Everything proceeded as she expected.
When the undead started to rise, they all did so at relatively the same time. In an instant, the entire grasslands became covered by the walking dead. And because they were naturally attracted to life, the horde started to slowly move towards the town. In a few minutes, the town guard would definitely notice the noise and then sound the bells.
But there was no way even such a large mass of zombies and skeletons could get past the walls. The town lord had invested a lot of money into the security of the populace. Thus, the walls were as thick as that of a small city and even had ballista mounted on towers spread regularly along the walls. Those monsters wouldn’t even be able to get past the sewers because of all the scavenger slimes that lived inside.
If only he had paid more attention to the men in the town guard, then that town might have been a slightly better place to live in.
Manna shook her head. It was an entirely useless topic to think about. All she had to do was to look around for any suspicious person inside the woods. Regardless of whether she found one or not, she would then have to ensure that the children would make it back to the sewers safe and sound. Only then could she go back to her partner and claim that she did her job.
Before that, she first had to hide the kids somewhere the undead couldn’t reach. And the best place to place them was somewhere high and secure. Her first thought was immediately a tall tree. Its branches would be able to support their weight easily, and none of the undead could climb over the other high enough. And if the tree was sufficiently large enough, then it wouldn’t topple over either. Fortunately, there were a few such trees in the forest. The only problem was how to get there. That was where that woman, Jelyn, came in.
“HEY! FLESHBAGS! FRESH MEAT HERE! TENDER, JUICY, VIRGIN MEAT!”
… Was that really necessary?
Well, whatever. It worked. Within moments all of the nearby undead started moving toward her direction. They made an assortment of noises as they did, from eerie, guttural groans, to the sound of flesh tearing, to that of ligaments snapping. As expected of their kind, their movements were slow and unthreatening. Low-level undead truly were only a danger when in great numbers.
Jelyn started to run, screaming and waving her fungi lantern all the while. Undead from all around her gathered for a futile chase. That, of course, also included the mob across the river. That group was headed straight toward where she and the children were. Even if all of their attention was on that noisy woman, they would immediately divert it to the kids once they were close enough. But at least that was an easy fix. All she had to do was to put all of them down.
One by one she knocked arrows on her bow. She heard the bowstring creak from the repetitive motion and tension. After an initial whistle, the arrows flew silently across the darkness. Each one of them landed a perfect hit on a zombie’s foot or a skeleton’s ribcage. The former shot prevented the slow-moving zombies from moving, while the latter simply shattered the target from the chest up. While it was indeed almost impossible to see without any good light source, that only applied to normal archers. Manna was something different. She could see just fine; perfectly, even. So for her, lining her shot during the night was not much different from doing it in the morning.
One, two, three… a total of twelve came their way until the crowd thinned. She was still not able to cause much damage to them. Because of how zombies worked, Manna didn’t have many choices to stop them from moving, much less eliminate them downright. She hadn’t brought any holy water, explosives, or even a club. She also had to save her arrows for later, just in case. Those were not free, nor were they cheap. As such, she chose to just immobilize them temporarily. The bulk of the work could be left to those useless town guards once the monsters reached the gate.
“Let’s go,” she told the children. They were huddled near where Manna stood, shaking in fear. “Come on. Move.”
After making sure that no undead was nearby, Manna picked up the youngest beastkin child and walked at a pace that the children could follow.
Because the only other ones who could see in the dark were the siblings, they were the ones who led the other two again. But since they only needed to follow, their progress was far better than when they had just gotten out of the sewers. Despite having to walk around undead stragglers, they were able to reach the first large tree pretty quickly.
Manna noted that while they walked there, the number of undead passing through the forest had considerably thinned. However, there were still an alarming number of them. It didn’t look like they were about to stop appearing anytime soon.
Among the five kids, only Dorian could climb a tree. That surprised her. She expected the beastkin siblings to know how to do so at least. But after seeing their faces as they stared up at the large conifer, Manna had an idea why. It was telling, given their unnaturally-dilated eyes and cold sweat.
They’re probably afraid of heights.
