“Harlow!” Majosha screamed in disbelief as she tightly hugged the corpse of Harlow. Unfortunately, his corpse had already begun to turn cold and harden. By now, it had completely lost any previous signs that it was once a living thing. Furthermore, the owner of this body had died from corpse poison, which meant that he could turn into an undead at any time…
Knowing that, I wanted to persuade Majosha to let go of the werewolf but my words failed me at the last second. Deep down, I knew that she wouldn’t listen to me even if I tried.
Harlow’s death came as too much of a shock for us. Poor Majosha had her heart ripped to shreds by the news of his demise and immediately broke down in tears. She simply couldn’t bring herself to accept the death of her sweetheart. In contrast, Habona was a lot calmer despite being his sister. She gazed at his lifeless eyes without a single change in expression and then reached out for them. Yet just as she was about to touch his face, her hands were swatted away by a slap from Majosha.
“He’s not dead!”
Majosha desperately clung to her unrealistic version of reality. Moreover, you could tell from her gaze that she slightly resented this she-werewolf. She must have felt that if Habona hadn’t tried to drain his poisoned blood, Harlow wouldn’t died…at the very least, not that quickly.
‘Even though there’s really no difference between the two outcomes…’
Ignoring Majosha, Habona coldly withdrew her hand and silently stood there with a pensive and unreadable look on her face.
“Master…the zombies are too strong…we need help…” Suddenly, the weak and almost non-existent No.5 came running to me with an anxious look on his face. The harried imp hurriedly made his report: “The recent pillar eruptions have produced a ton of zombies and they are all at least Three-stars. The Four-stars are swarming all over us…we can’t hold out much longer…”
‘A horde of Four-star zombies?’ Shocked by Harlow’s sudden death, I had completely forgotten about the zombie issue till now. From his report, I learnt that the pillars had basically unloaded everything they had and that other than skeletons, there were also zombies hidden within. Just thinking about those Three to Four-stars zombies swarming at us like bees, I couldn’t help but get an excruciating headache. To make matters worse, the corpse poison they possessed seemed to be even more frightening than we had first imagined.
Having heard No.5’s report as well, Habona immediately turned around to join the battle, zero hesitation whatsoever. In fact, her decisiveness and coldness almost made me wonder if the Habona who had recklessly charged into battle to save her brother was the same Habona who was charging into battle right now.
Surveying the battleground, I found the situation to be just as No.5 reported. The newly spawned zombies were all at least Three-stars and each had a varying degree of corpse poison stored within them, some more toxic than the others, The majority of those who were bitten quickly started showing abnormal signs and would probably fall dead if left untreated for long.
Fortunately, while the corpse poison was deadly, the zombification aspect of it wasn’t as quick as we had expected. Even Harlow, who had been bitten the earliest, hadn’t turned into a zombie yet.
However, that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t either. Living things who were bitten to death by such zombies would inevitably turn into zombies, even the poison-resistant devils. It was merely a matter of how long it took; the least resistant could even turn into zombies before dying.
Right now, the biggest problem facing us was that we had no way to deal with the corpse poison. In other words, anyone who got bitten had no choice but to pray to their maker.
While I did say that Habona was acting a little cold, I could still tell that she was affected by Harlow’s death. Right before leaving, she took Shadowfang from my back and rushed off without another word. Though there was no emotion to be found on her furry face, I could see the roaring flames reflected within her eyes. Looks like she wasn’t able to accept her brother’s death as easily as her placid face would suggest.
She needed to vent that anguish within herself, and so did I. Had it not been for me insisting on assaulting the Door of the Dead…Harlow would have probably been alive right now. He would have spent the rest of his life in the Prison of the Dead with Majosha. And even though that was basically the life of a small fry, at least he would be alive unlike the unmoving corpse laid out before us, that could even turn into zombie at the drop of a hat, and bite Majosha.
Stepping into the heat of battle once more, Habona opened up with a furious dance of death, slicing apart a score of zombies with a single wild single of Shadowfang. No matter who they were, Shadowfang sliced into them unhindered. Yet, the zombie horde was simply too numerous and the skeleton horde even more so. No matter how many she killed, the enemies around her didn’t seem to lessen one bit.
“Master, there’s one more thing…” No.5 leaned in to whisper in my ears. “Just now, I spotted two ratman zombies. Their bodies bore no signs of decomposition at all, in fact, it didn’t feel like they had been zombies for long…”
Still affected by Harlow’s sudden death, my heart simply wasn’t able to calm itself down and naturally wasn’t in the mood for No.5’s insinuations. “Exactly what are you trying to say here?”
