Fantasy Starting from the Stone Age - Chapter 32



Only Noblemtl

Episode 32. The Time That Was So Long 2

It was only after the entire South was scorched and the Holy Land was overrun with patients crawling like zombies in search of higher magical powers that it was finally discovered what it was.

Castel Laurent presents the results of his own research.

“It’s a disease. A new type of disease that has never existed before. It’s probably a disease that infects Daton through the spirits… It sucks out all the magic power in the body, killing them and spreading further. The spirits and the soft creatures show characteristics such as growing horns on their heads, rapidly increasing magic power consumption, and losing their sense of self, and Daton sucks the magic power until his senses eventually collapse and he goes mad and dies.”

“Castle Laurent. I can tell just by looking at it. What’s the cure?”

“······It seems that they can suppress very high magical power pressure since they can’t move in the Holy Land and its vicinity. However, since there might be a species that adapts to it, we should block their access altogether. Being in the Holy Land doesn’t reduce magical power consumption. If rapid magical power recovery and consumption are repeated, the body will wear out, and even if they endure, they will go mad and die.”

“What is the cure?”

“······It seems that the mother body of the spirit beasts like Minnirun and others like it is immune to the magical power pressure within its body alone, so All Chaun and Manum Lapang, as well as me and the spirit beasts that have been famous since before the Paradise Era, are fine.”

“No, so what’s the cure?”

Castle Laurent was sweating profusely.

“There is currently no cure for the individual. If we have to say, we have no choice but to isolate all patients who have come into contact with the South without any contact with the spirits and hope that they will naturally disappear······.”

“Die Recca!”

Even as the fire spreads before his eyes, Laurent speaks desperately.

“If we don’t contain it now, it will spread to the edges and we won’t be able to move a single step from the Holy Land. We won’t be able to pioneer or expand. We have to make a decision before all the Datons die.”

“Is that something you say to your own kind? You little punk!”

“······sorry.”

Ah. By the way, at this point, the infected who thought they would die if they stayed in the south have already evacuated to the east, west, and north, and are sighing in relief and starting to mate.

Cat-eared fire spirits are literally everywhere. Some people seem to think they’re cute. And those few people are dying along with countless others.

It’s not easy to develop a civilization. Expansion soon brings epidemics. But we can’t not expand.

“Okay, I’m sorry, Laurent. Isolate. Isolate the patients.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“It’s okay. The plague has come and gone several times, but we’ve finally overcome it. If everyone in Daton works hard, we’ll be able to find it soon. Call in the scholars. Study medicine and investigate biology, and somehow overcome this disease.”

“Yes. All right. It won’t take long. Daton’s progress won’t stop that easily.”

By the way, even if there is something similar to a cure, it will take 19,000 years. It will take 20,000 years for a real cure to come out.

15,000 years of the mythical age. If Daton had continued to progress as it was, it could have launched an artificial satellite within 5,000 years, but it rapidly declined in one fell swoop.

Even in prehistoric times, there was a concept of quarantine. Since the exact cause of disease was unknown, it was closer to a belief, taboo, or superstition, but you should not go near a sick person, and you should not use items used by a sick person and burn them. There was a prehistoric or ancient quarantine.

In that respect, Daton possessed quarantine technology that was ahead of its time.

In accordance with the maxim of Castel Laurent, “Everything in the world can be explained, we just don’t know it,” we have tried to solve the disease and injury that account for a very high percentage of the causes of death in Daton by identifying the causes and symptoms of illness, and recording and disseminating symptomatic treatments (in the form of fire) that can improve symptoms even if they cannot cure the disease fundamentally.

When a plague breaks out, we start by isolating the patient. Then we communicate by bringing supplies from far away and then picking them up after we retreat (this is possible because the land is so vast).

And since there are no letters, they communicate with the isolated patients by putting their memories into ‘flames’ and putting them down. This is because fire and spirits have never been known to cause illness.

