Catherine, the woman who had once been a [Botanist], didn’t sleep much anymore, but she did dream. Waking dreams as she walked the streets, fading remembrances of how things had been before.

She remembered how the markets had been full of bustle and activity, so she laid a rose amidst the ruins and walked on.

She remembered how the lines of drying laundry had hung over the streets, now replaced with tattered rags lying on the ground, and she laid a rose there too.

Then she remembered the [Maid]. Not a past memory, this one. She had tried to hand a rose but had failed. The [Maid] had gotten away. The woman’s steps faltered, and her foggy mind cleared as she jolted fully back to the world of the waking.

The [Maid]. The [Maid]!

She spun around and eyed her surroundings, then finally saw that it was already morning. She had walked all through the night. For her, it was relatively safe, as she never walked alone. [I Walk Among Them]. As always, she was in the midst of a horde, and they bothered her not. Her skills marked her as one of theirs.

The woman who had once been a [Botanist] eyed the rooftops around her warily. The hunters had become more active recently, and a decisive move would be made soon. She could feel it in her bones.

But she saw nothing now, so she relaxed. And addressed the waiting notification. A rich baritone voice whispered in her ear.

[The bloom spreads most wonderfully! Keep tending to the flock, good madam!]

[Progress towards next level: 90%]

Catherine spat onto the ground, dissatisfied. Not even a whole level for the night? It really has slowed down… I must hurry. Level 50 will be a major shift and will open the path to everything that comes after. I cannot delay. But first…

Her eyes ran over the horde around her, and her eyes darkened. The infection’s progress was slowing mostly because everyone not yet infected was hunkered down behind board and nail, waiting out the crisis. The monsters were failing to break through.

It would have to be remedied.

Catherine eyed the stock of former humans like a farmer at a market and picked out three suitable ghouls from among them—specimens with fine musculature and mostly intact minds. She poked roses through their skins, then adjusted her [Plague Pustules] skill to emit different pheromones. Her skin writhed as disfigured imitations of flowers formed slowly, opening up with petals of black.

She spun around, letting the pollen nestled amidst the petals fly free, and the horde around her instantly began to disperse—all except for the three ghouls which she had set a rose upon. They stayed. It was time to make full use of her [Plaguecraft] domain.

With a dash of [Adjust Mutation], she set more flowers upon the ghouls, and they sank under skin, dissolving as they began their work. She targeted the noses and the arms, for it was those that would enable them to sniff out hiders and rip apart their barricades.

As the mutation process began, she stepped back, said a silent prayer for this batch to be a success, then turned away. She could not make too many adjustments in a day, and most ended in failure. Soon she would have to go [Reap And Sow] once more, but first… there was the more important matter to check upon. The hunters had gotten too close. The [Maid] had almost been right there.

Catherine turned away from her horde and began her walk back home.

—

Stepping into the remnants of her former home, Catherine sighed with relief. It was still dilapidated and abandoned as usual, every wall filled with the festering might of her bloom, but her baby was safe—that was all that mattered. Or, well, as safe as something almost dead could be. Only mostly dead. Catherine reminded herself.

She stared at the pulsating sac of flesh and flowers which stood in the center of the room, and kneeled by it, laying her face against the soft warmth. It pulsed against her skin again and again, with the steady beats of the many hearts she had added in, and she hoped it would be enough.

It was a grisly sight, but she wished it would have been even clearer, just so she could have peered at her child’s resting form in the center of it all. [Adjust Mutation], [Accelerate Growth], [Strength from the Weak]—she used them all, hoping to buy just a bit more time.

Rest easy Margie, Mommy needs only a few more levels.

A [Doctor] may have said that the baby was a lost cause, only kept breathing and comatose by the many artificial additions grafted into the sac. But Catherine disagreed. Because she was leveling so, so fast.

Before, she had been nothing. When calamity struck, she had been able to do nothing.

But if you could hit level 100, become a [Saint]… you could do anything.

At least that was what they said.

[The bloom grows! Keep up the good work!]

[Progress towards next level: 95%]

Ah, excellent.

