Great! I'm surrounded by villains!
Chapter 259 - 179: Flesh Curse

Chapter 259: Chapter 179: Flesh Curse

Nobody might believe it, but Earth Wolf Twelve was attacked by a dog.

The dog that had become a statue was still alive, and when he approached the statue, the dog suddenly burst forth and lunged at him, viciously clamping its hardened teeth onto his thigh.

He could have blown the dog’s head off in an instant, but considering it was a summit councilor’s pet dog, and with too many frustrating things happening that day, Earth Wolf Twelve did not draw his gun. Instead, he pinned the fierce dog that had bitten several holes in his thigh to the floor. However, the dog’s strength was so surprising that Earth Wolf Twelve had to wonder whether it was just a pet dog or a large predator from Cocoon transformation planets.

You see, his entire body was cybernetically enhanced, and even bullets couldn’t penetrate the metal that the pet dog so easily left a row of bite marks on, and he had to muster all his strength just to barely restrain the mechanical dog’s counterattack.

This gave Earth Wolf Twelve a scare.

Fortunately, a councilor noticed something was wrong in the room and promptly informed the security personnel, otherwise, if it had been the councilor himself who was attacked, they might have ended up with a corpse mauled beyond recognition.

That would have been a serious dereliction of his duties, as up to now, there had never been an instance of a councilor’s death at any summit.

By now, Earth Wolf Twelve realized the seriousness of the situation and had no choice but to believe the absurd defense of the restaurant’s head chef—the stored ingredients had turned into metal themselves.

Just like this dog.

Earth Wolf Twelve had some impressions of this vicious dog that kept barking madly at him. After all, there were only a few councilors who brought pet dogs to the summit, and at the Gear Hotel, dogs were subject to much stricter security checks than humans. The last time he saw this pet dog was in the lobby on the first floor.

At that time, he was interacting affectionately with a female bionic waitress, and a councilor passed behind him holding a docile golden retriever.

Earth Wolf Twelve and the dog looked at each other for a moment, and the dog even stuck out its tongue at him and wagged its tail happily.

Meanwhile, at another location, the journalist from "Peace Dove News Agency," Owl, was also under attack.

He was humming a tune in the room provided by the townspeople, typing into his portable tablet computer everything he had learned about Mechanical Star. These were extremely valuable news materials, revealing everywhere signs of a disaster-prone planet worthy of being "liberated."

The queen of Mechanical Star had inhumanely deployed a weapon named "Golden Hourglass," ruining the planet’s surface, with massive numbers of Mechanical Star’s inhabitants dying from drought and famine every year.

Just like the other planets under the United Front, Mechanical Star was in dire need of change.

By a twist of fate, Duan Mingyuan, seen as the spiritual leader of the United Front, arrived on this planet with the delegation from Blue Star.

It was as if... destiny willed it.

Yes, destiny.

Owl’s eyes lit up; he liked this sensation of being destined by some profound cosmic decree, as if a higher order of will was bestowing a mission upon a certain group of people.

This word often became associated with heroes and tyrants alike, and he knew the readers of "Peace Dove News Agency" enjoyed such narratives as well.

Owl had a premonition that his experiences on Mechanical Star would become the hottest news in the universe for a long time to come.

Just as he was immersed in a strong sense of accomplishment, someone knocked on his door.

He snapped back to reality, and there seemed to be some commotion outside the room as well.

Could it be that pirates from Oasis had attacked again?

With such doubts, Owl opened the door.

Seeing the woman at the door, his heart settled a bit. Not so long ago, he had shared food and drinking water from the flying vehicle with these people and had a wonderful afternoon. The woman’s home had a ten-year-old child who was very curious about space, and he had even given the child a few postcards from the news agency.

Watching the child treasure the postcards, Owl felt inspired.

"What’s the matter?" he asked.

But what responded to him was a cold synthetic mechanical voice.

——"Anomaly detected, initiating treatment measures."

However, from the way the woman was baring her teeth and claws, it didn’t look like she intended to heal or save anyone. Her emaciated body, a result of years of malnutrition, became extremely agile, and before Owl could react, the woman’s hands had tightly clamped down on his arms.

The people outside the room heard the commotion and quickly gathered around.

Naturally, the target was him, the outsider.

Owl saw the ten-year-old child in the crowd. Just earlier, the child had looked up to him with admiration, and now only coldness and hostility remained.

He also took note of the woman’s fingernails, which didn’t appear to be made of a human body’s structures but some kind of metallic material.

And her hands, void of human warmth, were cold and hard.

