Chapter 44: Moving On and Using Magic
Loren and Lapis ran through the dark city.
It was bright around the clinic because they made sure to secure vision, but since they were getting far away from it, the only source of light they had were the moon and stars.
While they were running at almost full speed, they exterminated zombies that popped up occasionally.
“My eyes are infused with mana so they’re fine, but”
Lapis said while running ahead of Loren, in a slightly impressed manner.
“I’ve noticed since before that you can see in the dark quite well.”
Loren had carried Lapis on his back and ran through a pitch-dark tunnel in one of the earlier jobs they were on.
“Things like these are all about getting used to.”
Loren’s opinion was that anything can happen on a battlefield.
Ambushes and night raids were common, so seeing in the dark was something you needed to survive, and Loren wasn’t an exception, so since he was young, he had trained himself to be able to move around in the dark.
“But the problem is that undead have nothing that indicates where they are. It’s so hard to sense them.”
“Well, your senses are unbelievable, since you’re still able to cut them down.”
Unlike people, undead aren’t alive.
That is why it is very difficult to sense them.
Loren was very anxious because things almost undetectable kept suddenly jumping at him.
Although he could see them when they moved, and the fact that they were slow was helping him defeat them, it was a situation where he could be dealt a fatal blow any time, so he couldn’t let his guard down.
“I can’t keep this up, dammit.”
Loren cursed as he swung his great sword again and sliced a zombie that flew at him into half.
He heard something splatter onto the street, but it was too dark to see what flew how much, and Loren was a bit thankful that it was night time, as he didn’t have to see the unpleasant objects and colors.
“Can’t you conjure light using magic?”
“Running around with a light in a lightless city like this will basically be shouting out our location.”
“Who’s going to care about that?”
Loren felt that there were no living humans in the city.
If there were, there was no way it would be overflowing with undead.
The feeling that they were being focused onto him and Lapis was one reason.
If there were other survivors, the undead should be going to them as well.
“At least Shutel would care, don’t you think?”
If the only undead were zombies and revenants, Lapis wouldn’t have cared too much about showing off their location.
But their opponent was a wight, which has the same amount of intelligence as a human.
In addition to that, the wight was the cause, or in a position that led to the situation they were currently in.
“Having more zombies sent over is going to be annoying, but it’s going to be a problem if she sends over something like a bone dragon.”
“If that happens the only course of action is to run as fast as we can.”
“Leaving Shayna behind?”
Loren was stuck on an answer.
If he thought like a mercenary, the only option was to leave Shayna and retreat.
But when he asked himself if he could do that, he couldn’t find an answer.
“I’ll worry about that once that time comes.”
“Ah, you’re trying to change the subject, aren’t you?”
Loren tried to fool her, but when Lapis pointed it out he frowned slightly.
But Lapis didn’t seem like she was going to go any further with it and closed her mouth, seeming to wait for Loren to say something.
It cut their conversation, so Loren continued what they were talking about earlier.
“This whole situation, do you think it will be resolved if we defeat Shutel?”
“I don’t think so.”
The response to his question was very simple yet very cruel.
As Loren took a sharp breath without realizing, Lapis started explaining like it was nothing.
“There is probably a culprit behind this whole disturbance. And it’s not Shutel herself, but the being she was talking about. I’m not sure what he did, but he did something to Shayna and failed, then left this place.”
“Looks like it.”
“And this ma.s.s outbreak of undead. It is probably all his doing but he isn’t here anymore, so even if we defeat Shutel, the undead will still remain the way they are.”
Lapis said it easily, but the contents were showing an unbelievable reality.
It was unknown at that point how much of city state’s population became undead, but if the whole population of its capital city became undead, the numbers would definitely be over ten thousand.
If that many undead were let loose without any sort of control, it was already past the control of a few individuals, and it was a situation where the government or the army would have to make a move.
“Loren, two from the right.”
Loren unconsciously almost stopped thinking, but Lapis gave him a warning against the zombies that popped up, and he was able to cut down both of them with a single swing of his great sword.
“That’s not funny at all.”
“No, it isn’t. In fact, my prediction is only an a.s.sumption based on if the casualties are kept at a minimum.”
Loren looked at Lapis, wondering if there was anything more, but she took no notice of his gaze, and shrugged her head as she ran.
“I’m more concerned about the treasure that was given to Shayna. A wight alone is quite bothersome, but if something greater than that decides to show up, these zombies and revenants will look cute compared to it.”
“I don’t think these guys look cute at all, though.”
Loren cut down another zombie as he said that.
As he heard liquid splattering onto the dark alley, Loren gave his great sword a light swing, worried that the same thing was all over the blade.
“d.a.m.n, there’s so many undead, it’s kind of depressing.”
“We’re lucky it’s night time. If it was during the day it would be quite a mess.”
Undead rarely came out during the day.
And night time was when undead could display their full potential.
If that is the case you usually wouldn’t say that you were glad that it was night, but Lapis was thankful that it was night time.
She thought that because since the undead in the city haven’t been that state for a long time yet, most of them weren’t much different from when they were alive.
Lapis didn’t care much because she was a demon, but the zombies that Loren were killing included young children, and if it was during the day, when he could see his opponents, depressing might have not cut it.
“Loren, now that I think about it.”
“What’s up? I don’t have a good feeling about what you’re about to say, but go ahead.”