Catherine stood up, laid one last look at the cramped worker’s home, and turned away. She couldn’t spend much time here if she wanted to get things done, and revealing the place to the foe would be worst of all. She had covered her tracks carefully, but mistakes always happened, and the road to level 100 was still oh so very long.

A road she had stepped on out of necessity.

Her husband had brought a disease from the factory with him, and died from it. He had insisted that the officials not be alerted, because he knew what would happen to cases like him. Cases that… changed.

As the others had returned to work, her husband had sent out messages full of excuses, and Catherine had believed him—that if she only waited and prayed, it would get better.

It hadn’t. Catherine had been forced to put him down with a fire iron when he had grown violent and raving, only to find herself and their baby infected soon after. And when dear Margie’s condition had turned for the worse, Catherine had taken matters into her own hands.

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The disease had taken much from her—so she would use it to take it all back. Levels were power, and she had been gaining so, so many. After 50, she would head to the mainland.

But for now, she still had much to do.

—

Spreading a magical plague was surprisingly hard work. One would think that you could just… light the first spark, then watch the flames devour everything. But these types of plagues didn’t work like that. It needed grounding. A foundation.

Catherine was no [Mage], and she couldn’t exactly see mana, but she could see disease in its own way. She could see how it dug into the ground and hung in the air in a pervasive miasma, but threatening though it looked, its spread wasn’t actually that fast.

Sure, people brought it with them, but you needed lots of people staying in the same spots to really make it last. So she had to help out here and there. Use her [Plaguecraft] to constantly adjust newer, more effective strains, try to time things perfectly so people wouldn’t scatter before things properly spread, and of course—she had to lay her flowers.

She had been a [Botanist] once after all.

So, as Catherine walked the streets under the veil of her skills, she laid down roses wherever she went. By the windows and by the doors. By the puddles and on the floors. A rose here, a rose there, a prayer for the dead, and let the bloom spread.

[The bloom grows! Keep up the good work!]

[Progress towards next level: 15%]

She had gotten a level early into her walk, and level 50 was once more just a step closer. But that was only halfway to a hundred, and she needed it all. Sometimes her mind doubted. Would she truly be capable of this? When no [Saints] had ascended in centuries?

But then… she always got the next notification. One more drop of inevitable progress. And everything felt possible for just a moment more. So Catherine walked, she walked carefully, closer to where she knew the hunters were waiting, and laid another rose nearer to them. I wonder, how many roses must I lay before this is all over? How tall a mountain would they form?

However, she did not waiver. Her skill sang, and [Reap and Sow] laid down its next rose. But then—her hand paused. She abandoned the rose to the ground and quickly jumped back to cover, for Catherine saw movement ahead, hooded figures dashing through streets. No direct confrontation—not yet.

She was strong, but the crouching tiger would always win out.

Catherine waited an extra five minutes after the figures passed, just to be sure, then sent out a few petals and called a nearby zombie to her. It shambled out in the open, but no arrow took it, so Catherine finally judged it safe. She got out from the ramshackle shack she had been hiding in and began trotting deeper into town.

Today felt dangerous. It was something invisible in the air, like a distant crackle of thunder. She would not poke the hive of hunters yet.

Then suddenly, just as she stepped round a corner, an explosion flashed ahead. Not near her, but ahead. Catherine saw a flash and smoke over the buildings and then heard a boom that made her flinch back. An explosion? Wait, isn’t that…

Her eyes widened. The smoke—it was coming from right near her home! Suddenly in a wild panic, she started rushing ahead heedless of any danger. My baby! What has happened?

Catherine scrambled forward, scraping her knees on the ground as she fell and got up, but the fall didn’t slow her one bit. Her body wasn’t ordinary anymore, and soon she was rushing on all fours just as naturally as she had walked on two.

Over a pile of debris, through a gap between two collapsed buildings, past countless corpses she ran, even as the monsters all around shifted to higher awareness, attracted by the sound. But Catherine saw them not, for the only thing that mattered was in danger.

Only in the final stretch, when she finally beheld the plume of smoke and felt its warmth against her face, did she find her fears unfounded. Yes, it was in the district, but it wasn’t at her home. Her home was safe, two blocks away.

