Micky used the icy vines to constrict the healer tighter, but Flammy didn’t seem to care about his misshapen body or the countless wounds tearing open across his skin.

  Nodarr was having a much harder time enduring the violent symptoms of his infection, however. Bloody foam spilled out of his lips as he struggled to speak – or breathe – Micky wasn’t sure which – but only choked gargles escaped his mouth. Before long, he was convulsing on the ground, clawing desperately at the dirt and his own neck, trying to dig a hole to inhale through, yet his flesh only swelled further to seal his self-inflicted wounds.

  Realizing that Flammy wasn’t going to let the poor man go, Micky formed an icy javelin in his hands, pointing it at his host’s friend. He didn’t know whether the healer’s death would release Nodarr, but he had no idea what else to try.

  Marnok didn’t even try to stop him this time. Perhaps he’d fully accepted that Flammy was no longer the person he once knew, or maybe he was simply too shaken by the pointless cruelty transpiring before his very eyes.

  Just as Micky fired the construct, veins squirmed beneath Flammy’s mutilated skin too, his body turning red like a ripe tomato, in a manner that reminded Micky of his trollsfury potions. The healer’s muscles flexed with new power, shattering his restraints as he smashed the projectile with his backhand. At the same time, life mana flooded his body to mend his wounds.

  Of course, Flammy’s injuries were way too serious to be fixed in an instant, even after emptying his core. His half-repaired bones broke again with every step he took, cutting through his own flesh as he charged at Micky on all fours like a wild beast, leaving bloody footprints and palmprints on the frozen ground.

  Whether his goal was to rip Marnok apart with his bare hands, bite his throat out like a rabid dog, or just infect and watch him suffer the same fate as Nodarr, Micky didn’t know nor care. Either way, he didn’t panic, knowing that he was stronger and far more collected than the injured healer.

  Flammy had only possessed half of Marnok’s mana reserves to start with, and he’d already wasted a lot to worsen Nodarr’s injuries, to free himself from the ice, and to fight against his self-inflicted wounds.

  More ice spilled out of Marnok’s body, a new layer of frost reaching Flammy, this one even thicker than before. Tendrils sprouted to stop the healer in his tracks once again, the man’s face coming to a halt mere centimetres from his former friend’s.

  Flammy’s eyes had remained perfectly placid throughout, no matter what he’d done or what had happened to him – almost as if his mind was no longer even present, his body acting entirely on its own. Micky had to admit that he was more than a little disturbed by the sight, even though he knew that the healer didn’t pose much of a threat to him.

  Not giving up, the life mage spat out a mouthful of infected blood into Marnok’s eyes – or tried to, anyway – though Micky had seen that coming from a kilometre away, having already coated his host’s face with a film of water.

  Shifting his attention back to Nodarr, he realized that the man was already dead.

  Sighing, he was about to finish the incapacitated healer off, when another change occurred in the man’s body. His throbbing veins suddenly expanded once again, this time turning pitch black. The dark colour snaked toward Flammy’s face before spilling into his eyes, a black cloud soon covering his scleras.

  Micky instinctively took a few steps back, no longer sure what he was dealing with. Everything the healer had done up to that point could be explained by a life mage that had lost his mind due to greed, but they were quickly delving into stranger territory.

  It was a good thing that he’d put some distance from the man too, because Flammy vomited another mouthful of blood the very next instant, once again trying to infect his friend. Only, this time, the liquid was viscous and black like tar, a series of disturbing shapes writhing inside the blob.

  Micky intercepted the attack with a blast of pressurized air, only for the scattered droplets to move again by themselves the moment they landed on the ground. They formed a swarm of tiny insects – beetles? Or scarabs, perhaps? The nasty creatures – if they could even be called that – flew at Micky, trying to worm their way into his host’s body.

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  Gritting his borrowed teeth, Micky blocked them again with a screen of water, trapping them in the clear liquid. The scarabs didn’t give up, however, turning back into droplets that tried to swim right through the azure barrier!

