Getting a Technology System in Modern Day - Chapter 1020

Capítulo 1020: Hell on the Targeted

It was a pandemic, a hell targeted specifically at them. With each scan they performed on the remaining soldiers, they came to the realization that nearly all of them carried the virus that was deadly to the monsters the Erythians depended on to fight. With each passing second, millions of their monsters continued to die as they frantically searched for a mana signal that would command the virus to stop and return to its passive form.

It was their best solution at the moment. The time it took for the virus to go from activation to incapacitating a monster was very short, and researching and producing a vaccine would take months, if not years. By the time that route could provide a viable solution, they would have already lost all of their available monsters.

It was the worst attack ever perpetrated against the Erythians. They realized the empire had most definitely used the knowledge the Erythians themselves had provided to learn about and specifically target only the monsters they were producing. They had spread the virus months, if not years, before even the scent of conflict was in the air.

“What about mutations? Are they crazy? What if it mutates and starts being harmful to other life forms? Are we sure the empire doesn’t have the means to trigger the virus to become harmful to other life forms as well?” the Erythian leader asked. He realized that not only were the monsters infected, but he, the rest of their military, and their citizens also carried the virus. It just wasn’t harmful to them. But with the spread on the scale of hundreds of billions, if you counted the monsters, the possibility of a mutation turning it harmful to other life forms was more than certain.

“That is not a problem. We checked the virus’s DNA and discovered it has redundant code and more than fifty different ways to destroy any version of itself that mutates. Although we are still decoding and understanding the DNA and what every line of it does, there is currently no hint of any part of it being inactive and waiting for activation,” the heavily sweating man answered. He raised his head from the constantly updating report as his mind struggled to accept that they were losing their most powerful strength with each passing second.

…………………..

The reaction to the third attack was different depending on the person and the civilization. The conquered civilizations reacted with both relief and fear. They were relieved the biological attack wasn’t aimed at them, but they were fearful upon realizing the empire was capable of such a specifically targeted attack.

Their fear grew when they understood that the empire, with a single move, had literally taken away the Erythians’ most powerful weapon: their ability to overwhelm enemies with vast numbers of monsters of varying strengths. It was a move that would be remembered. Although there was no live footage of the third attack, the empire released the virus’s plan with a full, detailed breakdown of what it could do, how it was spread, and how they were confident it had already infected the entire Erythian civilization.

At first, many who read the document thought it was a virus targeting people. But after reading further, they realized it was targeted at the monsters, which made more sense. The empire would already know that targeting citizens with a virus was against its own rules of engagement, but the monsters were not classified as citizens, meaning they were fair game, and the empire had treated them as such.

As for the imperial citizens, they came to the realization that the empire had prepared for this long ago and was only now revealing its full preparations. They were living the motto, “Prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” in a literal sense. They were confident that a month was not enough time for the empire to produce such a targeted and sophisticated attack and then spread it across the Erythian star systems.

Opportunists even went ahead and opened betting on whether the Erythians would surrender. The betting was open to everyone under the empire’s control, including the captured civilizations, who also placed bets. The total pool exceeded trillions of END and continued to increase with each passing second as more people placed their bets.

Five hours into what the Erythians would forever call a nightmare, the empire kept its promise and moved to the next round of attacks. It was another biological attack, but on a different civilization, with implications similar to, if not worse than, what was happening to the Erythians. The target was the Galvinith, who gained their strength through biological symbiosis, where an organism matching their affinity forms a symbiotic relationship that gives the person the organism’s power. This time, the empire triggered a virus that specifically targeted the connection of this symbiotic relationship. When activated, the virus acted as a knife, severing the bond between the two individuals. This meant that those affected by this new virus literally lost their strength in a single action by the empire, resulting in them losing nearly forty percent of their power.

It was only the fourth attack the empire had sent, but the top ten were already dreading what else the empire had in store for them.

…………………..

“Do we have anything they can use against us?” the Valthorin leader asked during an impromptu meeting.

They had just declared their superiority and promised to keep fighting to the end, but the four attacks the empire had sent out had immediately made some of them, even the proudest ones, nervous.

“Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what they will target, which is our biggest problem in finding a solution. If we use the four attacks as a reference, they seem to launch two attacks of a similar style back-to-back before moving to the next. At the moment, that isn’t backed by much evidence, as what we have is not enough for a conclusion. However, we shouldn’t rule out the empire escalating their biological attacks to target our people directly, not just our means of strength. That is a possibility they might take in future attacks if we continue holding out. There is really no limit to what they can do, so we should take everything into consideration when coming up with countermeasures,” one of the most powerful Valthorins said, his pride nowhere to be seen during his speech.

It wasn’t just that he was afraid; at their level of strength, pride was not the main focal point. They had become much more objective.

The empire was pushing this aspect of their behavior to the maximum, forcing them to find a solution. Surrender was out of the question; they would rather die, but they knew that if things continued as they were, it would not end well for them.