Her frantic dash finally stopped, and Catherine rose back to her feet, the mind slowly catching up to her body. Now that she saw the remnants, a rather modest bit of damage to a long-abandoned house, she finally started to realize that something wasn’t right here.

What caused this? Why would someone cause an explosion like this? And… who? Is it because…

“So, you really did have something precious near here, did you?” A voice suddenly said from behind her.

Catherine spun and saw a [Maid] standing on a rooftop, staring at her through a thick mask. But she looked different from the night before. She looked so, so angry. “You,” Catherine hissed.

“Me indeed! I think we parted on uncertain terms last night—I came to correct things for you.”

Catherine’s eyes darkened, and she started stomping forward, roses already forming in her arms. “If you think to threaten me, you’ll see that—”

She stopped. She looked down. Her left foot had stepped down just as normal, but suddenly, it wouldn’t come up. There was some sort of trap there, a thing of rope that had been concealed under the debris from the explosion.

And there was a package giving off the smallest hint of smoke just by it.

The [Maid] smirked a cruel smile. “Got you.”

The package blew open in a flash of bright light. Catherine flew back, seeing nothing and with her skin singed black. Everything hurt. But everything had been hurting for a long time now, so it didn’t really matter. But her body wasn’t moving properly. That’s an issue.

She coughed out smoke from her lungs and blinked her eyes—but everything felt distant. Her head was spinning. But it was clearing fast—her body was not ordinary. I can heal this.

Then came the arrows.

Catherine felt dim thuds and prods against her skin, then realized that there were feathered sticks coming out her body. Her body felt even more distant. Her eyes were clearing. She saw people rushing out a hidden door, rushing at her with all manner of weapons, fury in their eyes. So angry.

They wanted to end her. No—they wanted to finally really kill her baby.

The woman who had once been a [Botanist] spat out another bit of smoke, finally felt air enter her lungs, and then screamed. [Wail of the Plaguemother]. With the full might she could bring out, she let out all her anger and panic in a sound almost as loud as the blast.

The veil of smoke covering the street was pushed back, and the hunters fell to the ground, covering their ears. But Catherine kept screaming, even as she felt blood forming in her throat, for as long as she could keep up the skill.

And her brood started to listen. Voices joined the call. Rotten roars from festering throats. And steps started running. Catherine felt a ghoul step to her side, and took hold of it, letting the monster pull her up to her feet. She finally really saw her foes.

The [Maid] was still on the rooftop, staring at her with grim eyes. Three more women had stepped out from a nearby building and had been advancing on her, but now they were getting back, wary. But angry. They were all angry.

Catherine wobbled on her feet, feeling the damage all over her body. It was terrible. But…

“You’re not getting away like that,” the [Maid] said, then jumped down from the roof, broom in hand.

Catherine smiled, and blood spilled from her split lips, painting her grin crimson. “Oh, really? You should have brought more.”

She felt three more monsters—normal zombies this time—arrive by her side. She leaned against them all with her arms wide as if lounging into a bed, and finally activated one of her capstone abilities. [A Horde Together].

The countless scratches, bruises, broken bones, and split veins in her body started to move and shift, going in four different directions. Like waves in water, they crawled forward along her skin, finally reaching the points of her body that connected to the monster.

Then they moved over.

Catherine felt her body once more come closer to her mind as the pain returned to normal levels, and she stood straighter, all her wounds now evenly distributed between her and her horde. She let the [Maid] see her bleeding teeth, in a blooming and brilliant smile. “You won’t get me! Not like this!”

The [Maid] however didn’t despair. She just grimaced, shaking her head and muttering to herself. She took a look at the masses of zombies rushing in from every direction, then finally raised her voice.

“Everyone, get out! Stealth portion over!”

Then the other two hunter teams jumped out from their hiding spots and started killing the approaching zombies. Arrows started flying at Catherine again. The woman ducked behind her horde, but even as it grew, her originals fell.

But now she saw many, many more foes. Finally, a tinge of doubt hit her.

This might be a problem.