The morning wind whipped up fiercely, carrying an unusual, bone-chilling cold from the eastern hills of Suka Makmur Village. Up on the marginal cliffside plot, Danu stood tall, holding a cup of warm water. Before him, rows of shallots grew increasingly dense, radiating an aura of vibrant life that clashed sharply with the creeping tension gripping the rest of the village.

Danu's eyes locked onto his own field of vision. There, the translucent holographic screen of the Sacred Farming System pulsed with a rapid, bleeding-red light, accompanied by digital numbers ticking relentlessly backward, second by second.

[0 hours... 0 minutes... 3 seconds... 2 seconds... 1 second... 0 seconds.]

The exact moment the countdown hit zero, the entire holographic interface flickered violently with a blinding flash of crimson light. A low-frequency emergency alarm hummed fiercely inside Danu's skull, shattering the morning quiet.

(COUNTDOWN COMPLETE!) the system's mechanical voice echoed sharply and coldly in his mind. (Late-stage Fusarium OXY spores have been massively released via the eastern winds across the entire territory of Suka Makmur Village. The melon farm biological apocalypse is officially underway!)

Danu drew a deep breath. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, then gazed straight out toward the vast expanse of the villagers' melon plantations on the western edge of the village, which stretched lush and green beneath the morning sun.

"The time has come..." Danu whispered softly to the morning breeze, his voice sounding intensely calm yet heavy with consequence.

Far on the western side of the village, right across the hundreds of hectares of golden melon fields belonging to Pak Darma and the locals, that morning began with roaring laughter and high-spirited chatter. Workers and farmers gathered along the paths, preparing to welcome the harvest season believed to yield overflowing wealth.

Kasim paced back and forth among his melon rows with a broad grin. He gripped a leafy vine that looked lush and fresh on the surface, then patted a large melon hanging heavy behind the foliage.

"Magnificent! Look at these melons—huge and flawless without a single blemish!" Kasim shouted proudly, calling over a few farmhands standing nearby. "Hey, foreman! Get the large harvest baskets ready by tomorrow! Next week, we kick off our very first massive harvest!"

The farm foreman, a middle-aged man named Mardani, nodded rapidly with a wide grin. "Don't you worry, Mang Kasim! All the hands are on standby. Not a single fruit is getting left behind. This year, we're genuinely pulling in billions of rupiah!"

Yet amid that soaring laughter and pride, a strange and suspicious scent suddenly caught the eastern wind sweeping across the plantations.

A farmhand squatting near the irrigation ditch abruptly halted his work. He frowned, sniffing the surrounding air with a puzzled expression.

"Eh? What on earth is that smell?" the farmhand muttered in confusion. He turned to the man on his right. "Do you smell that? It's like... like rotting sulfur."

Hearing this, Mardani snorted in annoyance. Strutting over to the worker with his hands on his hips, he snapped, "What sulfur are you babbling about, huh? Don't make things up! This is a super-imported golden melon farm, not a sulfur fertilizer plant!"

"N-no, Foreman! I swear, the smell is suffocating!" the worker protested in fear, pointing down at the soil beneath the melon vines. "It's venting straight up from inside the ground!"

Curious, Kasim hurried over as well. He dropped to a squat beside the worker, sniffing the damp earth at the base of a melon stem. The exact second he did, the wide smile on Kasim's face froze solid.

A pungent aroma akin to rotting sulfur and organic decay surged upward from the earth, piercing his nostrils with brutal force.

"What is this smell...?" Kasim whispered in a panic, cold sweat instantly beading on his temples. He reached out to touch the base of his melon stem, which had looked so sturdy just moments prior.

To Kasim's sheer horror, the lower portion of the plant felt remarkably soft, mushy, and waterlogged, as though its internal structure had completely dissolved into nothingness.

"Foreman Mardani! Get over here right now! Something is terribly wrong with these crops!" Kasim screamed hysterically, his voice breaking with panic.

Mardani and several other workers dashed over. Before they could even ask what was wrong, a horrific scene unfolded right before their eyes in a matter of seconds.

Beneath the warm morning sun, the sea of lush, vibrant green leaves suddenly wilted and collapsed simultaneously. That deep green shade faded at lightning speed, turning a dull, sickly brown, then pitch-black as if doused in acid that incinerated every cellular structure in the plants.

"Dear God... the leaves... the leaves suddenly turned black and charred!" a female farmworker shrieked, slapping a hand over her mouth in terror.

"The crops are dying! Every single plant in this row is collapsing in seconds!" Mardani shouted with a violently trembling voice, his face draining entirely of color as he watched row after row of melon vines slump dead into the dirt.

Panic spread like wildfire. Farmers and laborers scrambled across the beds, witnessing a living nightmare sweeping through the fields at terrifying speeds. Thousands of melon stalks previously flaunted as symbols of wealth now lay sprawled as charred, pitch-black corpses exhaling a stifling stench.

"No... this can't be!" Kasim whimpered in total despair. He dropped to his knees in the dirt, clutching his head as he stared in horror at his collapsing empire. "Just last night, these plants were healthy! Why is this happening?!"

Right as that mass panic peaked, a young farmhand at the edge of the field let out a blood-curdling scream.

"AAAAHHH! NO! HELP!" the worker shrieked in high-pitched terror, hurling the harvest basket he held far into the air.

Mardani sprinted toward the scream, breathing heavily. "What is it?! Why are you screaming like a madman, huh?"

The young hand pointed frantically at a large melon he had just snapped off its main vine. The fruit looked whole and perfectly round on the outside, but its bottom rind had turned pitch-black with a small, weeping puncture.

"F-foreman... this fruit... it's rotten inside!" the worker shook violently, thrusting the melon toward Mardani.

With shaking hands, Mardani drew the small utility knife from his belt, then sliced the massive golden melon straight down the middle before the assembled crowd.

Screeech...

The exact second the blade parted the flesh, every farmer clustered around gasped in horror, a few even dropping to their knees in sheer weakness.

The melon flesh—which should have been a vibrant, sweet, and juicy orange—had vanished completely. Inside the split fruit, the entire interior had liquefied entirely into a thick, black, slimy sludge bubbling with foul-smelling gases!

No fruit. No wealth. No billions of rupiah. Only a pool of putrid slime trapped inside a hollow rind.

Mardani hurled the fruit away in terror, stumbling backward while trembling violently. His face mirrored that of a living corpse.

And amid the suffocating silence born of absolute shock, the first sound of sobbing broke among the farmhands.

The agricultural apocalypse had officially arrived in Suka Makmur Village. THE OUTBREAK HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN!