Undeath Resonance naturally seems to move in helices, not balls.

A ball was still created during the Card creation process.

Dealer able to interrupt resurrection process by creating a card.

Could Undead function similar to hive Cards? Zombies at least?

Journal of Alabaster Roe

Chapter 48: Field Experimentation

Alabaster

Alley had a plan…of sorts, more like an idea or a feeling if he was entirely honest with himself. While it had come as a surprise that turning a zombie into a Card had proven only slightly more complicated than a regular monster, Alley didn’t want to fill his Library with weak common creatures. He would if that was what he needed to in order to have a Deck full of Cards he could actually play but he was certainly hoping to avoid it.

Watching the pile of zombies and the strange behavior of the Resonance inside them when they were slain had inspired an idea for an experiment with the nature of building his Deck. It was an experiment Alley felt confident would work. Yet even he had to concede there were two potential issues that he should be concerned about.

The first being that should his plan not work Alley and Darius would need to bid a hasty retreat from the area around the little grassy island lest they end up surrounded by reforming Undead. The second concern which was so immediate it should have been Alley’s first and only worry, was that he had pulled together a swarm of almost thirty of the walking corpses. Every one of which was presently giving its best effort to reach and tear apart the pair of boys.

“So we need to kill them all and stack them in a big pile before the first one down resurrects.”

Darius who was busy trying to fend off the encroaching monsters with a river pole shot Alley an annoyed look over his shoulder.

“Hack up thirty zombies and put them all in a neat little pile, in what ten minutes?” Asked the red-headed boy in a way that made it abundantly clear it was not a real question.

“After that, I’ll tie them up with a nice ribbon.”

Alley let out a little laugh at his friend’s faux irritation.

“I didn’t say the pile had to be neat but a ribbon would be nice.”

Darius shook his head ruefully while Alley continued.

“I’ll cover your swap to the spear when we hit the bank of that little island which is in….five, four, three” Alley finished his countdown just as the lip of the raft struck mud. At the same moment, both boys dropped their poles. Alley whipped his hook-chain out from his belt in a single drawing motion. The bladed weapon flew past Darius as the hunter repeated his trick of kicking his spear up into his hands. A few winters back he had tried to teach Alley to do the same, but while he was able to not stab himself in the face he had never quite gotten comfortable with the skill.

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Alley had his own tricks anyway. With a single smooth motion, he pulled the hook from his belt and flung it into the face of the zombie closest to the back of the raft. Rotting flesh parted easily as the curved blade impacted the monster. Alley had learned his lesson from fighting the zombies earlier in the day and opted to target heads when normally he would aim for necks or arteries.

The dark-haired boy hoped that one attack would be enough to stop that monster but he didn’t stop to check. With the large group of Undead closing in he didn’t have the time be admiring his own work. The zombies were disappointingly fast, slower than say a warrior but their movements were hardly ‘shambling’. Fortunately, Alley had accounted for this, beaching the raft on a section of the little island that was particularly muddy.

Moving through the chest high water already put the Undead horde at a significant mobility disadvantage, now when they climbed onto the island in an attempt to assault the raft they would find it a slippery and uneven affair.

With a flicking motion Alley yanked the hook back into his hand and proceeded to use it more like a curved machete than the thrown weapon it usually was. On the other side of the raft, Darius had activated his Deck and got to work slaughtering the Undead with astounding efficiency.

Alley had to admit he forgot sometimes just how dangerous his friend was. Darius liked to act a bit goofy and was easily the least successful flirt Alley had ever seen. None of that changed that he had been hunting some of the most dangerous creatures the world had to offer his entire life. It showed itself clearly in the way he fought the zombies, even after having only fought one small group the hunter had adjusted how he engaged the monster type.

The zombies might not be slow exactly but neither were they fast compared to the honed reflexes of the two boys. The height and stability advantage of the beached raft, and the fact that the zombies attacked near mindlessly from only two directions and were unarmed quickly turned the encounter into a slaughter.

Six minutes later when the last zombie was a twitching mass on the ground the pair of boys had only suffered a few scrapes and bruises. Most prominently Alley had a rapidly developing black eye and Darius had a number of welts where his frostscale cloak had blocked an attempted bite from one of the monsters.

Both boys were breathing hard and covered in a thick layer of sweat from having hacked through rotting people like they had been chopping blocks of wood. Still, Alley insisted they rush to complete his plan.

“Go go now! Get them into a pile at the top of the bank. “

Darius let out a sigh but still joined Alley as he leaped off the raft. The slippery bank that had helped them fight the zombies now became an obstacle for the rushing pair. If anything their footing was even more treacherous than it had been for the swarm of monsters as they hadn’t needed to contend with the gore of their own remains.

The pile was far from perfect or complete and both boys were covered in grime and stagnant blood, but they managed to get a hasty mound of corpses together before the zombies had truly begun to pull themselves together. The strange flows of helical Undeath Resonance were starting to connect the dismembered bodies but as long as he was quick that was all according to plan.

Still panting Alley rushed to the disgusting mound of slowly writhing corpses mentally activating his Dealer’s ability to create Cards and pressing it into the mound. Immediately the cloak began to glow before the shining teal light flowed from the clothing into the body he was touching the most. If his plan failed a normal Resonance orb would fly into the air and create an image of the single zombie Card.

If his plan worked something else would happen, though he wasn’t entirely sure what. Alley had never created a hive Card before and only had a rough idea of how the process was supposed to go. Doing it with a swarm of Undead was even further outside the purvey of his studies.

“Well that's a good sign.” He said eyes shining with excitement. The light of the normal Undeath Resonance seemed to be a shifting purple similar to the torches that had burned within the buried castle. The helixes linking the corpses however was quickly changing to the same teal light that Alley’s Crown Of The Cursed King seemed so fond of.