Volume 37 - The Guards' Preperations

== Chapter 433 - Mad Science ==
Demetrius was pouring a substance from one test tube to another, said other test tube being filled with another substance already as the two mixed.
The scientist then closed the tube with a cork and shook it a little, watching the substance closely as it changed to a deep purple color.
"Just what is it you were up to, Arthur?" Demetrius mutters, placing the tube inside a scanning device and pressing a few buttons to begin the scan.
As it began, he walked over to another project of his, a petri dish filled with a metallic grey goo, before prodding it with a Cordyceps mushroom, the goo quickly devouring it and growing.
"Well, it certainly has an appetite." He remarks, before placing a human fingerbone in the goo, and watching it remain inert. "Well, got that programming down."
After that, he walked back towards the scanner, to see it showed something rather odd.
"Huh...that's unexpected." Demetrius remarks. "It appears he discovered a virus...with genes in every species in the galaxy."
After that, he transferred the scan to a simulation machine, and walked out of his room and through the halls, towards Grimwald's.
"Hey, Grim, you'll never believe what I've just discovered!" Demetrius shouts, knocking on the door.
"Come in." Grimwald replies weakly.
Demetrius opened the door to see Grimwald laying there, bags beneath his eyes.
"What is it you wanted to tell me?" Grimwald asks. "...It can wait till later." Demetrius replies, walking away as Grimwald seemed to fall asleep.
== Chapter 434 - Persuasion ==
"Grim's having a real rough time, huh?" Dione asks.
"Yep. Took all the joy out of my discovery." Demetrius retorts. "I'll say what it is when he perks up."
"...I figured." She replies. "What do ya want me to do?"
"Date him." Demetrius explains.
"Date him?" Dione demands.
"Yup." Demetrius replies. "Maybe getting with you will cheer him up enough to not be an energy vampire."
"...I suppose..." She remarks. "Alright, I'll go talk to him and see if he agrees."
"I'm almost certain he will." Demetrius responds.
== Chapter 435 - The Date ==
Dione, wearing a sleeveless black dress, and Grimwald, wearing a black and white tuxedo, walked out of a limousine, and towards a restaurant. Though Dione seemed somewhat excited, with a small smirk on her face, Grimwald looked as tired as ever, and seemed to be staring at the ground, as they entered and approached the waiter.
"What a lucky man you are, Sir." The waiter says. 
...Suppose..." Grimwald replies quietly, as Dione leans slightly against him.
"Table for two please, highest class." She requests.
"Of course, Ma'am." The waiter replies.
The actual table itself was gold, the tablecloth a fine white silk as the chairs they sat on were plush and a deep reddish violet color. Illuminating them were a candle on the table and a golden chandelier above, and around them were a number of people who looked and acted as sophisticated as they could.
"What would you two like?" A waitress asks.
"In the spirit of fanciness, seasoned chicken." Dione replies nonchalantly.
"Steak." Grimwald replies weakly.
"And drinks?" The waitress asks.
"Fanciest beer you've got, for both of us." Dione replies.
"I'll be back soon." The waitress then says, leaving shortly afterward.
"...Drinking doesn't really put me in the mood, you know." Grimwald explains.
"You've never been drunk around me." Dione corrects.
"I never thought I'd be your type." He almost whispers.
"You, the greatest gunslinger in the galaxy, the badass with the heart of gold, not my type?" Dione asks.
"I dunno, I thought you and Kiyomasu were a thing." Grimwald responds, as there was slight pain in his expression.
"Oh, we're really just friends." Dione responds. "Close friends, childhood friends, but still friends."
"Still didn't think you'd want me, of all people." He responds. "You don't seem particularly enthusiastic to be here either, honestly."
Dione didn't respond for a moment.
"...I really do appreciate what you're trying to do, here." Grimwald whispered, his voice cracking a bit. "...I haven't moved on from Julieta, and I don't think I ever will."
As he said that, his eyes began to water, but he remained calm, still looking as defeated as he had since his wife and daughter's deaths.
A moment later, Dione hugged him gently, as he let it happen.
"I am as sorry for your loss as ever." She said as softly as she could. "We all want to help you through this...we want to see you smile again."
Grimwald didn't say anything back, rather, he began to silently cry, as he hugged her back.
== Chapter 436 - The Common Infection ==
"A virus with genes in all life forms?" Rosenstock demands.
"Compatible with all life forms, at least." Demetrius explains. "I've checked, and the virus is in every species we've discovered in our own borders so far, including Socqreath."
"...And Arthur was experimenting on this virus?" Rosenstock asks.
