novelraw Chapter 94 : Chapter 94
Chapter 94 : Chapter 94
Chapter 94
Latia and I drew our swords at the same time and raised our heads.
The dock was geographically lower than other places, and the surrounding hills were configured to enclose it.
‘Did they deliberately guide us to the dock? To hunt us down…’
That was the only way I could think of it.
The structure made it difficult to secure a line of sight, and all that was visible were the hills and the stairs leading to higher ground.
From there, the sound of several footsteps could be heard.
One by one, people appeared on top of the hill.
No, I was not sure if it was right to call them people.
Numerous people stood in a formation surrounding the dock, looking down at us with expressions so blank they were chilling.
Their eyes were empty, and no emotion was visible at all.
It was to the point where it felt as if mannequins, not people, were standing there.
Among them were the village chief who had rented a room to me, and Damond, who had guided me to Sursa.
“You people, what in the world are you?!”
Latia shouted.
It was not a cry meant to threaten the opponent, but rather a roar shouted with the ferocity of a cornered mouse biting a cat.
However, the opponents showed no reaction.
They just stared at us blankly, just as they had when they first appeared.
I grabbed Latia, who was unable to contain her anger and was about to charge.
“Don’t get excited.”
“But, Senior!”
“Listen to me if you don’t want to die.”
Cold sweat ran down my back.
A powerful energy had been crushing me from a while ago, so much so that my breath was catching in my throat.
It was to the point where I found it amazing, even enviable, that Latia could be so agitated.
Of course, it was likely not just a simple aura.
It had to be either an Authority or magic.
I turned my head to the place where the energy that had been pressing down on me originated.
‘Damond…’
The man with the kind face who had guided me to Sursa was gone, and in his place was only a man with an expressionless face, emanating a powerful aura toward me.
He silently raised his hand and pointed at Latia and me.
Then, the expressionless people, as if they had been waiting, charged toward us.
Some ran down the slope, flailing their arms randomly, while others kicked off the ground on all fours like beasts.
Their movements were frantic, but their expressions remained blank, making them look like possessed people.
“What is that…”
Latia, for her part, was terrified by the bizarre sight and took a step back.
Still, Latia was quite brave.
A fainthearted person who saw that sight would have foamed at the mouth and fainted on the spot.
One of the villagers, who had run at high speed and reached me, grabbed my shoulder as if it were the most natural thing to do and bared his teeth.
The hand on my shoulder was cold and hard, and a rotten smell emanated from his wide-open mouth.
The strange sensations and unpleasant smells I had felt since arriving in Sursa, all the moments when I felt that it did not seem like a place where people lived, were now all understood.
The dead had been pretending to be living people, so how could I have seen that and smelled the scent of human life?
“Latia.”
“Yes?”
“They’re not people. Kill them all.”
“Yes!”
Latia’s sword, which she swung after shouting vigorously, moved indiscriminately.
Her level and abilities had risen quite a bit recently, and with steady, repetitive training and considerable combat experience, Latia’s swordsmanship was considerably sharper than before.
The sword, swung at high speed, accurately beheaded a zombie.
Unlike the creatures I had faced so far, their appearance was close to that of ordinary villagers, so I had been worried Latia might hesitate.
To my relief, she had no hesitation in cutting down the enemy.
I too pushed away the one grabbing my shoulder and swung my sword.
‘They’re tough.’
The zombies I had encountered in Haram were also like this, but perhaps because these ones had special appearances from the start, their bone strength and muscle power seemed even greater.
It was to the point that I felt a slight pain in my shoulder where I had been briefly held.
The only fortunate things were that their numbers were not that large and that there were no individuals with special abilities, I suppose?
For some reason, the zombies we were fighting were the ones who had been acting as residents in the small village of Sursa.
As Sursa was small, the number of zombies acting as residents was also small.
Unlike in Haram, I would not be in danger of dying from my stamina running out while fighting endlessly against a swarming horde of zombies.
With every swing of the sword, I could see the number of zombies filling the dock decreasing.
“Senior!”
Latia, who had been focused on the battle, suddenly shouted.
I quickly realized why she had shouted.
Damond, who had been silently watching the number of human-shaped zombies rapidly decrease, had finally begun to move.
The village chief placed a huge greatsword and a shield next to Damond.
Damond equipped the shield on his left arm and raised the greatsword high with his right hand.
“What kind of monstrous strength is that…”
The characteristics of a greatsword would usually include its long reach and its powerful destructive force that could crush enemies.
But where there are advantages, disadvantages also coexist.
For powerful destructive force, high weight was essential, and therefore, it was a common perception that a greatsword was a weapon that even someone who had trained their strength considerably would wield with both hands.
However, Damond was lightly swinging a greatsword the size of his own body with one hand.
A formidable enemy.
I knew it without even having to cross swords with him.
I even wondered if Damond himself might be the culprit behind this zombie incident.
Damond, who had been meaninglessly swinging his sword in the air as if an athlete were warming up before a match, earnestly kicked off the ground.
Damond, who charged at a damnably fast speed, cut through the zombie horde and reached me in an instant.
“Senior! Be careful…”
“I know, so focus on the enemy in front of you!”
As I rebuked Latia, whose concentration had wavered in her panic, I threw myself to the side.
The moment I tried to block that, my arm would break.
The greatsword zipped past my side at high speed.
“This is crazy…!”
I could not hold back the curse.
I thought I had completely evaded the attack, but the hem of my clothes was cut by the rushing wind pressure.
If my level had been just a little lower than it was now, it would have been my skin that was torn, not the hem of my clothes.
Damond spun his body in a large motion.
Evasion was impossible.
If I tried to clumsily dodge the attack and Damond changed the trajectory of his attack, my body would be bisected without a doubt.
