Shadow Slave novel Chapter 3132

It began slowly.

Effie was still chained in the mud, with more dead soldiers scattered around her now. Azarax did not seem inclined to remove the corpses, perhaps as a way of making her already morbid existence even more oppressive, perhaps to instill a sense of competition into other warriors of the Steel Horde.

As if seeing their dead comrades would motivate them to try harder and succeed where others had failed. That was a questionable tactic, at best, but considering that a handful of fools inevitably attempted to attack Effie every day, it seemed to be working.

In the meantime, her wounds had healed, somewhat. When they did, Azarax personally arrived to disable her all over again. That was one of the only two times he had bothered to tend to her personally after expelling her from his tent — the second time was immediately after the first major assault on the Stone Castle had failed.

That time, Effie really thought that she would die.

But, in the end, she didn't.

The severity of the beating she received, however, helped mask her worsening condition. She had kept the plague under control for as long as he could, but by now, her body was finally beginning to surrender.

Effie was being consumed by persistent, harrowing pain. It was as if all her organs were devouring themselves. Her blood was turning thick and dark, almost black — luckily, when it dried, it was almost indistinguishable from the mud, and her condition had only worsened after the last visit from the King of Kings. So, no one had noticed the strange detail yet.

The soldiers simply attributed Effie's groans and weakened state to the consequences of the beating she had received from Azarax. It gave more of them the courage to try attacking her in a group... hence the increased number of corpses.

‘How the hell did Seishan endure it for so long...'

Effie had known that the daughter of Ki Song was not to be trifled with from their days on the Forgotten Shore. Still, experiencing the gruesome torment of the plague put things into perspective. Now, she could understand better how Seishan had survived a decade in that harrowing place... longer than any other Sleeper who escaped the Forgotten Shore in the end.

Effie's body... was slowly rotting from the inside. At the moment, her Transcendent physique was struggling to heal it faster than the plague was destroying it, locking her in a vicious cycle. For now, she was able to overcome the terrifying rate of virulent decay — but soon enough, the situation could change.

By the time gruesome sores opened on her body and blood began to seep from her pores, even a blind man would know that something was wrong with the captured War Maiden.

Effie knew that Azarax would know the truth far sooner, though.

That was because while she was still able to hide the symptoms, the soldiers of the Steel Horde could not.

Seishan had engineered her plague to have a long incubation period, so that it could spread wider before being detected. Now, that period was coming to an end.

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