"Yep." Demetrius answers. "He seems to have merged it with that Socqreath Virus Allen and his scientist developed a while back. Must've gotten it from whatever was left of the warehouse, or was given it by Saparbek and Karim."
"...Saparbek Sadulaev..." Rosenstock remarks. "...I want more intel on him."
"Sure thing." Demetrius replies. "I love messing with other scientists."
"...I have a feeling there's more to him than being a hotel owner gone rogue." Rosenstock remarks. "...And I've received word that Arthur was removed from his grave."
"Oh?" Demetrius responds. "It's possible he took the virus before that explosion...or during it. He might have been captured by Saparbek for study."
"...It is absolutely imperative that we get to the bottom of this." Rosenstock orders. "I will put this castle, this country, this Kingdom, on high alert, and heavy surveillance."
"Sounds good to me." Demetrius replied.
== Chapter 437 - The Disgraced Scientist ==
"Saparbek Sadulaev?" Reuben asks.
"Yes, he is suspected to have taken Arthur Grant's corpse." Rosenstock explains.
"...That doesn't make sense." Reuben remarks, putting his chin on his hand. "Saparbek deals in anatomy, coding and robotics, he doesn't touch actual biology and genetics, he wouldn't even bother to study Arthur's corpse..."
"I take it you're familiar with him?" Rosenstock inquires.
"...Saparbek was an old scientist of ours." Reuben explains. "He was discharged for his radical views, and proclaimed dead after a spaceship accident."
"I see..." Rosenstock remarked.
"...What do you think he would want his corpse for?" Reuben asks.
"We believe Arthur was infected with a virus capable of infecting any host across the galaxy." Rosenstock answers. "We've found dormant traces of the virus in genes of every species we've searched in, and Demetrius' simulations imply it may be old enough to have originated eleven billion years ago."
"Eleven billion years..." Reuben whispers. "...A virus that old would originate from the first habitable planet in the galaxy. If panspermia is true, then the virus could have shaped the evolution of all life in the galaxy...or even the entire universe."
"Is it possible that someone you know could have been searching for the virus?" Rosenstock asks.
"...No, no one I know would want to use this thing as a bioweapon." Reuben answers. "This Arthur Grant...he himself sounds like the only possible culprit."
"...He perished." Rosenstock remarks.
"...If any part of his nervous system remained...he could have regenerated...and dug himself out of his grave." Reuben said. "What are my orders, Sir?"
"...Put Mars on full lockdown and maximum security, until we know what we're dealing with." Rosenstock orders.
"Of course, Sir." Reuben replies. "You can count on me."
== Chapter 438 - Acquiring a Sample ==
Arthur walked across a sidewalk, under a rainy night sky, through a city made from brick and concrete, illuminated by yellowish street lights, wearing an almost ankle-length grey raincoat and waterproof brown trenchcoat and fedora, along with near-opaque sunglasses, his hands in his pockets as he listened closely to make sure he wasn't being followed.
He couldn't allow himself to be captured, now. He and Karim needed to plant the right seeds, first. And that would be easier if he wasn't even found out, let alone caught.
And, of course, as he thought that, he heard footsteps behind him.
"Hey." Demetrius says from behind Arthur, who turned around with a small grimace on his face, not responding before running across the sidewalk, the Royal Guard's Scientist giving chase.
"I just wanted to talk!" Demetrius shouts, as Arthur reaches his hand inside his trenchcoat to take out a laser pistol and fire at Demetrius' eyes.
"Ow!" Demetrius shouts, briefly stopping as Arthur runs behind a corner and into an alleyway.
Demetrius' eyes regenerate as he takes out a taser pistol and follows quickly, a few people having stopped and noticed the chase as he did so.
"Did that all-infecting virus make you immortal?!" Demetrius asks, as Arthur whirls around to glare at him with a glowing purple gaze through his sunglasses.
"You are not going to ruin my work!" He roars, right as Demetrius points the taser pistol at him and fires.
"GU-U-U--" Arthur growls, before falling to the ground, paralyzed.
"Well, that wasn't too hard." Demetrius remarks, before drawing some of Arthur's glowing purple, black blood into a vial.
Not long after Demetrius finishes and closes up the vial, Arthur suddenly regains his movement and slashes at Demetrius' face!
"Woah!" Demetrius yelps, leaping back as Arthur stood back up and wiped his own blood from his cheek.
He snarls at the fellow scientist before taking out a bomb and throwing it to the ground, as it made a loud BANG!, unleashed a bright flash of light, and emitted a massive amount of teargas-filled smoke.