Is it because they’re deer beastkin? Whatever. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t have a choice in the matter. Manna grabbed an arrow from her larger, secondary quiver, held it up near her head, and cast, “Threading.” Soon, a very long bundle of a rope-like object manifested in her hand. But unlike a typical rope, hers looked like frozen black ink; it was black and emitted a heavy, dark mist. Quite frankly, it looked like something sinister. But that was all Manna could do.
It was one of the very few spells she could cast, so she might as well be proud of it. “Threading” was one of the most sought-after skills by hunters. In being able to create a rope out of basically nothing but thin air, a hunter could set up traps anywhere and any time he wanted. The time duration depended on how much energy she used. It had its other uses as well, of course. For example, what if they needed a thick, strong rope to support the weight of three kids? Modifying the spell was easy enough once one got used to it. In that case, she just needed to make a very long and robust rope that only needed to last for a few minutes.
Easy.
“Stay away.”
She tied the rope to the end of the spear-like arrow and knocked it on her regular compound bow. Due to the length of the projectile, a good length stuck out in front of the weapon even when she drew the string to its limits. And because of the arrow’s weight, it quickly dipped back into the ground shortly after being released. But that was fine. It did what she had intended it to do.
After untying the rope, she held it up toward the children.
“Those who can’t climb, grab on. I’ll pull everyone up.”
With the threat of the undead around them, none of the kids refused. As the oldest among them, Manna made Gered go last. Her priority was the siblings, as the dwarf child could get up by herself. The youngest, Muon, was tied to Manna’s back, so regardless of what happened he would be fine.
As Dorian made her way up by herself, Manna tied Ekl and Tisse’s waists on the two ends of the rope. She went up to the high branch where the thread looped over with one leap and pulled the two up roughly. They grunted in pain, but Manna paid them no heed. They wouldn’t die from such a thing.
But during the short amount of time that it took for her to do that, several undead had already started to gather below. Gered, the only one remaining, called out for help. The only thing he achieved was to agitate the ones nearby and attract the attention of everything else. Manna sighed in irritation.
The thought of just leaving him there to die crossed her mind. Fortunately for him, she soon cast that idea aside. Matthias would be saddened by the brat’s death, even if the only thing he got from the kid was disrespect. So Manna absentmindedly took a few arrows from her quiver and knocked them on her bow.
Eventually, everybody was safely up the tree.
----------------------------------------
Her next order of business was to look for any suspicious activity within the area. And she could not do that without leaving the kids. So she did. But not before she made sure that no harm would fall on them. With her threads, she secured the branches where the kids were perched and reinforced them using the adjacent trees. She also set up a rudimentary web to act as a sort of barrier underneath them. While it wasn’t perfect, it should be enough to prevent any aimless undead from wandering by.
By the time she left, almost all of the kids had already fallen asleep. Only one remained awake, struggling to keep her eyes open.
“You should go to sleep.”
“But… okay. Good night.”
Manna couldn’t help but smile.
She had heard from Matthias about Dorian’s fascination with a hero. Among the children, she was the only one who idolized someone other than Soleil. She didn’t know if that had anything to do with her character, but whatever the case, Dorian was quite a sweet kid. Manna liked her a lot.
Not only was she quiet, but she was also obedient and submissive. In other words, she was easy to use. There was no need to use intimidation on her as she did to Jelyn. And most of all, Dorian looked up to Matthias.
Once she was sure that all of the kids were either sleeping or had passed out, Manna went away.
Her destination was… wherever her instincts told her to go.
She needed to go where the miasma was thick. That was where undead spawned the most. And typically, areas with an unnaturally-high density of it were the center of some ritual.
Manna did not need to be a mage or a part of the clergy to detect the stuff. She could sense it naturally. But if she was being honest, she wasn’t aware that a major ritual was taking place in town. Miasma was everywhere. Perhaps only the churches were relatively devoid of it. Just like if someone were to ascend a mountain slowly, then the thinning air would have minor effects on the person. She was well aware that she was still at fault for not noticing, though. She had no intention of escaping responsibility. That was why she was attempting to hunt the perpetrator down herself.