Noticing my impatience, No.5 dared not beat around the bush any further. Lowering his head in a fashion that almost made it seemed like he had been wronged, he continued”
Those two ratman zombies are the two ratmen who tried to sneak into the solo route when we first entered the Door of the Dead.”
“…you’re sure about that?”
Having been reminded of what seemed like such a distant memory, I couldn’t help but recall that day. I remembered warning everyone not to enter the solo route then because there was something fishy about it. Thankfully, because the legends stated that only the Four-stars could pass through it safely, only those two ratmen dared to defy my orders, no one else even tried to do so.
Back then, the two ratmen immediately screamed in anguish the moment they set foot on that road and that led me to suspect that they had met with some kind of accident.
“I’m sure. It’s definitely those two.” No.5 declared, cutting right to the chase. With a pat of his chest, he confidently reassured me: “I still remember clearly how one of those ratman had a slightly thicker tail than the others and that it had a rather eye-catching tuft of fur on its head. The other ratman had a darker coat of fur than the other ratmen and was missing the tip of his tail…”
“Where are those two zombies now?”
“Dead, One-eye and Nine-fingers killed them personally.” In a slightly confused tone, he elaborated: “For some reason, even though the two of them had the strength of Four-stars in life, their combat strength seemed to have dropped after becoming a zombie…”
‘To think those two ratmen popped out of those bone pillars, not only that, their strength decreased as well. In that case, is it safe to assume that those pillars are zombie incubators? Or perhaps they converted and even strengthened zombies?’
Previously, I had assumed that their strength regressing was an inevitable side-effect of turning into a zombie. Habona herself, once told me that living creatures, upon turning into an undead, would usually experience a drop in their strength. Most of the time, it would be impossible for them to reach their former peaks.
‘Perhaps these bone pillars had something to do with it?’
At the very least, there was something I learnt from all this: ‘So those who entered the solo route all turned into zombies…or should I say, they encountered something and then turned into a zombie. There’s a high chance that the solo route is some kind of teleportation array that teleported those who entered, into the innards of a bone pillar and directly turned them into zombies. Well, that’s my theory anyway.’
With that in mind, another problem came to mind. Numila mentioned that her predecessor left the moment she handed over the reins of the clan to her. Before leaving, that predecessor of hers mentioned that she was going to enter the Door of the Dead…given that she was alone, she most likely took the solo route.
Then there was Mimiya’s father, in other words, Julia’s and Mo En’s son…I remembered Julia mentioning that her son wanted to leave the Prison of the Dead. According to common knowledge, there was only one way of leaving the Prison…
Adding on the Four-stars from the other races, the number might not seem like much on an annual basis. However, the Prison of the Dead had existed for a period beyond my imagination. Within all those years, exactly how many had died to the lie of “Four-stars can freely leave the Prison of the Dead”?
‘Exactly who was it that fabricated and spread such a lie, what were their motives in doing so? Perhaps the Prison’s creator himself spread this lie, for who though? Why did he want to turn the Four-stars into zombies and not those below Four-stars? What were they scheming?’
Based on No.5’s report alone, I managed to uncover an entire string of possibilities, each more shocking than the other. It truly felt like I had been implicated some kind of giant conspiracy.
“Dearest, we’re ready.” Having spent some time digesting the massive shipment of souls, Numila and Eugenia finally finish charging up their mana, and were raring to go as they reported in to me. However, that liveliness went away immediately the moment they saw Majosha silently hugging Harlow in her arms. A look of sorrow crossed their eyes but they chose not to say a word in the end.
“The frontline’s not doing too well, I’ll need you two to cast your spell right away. If possible, widen the area of effect as much as possible and block off contact between the two armies, that way our soldiers can get some rest as well.”
“Got it.”
Not wasting another word here, the two harpy witches flew off to channel another sea of fire. In mere moments, a fiery line of separation was erected between us and the undead.
With that, the battle came to a temporary stop. Even so, that didn’t mean that our work was done. Elena promptly led her harpies to sweep the battlefield while Evilin instructed the dogmen to tend to the wounded. Those who were poisoned were all cordoned off into the same section after which food would be sent to them at a later time. The sturdier ones amongst them should be able to survive the quarantine, as for the weaker ones, only death awaited them.
A small division of lizardmen were stationed as guards over the quarantine zone. However, they weren’t there to guard the wounded. Instead, they were there to watch over the patients. Should they discover any zombification, as their guards, these lizardmen were to finish them off.
In total, the sea of fire lasted for five minutes. As ordered, Numila tried to expand the range of the sea in order to blow up some of the bone pillars which hadn’t erupted yet. As she did so, the undead, being deathly afraid of flames, desperately tried to flee but the flames were simply too fast for them and soon they were engulfed in flames.
