17. Old Faithfull

-Starta Village-

In the night after Seth left Starta Village. The figure of a hunter appeared at the closed city gates.

"Hey, Tom! Let me in!", he called for the guard to open the door, "C´mon! I´m in a hurry!".

"God damn, Wilton! Why are you here so late? Did something happen at the fence?", the guard complained as he opened the gate for the hunter to slip in.

"Yeah, I gotta report to the Priest.", he patted the guards should and passed by him.

Wilton left the guard behind and tiredly walked towards the church building. After the several hours of walk he still wasn't sure how to describe what had happened. He was still trying to come up with how to phrase it as he opened the door to the priests' bureau without knocking.

Simon was sitting on his desk munching on cookies and reading in the thick folder he had shown to Seth. Some things that had happened in this world read like a terrifying, but fascinating horror novel. He looked up when he heard the door open.

"Oh! Wilton!", he closed the folder and put the bowl with cookies away, "What happened? For you to come he at such a late hour is unusual. You look tired."

"Priest- Simon...Erm,I don't know how to say it but... something happened at the perimeter fence."

"Oh? At the fence? What happened?", Simon was sure that Seth had probably come from there. Did the young man have something to do with it? Those Arachne webs were quite strong! They were meant to keep the corrupted beasts inside the wood. Did he damage them when he tried to get out? For him to be able to damage them, he was already so strong at this early stage!

"It was burned down.", Wilton said scratching his head embarrassed.

"What?", Simon's eyes widened in disbelieve.

"A part of the forest and the fence were burned down. Completely burned to ashes. When we arrived only dust was left", the hunter elaborated.

"Wha- how? that...", Seth`s face came to Simon`s mind. It couldn't be him, right? Even if he was an Ori Huma, it couldn't possibly be him! To burn those webs was one thing, but to turn those gigantic corrupted trees into ashes... What kind of fire would it need?

-Current Time-Deltan-

Seth was in a predicament.  He lacked the mana to keep <Concealment> going and the Zombies suddenly went crazy. At least it proved, that the skill worked...

No! This was not the time for that! Seth stood in a devastated room at the end of a big debris-slap made of roof and a zombie horde was rushing to his location. He could barely make out a door behind the slap and rubble. He crouched down and crawled on the ground towards the door.

Behind the door in the rubble, he found a very small intact bathroom. It felt a little weird to make his last stand with his back towards a toilet, but he couldn't choose at this point.

Here, even if the zombies knew where he was, Seth could fight them off as long as they were forced to come one by one. Since they had to crawl into this tight space, he could easily pick them off!

The sound of rushed shuffling and dragged feet came from the rooftop, together with agitated grunts and growls and the Zombies started descending the slap.

Seth stood in the door frame and readied his billhook to chop at any corpse that dared to crawl in here. When the zombies came in sight, he used what little mana had recovered to use <Observe> on them.

<Zombie

Name:None

Level: 5

Race: Augmented Undead

Alignment: Arget Nore >

Augmented? Did their eyes shine because of that? He had not much time to think. With a 'whoosh' the billhook latched into the first zombies head and split it open.

<Ding! You have killed -Zombie lv.5- You have earned experience.>

They definitely gave above average experience! Seth had gotten a good amount of sleep, so he kept chopping at the zombies like a machine. At this point he was glad, that he had no time to eat anything. What he saw and smelled, would have been even worse with a filled stomach.

Luckily the zombies weren't the brightest and kept rushing at the small gap, clogging it up and hindering each other.  They kept pulling their dead back out. At first Seth thought they had realized that those clogged up the gap even more. But they were not that bright. Maybe those trying to force their way in pulled out the lifeless ones on accident? But soon Seth got a glimpse outside. They actually started devouring their dead!

Soon Seth couldn't care too much about it and kept swinging his weapon. Sometimes he heard notifications, but he could not spare any attention at this time. The Zombies came in without end, the young man could see no end to this sea of enemies.

At some point, hours later, he stood ankle deep in rotten blood and didn't feel that he could keep going. His body kept slaying zombies nevertheless.

Seth started losing hope. Although there were less and less augmented zombies. When he checked most of the zombies who sieged him by now were ordinary ones. Whether they were sent or lured by the stench of blood, he didn't know.

Seth couldn't go on like this. His arm was numb and his body ached. While he desperately tried to come up with a plan, his body subconsciously kept chopping. He could only thank his growing skills. Even as tired as he was the precision of his swing became a lot better and effective. However, his only fortune was that no intelligent undead had turned up to stop this meat grinder.

