Imported Sickness

The bulb did not pulse with the rhythmic, wet respiration of native Hollow flora; it twitched in violent, irregular spasms that threatened to rupture its membrane before Volya could set the brass clamps.

Volya knelt in the damp loam of the Sector Ten bedrock drift, the dark-steel billhook resting across their knees and a pair of long-nosed dissection pincers gripped in gloved fingers. The air down here tasted of rancid lard, stale battery acid, and an acrid, metallic heat that burned the back of the throat. Every breath through the coarse iron charcoal filter tasted like sucking down pulverized brick dust, but taking the mask off was not an option. Ten yards ahead, the cavern wall wept thick, maroon discharge that pooled in calcified stone runnels.

"Watch the vascular rim, boy," Mikhailov hissed, hovering four feet back with a glass specimen cylinder cradled in both trembling hands. The botanist's round brass spectacles were smeared with grease and gray soot from the kiln flue above, and his breath hitched in thin, whistling gasps. "If you puncture the arterial node before severing the feeder hyphae, the entire cluster will flash-boil. Southern Blood-Blight does not decay into passive compost. It converts organic mass directly into exothermic gas when stressed. It is an atrocity against cultivation."

"I see the node," Volya said quietly, their voice muffled behind the leather respirator.

The want driving Volya's fingers was precise and immediate: to harvest an intact vascular node of this foreign pathogen without blowing off their hands, and to determine whether the Spore-Reaper class could digest an artificial contaminant designed to rot the dungeon's bones.

Carefully, Volya slid the edge of the pneumatic bypass tool behind the pulsating crimson root. The tool's twin steel prongs seated into the petrified limestone fissure. Volya depressed the side thumb-lever, releasing a controlled burst from one of Radko's high-pressure nitrogen ampoules.

A sharp hiss of sub-zero gas frosted the root collar instantly. The vibrant scarlet flesh paled to a chalky pink, brittle and rigid.

Before the tissue could thaw and trigger a chemical defense, Volya snapped the billhook's curved tip under the frozen seam. A clean crack echoed through the low-ceilinged drift. With a swift twist of the pincers, Volya lifted the frozen nodule—dense as lead shot and covered in tiny, throbbing crimson cilia—and dropped it cleanly into Mikhailov’s specimen jar.

The botanist slammed the brass-threaded lid shut and screwed it down until the rubber gasket bulged. "One. By the soil, we have one whole bulb. Now step back before the parent cluster notices the trauma."

Volya did not retreat. Instead, Volya held a gloved right hand two inches above the severed root stump weeping dark, viscous sap into the mineral trench.

"Volya, what are you doing?" Mikhailov rasped, his voice rising into panic. "That sap carries an unnatural alkaline charge! If it touches open skin, it dissolves marrow!"

"I need to know if the System recognizes it," Volya said.

Volya stripped the heavy rawhide glove from their right palm. The skin there was pale, calloused, and patterned with faint, charcoal-colored lines where the Spore-Reaper's bio-channels had etched themselves into the epidermis. Hovering the bare skin over the boiling crimson fluid, Volya focused on the familiar pulling sensation in their chest.

[Skill Activated: Blight-Siphon (Rank 1)]

A harsh, electrical shock tore up Volya's forearm. Unlike the cold, oily weight of natural Hollow rot, this energy felt like crushed glass forced backward through the veins. The pain hammered into Volya's collarbone, making their jaw ache with sudden tension. The bio-channels flared an angry, fluorescent purple beneath the skin.

[Environmental Hazard Detected: Engineered Pathogen (Southern Blood-Blight)]

[Class Feature Engaged: Rot Assimilation]

[Warning: Pathogen volatility exceeds standard necrotic density by 340%. Bio-stress accumulation active.]

[Blight Reservoir: 3/6 Charges (1 Volatile Blood-Charge synthesized)]

[HP: 42/80 -> 40/80 (Caustic Bio-Stress)]

Volya severed the siphon connection and pulled their hand back, clenching their fist against the tremor running through the muscle. The skin of their palm was flushed dark red, radiating heat, but the charcoal channels were already absorbing the sting, locking the hyper-reactive energy inside the reservoir.

"You're mad," Mikhailov whispered, staring at Volya's hand with wide, terrified eyes. "You're genuinely deranged. You just pulled live military-grade defoliant into your bloodstream."

"It isn't in the blood," Volya said, flexing the fingers until the stiffness cracked away. "It sits in the class reservoir. And it carries three times the kinetic pressure of natural decay."

Volya stood up, retrieving their glove and pulling it tight over the burning skin. "Let's get back up to Kiln Seven before the patrol shifts. We test the yield where we have masonry walls."

