The Gaol
As Candy descended upon this place, he wasn’t smiling—though his face was not twisted in anger or grief either.
He was merely squinting his eyes, apparently lost in thought.
Ever since he’d received the death penalty he’d been thinking about that black-clad woman who’d killed him—in fact, he was thinking about her right now.
Who was she? Where had she come from? And regardless of how shoddily he might have constructed it in the little time he had...how had she broken through his False God Imitation?
He couldn’t begin to answer those questions, so he could only wonder about it fruitlessly.
From Candy’s perspective, this was like getting randomly assaulted while out on a casual stroll. It had all happened so fast that he couldn’t comprehend how he’d died, nor could he accept it.
However, Candy was someone who used bioterrorism to destroy an entire country. His distress couldn’t hope to compare to what the people of Mahem felt as they’d suddenly perished to his deadly disease. Some might say that this death was just Candy getting what he deserved, but it was truly only a fraction of that.
The wrongdoers and the wronged, however, always weighed such things on different scales.
For Candy in particular, his outlook on this outcome was more like a god’s than a human’s. Thus, he himself didn’t really think that he’d gotten what he deserved. That was why he saw it as more of a random assault by some maniac rather than understanding it as an act of vengeance.
He was actually wondering why it even happened at all.
Candy had already decided that he’d get his revenge, but first things first—he had to find answers to his questions...
“Yo! A newbie, aren’t ya?”
“The outfit’s a little much, but you’re pretty cute!”
“Ohh, those lips are gorgeous...”
...but his thinking was cut short by some voices calling out to him.
Candy was standing at the gaol’s save point, so it wasn’t so strange that someone would try talking to him.
“Gettin’ sent here is makin’ you feel all anxious, huh? Don’t worry! We’ll show you around!”
“Let’s start with the only café that serves good coffee! That’s also where you’ll find the biggest guy here!”
“If you don’t mind, give me your cup once you’re done with it.”
With the exception of the obvious Legendarian, the men didn’t have any ulterior motives. While some of them were probably trying to hit on Candy, they were also completely honest about wanting to lend a helping hand to a gaol newbie.
However...
Candy’s response was a crushing silence. From his perspective, they were irreverent, unpleasant fools who had bothered him while he was trying to puzzle out something important.
But this also led him to another thought.
Here in the gaol, he could no longer hope to power level by committing tian genocide, but there were still people he could kill for their Resources.
Thus, a smile appeared on his face for the first time since he logged in...
“Collapsed Present.”
...and he instantly infected the gaol with the very same bacteria that had destroyed Mahem.
The three who called out to him were the first to die—and as the save point was in the heart of the town, death quickly spread throughout all of it.
They don’t give as much as tians, but they’ll have to do, Candy thought. He would first kill all Masters, then massacre the monsters of this created dungeon.
With the gaol presumably being made using spatial control powers, Candy figured that if he gathered enough Resources to reach his limit as a Superior, he might be able to escape. And so, he intended to turn this gaol into his personal empire of plague where anything besides him was dead.
But then...
“Excuse me, about this poison...or, rather, bacteria—would you be so kind as to stop spreading it?”
...someone behind Candy tapped on his shoulder and addressed him directly.
Candy’s eyes widened in shock as he turned around. First the skeleton, then the black-clad woman, now this—it was his third shocking encounter within a very brief span of time.
However, in a way the source of Candy’s surprise this time might’ve been the strangest of the three.
“It seems to affect the flesh of living beings...but it also broke down the eggs I just bought at the store.”
The man behind him was holding a shopping bag, looked awfully plain, and behaved completely normally.
Unlike the skeleton or the woman in black, he didn’t try to attack Candy the moment he appeared. He only wore a somewhat strained smile and lamented the loss of his recent purchase.
It was as though to him, the spread of Candy’s deadly disease was roughly equivalent in seriousness to his broken eggs.
“You...” Candy hissed. The man didn’t look strange. He wasn’t a skeleton in Japanese clothes or a woman wearing a black men’s suit. He was just a spectacled man in casual clothes who didn’t stand out in any way. None of what he wore seemed like MVP rewards.
But all that was exactly why this didn’t seem right.
“What are you?” Candy was so dumbfounded by this that he couldn’t help but ask that question.
Notably, he didn’t ask “who” but “what,” as if he wasn’t sure if the man was even human.
And, in a way, Candy wasn’t that far off.
“You are speaking to Sechs Würfel. I am known as King of Crime, and I am the owner of the café here. Oh, and I am also a slime.”
The man—Sechs—casually answered Candy’s question, readily admitting that he was not human.
