Another half hour passed as Arthur looked out upon the barren and empty cavern, the only two things of note were the residential area and the overgrown field and he had already had a good look at them up close. He was about ready to just call it quits and command someone else to take his place when suddenly he saw something off in the distance in the residential area. It was a humanoid figure that from such a distance could not have any of its features identified.
Whatever it was, it noticed Arthur and knew it was being watched, it quickly disappeared into the residential area as Arthur stood up, tempted to start chasing after it and get himself some answers. He stopped himself from taking such a reckless action as he couldn’t leave those under his command without someone keeping an eye out. Instead he decided he would tell the next group about what he saw and to keep their eyes peeled and alert him if it comes closer.
The remaining fifteen minutes of Arthur’s shift were uneventful and he was more than happy to wake up the next group to replace himself, but before he left them to their job he informed them of what he saw. “Just keep an eye out for anything moving in the residential area over there, if it starts coming closer wake everyone up. We don’t know what it is so we should take every precaution available.”
“Of course sir, we will speak with the next group about it as well and make sure they know what to do.” The three members of this shift gave a small salute and quickly left for their stations, the one remaining inside found a chair towards the back of the room while the other two stepped outside and each took a chair of their own.
*********
Several hours passed as Arthur found some much needed rest for both his body and mind despite the subpar arrangements. He used some of the older and lower quality clothes that he kept in his bag as a pillow of sorts to rest his head while he used his overcoat to lay on. The stone floor was very cold and felt like it was sucking the heat out of his body when he tried to sleep on it. The leather overcoat helped significantly in that regard.
When he did awake it was at eight o’clock in the morning, his internal clock woke him up at his normal time. All the other guardsmen that accompanied him down were also either waking up or already awake. Just outside the bare room was a small campfire with a pot cooking food for everyone, one of the guardsmen was the cook of the group and brought most of the food and cooking tools for the task, the fire was created by some kindling that he brought as well as some of the dried grass like plant that was scattered across the cavern. All the guardsmen lined for their share of the food, Arthur on the other hand had his own food within his dimensional bag. Even though the food that was cooking smelt good he would rather eat a cold meat sandwich he made and stored for such an occasion.
Once they were all done with eating all the guardsmen packed their things up and readied themselves for a continued exploration effort of this underground cavern. They passed the residential area and followed the large road that ran through it. This road went straight through the ‘town’ and likely led to something else that might be of importance to this place. Unfortunately the dim crystals did not extend to this part of the road and the guardsmen and Arthur were required to use their own light source to see where they were going. Arthur conjured up a ball of fire for himself and roughly every fourth guard held a torch in their hands as a light source.
The group of eleven walked down that road for what felt like hours when they eventually found something, they passed into what appeared to be a mushroom forest of sorts. They couldn’t see all that much of their surroundings so they didn't know the complete scope of the forest, but the few massive glowing mushrooms that could be seen through the darkness that clouded the cavern was enough to give them an idea of what was there.
The road that they walked on was made up entirely of stone bricks and was large enough for two carriages to pass by without issue, given the distance it must have taken quite some time to finish, and wherever it leads must be just as important. But something didn’t want them to find out as ten figures blocked their path with five carrying some of the glowing crystals in the shape of clubs. These figures were the size and shape of dwarves, but something was off about them, they walked in a strange and awkward way as if they were having difficulty doing something so simple.
Arthur, who was leading the guardsmen, stopped and raised his arms up to his sides to stop everyone when these strange dwarves walked onto the road. Not a single word was spoken as they watched the group of ten shamble around on the road until one turned their head to look at them, now suddenly both the ‘dwarves’ and the guardsmen could see each other clearly. The dwarf was holding one of the crystal clubs in its right hand and it illuminated its face showing its skin to be both pale and peeling off like dried paper.
Without need of a command the guardsmen readied themselves with their spears pointed towards the incoming ten walking corpse-like dwarves, Arthur quickly took a few steps back and began casting spells. The lead ‘dwarf’ which was the first one to notice the group slowly began to lead its followers towards Arthur and the guardsmen, though it started with a slow shamble they quickened their pace until they were almost jogging towards their targets with their clubs and arms raised high to strike.
Arthur quickly finished the casting of the Tri Earth Bolts spell and propelled the three bolts into the lead ‘dwarf’, one struck the head and the other two struck the chest area as a sort of experiment on the durability of these sickly dwarves. To both the surprise and interest of Arthur this ‘dwarf’ only recoiled for a few seconds before it resumed its march towards him and his allies.
The guardsmen quickly braced themselves and a few stabbed forwards with their spears towards this sickly dwarf, the dwarf didn’t stand a chance against these and quickly found it had a few extra holes in its chest that it didn’t have before where it quickly began bleeding out a blackish blood. Unfortunately Arthur was unable to satisfy his arcane curiosity as there were another nine sickly dwarves moving towards them.