·  ·  ·

The climb back up the vertical root conduit was silent save for Mikhailov’s ragged breathing and the clinking of specimen jars in his rucksack.

Kiln Seven welcomed them with the familiar smell of cold ash, dry brick, and pine-tar smoke. The iron draft-damper Volya had broken during the ambush on Radko hung loosely by a replacement wire hook, keeping the lower air stagnant and cool while drawing the heavier gases up the high brick flue. Radko's stripped body had already been rolled down the drainage sink into the flooded sump fifty feet below the floorboards; there was no blood left on the flagstones, only a dull patch of damp scrubbed with lye.

Volya set their gear on an overturned oak curing crate: the dark-steel billhook, the brass Vanguard detonator casing, the unrolled demolition map, and the twelve heavy silver sovereigns taken from Radko's coat.

Mikhailov immediately scurried to the kiln's dry-storage alcove, setting out four glass slides, an alcohol lamp, and a small copper mortar. "Fascinating... and deeply monstrous," the old botanist muttered to himself, using a brass scalpel to shave a micro-thin sliver from the frozen blood-bulb. "Look at these cellular walls. They are artificially reinforced with zinc salts and dried alchemical bitumen. This strain didn't evolve in the deep dark; it was bred in a southern vat to consume root timber at five times the natural rate."

"Why breed something that destroys the timber?" Volya asked, leaning over the table while inspecting the bruised skin of their palm. "The entire harvest economy depends on the roots staying intact so the spores can regenerate."

"Because whoever paid for this doesn't want a harvest," Mikhailov replied, his voice dropping into a dry, bitter cadence. "They want the bedrock bare. Natural decay takes decades to soften an ancient transition ward. The Old Wardens built those irises from petrified ironwood and living marrow-stone. But this sludge? It breaks down the resin bonds in days. It strips the flesh off the skeleton so an industrial auger can drill straight down to the core."

Volya looked at the map Radko had carried. The red-ink circles were not random delver claims; they followed the exact subterranean fault line connecting Sector Four, Sector Nine, and the deep root system of Sector Ten.

"Levskor isn't just poaching rare nodes," Volya said. "He's clearing a highway."

"He's murdering the ecosystem," Mikhailov corrected sharply. "And once the main roots dissolve, the entire upper crust—including the farms, the outer hamlets, and half the municipal district of Krasnoy—will slide forty feet into the lower sinks."

Volya looked down at their right hand. In the status interface hovering at the edge of peripheral vision, the Blight Reservoir glowed with an unstable, shifting icon:

[Blight Reservoir: 3/6]

[- Standard Charges: 2]

[- Volatile Blood-Charges: 1]

"We need to see what one charge does when released," Volya said.

"Not in here!" Mikhailov squawked, clutching his specimen jars against his chest. "If you drop a wall in this kiln, the soot cloud will signal every Guild watchman between here and the southern ridge!"

"Not the outer walls," Volya said, walking toward the rear alcove where the kiln met the petrified shale foundation. "The sealed drainage plug behind the old charcoal chute. It leads into the dead quarry vein. It's solid three-foot bedrock reinforced with old iron rebar."

Volya stood five paces from the granite block that sealed the obsolete sluice tunnel. The stone was damp, crusted with decades of lime buildup and old saltpeter.

Volya raised their left arm, planting their stance. The new instincts from [Cellular Vent: Rank 2] settled into their chest like cold water poured into a hot cast-iron pot. Instead of simply blowing the rot outward in a diffuse cloud of choking vapor, the upgraded skill allowed directional compression—funneling the gas through a tight conical focal point.

"Stand behind the brick partition, Mikhailov," Volya commanded.

The botanist did not argue; he practically dove behind the kiln's central firing pillar.

Volya focused on the volatile scarlet charge sitting in the reservoir. The energy resisted the draw, biting into the bio-channels with savage friction. Volya forced the flow outward through the palm, triggering the skill in the same split-second breath.

[Skill Activated: Cellular Vent (Rank 2) + Volatile Blood-Charge]

[Skill Interaction: Hyper-Compressed Combustion Vector]

There was no soft hiss of expelled spores.

A concussive, deafening crack ripped through the kiln's rear vault. A pencil-thin lance of blinding crimson flame and pulverized caustic needles punched straight into the center of the three-foot granite plug. The shockwave hit Volya's chest like a swung timber, driving them back a half-step, their extractor boots skidding across the soot-covered gravel.

The granite didn't just crack; it violently disintegrated. A circle eighteen inches wide was blown out of the center of the three-foot stone barrier, the rock liquefied and shattered into gravel-sized shale fragments that pelted the interior of the dead quarry chute behind it. The edges of the borehole hissed with smoking, bright-red acidic slime that ate through the remaining lime deposits in seconds.