  “Not gonna happen,” Micky spat, gathering and rolling the mana into a globule as big as a watermelon, making sure that he pulled every last drop of filth to its centre. Scanning it with his Mana Sense, he soon confirmed that this thing didn’t have a mana core of any sort – something that every living being in the universe was supposed to need.

  Then again, he wasn’t sure whether spectral fiends had any either – he’d never thought to check – nor did he know whether they counted as living creatures. Whatever the case, the tar-like material trapped before him looked nothing like them either.

  ‘Another demonic infestation?’ he wondered. ‘They’re much more common than I thought…’

  How many clones had he even sent out in total? Four? Five hundred? And this was already his third time running into a world like this. Of course, every infestation he’d encountered had manifested in an entirely different way, but the similarities were uncanny.

  ‘Could this have something to do with Robari’s gods killing each other and ruining their only source of stable beast mana?’ he asked both himself and his host.

  Marnok remained silent, clearly still too shocked to utter a word. Even Micky was too tired to solve the mystery right now, and way too freaked out by the weird substance to keep watching it wriggling inside the azure bubble.

  Pouring some air mana into the construct, he froze it completely before shattering it into powder – as fine as he could make it. Just to be sure, he stomped on both the pale and black dust indiscriminately, before freezing everything into an even larger block of ice that would hopefully last for several hours before melting. If that wasn’t enough, he used more ice mana to drill a deep pit into the ground, burying the construct and sealing it with mud.

  Turning to Flammy, he realized that the crazed sailor was somehow still alive. Whether it was his life affinity or his ailment keeping him breathing wasn’t clear, though the man had reduced himself to a shrivelled mummy, too weak to fight against his new prison. Even so, he was clearly trying – and thankfully failing – to gather more of the dark blood to vomit out.

  Not interested in finding out whether the healer would eventually succeed, Micky froze him completely into a statue, before giving his corpse the same treatment as the bugs.

  Was it a little over the top?

  Probably. Especially given the fact that he was borrowing Marnok’s body to pulverize his friend’s. Still, Micky knew that these demonic infestations could bring even gods to their knees. Robari had been even more developed than Amenthes, and had still suffered greatly, so he wasn’t going to leave anything up to chance.

  Only after separating and burying the minced and twice-frozen remains of the treacherous life mage in five different pits did he finally exhale in relief, plopping down weakly.

  ‘Marnok… I’m really sorry about your crew and your friend. And for making you watch that,’ he said as he tried to catch his breath.

  ‘Just… what was that?’ the last surviving sailor asked, his inner voice soft and defeated.

  ‘If I’m right… something really, really nasty,’ Micky replied vaguely. ‘Have you ever heard of anything like this happening elsewhere on your planet?’

  Marnok shook his head. ‘Do ya think I could ‘ave ‘elped him? Had I realized sooner?’ he asked, clearly caring more about the people he had lost than the fate of his world.

  ‘Don’t even go there,’ Micky said, his voice growing firmer. ‘I’m pretty sure that whatever happened to him has been going on for a while. Since before the shipwreck for sure. Probably long before that. You couldn’t have known, and I doubt you could have done anything about it.’

  Marnok didn’t reply immediately, though he did eventually nod a couple of minutes later. ‘Now what? Everyone is gone. I’m the last person on the damn island.’

  Micky pushed his host’s body back to his feet, scanning their surroundings once more. His gaze lingered on Nodarr’s gnarly corpse for a second, the man’s expression still twisted by horror, disease and sheer agony.

  They should bury him. Micky didn’t know whether the infection that had killed him had merely been the product of Flammy’s life affinity or the infestation too, and he’d rather not wait long enough to find out. Besides, the poor guy deserved to be treated with some dignity in death. Either way, dealing with that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

  Peering past the dead sailor, Micky scanned the vast lake stretching before him as he answered his host’s question.

  ‘Unless you’ve reconsidered how important it is for you to stick around on this shitty planet for revenge – no offense – we’re going to have to start searching the lake. Just pray that we find your Saint’s tomb before we get eaten, and that the demigod has something useful buried with him.’

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