Loren replied to Lapis, not expecting much, as he continued to cut down the zombies that attacked him sporadically,
The undead should be focused on Klaus, who was in an area lit up with bonfires as well as using the power of his Gift constantly, but there were still quite a few undead attacking them in the dark streets. As they neared the center of the city, the number of zombies and revenants increased, which made Loren focus more and more on them.
“The only ones alive for sure in this city is us and Klaus, right?”
“Can’t approve that you’re aren’t including Broas and the girls.”
He knew that she didn’t include them because it wasn’t certain whether they would survive or not, but Loren wished that Broas and the girls from Klaus’s party would survive, and so he rebuked Lapis, who naturally didn’t include them.
“Let me rephrase. The only ones that are currently conscious and are aware of this situation is us and Klaus, isn’t it?”
“If you don’t count our opponent and Shayna.”
“Doesn’t this mean that there aren’t any witnesses in this situation?”
Loren experienced an even worse feeling at the word witness.
But the only things that were around the area were undead, and indeed the only living beings were him and Lapis, and Klaus was trying very hard to be alive, but they were already very far away from him, and weren’t within his view.
In the case of Broas and the girls, it was unknown whether or not they regained consciousness, so Lapis was right when she said no witnesses.
“What about it?”
“I was thinking that it wouldn’t be a problem if I went slightly serious.”
Loren thought for a moment as Lapis asked for his opinion.
Of course, he didn’t stop killing the undead that continued to pop up, but he thought about it the best he could while doing so, and after killing a few more undead, he finally got to a conclusion.
“Uh, I don’t really think you should. Doesn’t seem like anything good will happen.”
“It’s fine, right?”
In the dark of the night, when it was almost impossible to see anything, Loren and Lapis crossed eyes.
In that moment, Loren seemed to realize that it was impossible to talk her out of it, but a feeling that he shouldn’t give up drove him to continue the argument.
“You shouldn’t. My sword is enough to kill the undead for now, anyway. I don’t think you need to force yourself to use your powers. It’s a different story if something like a bone dragon appears, though.”
As soon as Loren said that, a violent tremor ran beneath his feet.
As he tried to keep his footing on top of the shaking ground in disbelief, Lapis said to him in a very happy voice.
“You said that it’s okay if a bone dragon comes out, right?”
“…I shouldn’t have said that…”
Loren was recalling a saying that included the phrase ‘speak of the devil’.
It was a saying which meant that words which come out of the mouth could sometimes summon the whatever the words were subject to, but even though Loren wished he didn’t say anything, it was too late.
The increasing tremors started to put cracks in the street and buildings around them were collapsing, the dragon made of bones that chased Loren and his group on the way here broke through the ground with a ear piercing roar.
“If you do not let me use my full power every now and then, I may start losing my touch.”
Instead of her usual gentle expression, Lapis’ eyes turned sharp with aggressiveness.
Lapis, whose way of talking changed as well, stood face to face with the bone dragon trying to climb up onto the ground, and raised her right palm towards it.
“Pa.s.s the river of sorrow and arrive at its abyss. If you desire to knock on the gates to heaven, may your sins be judged by crimson. >”
The color of crimson filled Loren’s sight.
He couldn’t see anything else.
There wasn’t a roar or scream, nor sounds of crumbling or burning.
Everything just disappeared into the crimson brilliance.
“What…. the h.e.l.l?”
It wasn’t like Loren hadn’t seen magic before.
But he couldn’t believe that the thing that just unfolded before his eyes was the same kind of magic that he had seen until now.
“Make sure to stay behind me, alright?”
Lapis said to a speechless Loren in an awfully gentle tone.
“If you do not, you would die in a way that even your ashes would not remain.”
Lapis’ words were like a whisper.
At the same time, the crimson brilliance that filled his sight disappeared.
It disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, making Loren doubt that there was ever a great fire in front of his eyes.
But the damage that it did was right in front of him.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Everything had disappeared.
The stone blocks that made the street, the buildings around it, the bone dragon clawing its way up, and the undead that started to gather in the area.
All of it was gone, and the sight that came into his eyes was just exposed, hollow earth.
He wasn’t sure how much of the area became like that, but a quite large area of the city disappeared in a blink of an eye.
“I guess my control was a bit poor…But I’m satisfied that I could use magic at full blast.”
“What was that just now…”
“It’s a fire type extreme magic…but as I had thought, it was hard to control with these prosthetic limbs and eyes. If I had my eyes at least, I could’ve increased the range on it.”
Lapis was saying that she had held back on the range, but after seeing the spell completely incinerate the bone dragon along with the undead around it, as well as the buildings in the area, Loren had nothing to say about her comment.
“What’ll happen if you’re at perfect condition? Actually, do you even need me?”
“it’s just a bad joke Loren. There’s no way I’ll be able to use this kind of magic during battle. It’s flashy and has great firepower, but that’s all there is too it. There’s no way I don’t need you Loren.”
Lapis told him as she stepped into the bare earth that the spell had hollowed out.
As Loren followed her, he was worried that the ground would be burning hot, but the only thing he felt was dirt, and nothing like burning soil.
As Loren wondered what the logic behind it was, Lapis continued.
“Plus, I’m a priestess, so it would be bad if people find out I could use magic. I wouldn’t usually do this kind of thing.”
Lapis stretched her arms, saying that it was a good stress relief.
As Loren followed Lapis towards the center of the city across the earth, he realized that she didn’t answer anything about what would happen if she was in perfect condition. He didn’t feel like pushing for an answer and swore to himself that he would try to stop Lapis whenever she says she wants to use magic.