Silence fell over Kiln Seven, save for the patter of falling grit from the rafters and the slow, rhythmic draw of the chimney flue pulling the caustic red smoke upward into the night sky.

[Target Neutralized: Reinforced Bedrock Sluice Barrier]

[Class Progression: Spore-Reaper Level 3 (65%)]

[Blight Reservoir: 2/6 Charges (Standard: 2)]

[Cellular Vent (Rank 2) stability test confirmed: +15% class mastery]

Mikhailov slowly poked his head out from behind the firing pillar, his spectacles hanging crookedly off one ear. He stared at the smoking, glowing borehole through the three-foot stone slab, then looked at Volya's smoking glove.

"By the grand roots," the botanist whispered. "That wasn't a spore vent. That was a localized mining charge."

"Better than a mining charge," Volya said, checking the palm of their glove. The heavy leather was singed along the seam, but the upgraded biological channels had absorbed the kickback without fracturing the arm bones. "Cordite needs a percussion cap, a bore hole, and ten feet of copper fuse. This needs two seconds of line of sight."

"And a suicidal willingness to hold liquid fire inside your organs," Mikhailov noted dryly.

A soft, rhythmic scraping noise came from the drainage culvert near the kiln’s east floorboard.

Three short scrapes, a pause, then two heavy thuds.

Volya’s dark-steel billhook was in hand before the sound finished echoing. Volya stepped light-footed to the rim of the square iron drainage grate, signaling Mikhailov to douse the alcohol lamp. The old man extinguished the flame with a tin cup, plunging the kiln into shadows lit only by the faint red luminescence leaking from the newly blasted borehole.

The iron grate groaned as it was shoved upward from below. A pair of heavy, grease-stained leather gauntlets pushed the heavy cast-iron plate aside.

Zoryanka hauled herself out of the drainage culvert with a guttural grunt, her muscular frame rolling onto the soot-covered flagstones. She wore her dark blue Municipal Exchange field tunic beneath a heavy, tar-treated canvas duster, her broad face glistening with cold culvert slime and sweat. A bulky canvas satchel was slung diagonally across her chest, clinking with iron tools and sealed tin cylinders.

She kicked the grate back into its frame with the heel of her boot, took one deep sniff of the kiln air, and immediately coughed into her sleeve.

"What in the nine sinks are you burning in here?" she rasped, her deep, raspy voice cutting through the dark. "Smells like someone boiled an entire brass foundry in pig bile."

"Blood-Blight test," Volya said, lowering the billhook. "You're late. The dawn bell is about to ring."

"I'm late because half the municipal watch is mobilized along the transition gates," Zoryanka said, dropping her heavy satchel onto the curing crate with a dull iron thud. She wiped a streak of oily black sludge from her cheek with the back of her glove, then stopped, her sharp hazel eyes fixing onto Mikhailov.

The old botanist waved timidly from behind his specimen jars. "Good evening, logistics officer. I trust the market quotas remain absurdly bureaucratic?"

Zoryanka let out a short, harsh bark of a laugh. "Mikhailov. So the kid actually dragged you out of your hole before Levskor could turn your greenhouse into gravel. That's one less corpse I have to balance on the municipal ledger."

"He didn't just save me," Mikhailov said haughtily. "We discovered the source of the anomalous seismic frequencies."

"I know what's causing the frequencies," Zoryanka said, her tone flattening instantly. The wry amusement vanished from her broad face, replaced by the grim, exhausted efficiency of an officer who had spent the last eight hours reviewing fraudulent ledgers. "That's why I took the low culvert under the mill race. We have a massive problem."

Volya stepped closer. "What did you find at the Exchange?"

Zoryanka unbuckled the straps of her canvas satchel and pulled out a thick roll of parchment bound with heavy iron clips, along with three brass-sleeved chemical pressure gauges stamped with Pioneer Vanguard insignias.

"Levskor didn't wait for the Council to vote on the full deep-quarantine," Zoryanka said, spreading the papers across the table over Radko's oilcloth chart. "He used the emergency mandate from Sector Nine to push through an immediate, classified requisition order. Look at these clearance manifests."

Volya leaned over the documents. The ink was fresh, stamped with the seal of the Krasnoy Harvest Oversight Directorate.

"Eight tons of high-grade zinc-salt fertilizer," Volya read, tracing the neat rows of numbers. "Forty industrial pressure injectors. Two hundred military-grade filtration canisters. All diverted from the main municipal stores to Margin Depository Three."

