Chapter 36: Attacked Again During Advance

After burying the revenants, they continued down the road.

The encounter with the undead gave some of them thoughts of going back to Kauffa, but since they accepted the quest knowing that there would be some sort of danger on the way, going back wasn’t an option.

While preparing to bury the bodies, Loren checked their belongings, but none of them had anything peculiar, and the only things they had were wallets and jewelry, nothing to let him know who they were or where they came from.

But on the other hand, that itself told him that they were common folk from a nearby city.

They loaded the belongings into the caravans just in case.

If they had any relatives they needed to give them back to them, and even if they didn’t it would serve as proof that they had defeated undead monsters. But still, carrying the belongings of the dead wasn’t the happiest thing, and the party’s morale sunk slightly.

Klaus and his party, who had defeated the group of revenants by themselves, was now acknowledged and had a high evaluation among the adventurers. But Loren continued to ignore him, as he kept on sending smug looks his way.

After a while, an incident that lowered the morale of the party even further happened.

The driver of the caravan Loren and Lapis were on had died.

Loren noticed that the caravan was moving unnaturally, even though they weren’t getting attacked, and went over to the driver’s seat. When he tapped the driver’s shoulder, the driver suddenly fell off the caravan.

He panicked and grabbed the reins and stopped the caravan, but the driver was already dead.

The cause of his death was unknown.

Lapis immediately examined him, but all the injuries on the body were scratches and bruises from falling down from the caravan, and couldn’t find anything that could’ve been the cause of his death.

On top of that, the body was already halfway undead, so they had to cremate it on the spot.

“What the hell is happening?”

Sitting next to Loren was Lapis, who was driving the caravan.

Apparently priests of the Knowledge god knew how to drive as well, and Loren thought that if the Knowledge god was such a handyman, maybe more people should start following him.

“I wish I knew.”

On Lapis’ other side, Shayna sat leaning onto Lapis, sleeping soundly.

She looked like she was sleeping peacefully, but Loren frowned slightly as he wondered what she was thinking inside about their current situation.

She hadn’t eaten much since the day before.

She looked fine, so it seemed that she still had some strength in her, but not eating anything worried Loren.

Food was important no matter what you did.

Since she wasn’t eating, Loren decided that she was must be stressed out mentally. As he continued to be alert on their surroundings, Lapis muttered to him.

“It seems like there are a few in that direction.”

She said it so suddenly that Loren couldn’t understand what she was saying, and after a moment realized what she had meant and looked towards the direction she was facing.

He saw a large plain, but couldn’t find anything of the sort Lapis had talked about.

He was relieved and thought that he must be worrying too much, but Lapis gave an additional blow.

“They can’t be seen by human eyes.”

Loren then remembered.

Although it couldn’t be noticed just by looking at them, Lapis’ eyes were artificial.

Her limbs were prosthetics as well, and they were being used to hide the fact that Lapis was a demon.

Loren found that out during his very first quest as an adventurer, and also learned that Lapis’ goal was to gain experience as well as search for her lost limbs and eyes.

Leaving that aside, since her eyes were artificial, it wouldn’t be surprising if there was some sort of special function built into them.

“There are some over there as well. Around twenty of them.”

“What is wrong with this area?”

Lapis tilted her head at Loren, who had given up trying to search the area and muttered with a lowered voice.

As the caravan was going slightly off track, Lapis fixed the pathing and whispered in a hushed voice.

They were both trying to be considerate of Shayna, who was still sleeping.

“There are a bunch of undead roaming in broad daylight. That means there is a source somewhere.”

“That’s a pretty depressing thought when it’s going to be night time soon enough.”

Undead were more active during the night than during the day.

They could see quite a few of them right now during the day, and Loren couldn’t help but feel melancholic as he thought about how many there would be once the sun set.

“In the case of an emergency, let’s take Shayna and run away. It’s okay, we’ll definitely be able to reach Hanza.”

“Am I the only one that feels that there are more undead the closer we get to Hanza?”

“Hahaha. That’s such an unpleasant thing to say.”

“It’s not something to be laughing about, geez…”

Loren sighed, but their worries soon started to become a reality as night came.

As they were trying to find a place to spend the second night, many different kinds of undead became active and started attacking them.

“Damn it! What is this!? There’s no end to them!”

Broas yelled, blood and flesh flying around him as he swung his axes. Around him were a large number of zombies, with their muscle and intestines showing beneath their rotting flesh.

If it were a few or even a decent sized group of them, they could’ve dealt with them without any problems, but against a seemingly unending number of undead, even iron rank adventurers had a difficult time.

The adventurers would get tired and eventually be unable to move, but to the undead, such things didn’t exist.

That meant no matter how much they were cut or pummeled, as long as a part of them could move, they would continue to attack.

To add on to that, there were revenants mixed in with the zombies every now and then.

Since they were higher ranking monsters than zombies, they were stronger and moved more smoothly than them, and didn’t feel fatigue as well.

They joined the zombies, which were surrounding the adventurers, and started attacking as well.

“S-stop! Get away from me!”

“Ow, it hurts, it hurts! Stop biting! Stop eating me!”

The female adventurers that had been riding with Shayna and lost consciousness the first day were far from being completely healed, and tired faster than the others. The zombies knocked them down and started biting off the flesh that wasn’t protected by their armor or clothes.

The other adventurers tried to help them, but the revenants attacked them as if they were waiting for them to turn away, knocked them down, and started biting at their throats.

“O-onii-san…”

Of course Loren, Lapis, and Shayna were in the middle of it as well.

With Lapis standing near him and Shayna clinging onto his waist, Loren reached back towards his weapon, grabbed it, and muttered.

“I get to try it out on rotting flesh, huh…Unfortunate.”

“Do you have time to be complaining?”

“Not much, apparently.”

As he spoke, he took off the cloth around his weapon and pulled it out completely and took a wide swing.

As the giant blade ran through in a sideways arc, zombies and revenant alike were cut down or crushed, and flesh and blood rained down in its wake.

Loren’s attack didn’t end there, and when he swung it in a return arc, more zombies flew away, reduced to chunks of meat.

“Whoa, how are you even able to swing that around?”

As the weapon stopped in front of Broas’ surprised eyes, its black blade was noticeable even in the dark of night.

There were patterns engraved in gold on the blade, but what was the most surprising was its size.

It was longer and thicker than the great sword that Loren used before, as well as slightly wider, and the grip was slightly shorter because of that. But after swinging it around a few times, Loren decided that there was no problem and he could use it just fine.

A long, thin strip of leather was wrapped around the grip to stop his grip from slipping, and the leather itself was pitch black as well.

“It’s called getting used to it. Anyways, what do we do about this?”

Loren swung the sword around one more time with his hand and set it on his shoulder and patted Shayna, who was still clinging onto his waist, with his other hand to try to comfort her. He then asked Broas, who was able to run towards them thanks to the number of undead being reduced.

The number of undead attacking the camp didn’t seem to falter no matter how many they killed.

In fact, it seemed like they were increasing in number as time went on.

Although the question of where all of them were coming from lingered, there was no time to be thinking about that, but instead if they didn’t figure out a way to escape this situation, it was obvious that they would be overrun sooner or later.

“Why are there so many of them?”

As Loren took another swing with his great sword and mowed down a few of the undead, Lapis, who was dancing around dodging the zombies’ grasps, answered.

“It must be because we are the only living beings in the area. To the undead, living beings are like bonfires. They swarm to it like moths to flame.”

“That’s not a good sign. Broas, moving forward or heading back, which do you think is better?”

Loren asked Broas which was the better decision, getting past the undead and continue on to Hanza is better or if going back to Kauffa.

At that point, almost all of the adventurers were wiped out, and it was difficult to continue on with the quest. Broas groaned at the two options he was given.

“It’s not like I’m the leader of everyone here, you know.”

“Even so. I won’t complain after.”

Broas should’ve been in a party, but Loren didn’t see anyone of the sort with him.

Loren wasn’t sure if they got separated or they fell prey to the undead, but he decided that the opinion of a veteran like Broas was the most reliable in this situation.

“Then we should head towards Hanza. It’s not about the quest anymore. There might be less undead towards Kauffa, but it’s better if we go to Hanza even if there are more undead because it’s way closer. There’s no way it’ll be overrun.”

“You got a better idea Lapis?”

“Can’t think of any.”

“Are you fine with that Shayna?”

Loren asked the girl still clinging to his waist, and she nodded.

“Then it’s settled. Is there a caravan that we can still use?”

For some reason, undead such as zombies or revenants didn’t attack living things other than humans.

They only attacked those that were similar to them, and didn’t attack animals such as horses.

So all the horses were okay, but two out of the three caravans were being dragged around by the panicking horses.

The last one was the one Loren was riding, and it escaped damage because they released their horse from the caravan and tied it onto a post.

“I’ll take care of the undead in the area. Broas, you go connect the horse to the caravan. Lapis, put Shayna in there so that we could depart at any time.”

“Got it.”

“I got you! Dammit, none of my party’s alive!”

Broas cried as he got to work.

Lapis took the Shayna from Loren’s waist, ran to the caravan, and put her inside.

While they were working, Loren took the great sword from his shoulder and swung it once again, using brute force to drive back the undead that were nearing them.

“Those who are still alive get over here! We’re going to force our way through to Hanza!”

Although he had no intention of helping anyone else, he didn’t want to leave anyone behind so he called out, but no one responded to his voice.

Loren thought gloomily that they must be the only ones alive, but then he saw undead being cut down in a line coming straight towards them.

“Can’t believe that out of everyone, you’re the one that’s alive, low rank.”

“That’s my line.”

The ones who came were Klaus, who was cursing as he came close, and his party members.

Although they were covered in blood and dirt, the fact that they were still alive told him how skilled they were. But to Loren, they weren’t really ones that he would welcome with open arms.

“Going to the city of Hanza? What are the odds?”

“Very low. If you don’t like it go to someone else.”

Klaus scowled as Loren spat at him, but there was no one else alive in the area, and every one of them knew there was no time to be thinking about another way.

“Klaus, this isn’t the time to be arguing.”

“That’s right Klaus. We need to work together to get out of this.”

At Layla and Roll’s argument, Klaus grudgingly followed Loren to the caravan.

No matter what he thought of them, Loren had no intention of kicking anyone who was still alive out, so he pointed to the caravan with his head, telling them to hurry up and get in.

Klaus returned a glare as they proceeded to walk towards it.

As Loren thought maybe they should’ve left them behind, something behind the magician girl from Klaus’ party, who was the last one in line, caught his eye. When he saw what it was, he reflexively shouted in a loud voice.

“Duck!”

“Huh?”

Loren wasn’t sure if the magician named Ange realized his warning was meant for her.

She looked at him with a bewildered expression and let out a small voice.

Immediately after, something caught her with a sideways swipe, snatched her up, and held her high above the ground.

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