Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Several minutes later, Griar popped back into the closet, his heart beating wildly still.

He had decisively made the choice of travelling back to the Peaceful Realm despite the fact that he would be unable to know what was happening here in the meantime, if that woman had been able to detect the usage of mana, she probably would have not left at all, so it had been a gamble on the youth's part, but it had paid off.

His presence had been left undiscovered.

Griar stepped out of the broken closet, looking back at the hole that had been literally punched through it, and also through the wall behind it, this place did not look like the most durable of houses, but still, to just casually put a hole through both in a single strike, and to even attempt that without hesitation, that woman was strong, and since she had not noticed the mana, it was not due to augmentative spells, from the looks of it, that had been nothing but pure physical might at work here.

The young man was pretty tough himself, but he was fairly certain that his head would have at least been caved in by that blow just now, he had been lucky that she had not known his exact position and had just struck blindly, because her act had had him totally fooled, he had not been given the occasion to dodge or move at all.

Having never been so close to such dire danger, if one ignored the time Loimos had entered the familial home in the Emerald Realm, this the very first time Griar had been so close to being severely injured or killed, and weirdly, whilst it frightened him to no end, it also made him feel pumped up, the danger had really gotten the adrenaline going.

But he did not linger on for too long, securing the kitchen knife in his belt, he stepped outside and took hold of an axe resting near a pile of wood, moving through the backyard of nearby houses as he headed in the direction Flor had been taken, the path separating houses that faced one another was not that wide, in fact, it was only big enough to allow a single carriage through at a time.

Griar did his best not to appear out in the open despite the apparent lack of people around, in fact, he wasn't even hearing any noise one would expect to hear from a forest nearby, everything was deathly silent, all looked grey and monotone, at least until he reached what looked like a plaza, here, there were indeed some people, sitting and standing around a large bonfire.

Some people were kneeling on the ground, mindless hacking at things Griar could not quite make out from where he was, so the youth slowly approached, doing his best to remain unseen, and doing a pretty good job of it, mostly thanks to the fact that the people seemed somewhat dazed, lost in their thoughts.

'Gods…' his expression turned once he realised what it was that they were cutting into, corpses, human remains to be exact.

They were dismembering corpses clad in clothing that was completely different from what they were garbed into, and everytime a limb or piece was successfully cleaved off, someone would come to collect it, and then throw into into the bonfire, and as he approached, he could heard them muttering things to themselves, but they spoke too quietly for him to understand a thing.

'The group with Flor has to have passed through here… Is that normal for those people?' he had felt somewhat confident that the tall woman was not a direct threat to Flor considering what he had understood from their conversation and the way the two interacted, but he was not so certain about it anymore.

'I should catch up and-' hiding behind the side of a house, he turned to arch around the plaza and avoid those people entirely only to instantly end up face to face with an old man, his face so deeply wrinkled that it looked like the callouses a hard worker would end up with on their hands.

His eyes were wide open, he was standing just a few meters away from Griar, having clearly just stopped in his tracks after being noticed, a bloody sickle with a round blade held in hand.

Just a few more seconds of inattention to his surroundings, and Griar would have been ambushed without a doubt.

"Herejak!" before anything could be done, the old man shouted a word with a thick accent, causing all of the town folks who had been lost in their own minds or busy dismembering corpses to suddenly stand to attention, series of shouts erupting all over the place, each shouting words Griar did not understand, rushing to where the old man and Griar was.

Griar gripped the axe in his hold tightly, hesitating for a moment before striking the old man in the head with the flat side of the axe, knocking him right into the side of the house, falling unconscious on the spot, the youth channeling mana toward his feet, pushing himself atop the closest house's roof, sliding upon the tilted roof up against a chimney, staying perfectly still in hopes that the rest would not have the presence of mind to check up there.

But unfortunately, one did see him fly up in the hair and land atop the roof, pointing and shouting something to let the others know, and many more townspeople began to emerge from houses near the plaza, each barring farm tools of various sorts around, most of them already tainted with blood, others went to fetch ladders.

One of them headed for another house nearby, throwing a chair through a window that gave sight on Griar before attempting to launch a pickaxe at the youth, which was evaded.

'...Well shit' realising how bad the situation was, in the spur of the moment Griar grabbed the pickaxe that had lodged itself into the roof next to him, and threw it back at its original owner, embedding it through his chest, before Griar could even think that he had killed someone, he watched the man with a pickaxe through his chest, stand up and attempt to pull it out mindlessly, only managing to make himself stumble forward through the window he broke, breaking his neck against the ground.

But even then, the man did not stop twitching, in fact, the trembling only got worse and worse every passing second, until black tendrils bursted out of the back, some sort of black sludge beginning to flow out of his mouth, eyes, nostrils and ears, the vile substances beginning to corrode away at his flesh.

The tendrils bent, and pushed the man back to his feet as he began to drag his feet toward Griar.

And none of the other town folks seemed to care or be surprised by that…