Lord of Rot

Leech hurried to the top of the wall and looked down. Five Mercenaries, all covered in blood, were in a truly miserable state.

'Weren't they with Baron Ross's legion?'

Leech recognized one of them.

The man had questioned him just yesterday, asking if he was really going to stop the Mercenaries from their three days of pillaging. Leech never expected that after a single night, this aggressor, once so eager to inflict violence, would be reduced to a pitiful soul begging for help.

"My Lord!" The Mercenaries shouted as soon as they saw Leech. "My Lord! Open the gate and let us in!"

Leech looked down and shouted, "What happened to you? Where are Lord Tyler Rose and his men?"

"We ran into a group of the dead last night," a Mercenary yelled back. "We got separated from the main force, and by the time we made it back to camp, the legion had already marched out."

Leech had no intention of opening the gate. "If you just keep heading west, you might catch up to them before nightfall."

"My Lord, it's full of those... things that come back to life out there!" one of the Mercenaries shouted. "We can't get away! Please, let us in! We're dead for sure if we go back into those woods now!"

'Everywhere?'

Leech gazed into the distance, his hawk-like eyes straining to catch any movement, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

'Perhaps the dead sensed the large number of living people here and decided not to approach. Or maybe they're just good at hiding.' Either way, it wasn't good news.

The expressions on the five men outside the gate didn't look fake, but a strange feeling warned Leech that now was not the time to open it.

He hadn't managed to catch any birds last night after dark. Today, he had to catch several to turn into corpse birds he could control for scouting. Otherwise, just listening to everyone around him drone on about the dead rising was starting to make him feel paranoid.

"ARGH!" Just as Leech was debating whether to open the gate, the Mercenary who looked the most severely wounded suddenly began to scream, clawing frantically at his arms and chest.

"What's wrong with you?"

Another Mercenary lunged forward to restrain him, yelling to the others, "Quick, help me!"

Three men pinned the screaming Mercenary down while the last one shouted up at Leech, "My Lord, we need an Alchemist! We need rest!"

"TCH—He's got thorns!" one of the men holding him down cried out, recoiling in pain.

'Thorns?' Leech was startled. 'It can't be that much of a coincidence, can it?'

In the Black King's chaotic memories, he had seen a female corpse sprout thorns that had wounded the Black King.

With one less man holding him down, the Mercenary's struggles intensified. Soon, the other two men recoiled as well, apparently having been pricked by the thorns themselves.

The Mercenary, now fully visible to Leech, was howling in agony.

The flesh where he had been scratching tore open, and vines sprouted out. Some of the vines burrowed into his flesh, while others writhed in the air.

"He really has thorns!"

"H-Help us! Open the gate!" The Mercenaries below pounded frantically on the gate, but the transformation was happening too fast.

Leech didn't know how he could help them, but one thing was certain: he absolutely could not open the gate. If he did, his own men would die.

The thorn-covered Mercenary lunged at his companion, vines wrapping around the man's neck and squeezing.

From the battlements, Leech could even see the iron-thorned vines plunge into the Mercenary's eyes, gouging out a spray of blood. The victim's body convulsed once before going limp and collapsing to the ground.

The vines retracted from the sockets, a shattered eyeball dangling from one of the thorns, dripping with blood.

Whether it was an illusion or not, Leech looked at the dead Mercenary's eyes and thought the sockets looked... wider, as if they had been hollowed out.

Another Mercenary drew his Longsword.

"ARGH!" he roared, thrusting his sword forward and successfully piercing the vine Mercenary's chest.

The vine Mercenary, however, calmly turned its head.

Vines wrapping its body shot out and pierced the attacker, making him howl in pain. The creature then lunged, its savage biting and chewing silencing his screams.

It was a complete slaughter below. Leech watched as the vine-covered creature dispatched the other four Mercenaries one by one.

Wounds that would be fatal to a human were nothing to it.

"My Lord," Lacy Sith said, nervously watching the scene below. He raised his bow, waiting only for Leech's command to eliminate the monster.

Even for a Transcendent, the sight of such a monster elicited a primal fear.

"Not yet!" he signaled to his man, telling him to hold his fire.

'This is a perfect opportunity to study this 'resurrection of the dead.' I can't just kill it outright.'

'Could this all be happening because the Black King fed his wife a flower? Is that what turned all of Iron Valley into this?'

He had too little information to go on, so all he could do was speculate.

When the battle was over, only the vine Mercenary was left standing.

The chaotic fight had cost it an arm and a leg, but the creature seemed to be in good condition. The severed stumps hardly bled, as if its blood had already dried up.

Leech waited for a while. He noticed that the vine creature, after killing the four Mercenaries, didn't leave. It didn't continue to gnaw on the bodies of its former comrades, either. It just stood at the gate, motionless.

