.
Wherever there is life, there would be sickness. And wherever there is sickness, there would be Dex.
In essence, the natural cycle of birth, aging, sickness, and death would now include him as a permanent player. And if that happened, Dex wouldn't just be a demon anymore—he would ascend. He would become the Lord of Affliction. The embodiment of plague. The Demon Prince of Disease.
Of course, such a dream came with extreme risk. Infecting the multiverse with one's influence wasn't exactly a low-key operation. If anything, it was bound to attract powerful enemies, holy crusaders, or even divine retribution. The "disease path," while subtle in its spread, was immensely hated across civilizations—universally reviled for its cruelty, randomness, and devastating toll.
Dex was well aware that, should his plan be discovered too early, it was very likely that someone—or something—would strike him down before he got anywhere near his goal.
Still, he was no coward.
As a seasoned demon entrepreneur who specialized in long-term soul acquisition and high-risk ventures, Dex was determined to give it a try.
"After all... what if it works?"
That small glimmer of hope was enough to justify the danger.
Currently, Dex saw two grand paths stretching before him, both leading toward ascension.
The first was the [Path of Pain]—inflicting agony, suffering, torment on a metaphysical level.
The second was the [Path of Plague]—subtle, contagious, and widespread.
Each had the potential to catapult him to the upper echelons of the Abyss. Both were considered fast tracks to demonhood of the highest order. And logically, if he pursued one of them carefully and diligently, there was indeed a chance he could reach true godhood among the demons.
But that was all theoretical.
Because if "being steady and safe" was truly effective, then the Abyss wouldn't be littered with the corpses of would-be princes who played it too cautiously. The truth was: success, especially in a realm as chaotic and treacherous as the Abyss, was never guaranteed.
Dex knew he could never compete with those ancient entities who had lounged atop their thrones for eons, unwilling to even shift in their seats. They were too deeply rooted, too powerful, too stable.
So for him, those two paths—Pain and Plague—were not certainties, but rather guiding lights. Tempting beacons to chase, knowing full well that he might burn long before he got close.
Still, Dex was not foolish enough to put all his eggs in one basket.
He had already invested in other paths as well—[Blood Flame], [Magic], and [Melee Combat]. These domains had their own merits: power in direct confrontation, adaptability in chaotic situations, and room for spontaneous growth.
While none of these routes had the same clarity or focused potential as his death-plague strategies, they were still valuable. He would treat them as his backup plans—lesser but reliable tools in his ever-growing arsenal.
And honestly, the obstacles in his way weren't as daunting as they might seem.
Why?
system
Because Dex had a cheat.
A literal, evolution-based cheat system that allowed him to break rules, skip steps, and brute-force his way through development. With enough resources, he could just dump points in a direction and let the handle the rest.
It was almost comical.
He barely needed to think sometimes—just click and upgrade.
The power to evolve endlessly, to enhance his body and mind across multiple dimensions... It made everything easier. And while Dex didn't yet know where the true limit of this system lay, he was certain of one thing: for now, it was more than enough.
Still, in the quiet moments, a part of him wondered:
What about the others?
Surely, he wasn't the only one with cheats in this world. Maybe there were people out there with even more broken abilities—more ruthless, more optimized, more terrifying.
After all, the ones who truly stood at the top of the multiverse... they weren't saints.
They were either born into divinity—those chosen by fate or lineage—or they were the ultimate cheaters, wielding systems and powers that shattered balance and laughed at laws.
Nobody made it to the top by working hard alone.
Because in a universe this vast, there was always someone smarter, more talented, or more obsessed than you.
You could work 24 hours a day, but someone out there had already found a way to work 240 hours a day through temporal manipulation. There were beings who could pause reality, multiply themselves, or skip time entirely.
Trying to climb to the top by "effort" alone was a losing strategy.
Dex's inherited memories were crystal clear about this.
Play by the rules, and you'll die nameless.
Break the rules—or better yet, rewrite them—and you might stand a chance.
That's why, with the cards he'd been dealt, Dex chose the easier road.
Cheat when you can. Stack the deck. Rig the game.
After all, gambling his life every step of the way was too unpredictable. Too messy. Too unreliable. He wasn't here to become a martyr.
He was here to win.
"I hope everything goes smoothly…" Dex murmured silently, his crimson eyes watching the faint clouds of bacteria drifting invisibly on the wind.
He didn't know where they would land. He didn't even know if this world's surveillance systems or divine monitoring techniques would catch on. His understanding of the world's defensive measures—both magical and technological—was still limited.
He could only do his best to fill in the gaps.
For now, the bacteria were spreading—harmless in appearance, weak in lethality, but countless in number. If they reached the right towns, the right bodies, the right populations…
The effects would be noticed.
And if the plan was seen through too soon?
Well, it wouldn't mean failure.
But it would certainly make everything that followed a hell of a lot harder.