Chapter 132: Weaponized Healing Magic
There was literally no logical explanation for how Diya had suddenly jumped all the way up to the number 5 spot on the trial rankings.
Uhtred stared at the trial ranking panel with utter confusion, his mind wrestling to process whether the Diya high up on the list was the same Diya he knew.
However, he was aware that he was just being paranoid at this point. Of course, this was the same Diya he knew. His crew member.
It was only because it was so absurd to see her that high up that he entertained the doubt at all.
As Uhtred stared at the list in silent shock, Mateo finally arrived. He climbed up the rocky formations without bothering to hide himself in the nooks and crannies as he headed for their position.
From the way Mateo had not bothered to hide himself much, combined with his haste and the expression on his face, everyone watching him knew that something was up.
"The operation is off," Mateo said the second he reached their elevated position.
His dark eyes moved quickly across every other human powerhouse crouching and sitting around. The elite ascenders looked thoroughly confused and highly vigilant at the statement, but no one spoke up yet. They waited patiently for Mateo to explain.
Mateo did not keep them waiting. He immediately began to speak:
"That ancient variant camp down there, our current target... it’s practically empty."
The words caused several of the high-ranking ascenders to frown heavily.
The ever-present smug smile on Hassan Al Malik’s face faltered slightly. He opened his mouth to question exactly what Mateo was talking about, but Mateo raised a hand to cut him off and kept speaking.
"Just this morning, within the time it took for me to travel from my camp to this place, several major events have occurred," Mateo said, his expression deadpan. "Open your trial rankings immediately."
As Mateo said those words, Uhtred’s eyes narrowed. He already knew where Diya sat on the trial rankings, and from Mateo’s statement about major events, he immediately knew Diya definitely had something to do with it.
Sure enough, as the rest of the elite strike force members brought up their ranking panels, their faces twisted into expressions of complete bewilderment.
They spotted the new name "Diya" right among the top 5. Whispers immediately broke out as several of them began to ask who exactly she was.
The only person whose surprise was slightly different was Antoine Blanc. He covertly glanced toward Uhtred’s corner, a subtle flicker of recognition showing in his eyes.
Antoine clearly recognized the name "Diya" and remembered she was a crew member under Uhtred back on the main continent.
John Allen and Michael Bush had not revealed this to him, but he had made his own findings. It was not particularly hard to piece together who had gone along with Uhtred from the safety of Sector 13 in Zone 0.
The rest of the powerhouses, however, did not have a clue who Diya was. They muttered amongst themselves and asked questions about who might know her, but Uhtred did not say anything. He simply kept silent, and Antoine Blanc smartly did the same.
The United New Eden representative quickly looked away from Uhtred and returned his focus to the ranking panel while Mateo continued to detail the situation.
"Between last night and this morning, hundreds of thousands of ancient variants died simultaneously."
Again, Mateo’s statements drew looks of shock from the members of the strike team, including Uhtred himself.
Everyone immediately scrolled down to the bottom of their trial ranking interfaces and brought up the live participant counter.
To their utter surprise, the total participant count, which had been just over 1.2 million the night before, had plummeted to roughly 935,000 participants.
A whopping 265,000 sudden deaths had occurred within the last few hours, and more than 95% of those deaths were ancient variant casualties.
Without Mateo needing to spell out the connection, everyone immediately understood that the unknown human named Diya sitting at the number 5 spot was the reason behind the massive casualty spike.
"According to the information I received, some sort of contagion has torn through the camps of the ancient variants," Mateo revealed with a serious gaze. "It has spread deep into their acquired territories, the inner zones of Australia where they have pushed forward and where the vast majority of their populations are currently clustered."
He paused slightly to let the weight of his words sink in.
"The variants are currently dying in tens of thousands by the minute and the hour. The situation has become so severe that their high command and their generals have been forced into frantic, immediate action to contain the spread."
As Mateo continued to explain what had happened in the last few hours, the members of the strike force listening to him could not help but feel slight smiles spreading across their faces. To their eyes, this was an unprecedented massive victory for the human race.
Mateo continued to explain in more detail. Over the last few hours, the damage to the ancient variants had been so dramatic that the human barrier had pushed forward a great deal.
The camps at the border, which were keeping up with the barrier’s movements, were now far behind. The human side was pushing forward as fast as possible, trying to meet up.
This was the largest push humanity had made ever since the trial began, even more significant than the push that had occurred after Uhtred had placed those bounties on the top 10 ancient variants’ heads, which caused them to begin killing themselves.
Mateo went further to explain exactly what the contagion affecting the ancient variants was like, based on the information he had gotten.
In summary, the contagion, while powerful, was still not powerful enough to affect the real powerhouses among the ancient variants.
For any variant at Level 7, the contagion only had mild effects that caused weakness. For any variant at Level 8 or 9, it was essentially negligible and not worth mentioning.
However, for variants below Level 7, it was extremely deadly. Their bodies would become extremely weak from a strange disease until they were rendered immobile and died.
As Uhtred listened, he became one hundred percent certain that this was the doing of Diya. Without a doubt, she had achieved a massive breakthrough in weaponizing her healing magic.
Even before they had arrived at the trial grounds, Diya had been experimenting with spells that affected the body on a cellular level.
She had been trying to weaponize her healing magic, but at that time it had only amounted to a negligible spell that barely did anything to Uhtred’s body when she used it against him.
But now, with the pressure of the trials and the fact that every member of his crew had been separated, whatever Diya had gone through wherever she was had surely pushed her to advance by leaps and bounds in her understanding of her healing magic.
She had weaponized it into a plague that spread across the population of the ancient variants.
As Uhtred stared at her name on the trial rankings, he could not help but feel a trace of pride.
Of course, he knew that the current situation was not all good. Mateo was only saying all of this, and he had not delivered his punchline yet.
There was surely something terrible that had happened as a result of Diya’s move. It was just that Mateo had not reached that point yet in his explanation.
As if to confirm his thoughts, as Uhtred stared at Diya’s name, a red notice suddenly flashed just in front of her name.
