Sam was of course worried at first. It was the very thing they had been afraid of encountering since their arrival in this world, people were just wild cards they couldn't predict. The fact that these people still seem to have some form of command structure and organization in what Sam could only assume was a catastrophe at best and apocalypse at worst proved that they were right to be worried. Sam decided to watch them from afar not wanting to get too close, especially since more than a few were the typical fantasy style, Archer.

Surprisingly though a few had muskets only two compared to the six Archers in the group but the muskets they were using were weird. They were both barrel and breach loaded but judging by what they saw using a variety of ammo types including both your typical balls but also bolts and darts. The design was unique as it used a breach loaded cartridge as an accelerant. The cartridge would be loaded into the breach and then sealed then the arrow or projectile would be loaded through the barrel and strangely enough, it seemed to work better than the depictions of muskets in Sam's old world. Since the ammo and the propellant were two separate items it wasn't limited to your standard bullet. While musket balls seemed to be the fastest to reload only having to be rolled down the barrel or when they wanted a shotgun like effect poured in a bunch of smaller ones. Small metal bolts and darts could be slid in and fired out.

The bolts acted as specialty ammo types as they were typically filled with various volatile materials. Sam witnessed several of these bolts causing the undead to burst into flames dissolve or explode one just straight up released a slime inside of the undead that then ate its way out. Darts on the other hand worked a lot like penetrator rounds. While taking the longest to load as they actually had to use a ramrod to load them and judging by the gunner recoil required more powerful propellant. This sent the small metal darts flying fast enough to penetrate through armor. The Gunners for lack of a better word also seemed to carry three types of firearms. A rifle which seemed to be their primary, a pistol which seemed to be their secondary and of which they usually carried more than one kept preloaded and a for lack of a better word miniature Canon. The thing didn't look much different than in an oversized single barrel shotgun the only major difference from it was the curved padded stock and a thickened reinforced metal barrel. Sam had only seen it fired once to kill an undead bear, where a golf ball size projectile was loaded into the barrel and was fired with enough explosive force that it nearly knocked the gunner over. It shattered the undead bear's front left leg shoulder and spine. It didn't kill the thing but completely stopped its momentum allowing for a far easier kill. The Archers, on the other hand, seem to be more like your modern Rifleman in the squad. Able to fire at almost inhuman speeds and while a few of their arrows had tricks similar to the bolts Sam had seen fired by the gunman they seemed to have abilities of their own. That amplified basic arrows which all but confirmed Sam's theory that magic was a thing here the rest of the squad were various forms of soldiers your typical warrior and scout or was rogue the correct term here?

Regardless, they seemed to be looking for something they had taken up camping in a cave in the valley wall and had started gathering what meager wood was available in the valley for fortifying defenses.

One of the more fascinating things Sam observed was their supply lines. They used a fast moving wagon with a few people who would ride in avoiding the undead as much as possible. The wagon would be unhooked and while they kept the 1st and 2nd wagons after that they dismantled them for their lumber. They then used the lumber to improve their own defenses meanwhile those who had brought the supplies that weren't acting as reinforcements would ride off on the beasts occasionally taking a passenger or two. Though on occasion if they had wounded, they would take the still intact wagon to transport the wounded back. There was a new supply transport every other day, but they weren't hunting the undead like Sam had at first thought they would.

They instead set out in squads and began investigating areas. Sam tried to keep their own squads of slimes away from them but there were already a few run ins and Sam had lost a few transceivers to the overly curious humanoids. Well, mostly humanoids as the last wagon didn't have any beasts of burden and were instead pulled by two centaurs who apparently were sticking around. Most of the humanoids were well, actual humans from what Sam could tell but some were human adjacent. Like elves and if the naming from popular media back on earth was correct, beast kin and halflings and at least two dwarfs. Who were constantly shoring up defenses and a few other odds and ends?

So far, they had all but avoided the forest as that was where Sam was fighting instead they were sticking to the valley that had Sam worried. They, however, weren't given long to worry about it. As while they were continuing their activities to secure the valley and gather resources one of the scouts managed to get themselves cornered by a pack of undead wolves.

Sam could have left them, they should have left them, but they wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for their need to protect others, to begin with.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

As the cat girl Archer slowly backed up against the valley wall with her snapped bow. Six of Sam's aerial drones soared overhead each dropping a slime onto one of the wolves Sam didn't have enough in the area to do a coordinated strike with more than that.

