"Scatter!! Don't let them touch you!!!"
Captain Astra's command cut through the eerie silence, shattering the brief moment of hesitation.
The twisted scouts lunged, their movements erratic, their bodies writhing under the influence of the parasitic black veins.
Kalem stepped back, his hand already reaching for his serrated steel whip. With a sharp flick of his wrist, the segmented metal snapped outward, cutting across the closest scout's torso. The blade carved through cloth and skin, but instead of blood, a dark, oily substance oozed from the wound.
It moved.
The black ichor pulsed, strands of it reaching outward as if trying to reconnect the severed flesh.
"That's new," Kalem muttered.
A Battle Against the Infected
The recon unit scattered, following Astra's order, keeping their distance. These things—whatever they had become—were not normal abyssal creatures.
They weren't merely twisted by corruption.
They were infested.
Serka moved fast, slipping between two of the infected with blade-like precision. Her stilettos flashed in the dim light as she slashed across the knees of one, forcing it to buckle. But even as it collapsed, its arms flailed wildly, the black veins twisting and bulging like living tendrils beneath the skin.
She clicked her tongue in frustration. "Tch. They're not going down easy."
Another soldier tried to pierce a scout's heart with a spear, but the weapon got stuck—not because of armor or bone, but because the flesh itself resisted, as if something inside gripped the blade and refused to let go.
"Don't aim for the body!" Astra called out. "Go for the head or sever the limbs completely!"
One of the soldiers didn't react in time.
A twitching, corrupted scout lunged, fingers stretched toward the soldier's exposed arm. Before he could retreat, the black substance lashed outward, thin tendrils wrapping around his wrist like leeching vines.
He screamed.
The corruption crawled up his skin, veins turning black, spreading from the point of contact in seconds.
"Cut it off!" Astra barked.
Another soldier didn't hesitate. A blade flashed, severing the infected arm at the elbow. The soldier collapsed, clutching the stump, his breath ragged.
But the severed hand twitched, its fingers still moving. The veins within it pulsed and twisted like worms, as if searching for something to latch onto.
Kalem wasted no time.
He brought his boot down hard, crushing the parasitic hand underfoot, grinding it into the dirt until it stopped moving.
"They're not regenerating fully," Kalem observed, wiping his whip on his coat. "But they can still move even after getting torn apart."
Serka grimaced. "So, what's the plan, genius?"
Kalem's mind worked fast. The ichor-infested scouts were slowly weakening, but their ability to resist wounds made them unpredictable. If they continued fighting like this, the risk of losing someone to infection was too high.
He looked around. "Astra, we need to set up a perimeter. Keep them at a distance and burn anything that stops moving."
The captain nodded. "Fall back toward the ridge!"
The unit moved with practiced efficiency, retreating toward higher ground. Astra and two others covered the rear, cutting down any infected that got too close.
Kalem, meanwhile, rummaged through his cart.
He pulled out a sealed flask—inside, a viscous oil infused with powdered pyrite. A basic fire accelerant.
Serka caught on immediately. "You had fire oil this whole time?"
"Of course," Kalem replied, tossing a flask her way. "I'm a smith."
Serka smirked. "Good enough."
As soon as the unit reached the rocky ridge, Kalem tossed the fire oil forward, coating the ground between them and the infected.
Then he drew his Burnt Blade—the sword he had reforged with fire runes after the last deployment.
With a surge of mana, the blade burst into flames.
Kalem swung downward, igniting the oil-soaked terrain.
A wall of fire roared to life, cutting off the infected from advancing.
They twitched violently, their bodies reacting as the heat licked at their skin. The black veins pulsed erratically, as if the parasites inside were panicking.
Astra wasted no time. "Archers! Fire at will!"
The unit's archers let loose a volley of flaming arrows, each shot piercing into the writhing infected. The moment the fire touched their bodies, the black ichor inside them reacted—not with regeneration, but with violent rejection.
One of the infected bursts apart, the veins within it shriveling and curling like burnt vines.
Another let out a horrifying, unnatural wail before collapsing into itself, its body disintegrating into ash and twisted remnants.
The fire spread rapidly, consuming the corpses and cutting off any chance of the parasites finding new hosts.
The battle was over.
But the questions remained.
The unit stood in silence, watching the last of the infected turn to cinders.
Serka exhaled, wiping sweat from her brow. "That was... unsettling."
Astra stepped forward; her expression unreadable. "We need to report this immediately."
Kalem crouched near one of the half-burned corpses, examining what little remained.
The black veins had stopped moving, but even in death, the flesh looked unnatural—twisted, as if something had restructured it from the inside out.
"It's not just corruption," he muttered. "This is something else entirely."
Astra nodded. "And we have no idea how far it's spread."
Kalem stood, dusting off his coat. "Then we should find out."
Astra turned to the rest of the unit. "We move out. We need to track where this came from before it spreads to the city."
Nobody argued.
They had seen what happened when the abyss changed its tactics.
Now, they had to make sure it didn't happen again.