Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

It was nightmarish, plain and simple, that man was currently in a state that barely counted as living, the tendrils of blackness, seemingly liquid, yet still and solid, were the ones doing the heavy lifting, the man's neck was still broken, head flailing about with every motion, the blood that should be flowing crimson out of the hole in his chest was darker than a moonless night, one could not tell whether his limbs moved out of his own volition, or if it was the work of the vile darkness as well.

Griar did not have much time to ponder such a question either, as the tendrils reached out, and stuck to the side of the house, lifting the man up onto the roof where the young man was, of the four tendrils that had bursted out of the townsfolk's flesh, two remained grounded, maintaining support, whilst the other two lashed out wildly at Griar, moving with terrific dexterity and swiftness, the boy threw himself onto the other side of the roof, rolling upon the tilted surface and nearly falling straight to the ground, where a congress of townspeople would have caught and taken him apart with their horribly blunt and tainted tools.

"He…"

'He's still speaking?'

"Here… Herejak…" with that foul substance flowing out of his mouth, tainting his teeth completely black, the monstrosity on the roof with him called him by what sounded like the same word as the old man from earlier, Griar did not know for certain, but to him, this implied that the man who ad not received just one, but two mortal injuries, was not only still alive due to the thing within him, but also remained conscious to boot.

And despite this, he was still laser focused on trying to kill him, which he did, one tendril lunged forward like a spear, piercing right through the roof to get to Griar, who did not have much room to dodge right now, but he access to mana, so manifest a burst of wind, he basically launched himself out of the way, the landing nearly sent him to the ground once more.

'...This isn't good' he had first wanted to cast another spell after that one, but found out that it was not possible, he had not noticed the previous times because he had not attempting to chain cast at all, but it seemed that in this realm, his inner mana was momentarily slowed down to a crawl after weaving a spell together and manifesting it.

They had indeed been told that Arzt had limited the realms one could end up in to ones that were supposedly not dangerous, so it was likely that energies and things like magic were either impossible here normally, or incredibly rare and limited, so although Griar could still cast spells due to being an outsider, he was still being affected by the different rules of this realm.

Stepping onto the highest point of the roof, which separated the two tilted sides, he dodged another swing of the tendrils and landed against the chimney once more, or at least, what was left of it as most had been blown away by the tendrils earlier.

Griar grabbed one of the bricks that had come loose because of this, and threw it with all the force he could muster whilst being in a position that was absolutely terrible to chuck anything with strength, hitting the man right in the head with it, his superior physique coming into play as despite the disadvantageous position, the slammed into the man's face with great force, the body was knocked back whilst the two tendrils stuck to the ground tried to bring back into place, but the the town person's and the vile substance were so disconnected that the latter tore in the former's flesh whilst trying to do so.

Running alongside the angled roof as best as he could, Griar rushed the man down just as his body got back into place, and with a swing of the axe he had picked up earlier, swiftly decapitated him, sending the disembodied head flying off the ground, where it hit the side of a stone watering through before falling into the filthy water inside, sinking to the bottom to never be seen again.

Contrary to what Griar would have hoped, losing his head did not cause the body to collapse, instead, the two upper tendrils went absolutely wild, swinging and stabbing repeatedly into every direction, the two lower tendrils beginning to move very slowly, as though testing the ground they were going to reach for, only moving one at a time in the same way as child learning to walk might down.

As the boy narrowly avoided getting slugged in the head by one of them, he quickly realised that although the dark substance was still kicking, that it had become completely blind, the eyes of its host had indeed served a very important purpose.

The tendrils thrashed around the roof, destroying a large portion of it, only for, about thirty seconds following the beheading, suddenly grow still, and turn into black water that simply came splashing down harmlessly, the man's headless corpse falling still against the roof, sliding off the side into the mass of townsfolk, only for ladders to suddenly rise up right after.

Seemed like they had not wanted to get onto the roof whilst the tendrils were swinging blindly, since Griar was fairly certain they had gotten ladders here a little while ago.

Furthermore, some of them were trying to get through him by entering the house, with holes in the roof, they might just be able to climb up to him that way as well, Griar was not interested in fighting them, especially if they were going to all sprout tentacles when he actually defeated them, so after making sure that his inner flow was back to normal, he manifested another burst of wind to soar to another roof, this one higher and featuring a bit of flat ground in the middle.

"Herejak!"

"Matarlok!"

Some farming tools came flying up to him with rather impressive accuracy, but Griar was already on the move, whilst waiting for his ability to cast a spell to come back, he overlooked the surroundings from this vantage point, trying to see if he could spot Flor and the tall woman.

But a distance away, the town seemed to stop, and gave way to a dark forest that was sorely lacking in leaves, but was still nearly impossible to see through due to the sheer amount of intertwined branches and brambles growing through the trees.

What he could see however, was a sort of small tower over in the distance, it seemed to be the only thing of note in the surroundings, and it matched the direction Flor had been going in, so he set his sight on getting there.

Unfortunately, he would have to go there from the ground, and thus, would have to deal with the townspeople…