I crossed the Ella 7 Sword and Svalinn in front of me.
I had no confidence in blocking the attack with just one arm.
CLANG!
Upon impact, my body flew through the air.
I flew back a good distance and rolled gracelessly on the ground.
My left arm was numb, and my right hand holding the sword trembled.
Numerous large and small wounds had appeared all over my body, but I did not even feel the pain due to the overwhelming feeling of how to deal with that monster.
To be precise, I did not even have the luxury to suffer in pain.
Damond was running toward me, dragging his lowered greatsword, to close the distance that had opened up between us.
Then, he gripped the greatsword with both hands, raised it above his head, and leaped into the air.
“……”
Even the sword he swung with one hand was difficult to block, so could I withstand that powerful blow that had momentum and weight added to it?
No matter how I wracked my brain, I reached the conclusion that it was impossible.
The Second Claw was also useless this time.
To launch a powerful counterattack, I first had to withstand the opponent’s initial blow, but even that was not possible, and right now, Damond was attacking using only pure physical strength without the interference of mana.
My Authority was, to the last, an Authority that counterattacked by using the opponent’s mana against them, so it was bound to be endlessly weak in the face of pure destructive power.
“Senior!”
With Latia’s urgent shout, I heard the sound of something cutting through the wind.
A flying blue sword aura struck Damond.
It was Latia’s new Authority, ‘Wind Slash,’ which she had recently acquired through various methods of the nurturing system.
It was a fairly powerful Authority, but it could not inflict a serious wound on Damond’s body.
However, thanks to that blow, Damond’s posture was shaken, and the power of his attack was greatly reduced, allowing me to succeed in blocking and deflecting the blow by crossing my shield and sword.
“Kugh…!”
Though I could not hold back a scream.
My ankles were half-buried in the ground.
If not for Latia’s help, one of my arms might have been broken by that last blow.
If I were unlucky, it might have broken both my arms as it advanced and split my head in two.
“Latia! Jump back!”
The only fortunate thing was that Damond’s weapon was a greatsword, so while it could pack a powerful punch in a single blow, its speed was lacking.
While he was retrieving the greatsword stuck in the ground, I kicked to throw Damond off balance and ran towards the dock.
Latia, having received the instruction, also hastily followed behind me.
The zombies charged to prevent us from getting away, but the two of us were slightly faster.
Just in case, I had already given the boats at the dock a quick look-over.
Having been untouched by human hands for a long time, most of the boats were in such a mess that they were unusable, but I ran straight for a small boat that I had picked out, one that seemed at least capable of being used for fishing.
I cut the rope tying the boat to the dock, pulled Latia’s hand, and got on the boat.
We desperately prevented the zombies that had caught up from clinging to and climbing onto the boat, and in order to get away from the dock even one second faster, we looked for oars, but there were no oars or sails on the mast.
Cold sweat ran down my back, wondering if I had chosen the wrong boat.
At that moment, Latia strongly struck a box located at the stern of the boat.
VROOOM!
A small sound came from the box, and soon it began to emit a faint blue light, and the boat slowly began to move forward.
Because the boat was small, I had naturally thought we would have to sail using oars or a sail, but it seemed to have a motor that was a concentration of magical technology.
The boat gradually moved away from the dock.
A few zombies recklessly jumped into the sea without looking, but when Damond raised his arm, they all stopped their actions.
The zombies stood on the dock or floated with only their heads above the water, staring intently at us as we moved away.
Latia, who had been watching them without letting down her guard, finally sat down in relief.
“We’re saved… I never imagined the entire village was full of monsters. Why on earth were they pretending to be people?”
I adjusted the direction the boat was heading with Latia’s help and became lost in thought.
It was certainly not a normal situation.
The zombies I had encountered in Haram had acted purely on instinct, as if they had no intelligence.
But the zombies here in Sursa were different.
For a start, their appearance was almost identical to humans, and although an awkward and strange atmosphere remained, their behavior also tried to imitate humans.
But looking at how they fought, they were not much different from the zombies of Haram whose reason had melted away.
At this point, I had no choice but to be certain.
The zombies definitely have a command center… that is, a necromancer.
And the most likely candidate for the necromancer at present is Damond.
‘A necromancer, zombies. And… Haram.’
Haram had become completely non-functional as a city due to the war ten years ago, and the surrounding land had become a land of death where nothing could be harvested even if seeds were sown.
Since they could not sustain themselves from within, the people who survived the war also left Haram, and thus Haram became an abandoned ghost town.
A ruin that was damnably large, yet received no one’s gaze or even interest.
There could not have been a more suitable place to hide zombies.
And one more thing.
To get to Haram, one must pass through Sursa.
In other words, by occupying Sursa, it is possible to completely control all information about the events unfolding in Haram.
By doing so, they must have gathered zombies in Haram, completely isolated from the outside world.
With ten zombies, it is difficult to even occupy a small village in the boondocks.
But with a hundred, a small village can be easily swallowed up.
With a thousand, it is possible to occupy a small-scale city, and with ten thousand, it is possible to overturn not only a city but also a small, weak nation.
The reason for gathering zombies in Haram?
It is simple.
To increase their numbers as much as possible and deliver a powerful surprise blow to the Mergan Kingdom.
That must have been the necromancer’s objective.
However, because of me, information related to Haram was exposed to the outside.
In that case, there is only one method the necromancer can take.
“…Latia.”
“Yes, Senior.”
“I don’t think this will end with just evacuating the residents of the surrounding villages. I’ll steer the boat, so please contact Celina for me. Tell her that it seems we won’t be able to resolve the current situation unless they dispatch at least the defense forces that protect the kingdom’s capital.”