Chapter 139: Mutagenic

"...Haaa...haaa...w-why?! W-Why won’t you stop dying!! Stop dying!! P-Please...I-I’m begging you..." Chrysaria’s face is covered in tears as she holds the hands of a servant who has just died.

As expected, the situation in her kingdom is a living hell. After Typhon’s "help," the radiation naturally affected everyone there. During the first few days, everything seemed fine, despite people beginning to fall ill.

But before long, the deaths began. Most of them were ordinary people with no means whatsoever to survive the radiation.

Their flesh rotted while they were still alive, pieces of their skin and flesh falling away and inflicting immense pain, causing many to beg for death as their organs slowly failed.

Healing magic proved useless, and by the tenth day, the entire city was filled with screams and sounds of sorrow and pain. Naturally, the situation only grew worse, because radiation relies heavily on time to reveal just how cruel it truly is.

With each passing day, the situation deteriorated. The deaths never stopped, and even those who were strong did not last long. Within a month, around 89% of the population had died, and now the situation is simple.

No one besides Chrysaria is alive. The last living person other than her has just died in her hands, filling Chrysaria’s heart with despair. She has failed as a queen three times.

She failed to protect her kingdom from the empire’s attack, failed to protect her people from the Raid, and now she has failed to save them from the "mysterious disease." Unlike the others, Chrysaria survived the radiation.

Her high level, combined with her race as a powerful dragon, granted her astonishing resistance and an impressive cellular resistance factor, but surviving does not mean being well.

Chrysaria is sick. Her entire body aches, and green spots cover parts of her body. These spots are a mixture of pure radiation and Typhon’s magic.

A terrifying truth about the radiation released by Typhon is that it does not deteriorate as long as it remains in contact with living things. In fact, it only grows stronger by using the magic of whoever becomes "infected" by it.

At this rate, if Chrysaria cannot remove the radiation from her body, she will die, only in a much slower and more painful way than everyone she watched die.

"AAAAHHHHHHGHHH!!" She lets out a desperate scream as she slams her fist into the floor, creating a crack across the floor of the castle room. For a queen so loyal to her people, her failure is worse than death in her eyes.

"W-Why...why did everything end up like this...a-am I really such a terrible queen?" She questions herself while biting her lips. The blood running from them is mixed with a dark green slime that emits a faint green glow.

Another property generated by Typhon’s magic is [Mutagenic], something that emerged because Chrysaria survived for too long.

[Mutagenic] When Radiation released by Typhon’s body, magic, or Mana reaches a critical level, it becomes an extremely viscous and sticky green slime. This material is Mutagenic, a liquid mass capable of biologically mutating everything it touches.

Mutagenic is truly a terrifying thing to exist. Normally, Typhon always eliminates any traces of Mutagenic, because a single drop of Mutagenic can destroy an entire planet.

Not because a single drop possesses that much power, but because if even one drop infects a living being and it undergoes a mutation, it may end up generating more Mutagenic, infecting more things, which causes even more Mutagenic to be generated in a cycle.

So as long as even a single drop exists and something becomes infected, the chances of it spreading increase catastrophically. The initial Mutagenic is like a seed, spreading more seeds and more seeds, and the more of it exists, the farther it will spread. Only Typhon can deal with it.

However, Typhon is now dead. She has no way to destroy the Mutagenic Chrysaria generated in her body by surviving. Of course, most living beings that come into contact with Mutagenic will die, but Chrysaria is generating it and remains alive. The chances of her becoming an infection center are high if she does not die soon.

"..." Chrysaria looks at the decorative sword hanging on the wall, her despair leading her to question whether she should kill herself. As a failed queen who has lost all her people, her life no longer has any value.

"...I-I should die too...but...that woman...this is her fault..." Chrysaria bites down so hard that her already weakened teeth crack, causing her gums to bleed.

"I’LL KILL HER!!" Chrysaria transforms all her sadness into pure hatred. She knows who did this. She can feel Typhon’s magic within the drops of Mutagenic.

"I can’t die...I won’t die...not while that woman is still alive...I’ll kill her!!" Chrysaria’s right eye turns a bright radioactive green as the green spots spread across her body like cracks.

"I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you." Chrysaria’s mind completely breaks.

The only thing that had kept her sane was the lives of her subjects. When the last of them died before her eyes, her entire purpose for existing died with him, causing a new reason to live to destroy the sanity she had clung to.

"..." She gets up from the floor, spitting the blood mixed with Mutagenic onto the ground as she grabs the sword. She spreads her wings and crashes through the window, the glass cutting into her skin. Her body is far too weak to even offer resistance. Any strong blow or deep wound in this state could kill her.

But none of that enters her mind. She simply begins to fly without any real destination. All she can think about is finding the woman who destroyed her life. The emperor does not matter. The monsters from the Raid do not matter.

They did not destroy her life. They were problems that she, as a queen, accepted. But Typhon? She is not an acceptable problem. She is an "Error" in Chrysaria’s mind, something that should never have existed or appeared in her home.

An Error that destroyed everything she had fought for over hundreds of years, and now the life mission of this doomed queen, who could die from almost anything, is to take Typhon’s life.

But although she has not the slightest chance of accomplishing such a thing, she is now an even greater problem, because every drop of blood containing Mutagenic that she leaves on the ground increases the chances of the infection actually beginning to spread.

And if the infection spreads, there is no one who can stop it besides Typhon herself, who is unaffected by Mutagenic and can both destroy it and absorb it.