Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Carefully counting the amount of people moving around, Griar, if he had not missed any, was seeing twenty-one townspeople stumbling around and trying to find a way to get to him, on the roof that he occupied, they had not good way of climbing up to him with anything other than ladders, but as unfortunately for them, the youth was not going to remain passive until they arrived up there, everytime a ladder was put in place, he would kick it down, preferably after waiting for someone to climb partway, which resulted in several of the people to end up falling to their death.

Five of them, to be precise, before they all entered a sort of dazed state, not knowing what to do to get to the so-called 'Herejak'.

And surprisingly, Griar also learned from that, that not all of them would sprout dark tendrils when severely damage, as none of the five had done so, three of them died on impact, with one ending up split in half after landing on a protruding rock, whilst the other two survived the fall, but were unable to stand back up, simply laying paralysed in the mud.

This left sixteen townspeople, who remained in place for several minutes before suddenly all beginning to move again, all of them seemed to simply resume the infective ladder strategy, but one, a middle-aged woman from the looks of it, just joined both fists together, and began to repeatedly strike herself in the chest, this spectacle made Griar greatly unnerved as the self-harm eventually caused her to cough blood, or rather, to cough that black substances out.

Once a great deal of the foul liquid was spewed out, she just arched backwards, spreading both arms wide as though awaiting a blessing from the heavens, and perhaps, it is exactly what happened from her perspective, as large, lengthy tendril suddenly manifested from within her, crawling up her throat and out of her mouth, the abnormal limb so awfully thick that it dislocated her jaw and split her cheeks.

The woman just felt to her knees, seemingly dead as the tendrils continued to extend upward, reaching up to a higher elevation that Griar, much like the previous tendrils after their host's head had been removed, this one was attacking blindly, the horrifying limb was the way of its own host's eyes and the woman could barely even see what was atop the roof to begin with.

But it really didn't matter, as the point was not to precisely strike down the youth, but to flail about madly and tear the roof or entire house apart to bring him down where the other town folks would be able to get a hold of him and dismember his body to join the bonfire.

Griar was unwilling to waste a spell on trying to cut down the tendril, as if he failed, he would have to wait before using another, and thus potentially fall prey to the dark growth, the abomination swung horizontally, sweeping through the roof and turning wood to splinters.

But the young man was already out of here, rather than a burst of wind this time, he manifested a spell that controlled winds around him, basically making him float down slowly, the house he had been standing upon was near the edge of the town, and apart from the house that he had come from, there were no other directly nearby.

With the tendrils being completely blind and not having a clue that its target was long gone, it only left fifteen townspeople to deal with, most of which had already thrown their weapons in a useless attempt to wound him.

So landing upon the ground, he turned back to look at the approaching mass, he breathed in and out carefully.

'What was it that Lizi would say?' his eldest sister had lots of words of wisdom, which she had probably come up with herself and chosen to share based on how cool they sounded, she was the eldest sibling after all, she needed to stay the coolest one in the eyes of her younger sisters and brother.

If he remembered correctly, there was : 'When fighting people who want to kill, and have the ability to kill, you have no business pulling your punches' and also : 'Each individual attack needs to be delivered with the intent to kill'

Lizi had only ever fought some wild animals, the rest was just sparring with Aunty Antieeld, so the quality of her words could be doubted, but Griar could not really see anything wrong with them, in fact, he had always taken Lizi's bits of wisdom very seriously.

Of course, Louizon would have just said to blow up whatever was the problem with maximum firepower, Alize never would have even gotten into such a situation, as the townspeople would have just been instantly charmed by her mere presence.

Whilst Zaya and Zally would have a much easier time just restraining all of these people, especially if they casted the spell to do so together.

Griar smiled slightly, maybe he should have asked one of his older sisters to come with him, but how lame would he have looked in front of Flor after asking big sister to help him in saving the girl he liked?

The simple thought of it was dreadful, and the ways in which he could have been made fun of seemed unlimited.

'I am thinking about silly stuff…' his gaze sharpened, a man wearing a flat cap and thick mustache moved away of the group, running faster than the rest, wielding a hatchet, the motion of his attack was greatly predictable, but of course, these were but people living in a town, they were not warriors.

With a swing of his axe, Griar severed the man's arm, took hold of the hatchet and threw it directly in the face of a woman.

He moved behind the man he had just disarmed in two different ways, hooked his throat using the axe, and with a spinning motion, threw him into the crowd whilst simultaneously cutting his throat.

None of the two erupted with tendrils, so that left only thirteen to deal with.

He would not consider himself a great fighter or martial artist, but those people were certainly far worse than him, a man wearing an ascot cap without any weapons lunged at him, only for Griar to dodge, and without the youth even counting on it, another woman attacked with with a sickle stabbing the man with the cap straight in the neck, killing him on the spot.

Indeed, whenever they felt like they could reach the Herejak, they would immediately go for it without a second thought, resulting in them getting in each other's way, or even taking one another out like just now.

This left only twelve…