"Margin Depository Three sits right above the Sector Ten arterial root junction," Zoryanka said, tapping a thick, calloused finger against the schematic. "They aren't just letting the rot spread naturally down in the dark. Levskor's crew brought in four pressurized industrial slurry-pumps this afternoon. They’re tapping the main drainage pipes directly into the root canopy. They are pumping thousand-gallon batches of that red filth straight into the transition locks."

"Why the rush?" Volya asked. "He told me in Sector Nine that he needed weeks to align the secondary wards."

"Because he lost his key," Zoryanka said, looking straight into Volya's eyes. "He knows you took the Bio-Resonance Splinter from the Sector Nine iris. He knows you survived the purge. He knows that if you make contact with the Council elders or the independent guilds with that splinter in your hand, his entire narrative about 'accidental rot collapses' falls apart."

"The Council elders won't listen to an unbonded extractor," Volya said coldly. "They signed the bounty mandate."

"They signed it because Levskor showed them forged soil samples claiming the outer roots were already dead beyond recovery," Zoryanka retorted. "He convinced them the only way to save Krasnoy’s economy is to execute a deep 'controlled breach' to access the lower bedrock reserves before the end of the harvest cycle. He’s set the timetable for midnight tomorrow. Once those industrial slurry-pumps hit full pressure, the Blood-Blight will liquefy the Sector Ten foundation within three hours. When that happens, Levskor blows the transition locks with military cordite and walks into the Core with his private extraction rig."

"And Krasnoy?" Mikhailov whispered, his hands trembling violently as he adjusted his spectacles.

"The entire southern district drops twelve paces into a sinkhole," Zoryanka said flatly. "And the poison gas blown up through the municipal wells will choke out every living thing in the lower borough within two days."

Silence settled over the kiln. The only sound was the faint, steady crackle of the lingering acid in the rear borehole eating through the stone rebar.

Mikhailov sank onto an empty salt barrel, burying his face in his hands. "It's over. We can't reach the Council in time, and even if we did, Levskor's sappers control every checkpoint between the ridge and the high hall."

"We aren't going to the Council," Volya said.

Zoryanka looked up, her eyebrows raised. "Then what's the play, kid? You have a damaged billhook, three jars of marrow-salve, and an eccentric botanist. You can't fight forty Pioneer sappers in the open streets."

Volya reached into their coat and pulled out the brass Vanguard blast-detonator casing taken from the crater in Sector Nine, setting it beside the high-pressure nitrogen ampoules and the twelve silver sovereigns.

"Levskor’s entire operation depends on the high-grade filtration units stored at Margin Depository Three," Volya said, pointing directly to the red ink square on Zoryanka's logistics chart. "The Blood-Blight is too corrosive for standard cloth or charcoal masks. Without those two hundred military-grade filters, his sappers can't operate the slurry-pumps in Sector Ten for more than ten minutes without their lungs dissolving."

Zoryanka narrowed her eyes, studying the map. "Depository Three is built into the old timber hoist-station on the southern verge. It's heavily barricaded. There are at least six Pioneer guards posted at the surface gantry, and the main vault door is reinforced iron-plated oak."

"It's reinforced against cordite blasts and crowbars," Volya said, gesturing toward the rear alcove where the smoking, pulverized three-foot borehole pierced the bedrock plug.

Zoryanka walked over to the alcove, her heavy boots clicking on the flagstones. She stopped at the edge of the hole, peering through the shattered granite into the dark quarry chute beyond. She reached out, running a gloved finger along the scorched, smooth edge where the stone had melted under the concentrated crimson blast.

She turned back, a grim, wolfish smirk breaking across her soot-stained face. "You did that with one charge?"

"One volatile charge," Volya confirmed. "And there's a whole field of Blood-Blight sitting directly beneath this floor in Sector Ten waiting to be harvested."

"They'll have the gantry wired with alarm bells," Mikhailov said nervously, looking between them. "And Levskor's veterans don't panic when they hear an explosion. They'll swarm the perimeter in five minutes."

"They won't hear an explosion," Volya said, picking up the dark-steel billhook and checking the keen, dark edge in the faint moonlight filtering down the chimney flue. "They'll hear a gas leak. We siphon five volatile charges from the lower drift, breach Depository Three from the abandoned quarry tunnel behind their foundation, and destroy the slurry-pumps before they ever pump a gallon into Sector Ten."

Zoryanka folded the logistics chart and shoved it into her coat, fastening the heavy brass buttons with a sharp, decisive snap. "The guard rotation changes at the mid-morning bell after the shift turnover. That gives us four hours to prep the charges and pack the gear."

Volya turned toward the square iron hatch leading back down into the dark, living roots of Sector Ten.

"Four hours is enough," Volya said, tightening the straps of their extractor harness. "Let's go harvest the poison."