The Paladin in the Abyss

"Another original spell?" Alamir's face was full of surprise, "This is no small achievement…"

"After copying a thousand spell scrolls, one develops a bit of their own understanding of magic," the Scholar said with a shy smile and then began to rub his eyes, "To share a vision, you need a special casting material... Aha! This is it—a caster's own eyelash!"

"Good thing it's not an eyeball," Bruto muttered to Lancelot, "otherwise that'd be really horrifying."

"The higher the cost, the stronger the effect of the magic, but this spell doesn't need such an exaggerated catalyst…"

Kalalin pulled out a noticeably thicker scroll, pressed a small eyelash from his thumb onto the red circle in the center of the scroll, then uttered a strange syllable. This caused the scroll's mysterious arcane runes to all light up and form a dark green halo in the air, linking everyone's heads together.

Lancelot immediately experienced something amazing. It was as if an extra window had appeared in his mind, showing the view from Kalalin's eyes. This didn't get mixed up with his own vision because he had to concentrate to see clearly through the "window," and if his attention drifted even slightly, the image would blur, like a fleeting thought that passes through the mind when daydreaming.

"I suggest everyone sit down first. Experiencing the Arcane Eye for the first time can be dizzying..." Kalalin cast another spell, summoning a floating transparent eyeball in mid-air. After making sure everyone was seated firmly on the ground, he was the last to sit down and then closed his own eyes.

The scene in everyone's minds immediately changed, switching to the perspective of the magic eyeball. The eyeball gently floated in the air, moving the view constantly, and as Kalalin had warned, this was indeed a bit uncomfortable for their bodies firmly seated on the ground. To help them adjust, the Scholar maneuvered the eyeball to slowly fly around the cave twice, so his companions could get used to the new vantage point.

"Is everyone alright?" Kalalin's somewhat detached voice echoed in everyone's ears, "If you really feel uncomfortable, don't force it, just shift your attention away... The spell has a limited duration, so let's get going."

The scene in everyone's minds started flying out of the cave, entering the crevice's interior. Something suddenly swept past in front of them, and the view moved downwards, revealing that it was a Frost Giant corpse falling from the sky, plunging into the dense fog at the bottom of the valley and tearing a small hole in it.

The fog closed up almost instantly again, but in that brief moment, everyone saw the valley floor teeming with undead giants. Facing the body hurtling down from above, they all stood motionless, and two unlucky ones were silently knocked to the ground.

"Seems like the battle has started up there again," Kalalin's voice rose once more, "With a fresh corpse, we can observe how it gets transformed…"

The perspective kept descending, sinking into that thick fog. Just like what Bruto had joked about before, everything looked the same up, down, left, and right in the fog, and through the Arcane Eye, there were no references like gravity or sound. As observers, they couldn't even be sure if they were still moving, and all they could do was wait patiently for Kalalin to fly out of the fog zone.

After about half a minute, the fog in front of them suddenly dispersed, and the scene at the bottom of the valley became clearly visible to everyone. Looking around, there were standing Frost Giant corpses everywhere, and the low temperatures had spared their flesh from rotting. However, severe dehydration had made these dead giants look especially gaunt, their skin cracked like tree bark, exposing the dried muscle tissue beneath.

"By Moradin's beard, that's the ugliest giant I've ever seen, even uglier than those degenerate giants living underground!" Bruto's voice rang out in surprise, "How many zombie giants are there exactly? Did they all die attacking Gjollgard Fortress?"

"There are more than three thousand within our line of sight. Who knows how many more are out there." As a General who had led troops before, Lancelot was very sensitive to numbers, "They just fell in this meaningless escalation tactic... Hmm? What are those zombies doing?"

Just then, the recently fallen body beside them, two of the giant zombies' eyes suddenly lit up with a faint blue glow. They seemed to have received some command, one lifted the new corpse under the armpit, while the other grabbed the corpse's feet, and they wobbled off toward the distance.

"Is this... someone controlling those two zombies?" The Dwarf was somewhat puzzled by the sight, "Where are they taking the body?"

"It might not be someone controlling them, it could also be instructions set in advance by the Summoner." The Elf Priest calmly responded, "I guess they are taking the body to a place where it can be turned into undead. Let's follow; it saves us the effort of searching."

Everyone agreed with the suggestion, so Kalalin maneuvered the arcane eye to float behind them at a moderate distance. The rest of the giant zombies still stood there dumbfounded, not resisting even when knocked over by the two glowing-eyed corpse carriers, just awkwardly standing up again, a scene so eerie it made one's scalp tingle.

"Even if there is a passage leading to that fortress, would these zombies really attack?" Reap, who had been silent, suddenly spoke, "Such a massive undead legion couldn't have been newly formed, but there's been no whisper of their existence for such a long time, could it be they were given instructions to stay put and wait when they were reawakened by their creator?"

"That's a possibility, if we find..."

The Elf Priest hadn't finished his thought when another Frost Giant fell into the chasm above. Its body, banging against the mountain walls on the way down, still wasn't dead upon landing and struggled to stand up.

The surrounding giant zombies suddenly fell silent in an eerie stillness. Although they had also just been standing there, they would occasionally shift their weight or scratch their bodies unconsciously, but now they suddenly all froze as though they had turned into ice sculptures.

"Ah, this is bad," Alamir gasped, "the scene that follows might be a bit bloody..."

As he spoke, all the undead giants suddenly sprang into action again, like nighttime insects drawn to light or sharks smelling blood, they furiously pounced on the still-breathing Frost Giant, quickly drowning it, even forming a small mound of corpses. In less than the time of ten heartbeats, the mound ceased moving, the zombies slowly dispersed, and all that remained on the ground was a dark red pool of blood that had already coalesced.

"Alright, I have no more questions," the Werewolf's tone still a bit shaken, "Wait, what about those two that were carrying the body?"

"Kalalin, turn the perspective to the right." Lancelot's steady voice rang out, "I think we've found the source of the transformation..."