She leaped across branches and treetops without making a sound. Like a specter, the only thing she left in her wake was her shadow. Though the undead could detect life, low-level ones were too slow to notice her vitality. And even if they could, none of them below could pose a threat to her. Though there was a staggering amount of them, because they were moving through a densely-wooded area, they had been scattered messily. They couldn’t reach a critical mass there. But perhaps at the city walls, they could.
“Where are you, bastard?”
It was useless to try to pick out a scent. The air was heavily impregnated by a wretched rotting smell. There was no point in trying to look for tracks, either. Due to the lazy, heavy footsteps of the zombies, the ground had become a jumbled mess of footprints and draglines. The mass of undead had erased everything a hunter typically used to track down prey.
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What an effective way to protect themselves, she thought. Since everybody would be busy defending the town from the threats inside and outside the walls, only the mobile hunters and scouts could be sent to look for the criminal. But since the undead made everything they relied on become useless, then they would be safe from even them. And that was only if someone had made the connection that there was someone behind everything that happened. Even so, by the time the adventurers and knights could deploy, the perpetrator would have long disappeared already.
As a huntress herself, Manna was quite impressed. It was too bad that she had other means to track someone down; especially someone who manipulated miasma.
Manna leaped to the top of the tallest tree in sight. Looking back, she saw the place where she had left the kids in the distance. She hadn’t gone that far. The path she took was a winding one meant to look for clues. She had hoped to not have to rely on what she was about to do, but at the end of the day, she had no more choice.
She really wanted to put an arrow between someone's eyebrows already.
With a tug, she removed her collar. It slid off her neck in one piece.
“...”
“Found you.”
----------------------------------------
A bright, purple light. Lines of innards and blood form a circle. Candles, nails, bone, and torn clothes. A hundred peripherals of all kinds, too many to name. On the reddened soil were the dead bodies of three men. Their bodies were twisted, broken into the shape of something blasphemous. Vile, radiant energy oozed from their pores and seeped into the ground. The eerie light illuminated a small chamber around six or seven meters in diameter. There were boxes of materials and tools in the corner, mostly torn down and covered in gore to add to the horrific atmosphere. How else can anybody describe it besides being a “wretched sight”?
Yet the lone person occupying that room laughed. Nobody made a joke. Still, he laughed like he was witnessing the greatest comedy act of his time.
“It won’t be long now!” he screamed. “Soon, the entire town will drown in undead!”
He was the stereotypical madman who sought power desperately, even at the cost of his humanity. That much was obvious. He was willing to sacrifice people to some dark being, perhaps even selling his soul in the process. What else was there to say?
“But, damn it!”
Suddenly, his elation turned into irritation. He picked up a nearby animal skull and threw it angrily to the wall.
“Those idiots can’t even arrest a single adventurer woman. If I had stolen her power, I could have made this ritual stronger."
According to his estimates, the powerful adventurer capable of defeating an undead drake could very well have allowed the ritual to reach an entirely new tier. Perhaps it could have allowed him to summon even stronger undead? But it was too late. Once the ritual had started, he could no longer add more catalysts. All he could do was lament the missed opportunity.
“Well, no use crying over that. I can still finish off the entire town as long as that woman’s dealt with.”
Someone that powerful could easily deal with however many low-level undead he makes. At that moment, she was the only one he was wary of. As for the Blue Wolves, the so-called strongest party in town, their main undead countermeasure completely relied on the two spellcasters. As long as he continued raising undead, he would eventually win a battle of attrition.
There was no limit to the amount he could raise. The land was full of corpses of both people and beasts. And as more people died in town, his undead army could only become stronger.
He started to feel good again. What’s more, the prospect of ruling over the townspeople with fear made him even more ecstatic. A stream of ideas for the evils he could commit occupied his head. The excitement was too much. He wanted to be done with everything as soon as possible.
“Right about now, the bodies at the graveyard should all be rising. Everyone would become overwhelmed with the undead. Soon I’ll–”
That was as far as he was able to go with that line when a loud crash distracted him from his monologue. His head snapped toward the direction of the noise and saw that the four undead bears that he had stationed at the entrance of the burrow were on the floor.
They struggled in vain to move. But the weapons that nailed them to the ground wouldn’t budge.
