Autophagy

Song Lei got up from the chair he was sitting on and stretched all of his body parts one by one. He slapped his own cheeks to wake himself up.

"Let's wrap this up," Song Lei muttered. Aston nodded calmly and followed Song Lei out of the room. There wasn't anything left to do for them in the dorms. There was only a single part left of their grand plan.

"Everyone, gather around," Song Lei ordered. Twenty-four people that had separated into two groups a few hours ago formed a circle around Song Lei and Aston. There was excitement on their faces. This excitement wasn't a particularly positive or negative one.

"We have dealt with the first part of our plan," Song Lei started explaining. He shifted his weight from his left leg to his right leg. He then clasped his arms behind his body and continued his explanation by saying, "However, that was mostly the easy part of it. We have to be extra careful with our next step."

As his voice resounded across the hallway, the trainees started fidgeting and licking their lips. Song Lei knew that they were anxious and he thought that they should be somewhat anxious if they wanted to win. He wanted their bodies to pump adrenaline before the fight started so that they could get used to the effects of it. Their heart beating like a prisoner trying to break his chains, their palms sweating like crazy... Unless they adjusted, they would lose.

Of course, that adrenaline didn't come without some benefits. Song Lei had experienced it pretty well before. Although he couldn't use it now, he had a skill called Adrenal Rush that would fill his body with adrenaline.

Staring at them for some time, Song Lei watched them having more and more resolute expressions on their faces.

"I'll assume that everyone knows what to do so I won't be repeating anything," Song Lei muttered. He closed his eyes for some time as he sighed deeply. "Spread!"

As soon as everyone heard Song Lei's command, they split into four and separated from each other. Aston, too, followed one of those groups, leaving Song Lei alone.

Song Lei walked to the main entrance of the orphanage. All of the patrols had been taken care of, so he could completely focus on what was happening outside. The Midnight Festival was going on with all of its glory.

'The gore, the sin... Those worms love doing this a lot,' Song Lei thought. Although they had spent a lot of time dealing with them, he still couldn't understand why they would do that. Aston had a single assumption that was rather weak.

It was that the soul worms would reveal people's innermost desires, amplifying them by leaps and bounds all the while taking over their minds. This festival was the expression of those desires. They could all fulfill their wishes every night like ferocious monsters and then wake up in the morning as if nothing had happened.

After waiting for a few minutes, Song Lei felt a small ray of light hit his eye. It was coming from one of the windows of the buildings that had an angle of view with the place he was currently in.

"That should be team 1," Song Lei muttered as he look towards the direction of the light came from. Then, another ray of light hit his eyes. One after one, a total of four light rays came his way. Closing his eyes for a few seconds, Song Lei sighed deeply and opened the door of the main entrance.

A second after, more than forty balls wrapped in bandages were thrown into the site of the midnight festival. Those balls were thrown neatly. Their trajectory had already been calculated more than a hundred times each so that there would be no problem in their placement.

Of course, those infected were confused, incredibly at that. The festival went silent for a second because of those mysterious balls wrapped in bandages. What were they? Who had thrown these and what was the reason for doing such a thing?

Those questions were answered shortly after as those balls of bandages exploded into giant clouds of smoke all at once. They were placed so well, so good that there wasn't a single part of the field that was left empty. Seeing this, Song Lei adjusted the gas mask on his face once more and dashed out of the building.

Just at the exact time he did that, all 25 trainees other than him, including Aston, jumped out of the windows and charged into the festival field from three sides. They were at an incredible numbers disadvantage. If they wanted to win this, they had to reduce those numbers to a manageable amount.

Of course, these smoke bombs filled with relatively harmful chemicals would help them in doing so. They were in no way harmful enough to kill someone, however, it was enough to irritate the infected's respiratory systems all the while blocking all of their vision.

Dashing into the gigantic smoke cloud that had formed because of a few smaller ones uniting, Song Lei and his men started mowing down the infected one by one. In a figurative way of course. Swing after swing, countless infected would fall on the ground puking out every worm that had accumulated in their souls.

The whole festival had fallen into a state of disarray. There was no way that those worms could've responded to this. If they were just a bit more careful about Song Lei and Aston, they wouldn't have fallen into this state. However, because they were totally oblivious to Song Lei and Aston's real capabilities, they were going to lose their dominion over the orphanage's most prestigious Section.

A lot of those infected tried different ways of saving themselves. Some tried to put up a fight but were quickly beaten up. They would have had no chance even if the smoke bombs weren't there in a one-on-one fight, after all, a single blow from a soul dagger would be enough to take most of them down.

Some other infected also tried escaping the cloud of smoke, however, Song Lei and his men had spread like a net around them. There was almost not a single opening that they could utilize to escape from. Accompanied by the fact that their sights were disrupted by the veil of smoke, none of them managed to escape.

Screams, grunts, and gagging noises filled the whole Section A. The smoke was there to block the sight, however, it couldn't block those noises. It took about fifteen minutes for the smoke to disperse.

After that veil of smoke was removed, it took quite a bit of time before the infected's eyes recovered enough to see properly.

As their vision came back to them, what they were met with was nothing less than disastrous. It was as if a calamity had befallen them. The whole field was filled with former infected trainees lying on the ground unconscious.

Clark didn't know what to do in such a situation. His makeshift throne was the farthest away from the sudden assault, resulting in him being left untouched, however, his face didn't really look like he was fine.

He had less than twenty trainees left on their side. Although they were the elite of the society that he was the god of, this didn't mean anything to him.

"This is blasphemy!" He shouted in anger as he brought down his fist on the throne. When he did so, the throne collapsed altogether. After getting up and balancing himself, he shouted again by saying, "You... I knew I should've killed you fuckers!". This time with even more anger in his voice.

"Yeah. That would have been smart of you," Song Lei said with a condescending smirk on his face. He, Aston, and the other 24 trainees stood side by side. None of them had been hurt heavily. Although they had a few grazes, that was it. "Unfortunately, you didn't."

"Y- You!" Clark shouted as he squeezed his fists. He squeezed so much that his nails penetrated into his skin, making his hands bleed.

"If you weren't an idiot with your little god complex, you wouldn't have fallen this far," Song Lei pushed on. "If you were to do your best to infect us as soon as you learned us having immunity against it; if you were to not use me like a toy in the arena and make me develop my fighting skills; if you were to catch onto the fact that I and Aston were plotting something, things wouldn't have escalated this far," Song Lei said. His words caused Clark's face to sour.

"But look at this society that you were trying to create," Song Lei said as he lifted his hands to his sides. "It's all over now," he muttered. Clark was expecting Song Lei to be smugger about it, however, that wasn't the case. "Was it something about your nature?" Song Lei asked. He was directly talking to those worms that had infected Clark's soul. "Or was it special to Clark?" He asked again.

"Overall, it doesn't matter anymore," Song Lei muttered. His voice wasn't loud by any means, however, everyone in the field could hear him clearly.

"Prepare yourself...."