CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE—LIVING AND UNDEAD
Shiro struck an undead across the back then whirled around and crossed swords with another, the desiccated soldier’s blade shrieking metallically as his scimitar slid against it.
The godforsaken abomination snarled, its eyes glowing hot with malignant design. Shiro was about to be overrun by the others, so he lifted his bare foot and kicked the undead away then cut its head off with a horizontal strike.
Before he could be overrun he back stepped, blocked a sword strike from another zombie before turning and sprinting out of their reach.
The living warriors circled about, their attacks much more cautious than before. From behind, Shiro heard the shaman shimmer and slide, like before. How could they win this battle if they could not defeat such a foe?
Shiro continued cutting down the desiccated corpses. There were dozens left. What they lacked in speed, they made up for in natural armor, the ability to remain animate even after losing a limb, and of course in their numbers.
Slashing viciously, Shiro attempted to thin them out, but they were encircling him. He cut two more down, backed away, then turned and cut down another. He raised his scimitar sideways to block a sudden and cowardly strike from one of the living warriors. Shiro shrugged it off by circling his blade and thrusting his sword down toward the ground at an angle, the red-bladed scimitar’s swedge taking his attacker in the chin when he flicked it back up.
The warrior cried out in a spray of blood and retreated. Though he might not die from the wound, he would not be fighting Shiro and the others again this night.
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The others pushed in on him, their blades arcing out to take Shiro over the shoulder. He screamed, swung his blade in an aggressive slash as Razul jumped into the outer edge of the thicket.
As the Abassir swiped his blade about, he felled zombies with every swing, but Shiro’s stomach knotted up as he realized Razul would not be able to cut his way to Shiro in time!
Something flashed orange and yellow and suddenly the terrain of shoulders and heads bobbing forward amidst incessant snarling and growling lit with flames.
The zombies snarling became agitated as they convulsed with what Shiro thought to be panic. As they failed to strike at him, Shiro cut them down in swaths, the dry and cracking materials of their bodies putting dust into the air as a path was opened up from both sides. Shiro and Razul met in the middle as that cloud of dust covered them.
Shiro’s cut a hot swath over Raz’s head, and suddenly the other man, patting his hair as he swung his blade one handed, he shouted, “My hair! My hair!”
“Baka!” Shiro bellowed. “Forget your hair! Fight!”
The isekai cut the last zombie down in the corridor they had made. When Razul realized his beautiful hair hadn’t caught flame, he turned with renewed vigor and cut down five undead warriors with a single wide strike of his blade.
They snarled and cracked, their bodies crumbling to dust as Shiro and Razul stepped over them.
“Look out!” Shiro called, and pointed.
Razul didn’t wait to lock gazes with his attackers. Instead he whirled out with his blade, taking one man across the face and forcing another’s blade back into his forehead. The sudden wound caused the second warrior to grasp at his forehead whereupon Razul finished him off in a spray of blood.
As the undead warriors thinned in number, so the living one’s numbers increased. But Shiro didn’t much care—in fact, he preferred the living warriors, as they would back away when lashed out against, unlike the undead, which simply kept coming no matter what. Except for when there’s fire!
Instinctually his eyes flicked up to where Jessamine had last been, but now she was gone, nowhere to be seen. “Where is Jafa?”
“I do not know!” Razul shouted back frustratedly as he fought a small horde of warriors who continually fell at his feet, bloody and screaming.