He hadn’t seen anything like it. The tailfeathers looked like that of an arrow but… they were too large. In fact, the arrows were the length of a full-grown man. And judging from the way the large and powerful undead bears struggled, the arrows must have been either embedded deep into the ground or were unbelievably heavy. Or both.
“Who goes there?!” he demanded.
Now, normally, a conversation between two people on opposite sides would commence. Information will be exchanged, plans would be revealed, and perhaps “pleasantries” would be thrown around like mud. It was a development that potentially benefited both sides depending on how well they could form words. It was especially so for the party that could back down anytime they wanted to.
Following that train of logic, the trespasser would come down to the chamber and face him in a war of words. And depending on the outcome, they would either reach some sort of agreement or, in the worst case, try to kill each other. That was why even though he was guarded against the sudden intrusion, his mind was partly preoccupied with trying to come up with probing arguments.
He didn’t expect that the other party would skip everything.
Before he knew it, he, just like his undead minions, had been nailed to the wall.
An abhorrent cry of anguish gushed out of his lungs as he felt his chest and right leg explode in pain. Two obscenely large arrows protruded from those parts. At the back of his mind, he had estimated that the projectiles had pierced the cavern walls by about a foot before stopping. That information, unfortunately, was provided to him by the way he felt the metal grind against his ribcage and thigh bone.
“Huh? Isn’t the heart there? Strange.”
He heard a voice, calm and frigid, through his screams. The tone of the female voice only added to the fear quickly gripping his mind. Undoubtedly, she was the one who shot him. But the way she commented made it seem like she was simply describing a piece of rock that caught her attention. He wasn’t aware that words, invented so people could communicate, could be so devoid of feelings.
“Maybe it’s undead? I should cut it up just to be sure.”
Those words almost caused him to faint. He pulled at the arrow in his chest desperately. But it was no use. He couldn’t get any leverage. The arrow had been embedded too deeply into the wall. Next, he tried to defend himself. But that was strange. The arrows had been launched toward him at a perfectly horizontal angle. Yet, there was no one else in the room. Though the light from the ritual circle was dim, it was still enough to barely illuminate the entire chamber. What corners the light couldn’t reach were too narrow to hide in.
“Where…? Where is she–”
“Here.”
The moment he heard that damnable voice again, he felt a searing pain cut across his neck.
His vision rolled over. For a moment, he saw the ground. Then, the walls and ceiling. But before the ground rushed to his head, the vision stopped. He felt his hair being grabbed and lifted.
A glowing pair of red eyes looked straight at him.
“Well, that was easy. So you are undead. You smell like one, at least.”
Lacking his throat and lungs, he couldn’t speak anymore. The only thing he could do was blink. But in a weird sense of connection, he could still feel his body from afar, dangling from the wall and still trying to free itself. Fortunately, it appears as if that connection couldn’t transfer emotions. Otherwise, his body would be shaking.
The woman who had killed him was like the night. It was bottomless, formless, and cold. But more than that, he felt something else–something terrible. But he could no longer speak words. There was no way to ask.
Suddenly, the woman started to laugh. It was a normal kind of laughter that one would expect from a girl the age of a teenager. But the disparity between that and her eerie appearance made him think that there was something really, really wrong with her.
“Wait, now that I think about it… did you expect me to talk early? Was that why you were so unguarded?”
She continued laughing that laughter of hers. The longer it continued, the more the sound twisted itself inside his ear. If he still had his arms, he bet that the skin would have been crawling. It was amazing just how much a simple sound could affect him, who was already a deranged man. The melodious tunes were like worms, tickling what was left of his brain through his delicate ear canal. He felt his eyes sink in horror and his blood drain from the stump under his head.
He was undead. His pulse was non-existent, and his blood had gone viscid. He knew how disgusted he had felt about himself when he had just risen as one of the things he hated the most. But that new feeling was worse. It was much worse. With just her jovial laughter, she had managed to strike deep fear into an undead. And a glimpse of his undead bears showed that even they felt it. They desperately clawed at themselves to open a path for the arrows; all so they could put a bit more distance between them and her.