A slime! Candy thought as everything fell into place.
Collapsed Present targeted only people and other creatures that possessed actual flesh—slimes weren’t its focus, and as a result its effects on them were minimal. Even a little defense or a minor countermeasure against disease from a tertiary target like a slime would be enough to negate it.
But that also meant that the man was vulnerable to bacteria specialized against slimes.
With that thought, Candy immediately gave an order to Resheph, causing it to release the antislime bacteria he’d prepared in the past.
A burst of black smoke laden with pestilence quickly enveloped the man.
If everything went as Candy planned, this would’ve killed his opponent immediately, and yet...
“Hmm. So your Embryo consists of fatal bacteria—or rather the system to prepare them. I suppose it’s true that, given enough time and Resources, a production-focused Embryo can become something fearsome.”
Candy’s eyes widened again. The man claiming to be a slime spoke with a tone as calm as before, and Candy almost began to suspect that he was bluffing about being a slime—but then he noticed a bigger issue.
The man’s voice had changed. In fact, it had become a voice that Candy found very familiar.
“Though it does seem that you produce them with the bare minimum of safety measures.”
The wind then blew away the black smoke...
“Like, for example, making it so they don’t target you.”
...revealing none other than Candy himself.
“Huh...?” Candy was now more confused than ever, but there was a fairly simple explanation for what had just happened.
Candy’s assumption about why Sechs was able to approach him without fear of the bacteria was correct. However, when Sechs had touched Candy’s shoulder, he’d also taken a hair from Candy’s head and absorbed it into his slime body. This enabled him to use Shapeshift—his transformation skill that required him to acquire cells from whomever he wanted to transform into.
Thus, Sechs had simply made his flesh the same as Candy’s.
“I believe spreading the disease any further is meaningless now, unless you intend to include yourself in the massacre,” Sechs went on. “So would you mind putting a stop to all this, please? There might be better ways of going about all of this in any case.”
In terms of form and structure, Sechs’s transformations were flawless. They were so good, in fact, that they were able to perfectly mimic the bloodlines of Special Superior Jobs.
As Candy’s current level was higher than his, Sechs couldn’t copy his skills as King of Plagues, but that didn’t stop him from creating a true reflection of Candy’s physical body, thus putting Candy in checkmate.
In silence, Candy considered the situation. He possessed many MVP rewards, but none of them provided any means of attack.
That was because his usual method of dealing damage—of dealing death—was his bacteria. His MVP rewards had thus ended up being either defensive items or materials for his diseases.
And since Candy had excluded himself as a target with all of his bacteria creations, by copying his cells, Sechs became effectively immune to anything Candy could do.
I’ve only been here a few minutes and I’ve already gotten hit with all this... I’ve got no luck at all these days, Candy thought.
The skeleton and the woman in black had both succumbed to the bacteria. However, Sechs was immune to them as long as Candy was himself. Candy had absolutely no chance against Sechs now.
Well, I’m stumped. Can’t think of anything I can do, Candy thought. There were some options that would have been open to him before Sechs had come this close, but it was far too late for that now.
On top of that, still reeling from the shock of the current situation and the death penalty dealt him by the woman in black, Candy failed to notice one other detail—he no longer possessed the helm that so greatly enhanced his defenses.
“So...will you stop? Living here would become quite difficult if you do not.” Sechs’s words, spoken using Candy’s own face, were obviously an ultimatum, carrying a very specific hidden message: stop spreading the disease or die.
Unlike Candy, Sechs had means of attack that didn’t rely on bacteria, so if they fought, it would be completely one-sided. Candy was well aware of that.
It would only lead to his immediate second defeat.
I’ll have to be more careful with my concoctions from now on, he thought. First, he would have to research bacteria that worked on beings with identical cell structure to his.
With that thought, Candy ordered Resheph to cease spreading the disease and raised his hands in surrender.
However, he was a few moments too late.
“Oh,” Sechs sighed. He, for some reason, shifted his eyes from Candy up toward the sky.
Candy couldn’t help but follow his gaze...
“What?”
...and saw a circle.
Actually, it was the bottom of a cone that expanded upward—specifically, it was Sandalphon, the Embryo of the gaol’s second Superior—King of Berserk, Hannya.
The Embryo had appeared right above Sechs and Candy so suddenly that he might as well have teleported.
The very next moment, the massive cone smashed into them.
Candy—as well as Sechs taking Candy’s form—were both ground into the earth below, immediately giving King of Plagues his next death penalty.
An encounter with people who were very different kinds of outliers than he was—this was what marked the beginning of Candy’s life in the gaol.