“But… If you think about it, the undead not showing up could mean trouble.”
“… Why?”
“Well, it feels like our surveillance is missing something.”
“You think too much, normally there won’t be so many undead. I heard that the undead rise frequently after burying the bodies of those who were killed in battle against the Empire. Conversely, this is how it is without war right?”
The guards nodded to acknowledge this theory. Although the villages in other areas also bury their dead, they had never heard of such frequent spawning of the undead there.
“… Now that you mention it, the situation in Kaze plains went out of hand.”
“Yup, I heard incredibly strong undead spawned there right?”
The plains where the Empire and the Kingdom clashed. That place was a famous zone where the undead roamed. The adventurers commissioned by the Kingdom and the knights of the Empire exterminate the undead there frequently. The importance of this job prompted the support division of the Kingdom and the Empire to set up a small town there.
“I heard──”
The guard who was about to speak stopped suddenly.
The other guard who felt uneasy because of this said:
“Hey, don’t──”
“Quiet!”
The guard who stopped speaking seemed to be able to see through the dark and stared at the cemetery. Affected by this action, the other guards looked towards the cemetery.
“… Did you hear that?”
“Was it your imagination?”
“I didn’t hear anything… But I smell soil. Didn’t we dig a grave recently? It smells just like that…”
“Don’t joke like that.”
“… Huh? Ah, hey! Look over there!”
A guard pointed towards the cemetery. Everyone focused on that spot.
Two guards were sprinting towards the main gate. They were out of breath and their wide open eyes were bloodshot. Their sweat-stained hair stuck to their forehead.
The scene before them made the guards feel something was wrong.
The guards patrolling the cemetery moved in groups of ten. Why were there just two? They were running without weapons and seemed to be running for their lives.
“Quick, open the gate! Open the gate now!”
Seeing the way these two were screaming, the guards ran down the stairs and opened the gate in a hurry.
The two guards scampered in without waiting for the gate to fully open.
“What in the…”
The two guards interrupted while panting with a pale face:
“Quick, close the gate! Hurry!”
All the guards got goosebumps looking at their unusual actions, closing the gate together and placing the bolt in place.
“What happened? Where are the others?”
Hearing this question, the guard lift his head and had a shocked expression.
“They, they were eaten by the undead!”
Hearing that 8 comrades had fallen, the guards looked to their captain. The captain immediately ordered:
“… Hey, someone get up there and take a look!”
A guard climbed the stairs and stopped when he got half way up.
“What, what is it!”
The trembling guard shouted:
“Undead! A huge mob of undead!”
Straining their ears, they could hear sounds like a stampede of horses coming from the other side of the wall. Not just the guard that first sighted them, all the guards present were dumbstruck by the scene before them.
A mind numbing number of undead were advancing towards the gate.
“What is with these numbers…”
“It’s more than a hundred or two… There should be thousands…”
There were countless undead in places the light didn’t shine, it’s hard to gauge the actual number if you include the figures wriggling in the darkness.
With their rotten stench the innumerable undead closed in on the gate with unsteady steps like a dark cloud. Not just zombies and skeletons, there were a few strong undead mixed in ── Ghouls, Devourers, Wights, Bloaters, Carrion Crawlers etc.
The guards trembled in fear.
The city was protected by the walls, the undead couldn’t attack normal citizens without breaking through the walls. But even if they mobilize all the guards, it was uncertain if they could keep such a large group of undead at bay. The guards are just peasants wearing defensive gear, they didn’t have the confidence to exterminate all these undead.
Not just that, some undead could even turn the people they kill into their own kind. If things went bad, the guards might even be turned into an undead and start attacking their comrades. No flying undead were sighted yet, but if they didn’t take care of this soon, it would only be a matter of time before vicious undead able to take flight spawned. This made the guards even more terrified.
── The wave of undead washed to the walls.
Bang bang──
The swarm of low-intelligence undead couldn’t feel pain and bashed the door haphazardly. They seemed to realize they could attack the living after breaking down this door.
Bang bang──
The banging sound, the creaks of the door bending under the pushing force and the moans of the undead kept coming.
With no need for brakes, the undead who didn’t mind shattering under the brunt of the impact were like a siege weapon.
The guards witnessing this sight were breaking out in cold sweat.
“Sound the bell! Request reinforcements from the guard post! The two of you inform the other gates of the emergency!”
The captain issued the orders after getting a hold of himself:
“The ones behind use spears to attack the undead that approach the gate!”
The guards remembered their duties when they heard the orders, thrusting their spears hard at the undead below. The mass of undead flooding the ground were easily hit.
Thrust, pull back and thrust again.
Murky blood and the rotten stench numbed the noses of the guards who repeated the same action like a factory worker. Several undead lost their negative life force, and got trampled by the undead behind them after they fell.
The undead lack intelligence, so they didn’t fight back against the guard’s repeated spear attacks. Repeating the same motion made the guards lose their sense of danger.
As if it was aiming for this moment──
“Wahh!”
There was a scream and when they looked toward the source, the neck of a guard was entangled by something long and squirming.
It was a smooth and pink— an intestine.