In that respect, the Hanjuta Mal transmitted through the spirits was a strange disease that far surpassed their common sense. It was a strange disease that shook the very foundations of Daton, where everyone was a spirit master and a civilization built on spirit magic.

First of all, it is not transmitted through simple contact with droplets between an infected person and a healthy person. It is transmitted only in the order of person-spirit-person, and the only cases of true infection are contact with bodily fluids at the level of sexual intercourse.

The problem is that all of the Datons are spirits and have a habit of rushing into mating as soon as they meet each other.

When the epidemic that started in the south spread to the east and west and eventually to the north, people in each place had no idea how to isolate themselves. It was even more serious because the disease had an incubation period of one to three days.

One Daton has sex with at least three people in one night. And those three have sex with three more. If you do three more, that’s 27 people infected, and in the case of simple contact with spirits and spirit beasts, it’s even more.

When the fact that contact with the spirits was not allowed was conveyed, 20% of the Datuns from the east, west, south, and north were already walking to the holy land, and the remaining 20%, not knowing that they were already carriers, hurriedly ran to the holy land a few days later.

All Chaun’s decision was quick. He sent a strong message of determination from the altar of Mainilun to the altars of each region.

“Listen, all descendants of Datang Oram! Cut off the connection with Daton that you contracted with! And wait in your isolated position!”

For the spirits, long-distance communication through the altar is possible. The problem is that it is not transmitted to Daton. He does not have such advanced communication technology.

The Datons, who knew that All Chaun had done something, mated with each other in peace, and the Datons, who were carriers except for the spirits, soon crawled to the holy land as a group.

And here we discover the second characteristic of Hanjutamal.

“Oh, it’s fire!”

“What the heck? The Orotbes are crazy!”

The broken contract Orotbes with cat ears on their heads go crazy and start setting fire to the surroundings.

Yes. If Hanjutamal is infected by a spirit, it will make you crazy. You will not be able to identify Pia and will not be able to follow the rules set by Datang Oram at all.

In the end, you end up burning it anywhere, just like your original instinct.

And the Datons have all lost their fire blessings. Now they burn.

“Run away from the village!”

The Datons, who had barely escaped to the grassland, were shivering from the ‘burn’ they had experienced for the first time. Fire was such a scary thing.

But that’s not really scary. What’s really scary is that even a fire started by a single person like me can be contagious.

A village that had been thoroughly quarantined without even making contact was hit by the flames, and the fire spread to the Malrangmalang that had been touched by the flames, and the spirits that had been touched by the Malrangmalang, and the flames spread to the neighboring villages.

Quarantine and isolation. It seems easy to avoid meeting each other in this vast prairie. In fact, quarantine policies have been successful, albeit slowly.

However, you can get infected through the spirit water. You can’t send the message without riding an ostrich, and if you do, if the ostrich gets infected, the village you sent the message to will be devastated. Even if that doesn’t happen, you can still die from the sparks that fly in.

When the number of people who entered the Holy Land to avoid death exceeded 2 million and the Holy Land was completely filled with people, Ol Chaun now reached a different problem.

“······What about food?”

They can’t be collected. If patients enter the Holy Land and go outside the Holy Land, their magic will be sucked out and they will all die.

If we were to supply food from outside, all the healthy Datons would have been quarantined, and if we were to gather food, we would have to bring spirit beasts with us, but since all the patients had gathered in the Holy Land, all the spirit beasts were infected.

In other words, we cannot collect or transport food.

A severe famine strikes the Holy Land. There is a concept of preserving food in case of famine, but there is no granary or anything like that, basically gathering millions.

Before the magic shortage, everyone would have starved to death. Only three Minniruns could never get sick. Millions of people gathered.

Eventually someone raised their hand.

“All right! If we continue like this, everyone will die!”

“I know. But······.”

“So I will sacrifice myself! Should I not take my life and let my brothers eat my body?”

“?!”

If there was a story about killing someone and eating them, that’s trash. No one talked about that.

