CHAPTER 198: CHAPTER 194: DOOMED CITY

Without wasting any time, Blaze ordered the tribe to hunt as many beasts as they could. Usually, he would have just used the tribesmen as sacrifices to test his theory after seeing the Solian memories, but he chose not to.

For the first time on Sadarla, he viewed the natives as more than guinea pigs to experiment on. In the case an all-out war broke out, he would need them as meat shields since he couldn’t get involved directly in most cases.

Just like that, dozens of hunting parties were sent, and within three hours, they returned with the first prey.

Unfortunately, the animal was just like a boar, which wasn’t nearly enough biomass for him to experiment on for long.

All of it will get used up in one attempt.

Still, it was better than nothing, so after instructing them to store all hunted animals inside his hut, he disappeared underground once again. Until he received any success, he would stay there making oil to use.

To increase his chances of success, Blaze decided to recreate the environment described by the Solian teacher.

For that, he used some of the boar’s flesh to create Fester’s lookalikes and sent them to find a place untouched by the tribes where he could conduct experiments without any issues.

Thankfully, it didn’t take them long to find such a spot since all nearby tribes had been wiped out by him. He just used one of their abandoned villages as his base and simultaneously gained some rotten corpses that were left behind.

They just keep giving me gifts.

Blaze smiled and kicked over one such corpse. Naturally, the microbes had already begun acting on the body and slowly began decaying it.

"Hm, it doesn’t seem the right conditions were met for the microbes to turn the corpses into oil," he said, turning towards the rats. "Bring me all the corpses you can find, and you, start digging a wide hole right about here."

The rat went to work while Blaze analyzed the corpse.

Without a hint of hesitation, Zaen snapped his fingers on his right hand before turning them into Onyx-like mutation and used it to dissect the corpses.

The parts with high-fat concentration, such as the belly, buttocks, and even bone marrow, along with multiple organs, were separated and put on the side near the hole the rat was digging.

After getting everything from the rotting corpse, Blaze did the same with the boar. Once everything was stripped away from the body, he broke the flesh and bones into smaller pieces so the microbes could act on it faster and evenly.

Grinding them was a pain in the ass as it was too slow, but once all the rats returned, things got easier.

"Clean all the corpses," he instructed the rats. "And bring me the parts you see here, go!"

While the rats did that, he also used some flesh and bone to create a corpse pit. The flesh from there wasn’t much, but still, it would be helpful, especially the gases it kept leaking.

"They’d help decompose the flesh faster and even provide a better environment for the microbes to act... wait, why am I talking to myself out loud?"

It was a habit most scientists and researchers had as they used recording devices to store information in case they forgot about something later. Only, Blaze never forgot a thing when it came to experimenting, yet it was a habit that he couldn’t get rid of.

Once the raw material had been prepared, it was time to start the pre-fermentation process. Usually, it would involve lots of water to soften the tissue and stuff, but since the teacher said the oil was found during a drought, there wasn’t any water to use.

The only alternative was to use blood, since that was everywhere, especially with the corpses piling up. Thankfully, he had no shortage of blood with the corpses piling up.

The next part was perhaps the most crucial part, layering.

While it was impossible to replicate the exact process as the Solians without capturing a scholar within them, Blaze knew a thing or two about biological fuel production.

Proper layering would prevent the fuel pit from becoming dominated by foul-smelling, non-productive microbes. Besides, using proper mats would help absorb the oil as it is produced for easy collection.

For the layers, he chopped trees in one blow and stripped them away like he did with the corpses. Then, he placed the bark skin on the lowest layer before covering it with powdered bone-dust.

Flesh chunks came next, along with the organs, and he covered them with leaves in the end. That’s how the first layer was completed. The same process was repeated with hollowed logs separating the layers and also promoting air flow.

"...maybe I should instruct the tribesmen to help with this," he thought, but quickly abandoned the idea.

Letting them know anything now was useless. Besides, he was having fun while others might not feel as comfortable as he did around the corpses.

"This is going to take a while..." Blaze said, knowing he wasn’t even done halfway.

***

A few months later...

The twin stars were yet to rise over Shilia, but the agricultural town was already busy. The agricultural market was buzzing as people from all over the kingdom were inspecting the goods to buy for their respective cities.

But that wasn’t all.

Some merchants had also traveled there to sell other wares, such as jewels and dyed fabrics. The smell of roasting meat attracted many to the food stalls, especially the children.

From a look, no one could say the kingdom was under strict lockdown.

Among such children was a blonde child called Isa. Even though he was running around barefoot, he had the brightest smile on his face. Why you ask? Because today was his special day!

His mother had given him three coins to buy whatever he liked from the market, and as usual, he headed straight towards the fruit stall. While children his age were tempted by the smell of meat, he didn’t care about that.

Isa loved fruits because his mother helped grow them on the community farm, and today was the day he got to taste the literal fruit of her labor.

"Three coins!" he muttered to himself, eyes scanning the fruit stalls. "Enough for something sweet... or something big. What was the fruit Mother grew this year called? Tiku? Tikha?"

He kept muttering to himself until he reached a stall with something strange. It was a fruit stall, but the fruits there looked oddly unfamiliar.

There were deep green orbs with fleshy white insides, a fruit with strange purple spikes, and a miniature yellow one that looked like the afternoon suns high in the sky.

He grabbed one of the latter fruits and cheerfully asked the vendor for its price. The old vendor laughed and pinched the boy’s cheek before handing him the fruit for free.

"You’re my first customer, little one," he said. "You can have it for free."

"For free!? What’s free...?"

"Uh..."

The vendor didn’t know how to explain it to the kid since it seemed the boy had had no formal education. It was quite common there, as most folks who lived there spent their lives farming for the rich.

It was the only thing they and their ancestors knew, and the same trend would probably carry over.

"It’s a gift," the old man said, ruffling Isa’s hair. "You know what that means, don’t you?"

Isa nodded and thanked the old man before continuing on his merry way. He was planning to eat the fruit with his mother, but the yellow glow of the fruit seemed irresistible to him, and he took a bite right in the middle of the road.

"Ooh, it’s so sweet!"

The gluttony in the boy awoke, and he kept biting the fruit while holding it in both of his hands. He finished it in less than a minute and once again headed to the vendor to buy more fruit for his mother and aunties.

However, the moment he took a step, the entire world spun. A cold shiver shot through his spine as he clutched his chest. Others noticed him, but before they could help, the boy collapsed on the dusty road.

"...what happened?" someone asked.

No one knew the answer. One moment he was hopping all over the place and the other he was on the ground convulsing. It was the first time anyone had seen such a thing, and they didn’t know what to do. They just stood there, watching life slowly drain out of the boy’s body in the form of blood.

"The temple... someone contact the priest!"

"Yes, this must be a delayed blessing!"

Thanks to years of brainwashing, instead of panicking and calling a healer, the Solian celebrated as a boy died. Obviously, they didn’t know that. For them, the boy had merely fallen unconscious from receiving a god’s blessing.

However, not far away, a small rat was watching the fools celebrate, not knowing death had marked their city for doom.