In the end there was only one idea he had. It was the masterstroke of his tactics. It was a crazy idea that had taken over his tired mind. A weak smile sneaked on his face as he checked his mana. It had recovered quite a bit in the last hours.

"You forced my hand! Really! Don´t blame me for this", he said with a maniacal laugh.

Seth summoned the Spirit Furnace in the gap before him! He ramped up the power until the flames spewed from its top and kicked the furnace over! The blazing flames shot into the small gab filled with blood, body parts and debris and devoured anything in their way.

The fire easily spread among corpses and zombies filling the gap and those waiting outside. They burned like tinder under the pale blue fire. It was the first time something different from grunts reached Seth´s ears. Guttural screeches and scream filled the night as the undead acted as if in pain. Whining and tumbling around, hitting others in their desperate throws to put out the fire.

The flames jumped from undead to undead and onto the surroundings. In a matter of moments, the fire spread all over the building.

<Ding! You have killed -Zombie lv.3- You have earned experience.>

<Ding! You have killed -Zombie lv.2- You have earned experience.>

<Ding! You have killed -Zombie lv.3- You have earned experience.>

...

Like before in City B, a whole slew of kill messages dinged away in his head almost giving him a headache! It kept going for a while before it slowed down. The fire probably killed most zombies in the vicinity. When Seth dismissed the Spirit Furnace, the fire had already spread all over the place and started devouring the buildings structure.

He relied on his resistance to withstand the heat and noticed, that neither the heat nor the flames surrounding him did any damage. Seth could freely move withing the sea of flames!

He used this to concentrate on dodging falling debris and find his ways to safe spots within the fire. Soon Seth reached a balcony on the second story and could see the streets below. Except for some burning corpses they were completely empty! The undead parade was gone! Had the undead evacuated to dodge the fire? It didn't matter now!

At this point he activated <Concealment>, climbed down to ground level and sneaked into the building on the other side of the street. There were some lone zombies here, but Seth managed to sneak past them and up the stairs. And no matter how much his tired legs screamed, he kept going up the stairs until he was almost at the roof.

Only then did he pick a door and entered a new apartment. It actually looked a lot better in here. When he found the quite clean bed in the bedroom his heart jumped. There was no way Seth could resist. He barricaded all doors up to the bedroom before throwing his backpack to the side and lying down. This had been a really terrifying night. He hoped that the sun would soon rise and ban those undead back into the shadows. And then, during the day, he would go around and burn down their hideouts when they can´t run! It was a happy thought before he fell asleep

-Omega City, North-western part of Urth-

"Today is the day we bring the glory of our king to another world! The new world opened to us by the Pathworks is called Urth! It was a pathetic world without an ounce of magic! It is us who will bring these poor heathens back into the embrace of  God King Pursa! For Arget Nore!"

The impulsive High Priest of God King Pursa was walking up and down in front of the troops that were about to enter this new world.

Urth was a world with one gigantic continent surrounded by a mighty ocean. It was perfect to be occupied by land troops. And those, they had. The dark elven general looked down at the rows and rows of undead.

A well-constructed military made of all kind of zombies and skeleton in the lower ranks, stronger undead like death knights and vampires as commanders and a ton of necromancers and liches in the rear.

Arget Nore, the Kingdom in darkness and moonlight. The sole empire encompassing an undead world, led by the Immortal God King Pursa! Their access to the Pathworks was a story of success. They did not need land to grow a new populace, they could just revive the dead of the destroyed worlds and grow their power! They took in the living who were willing and if they were not, in death they were!

The path they had chosen would lead to the northwestern corner of the continent of Urth. The information they had gotten from the Church of the System describes this place as the center of undead activity.

This was why the biggest delegation of more than 100-thousand undead had been sent here

Everyone here had already been dead, before the Pathworks were even opened! It was perfect to grow their troops before continuing to pacify this land from the northwest, before meeting up with the smaller groups across the continent.

Even better, as the center of undead there would be a lot of wild undead. The information had talked about the zombies being the result of a 'parasitic virus', whatever that even meant. Undead were undead. This meant necromancers would not have to spend mana on raising them, just taming them.

When the priest was finally done with his fanatical speech the troops were allowed to enter the Pathworks. The entrance was a gigantic dark hole that was just existing in midair, like a gab in the fabric of space. Wind, sound, Light and people. Anything vanished as if sinking into a pool of the darkest blackest ink one could find.

It was not his first time leading his troops into another world, but you would never get used to the feeling of slowly being submerged into a liquid and then sucked in and flung around as if you entered a current.

What came into view after leaving the portal on the other side was a wide plaza surrounded by high rising buildings and streets that reminded him of canyons with the straight fronts of skyscrapers bordering them. Leaving the portal that was stretching across the plaza were orderly rows and rows of disciplined undead foot soldiers, all decked in the same dark rusty lightweight armors.