But it is a bit different to say that you will die and turn into a piece of meat. This kind of extreme starvation has never been experienced even in the primitive era.

“I, I am originally old!”

“I gained a lot of weight!”

“I don’t have long to live anyway because I have a terminal illness!”

“At least so that my brothers can endure it longer······! Please!”

All of this was permitted. If that’s what you call a permit.

All Ol Chaun could do, seeing his comrades devouring his flesh and blood, was to teach them how to make fire with sticks without the power of the spirits.

They are thirsty and suck blood, chew on human flesh, and gather firewood and hair to burn.

And here’s what we found out.

First, if you eat a person infected with Hanjutamal, you will contract Hanjutamal. That is, unless it’s a main run.

Second, if an infected person eats another infected person, the symptoms will worsen and progress quickly.

Thirdly, if you leave the corpse there, the plague will spread from there.

“Ah. It looks like a storm is coming.”

Yes, the storm is coming. The rainy season has begun. It warms people near Datang Oram, but not enough to heat millions.

And we also found out that if the blood of a corpse enters the ground or the water, even the ground and swamps become carriers of the germs, so we had to scoop out the ground and get rid of the blood-sucking worms and other creatures underground.

It is also soon realized that plants can become infected. To be exact, the plants are not infected, but if they drink infected water, the spores will appear all over their fruits, leaves, and stems.

“It’s a leopard!”

“A pack of leopards has arrived!”

The first enemy in the Holy Land that Ol Chaun burned down, then and now, Daton is a pack of leopards that could only be defeated by a few dozen people, but when they see people gathered, they pounce, feast to their heart’s content, and then retreat.

A leopard that can only be fought with fire. The power of Datang Oram could not stop the entire Holy Land where millions had gathered.

Those who had no choice but to open their eyes and watch their brothers being dragged away and eaten were able to console themselves to some extent.

“That’s good. Those leopards must have suffered from being caught in a Hanju Ta-mal too.”

By the time we learned that some creatures, including leopards, were immune to the effects of the Hanjutamal, thousands of people had already become leopard food.

It wasn’t long before a pride of lions formed a camp around them and began to prey on the Datons who crawled to the sanctuary in search of survival.

“Why! Why is it that leopards and lions don’t get caught in Hanjutamal!!!”

There is a scientific reason for this, but it is something they don’t know about now.

They are afraid because they do not know. It is unfair. An unprecedented disaster has befallen them, of which they are unaware.

Millions gathered in the hope that they would find a solution, but most of them died: from hunger, cold, wild animals, and disease.

All of this is miserable. Even in the primitive era, it wasn’t this miserable. All he can do is run around alone, make fire, and attack the enemy.

All of this thinking about this terrible disaster.

“Are you a bee?”

“yes?”

The people who were listening turned their heads.

“Did I do something wrong and heaven punished me······? Was I not supposed to go out into the meadow? Did I go out recklessly and cause disaster?”

“No, it’s not true. There’s no basis for it. There was just such a monster outside.”

As Castloran speaks, Ol’ Chaun kneels as he looks upon his dying compatriots. He then waves his palms in the empty air.

I was hoping something would happen.

“Please······. I beg you. Please······. Please save us······. If we continue like this, we’ll all die······.”

In fact, in all the thousands of years he has lived, he has never once prayed to anyone.

Because he is the one who overcame all adversity and created his own future.

He prays. He prays in this hopeless despair.

It could be said that this was a true revelation of faith for Darton.

But the world doesn’t really care who suffers or has faith. All the people who come now are people who rub their palms in the air diligently.

“I want to die!

But nothing changes. All Chaun cries in anger. He really cries. All Chaun’s despair is contagious to Daton, and he hurls all kinds of curses at him.

The population of Datang, which had grown to 20 million thanks to the remarkable progress and development of the mythical era,

Less than a year after the Hanjutamal movement began to spread, the number had dwindled to 3.5 million.