“Well, too bad. I don’t give a shit,” she sneered. “Now, be a good boy and die slowly.”
----------------------------------------
And it was over just like that.
Honestly, Manna was quite disappointed. Although she certainly had her laugh at the end, which made up for how anticlimactic the fight was.
It was easy to destroy the ritual circle. No delicate rite could survive a good roughing-up after all. While regretting the fact that Soleil, who was the best in the team when it came to creating collateral damage, wasn’t with her, Manna begrudgingly stomped on the gore drawn on the soil. Pretty soon, the weird purple light disappeared and the chamber was once again enveloped in darkness.
“Job well done, me.”
The effects of her hard work became clear almost immediately. The heavy air inside the cave thinned and the peculiar feel of thick miasma disappeared.
While it was still far from enough to redeem herself for her mistake, it was a start.
“Unfortunately for you three, you were in the wrong place at the right time.”
Without bothering to check what shape they had been forced into, Manna absentmindedly kicked the body pile away. The mess it made completed the aesthetic she was looking for; a ruined ritual of the damned. She nodded to herself in satisfaction.
And just for good measure, she kicked one of the bodies again. The only reason she did was to have some satisfaction in doing so. The fight earlier wasn’t exciting at all, so it was mostly just to vent. But as she did, a clinking sound caught her attention.
Despite the complete darkness, she could see what had made the sound clearly. It was a tag.
An adventurer’s tag.
“These three were… adventurers?”
Curiosity got the better of her, and she checked the victims’ faces just to see if they were anybody she knew. Not like it mattered since she wouldn’t care for someone else’s death anyway. Again, she was just curious.
All three of the sacrifices were men. It looked like they had died more than a couple of days ago by that point. There were stab wounds on their chests, which was likely what had killed them. But aside from that, Manna noticed something peculiar.
One of them was wearing an arm brace. Two of them had large bruises on their faces. Another had signs of swelling on their ribs… all-in-all, every single corpse indicated that they had been beaten beforehand. But the thing was, all of those wounds were already pretty much completely healed. And none of them were made with a sharp object like the one on their chests.
It was like they had been beaten up before all of that.
Then, an idea popped into Manna’s mind.
“Well. Wouldn’t that be a coincidence?”
She remembered Soleil’s words. Before she joined the party, she had stayed with another group before having a falling out. It was because she had beaten them up for harassing a woman. Apparently, the damage she had done was so bad that they had to be sent away to the Pharmacy Guild and the church to recover. Then, there were also the accusations that she had killed three men.
Were these bodies those of her old party?
“Good timing. You. Come here.”
“Wh–Wait, Miss Manna? Why are you here?!”
Light, pure and white, suddenly flooded into the room. Jelyn stood aghast at the end of the staircase. She looked like she had suddenly barged into a murder scene… which wasn’t wrong. Fortunately, Manna had already cut off the limbs of the undead bears, so the place was completely safe.
“What’s going on here? Why is the guild’s burrow like this? I saw the barrier-breaking from afar. So it was you, Miss Manna?”
Well, Manna remembered her arrows breaking something, but she didn’t mind something that didn’t impede her. Meanwhile, Jelyn was obviously confused. But Manna didn’t care. What she wanted was answers, not questions. So she came up to Jelyn and dragged her to the necromancer’s head.
Jelyn released a short scream.
“Do you know who this is?”
Maybe that was the first time Jelyn had ever seen a severed head. She wasn’t able to answer immediately. Manna had to slap her lightly on the cheeks to snap her out of her stupor.
“Ah! This is… the town guard captain!”
“Oho?”
Bingo.
Manna realized that she had chanced on a wonderful situation. The gears in her brain started to spin at high speeds to connect all the dots. But before she was able to have her eureka moment, Jelyn suddenly interjected.
“Wait! That’s not it! Miss Manna!”
Displeasure pulled Manna’s mouth downward. She didn’t like to be interrupted. But since Jelyn did her a favor by identifying the necromancer, she decided to let that one pass.
“What is it?”
“The town gates! They’re open! I managed to run through to tell you, but the undead from outside! They’re flooding in!”
"Oh... So what?"