There were fifteen wolves, but his slimes had their little electrical trick and electrocuted the first ones that attacked them. Since the slimes could not be detected by the undead naturally, they had to rely on their own visual acuity to hunt them. This gave the slimes a huge advantage and while electricity couldn't kill the undead it could short out whatever it was that held them together. Giving them enough time to pour into the corpse and rip it apart from the inside out going for the joints first. It wasn't pretty it wasn't clean but simply removing the arms and legs was enough to render the undead to a none threat. Meanwhile, the Archer girl wasn't being idle either once the slimes had zapped the undead. she got busy putting the undead down. While her bow may have been broken, she still had a knife, a few spells and her arrows.

Molly panted as she leaned against the valley wall swearing at herself for her poor decisions. She had volunteered for this scouting mission to try and find out what was protecting these lands from the undead horde. They weren't hostile with it had bought them some much needed time and breathing room for towns' defenses and farms to be readied. While they weren't quite ready to form a counterattack. If the source of whatever was defending the forest and valley could be located and if the gods were merciful and it could be bargained or negotiated with, they might, just might be able to set up some form of forward operation, or better yet a new supply line between cities. They had tried to use the nearby roads early on in the undead's invasion. When it became clear whatever was stemming the tide by attracting in most of the undead in the area. Was further into the valley and would not protect the roads beyond they abandoned the route.

Unfortunately, they hadn't found much of anything, the valley just seemed to be overrun with undead. They had spotted a few strange flying creatures, but none got close enough to inspect, and a few strange slimes made of a strange silverish blue material. That instead of a traditional cores they had strange metal plates inside of them. The blacksmiths that had come with couldn't make heads or tails of these plates and the alchemists were just confused as to why anyone would meld such elements together. Valuable metals like gold and copper were seemingly fused with a flat plate of well not glass but something close to it.

The strangest part was just how alive the forest was, the valley was dead stripped of all life but a few monsters that still managed to make a living there but the further up the valley you went the more life seemed to flourish. The undead naturally leached life energy from the environment around them. It wasn't dramatic enough to greatly affect a person unless they were exposed to it for long periods of time or we're surrounded by a large number of them but plant life didn't fare nearly as well. So, the lush green forest at the end of the valley made no sense.

If that wasn't enough according to the Centaur druids that had arrived recently the valley was healing. The forest seemingly being a wellspring of life energy so it wasn't surprising that the undead would be attracted to it like a beacon similar to the way it was attracted to towns or cities, but no one had managed to get close to the forest. It was set at the end of the valley and wasn’t wide enough to slip by the undead. Where the undead were thin enough simple disillusionment charms made it easy enough for you to pass around them.

However, the further up the valley they went towards the forest the more the valley bottlenecked and the thicker the concentration of undead became. Though strangely, so did the concentration of the silver slimes and those strange flying creatures. The dispelling charms they use merely mask their life signatures so they weren't lit up like a beacon for all undead in range but the undead still had their sight and hearing, heck some even still had a decent sense of smell. So, if one was spotted or made too much noise they would still come swarming after them. The only reason the undead weren't a bigger threat yet was because they were an extremely well known property. Adventurers’ armies and even the occasional hero had been dealing with them since time immemorial and while in large numbers they were still a great threat. Nonetheless so long as you knew how to deal with them, they could easily be dealt with, which was the only reason they had gone so long without losing a major city. They had lost a few villages in the opening days of the undead rising and had a few close calls with cities, but the local guilds and Garrisons had managed to prevent the worst.

The peculiar part was they were all coming from the West. Every party that was sent West, well at least the ones that came back at least. Said it was the same scenario every wear. The neighboring Kingdoms had lost at least two major cities and almost a dozen villages had retreated to fortify the remaining cities and were in desperate need of supplies. Both the adventuring Guild and the army of the nation of Ringwood were currently holding the line against the undead hordes. Systematically eliminating the undead and destruction of their bodies. They were more or less able to stem the tide the annoying part though was the local wildlife. Monsters would always outnumber humans and the undead would inevitably outnumber the monsters and while powerful undead created from them were few and far between there are lesser counterparts were not so much.

Their best hope was to try and continue to stem the tide further by resupplying the neighboring Kingdoms with whatever they could get their hands on. If all of this wasn't already a big enough headache, she was now following one of the flying creatures that had somehow done a coordinated takedown of a pack of undead that had been hunting her. She begrudgingly admitted it saved her from said pack of undead and while it stayed out of her reach it seemed to know where all the undead were and was able to guide her with all things bird calls. To her surprise when she had finally stepped out from behind a patch of boulders to find a small field of grass in front of her. It had been to long since she had seen plant life this vibrant outside of some nobles garden as she took her first steps into the forest.