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Arthur began casting another stronger spell that he expected would be able to eliminate or completely disable one of the sick dwarves, the guardsmen on the other hand slowly moved towards their aggressors with their spears pointed ahead them. Arthur finished his tier two spell and propelled a large earth spike towards the head of the right most dwarf, his control over his earth spells had already reached high enough that a moving target moving at such a speed was of very little difficulty. The ‘dwarf’ fell to the ground as the large earth spike created a rather large hole in its forehead where its brain once was.
Arthur would cast the spell two more times as the guardsmen stabbed their spears into the open chests of sick dwarves. Since the ‘dwarves’ had no strategy or formation it was quite easy for the guardsmen to take them out one at a time, Arthur would take out the few that were farther off to the side allowing for the guardsmen to focus on the remaining six that were all grouped together.
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Once the sick dwarves were all dead the guardsmen were quick to distance themselves from the corpses as Arthur quickly took a sample of the blackish blood. As he kneeled down to the closest corpse Arthur removed a potion from his bag and quickly drank its brown contents, once he was finished drinking he quickly conjured up some water to clean out the bottle and then manipulated some air to dry the water. Now with the clean bottle Arthur filled it with a large amount of blood from the corpse as it bled out of its wounds, this left him with a half full bottle of blackish blood that smells worse than the dead bodies he found in the temple earlier.
The guardsmen that accompanied him watched with wonder and confusion as this happened. When they saw Arthur quickly down the potion only to clean it they were rather confused, one guardsman by the name of Vel began wondering out loud. “Why did he just drink that? Is there a reason why he did that?”
“He probably just didn’t want to waste the magic potion. I hear they can get really expensive once you start factoring in rare ingredients and brewing times.” A guardsman by the name of Kaeso said. When they saw Arthur start to collect the blackish blood from the dead dwarf he said “I told you so.” which annoyed Vel more than it probably should have.
Once Arthur was done collecting the blood he placed the secured bottle into his bag and began writing something down in a book with a small bottle of ink in his off hand. As he did this he directed the guardsmen under his command to follow him as he continued down the road in the direction they were initially going. Soon Arthur was done with whatever it was he was writing and returned the paper as well as the ink to his bag.
While he was inspecting and collecting a sample of the blood Arthur also picked up one of the crystal clubs that were wielded by the sick dwarves, like he expected it was likely the same material that was used on the iron poles to illuminate the residential area the group first came across. It was also surprisingly durable for a crystal, Arthur expected it to be far more fragile despite the clear use as a weapon. This crystal club was also placed into his bag for safekeeping.
According to the watch that was brought along the group managed to walk for another half hour down that road before they encountered a second group of these sick dwarves, this time it was a group of five with only one carrying a crystal club. Like the previous group the guardsmen quickly formed a line with their spears pointed towards the aggressors, they moved forward and stabbed their targets in the chest and stomach areas. With two guardsmen for each sick dwarf the fight ended quickly and did not require any spells from Arthur.
Another hour of walking passed and the group found themselves at another group of buildings, but unlike the residential area they were at beforehand that looked like it was just up and abandoned one day this place looked like a war tore through. Almost half of the buildings were damaged with a quarter of those being collapsed completely, the amount of sickly dwarves in the area was also much higher than before on the road.
“A disease or sickness of some sort did this to these people, and now they continue to walk around their ruined cities as mindless husks of what they once were. Make sure that you don’t make physical contact with them, and don’t get any blood on you, we don’t know how this disease spreads to others.” Arthur said before he cautiously led the guardsmen under his command into this ruined settlement. When they came across a small group of sick dwarves that numbered no more than five they would quickly cut them down and leave, when the number was higher they would avoid it unless it was blocking the only way to something they needed to get to.
As they explored this city Arthur prioritized stores and other important looking buildings whether they be government or privately owned. One such building sold these pieces of parchment that had the details of important events written on them for the general populace, with the Comprehend Language spell within the amulet Arthur wore he could read what they said and knew that the information the most recent pieces contained was incorrect.
The cheap parchment contained information of a disease that was spreading around this underground kingdom known as Kinwihr, the disease was referred to as The Pestilence and was said to be lethal in around five percent of cases. Clearly that wasn’t the entire truth as it was very likely that those infected with the pestilence were the ones still walking around to this day and attacking anyone that is not affected.
A few of the other locations the group looked into were alchemists, healers, and any government buildings. But unfortunately nothing within these types of buildings told them anything that was important, at best they received the symptoms of the pestilence from the healer buildings which closely correlated with the dwarves that were still wandering around to this day. But the one key difference was that they stated that the victim of the disease would just die a very painful death, there was nothing regarding the crowds of the infected wandering around and attacking those who were not infected.
Arthur furrowed his eyes at this information as he was reading the pile documents that he found within the only healers building within this town. “Is there something wrong sir?” One of the guardsmen asked as she noticed Arthur’s expression. She was half worried that whatever this disease was they were investigating it was worse than they expected.
“These reports of this pestilence don’t make any mention of those sick with it wandering around and attacking those who are not. They either did not know about that at the time of writing these or were purposefully hiding it from the common people. There is also no mention of how people get sick from this disease, not from drinking contaminated water, not bloodborne, nothing. It's almost like this is a weaponized disease that managed to get out of its containment that this Kinwihr kingdom was trying to hide it.