Demetrius coughed a bit, as his eyes, ears, nose and throat began to regenerate, seeing that Arthur had vanished.
"Well, that's a bummer." He remarks, holding the vial up to his eye and staring closely at it. "Now that I have a better sample...I think it's time to see what can cure you."
== Chapter 439 - Return to the Castle ==
"So Karim resurfaced..." Rosenstock remarks. "...he didn't perish in the starship's explosion after all."
"Yeah, and he turned the Olgaih's homeworld into a zombie-infested nightmare." Shunsuke explains. "He's stronger than ever, and now he can...create zombies."
"...I see..." Rosenstock remarks. "Have any of you been infected?"
"Not as far as we know." Kasper answers. "But now a whole world of zombies is under Karim's control."
"Do you know any way we can take him down?" Jack asks.
"Demetrius is working on a cure for a sample of the virus we acquired." Rosenstock explains. "Please, return to your home."
== Chapter 440 - Maibaum Manor Improved ==
"Woah! So many cameras! So many weapons!" Candice shouts.
"Yep, I'd rather no one sneaks up on us this time." Kasper replies. "Let's get inside, and the defenses should all go back up."
And so, they enter, a forcefield activating around the manor, an electric, barbed wall raising up between said forcefield and said manor.
Andromeda sat on a couch and sighed, looking down at her own hands, which trembled a bit.
"You okay, Anne?" Jack asks.
"Yeah..." She answers. "...I just...need some more time to think about all this."
"That's alright, I can imagine so." Jack says, hugging Andromeda gently, as she hugs back, closing her eyes.
"Well, that's quite lovely." Arthur says, standing in the hallway.
== Chapter 441 - Infiltrated Once More ==
"...Seriously?" Kasper groans.
"Mr. Grant?" Candice asks.
"Hello again, my former students." Arthur replies. "I am glad to see you've all matured."
"...Cool getup you've got, there." Jack says, as Shunsuke and Andromeda look on in suspicion.
"Thanks, it's not what I normally wear but it works." Arthur responds.
"...Wait...you died..." Shunsuke breathes.
"The reports of my death were...quite exaggerated." Arthur retorts.
"Stop that bullshit." Andromeda growls. "What are you here for? How did you get past the defenses?"
"The sewers." Arthur answers flatly. "I and a few of my...creations, snuck beneath the forcefield, and through the electric fields."
"Creations...?" Kasper asks warily, as Arthur grinned a smile of glossy black teeth, and snapped his fingers.
And then, from the darkness, they heard growling.
== Chapter 442 - Rise of the Living Dead ==
People, with skin slightly tinted purple, shambled and crawled out of the hallways, the lights Arthur broke flickering to at times illuminate them, as the team noticed the glowing purple, black blood oozing from wounds in their bodies, as well as from their eyes, nose, ears and mouth.
Candice screamed as the zombies continued to shamble towards them, Jack firing a few down as they quickly got back up, snarling.
"...Shit." Jack grunts, as Kasper creates a blaster in his hand and fires at a zombie to disintegrate it into glowing orangish-yellow dust.
"We have to get out of here!" Kasper shouts.
They ran up the stairs, Kasper blasting said stairs down behind them as Arthur watched, keeping his smile.
"Arthur's back?!" Jack yells. "Does Karim have control of him, too?!"
"...Or maybe...it's the other way around!" Shunsuke replies, as they hear a thud from behind them and turn to see Arthur, a glossy black and purple tendril retreating back into his right sleeve as he had evidently pulled himself up with it.
"You're exactly right, Vaquero." Arthur said, his voice now sounding slightly distorted, like three similar voices speaking at once, before he leaps at them, his right arm turning into a spiky, tendril-protruding mess, complete with five scythe-like fingers!
Andromeda blocks his slash before Candice punches him back, the former scientist landing on his feet and chuckling as blood dripped from his mouth onto the carpet.
"Why are you doing this?!" Shunsuke demands.
"To eliminate difference." Arthur explains. "Once we are all the same, we will all, finally, be...equal, and immortal."
"By taking everyone's will away?!" Andromeda roars. "Turning everyone into monsters?!"
"I'm honestly still on the fence about the 'free will' part." Arthur replies, before firing globs of his own biomass at them, Kasper creating a flat forcefield to block the globs as the team continues to run.
"Keep running..." The monster of a man growls. "...it is inevitable that all shall become one." And at that, he rushes at them, ramming the forcefield repeatedly.