Owl managed to break free from the woman’s grip, grateful that his profession before becoming a journalist was that of an interstellar mercenary. Despite this, the woman’s nails still scratched a cut onto his arm.

He rushed to the desk, grabbed his laptop, smashed the window, and leapt down from the second floor of the building.

The shock of landing startled him—the ground beneath his feet wasn’t soft soil, but metal, and his knees, which banged against it, hurt so much he was almost in tears.

But the Owl had no time to hesitate, limping toward the flying vehicle parked near the town.

He heard footsteps behind him, the townspeople were unwilling to let him go, all of them in pursuit.

Something had definitely happened in this town!

Without any regard for anything else, he scrambled onto the flying vehicle and closed the hatch.

As the flying vehicle rocketed into the sky, leaving the entire town far behind, the Owl’s tense nerves finally relaxed a little, and the adrenaline subsided, making the clawed spot by the woman’s fingernails feel particularly sore and itchy.

The Owl immediately retrieved a first-aid kit from the flying vehicle, but as he was about to tend to the wound, he discovered that the wound had already "scabbed over" in less than five minutes—it stopped bleeding, and a thin metallic film was now in view.

The strange sensation persisted, his right hand becoming heavy and stiff, and the fingers of the injured right hand gradually ceased to obey.

This is...

An infectious disease?

A sense of foreboding emerged in the Owl’s heart, but it was the only explanation for the calamity in the town.

Only an infectious disease could turn all the people in a town into their current state in an extremely short time, and it was very likely that these townspeople had been infected without knowing it, having suddenly erupted under some trigger.

The Owl couldn’t help recalling a planet he had once visited, where the inhabitants worshipped the Beast God, considering themselves the offspring of this deity. Those people appeared no different from ordinary humans under normal circumstances but would transform into humanoid monsters under a condition known locally as the "Sun’s Radiation."

And the bodies of people from Mechanical Star had become metallic constructs.

He must get to the Gear Hotel as quickly as possible for help.

The ominous feeling within him grew stronger, and the Owl knew if he didn’t get treated quickly, he was likely to become a monster like the townspeople.

The journey felt especially long, so he looked outside the flying vehicle, trying to distract himself, but the discovery that followed sent a chill down the Owl’s spine.

—It wasn’t just the townspeople that were changing; the planet’s surface was also undergoing transformation.

The endless desert was being replaced by metal, and the wild beasts hidden beneath the sands were experiencing internal strife.

The Owl witnessed the Sand-Eaters engaged in infighting. Those who died in battle would get up after a while, armored with a harder metallic shell, reflecting blinding light in the remaining glow of the setting sun, and before long, this tribe had unified.

Before nightfall, the Owl had arrived at the location marked on his map.

He landed the flying vehicle, crashing straight into the not yet fully metalized desert.

The vehicle made a crater in the desert; the broken parts were soon filled back in, and the metal finally filled all gaps.

And it seemed the other side of the planet was also in turmoil.

The entire city was up in smoke, wreckage of crashed flying vehicles could be seen everywhere, and the broken city looked as if it had just endured a war.

When the Owl’s flying vehicle landed on the rooftop of the Gear Hotel, his injured arm had completely healed.

That was no longer his own body, but a metallic arm, looking no different from those who had lost their limbs on the battlefield and replaced them with prosthetics.

What terrified the Owl more was the thought that emerged in his mind as he stared at his metallic arm: "Perhaps this isn’t so bad after all."

Something was invading his brain, attempting to implant thoughts that didn’t belong to him.

The interior of the Gear Hotel was already in utter chaos; security personnel were doing their best to maintain order, and from the staff, the Owl learned the name of the disease—Flesh Curse.

The cause was unknown; those who caught the disease, their bodies would gradually turn into machinery, and the human consciousness would vanish.

They referred to those of other groups as "aberrations," demonstrating extreme aggressiveness. Once wounded by the infected, a virus would be injected, and the injured part would transform into metal and machinery rapidly.

Many council members and their entourages were already affected.

The attackers were mutated mosquitoes, insects that became more aggressive after being transformed by the Flesh Curse.

And in the lobby of the Gear Hotel, the Owl saw a person who was severely injured.

Besides the head, all other parts of that person’s body had been converted into metal, yet he showed no sign of retreat, the Gear Hotel’s head of security still charging the front line.

This inspired the Owl.

"I am a journalist from the Peace Dove Press, a former Interstellar Mercenary, can I be of any help?"

He approached the head of security proactively, seeing in him an embodiment of undeterred determination.

"Earth Wolf Twelve,"

the head of security said, "Your hand is injured, go to quarantine first."