In front of them, seated on skeleton horses, rode the other generals like him. They gave commands to get into formation and horns were blown as the troops gathered together on the plaza.

They set up camp for the living and sentient members of the army. One might think that in an undead world, everyone is supposed to be an undead. But that's not how it was. There were many living among the commanders and necromancers, like him.

It was unavoidable. You can't have an empire, when almost all your subject are brainless drooling sacks of rotting meat.

After camp was set up they sent out teams of soldiers and necromancers to collect the wild undead in this megacity and bolster their troops.

It was night right now, and they would be back at sunrise so the undead would not be damaged by the sunlight.

But nobody came back at sunrise. The remaining necromancers and liches created a canopy of darkness above the camp to shield the army from the sun.

The generals and commander met and decided to wait a little longer.

Several hours passed, but there were no signs of the missing teams.

This was not supposed to happen. There should have been nothing that could endanger them in this town. So...what happened?

After waiting this long without any clues the generals and the commander had a meeting and decided to send scout teams consisting of dark elves, since the undead were not fit to move during the day.

The generals waited again. The sun was setting again. But nobody returned... again.

When sun had set the generals had decided. Sending small numbers and teams was obviously not working, so they split up the army. Each one took about half of their men and would scout in a different direction, while the other half would stay with the army commander in the plaza.

The dark elven general led an army of about 8000 men, of which more than 1500 were dark elves while the rest were a mix of different undead. They slowly wandered into the dark and foreboding street canyons.

Few cars filled the otherwise empty streets and the black empty windows were staring at the silently moving army.

He could feel the gaze of these windows...something was there.

It did not take long. As he was watching, he saw pale figures scramble out of those empty windows and CRAWL down the walls like four legged spiders.

Deformed humanoid figures with eyes and lumps of meat growing on all kinds of places and limbs moving in unnatural angles and some with a few too many limbs and extremities growing from unusual places.  Others  had eyeless faces or lacked a nose, but sported split jaws filled rows and rows of terrifying teeth.

The general shuddered at the sight of such atrocities. He had seen the creations of some crazy necromancers, but this and these numbers were too much for him. It was just incomprehensible. Just what was wrong with this world!?

But the worst was yet to come. From the entrances to the sides came similar, but less distorted creatures wearing shreds and pieces of dark robes and armor. This was what was left of their teams and scouts.

Before he could even comprehend what was going on the pale creatures attacked. With incredible power they jumped off the walls on either side of the street and crashed into the undead army.

This was a bona fide ambush!

The dark elf watched as the creatures easily dispatch his troops! They did not just rip and tear the skeletons like paper cut-outs, they even hunted his soldiers!

They easily entered their ranks, killed a few and would snatch a living, a dark elf or a necromancer, or even a zombie. Tongues like tentacles would strangle the living and long armor piercing claws snatched the dead. Then they would return to the buildings with a mighty jump carrying their prey!

Even though his soldiers fought back valiantly, their weapons could barely hurt these monsters! And they were just too fast for the necromancers to use their magic against them. Only few creatures fell to the undead troops.

The dark elves were better off. They could keep up with the monsters and take a few with them before they finally fell. But they were vastly outnumbered.

Before the general could react and  call for a retreat, they had already been surrounded by an overwhelming number of creatures. There was no way out. He could dispatch them in a fair fight, but their overwhelming numbers pressured him. He could only fight for his life and watch his men be wiped out one by one.

Whatever these creatures were, they were not 'Zombies' as they knew them.  He gathered his last troops and tried to break out of the encirclement. Rushing back to the main army was their only chance now! Their last hope!

Was crushed. When the small group of survivors finally reached the plaza after many losses and sacrifices everything was already gone.

The troops that had stayed behind had been annihilated! All they ran into was an army of monsters feasting on the remains of their comrades.

Not only that. Some of these creatures were even entering the Pathworks!

It was then that the creatures behind them caught up and the dark elven general realized the true danger. Among the beasts chasing them new ones had appeared. It was a tattoo that revealed the terrifying fact. One of the creature had a tattoo he knew from one of his ghoul soldiers. It wasn't just the living who had turned! Even the undead could turn into these beasts!

"'It´s just a pathetic world without magic.', 'If it´s undead we can just count them to our troops...' We were truly arrogant in our ignorance. This world is way too frightening and dangerous."

Looking at his men, they all knew, they were dead. However, there was still one thing he had to do. He rallied his remaining men, and they made one final spurt toward the portal. They had to close the gate and hinder these creatures from entering their world!