== Chapter 443 - Madness of the Just ==
"This is bad! This is really, really bad!" Candice yells. "Doctor Grant turned himself into some kind of...of monster! And now he wants to turn everyone else?!"
"We won't let him!" Jack replies. "Hey, Kasper, does this mansion have a self-destruct feature?!"
"I-it does, b-but..." Kasper whimpers. "...I'd destroy all the progress on my game..."
"Fuck your game!" Andromeda screams. "You can work on it later, IF we survive! Which we won't unless we blow Arthur to Hell!"
She then realized what she said, and stopped talking, looking sorry.
"...Alright." Kasper replies. "...We just need to get to the generator."
Andromeda crushes a few pieces of furniture up against a door to seal it shut, before Kasper creates a tunnel into the basement which they leap into, the tunnel's entrance closing right as Arthur slashes the door open and rushes in.
The five notice the cracked pipe, where zombies were crawling out of, as Kasper creates a forcefield to keep them at bay. They then see the generator, and run towards it, right when a number of zombies burst through the ceiling, Kasper immediately firing at them with his disintegration blaster.
"This isn't good!" Shunsuke shouts. "Most of us can't do crap to those guys!"
"We just need to activate the self-destruct!" Kasper shouts back. "And then we can teleport out of here!"
"And where do you think YOU'RE going?!" Arthur howls, landing on the floor as half of his body was now twisted in almost every wrong way imaginable!
"You aren't going to stop us!" Andromeda roars, grabbing Arthur's arm with her Psychic Weapons as he lunges at them, before throwing him into a number of crates.
"Any time, Kasper!" Jack yells.
"Alright, it's ready!" Kasper yells back." We have ten seconds, everyone grab on!"
They all go to do so, as Kasper frantically types on his console, Arthur beginning to stand back up as his body further mutated, the zombies following suit as they grew extra limbs with blade-like appendages on their ends from their backs and grew, as well, mandibles on the sides of their mouths. Then, Kasper manages to teleport them away, right as Arthur lunges again, and the countdown reaches zero.
The explosion was massive, blasting off a large portion of the mountaintop, as Maibaum Manor...was no more.
== Chapter 444 - Situation Briefing ==
"So Arthur attacked you five?" Reuben demands. "Were any of you infected?"
"No." Jack answers. "But we've lost the mansion, and Kasper's console ran all out of battery creating the negative mass needed to take us to Mars."
"Then get it charged, and give me the schematics for that disintegration rifle you created." Reuben orders. "I'm going to be equipping the Olympian Hoplites with them, and sending search parties of them to contain and eliminate this plague before it can spread any further."
"We can't just hold them for curing?!" Candice pleads.
"No, we don't know if there is a cure to this disease." Reuben retorts flatly.
"...Well...at least Arthur's gone." Andromeda remarks.
"I doubt it." Reuben replies. "If these zombies operate via a hivemind, then Arthur could just transfer his consciousness to a zombie somewhere else and, with the shapeshifting capabilities you mentioned, reshape that body to his own, right down to the genetic level."
"...So he's immortal as long as any biomass of this plague exists anywhere..." Shunsuke breathed, clenching his fists.
"We believe that he and Karim struck a deal at some point during Phantom's attacks." Reuben explains. "And so it's safe to say that they're working together."
"How are we supposed to fight them when we can't even touch them?" Candice asks.
"Don't worry." Reuben answers, stepping aside as a secret door in the wall opens to reveal five white and red environmental suits, modeled after the five's own body types.
"We thought of that."
"Woah..." Jack breathes, as they look on.
"These are state-of-the-art environmental suits." Reuben explains to them. "They can function in every environment we've discovered, and not only are they durable yet lightweight, but they are also skintight yet ultra-flexible. Do not take them off during or, honestly, between missions, except to eat. And even then, take all sterilization precautions we believe will be effective."
"Right." Shunsuke replies. "Do we have a special transport, too?"
"Indeed you do." Reuben answers, waving his hand at a relatively large oval-shaped spaceship.
"So cool..." Kasper remarks, looking at said spaceship.
"That will automatically sterilize your suits whenever you enter or exit." Reuben says. "It's also incredibly fast, and has its own warp drive installed into it so that it doesn't have to follow the warp lanes."
"Thanks for all the help." Andromeda replied.
"Of course." Reuben responds. "We've received reports of Karim sightings on Lacenope, an icy world about to explode. If he places vials of the disease in the right spots, the pending explosion could quickly spread infected asteroids across the galaxy. Your mission is to apprehend Karim, and bring him here for interrogation and experimentation."
"You can count on us!" Jack replies, pumping his fist up.