'It doesn't kill to eat, nor out of hunger. So why does it kill?' Leech found it very strange. The creature's actions seemed driven by some instinct or desire, yet they didn't align with any obvious biological need.

'And it's just standing there at the gate, as if something inside the castle is drawing it in.'

Its previous behavior could be described as "zombie-like." But now, after killing everyone, it wasn't leaving. Instead, it just stood there facing the castle, which Leech found perplexing.

"Have someone keep an eye on it," Leech said to Lacy. "Notify me immediately of any change."

"Yes, My Lord!"

Leech left the wall, grabbing a bow and a few arrows on his way.

He went to a large open area in the castle.

It was already March. As the weather in Iron Valley warmed, birds had begun to reappear.

Holding the bow in his left hand, he drew an arrow with his right.

He took a moment to aim, nocked the arrow, and drew the bowstring.

He released his grip.

THWIP! The air whistled.

The arrow flew as if it had eyes of its own, instantly striking the bird and pinning it to the ground. It struggled for a few moments, then went still.

Leech's archery wasn't bad, it just wasn't as brilliant as his Swordsmanship, throwing, riding, or hand-to-hand combat skills.

Using this method, Leech quickly collected five birds. He had the Necromancer Ah Yamei take the carcasses back, fill them with gold, and craft them into undead. Tonight, five corpse birds would be ready to help him scout all of Iron Valley.

"My Lord!" A Soldier came running up, panting heavily from the exertion.

"What is it?" Leech asked. "Why the panic? Did something happen?"

The Soldier nodded. "Those men below the wall... they're all alive again! They're alive!"

"What!"

Leech raced back to the top of the wall.

Sure enough, five figures were milling about aimlessly below. They couldn't get through the main gate, but they showed no sign of leaving.

Each figure was entwined with thorny vines.

'I wasn't gone for long.'

In that short time, the four Mercenary corpses had sprouted vines and, just like the first one, risen from the dead.

'Incredibly fast,' Leech thought. 'They're like a magical version of zombies. The infection rate is terrifyingly fast.'

Leech raised the bow in his hand, nocked an arrow, and aimed.

He drew the bowstring into a full arc and let go.

THWACK!

The arrow struck one of the vine creatures squarely in the head.

It barely reacted. With the arrow sticking out of its head, it continued to make guttural moans.

"Musket!" Leech ordered, turning his head.

A Soldier handed his musket to Leech, along with a powder pouch and a lead ball.

He loaded the powder and rammed the ball down the barrel.

He aimed briefly. The instant he pulled the trigger, Leech softly chanted a Spell: "Ignite!"

The gunpowder seemed to be guided by some force, its combustion focused in a specific direction within the barrel instead of exploding randomly.

BANG! The musket roared.

The musket held firm in Leech's hands; the recoil from the ignited powder failed to move it even an inch.

At the exact moment of the loud report, the skull of the vine creature—the one that had been unfazed by an arrow to the head—was instantly blown apart in a spray of blood and gore.

THUD. The corpse collapsed.

Leech watched the fallen vine creature and thought, 'So an arrow isn't enough, but a musket shot is. It dies if its head is destroyed. In that respect, they're weaker than standard undead or Corpse Ghosts. Their intelligence is also clearly lacking, which means no one is controlling them... at least, not yet.'

Other than their powerful and fast-acting infection, they didn't seem to have any other obvious strengths.

And the infection seems to spread only through bites. That works fine against lightly armored Mercenaries, but it would be useless against Soldiers in full plate. No matter how contagious it is, you can't bite through steel.

At this level, Leech's Porcupine Soldiers could slaughter them with ease.

Leech's shot had drawn the attention of the four remaining vine creatures. They tilted their heads up toward him on the battlements, abandoning the gate and beginning to scramble up the wall, using both hands and feet.

'They're looking this way, even without eyes?'

Leech stared intently and noticed a small flower on each of them. One grew from a throat, another from an ear. They looked just like the two flowers he'd seen blooming from the lady's eye sockets in the Black King's memory.

With their clumsy, uncoordinated limbs, there was no way they could scale the towering walls.

They would climb, then fall.

The creatures didn't seem to learn. They'd fall, get back up, and try again. Fall, and try again.

'They're just creatures of instinct. But why do they love to kill, but not to eat?'

As he mulled it over, Leech took out another iron ball, reloaded the musket, and took aim.

He pulled the trigger.

BANG!

Another deafening roar, and another vine creature's head exploded.

This was a normal shot, without the aid of Magic. The bullet strayed slightly, but because Leech kept the muzzle steady, it was still a precise hit.

The corpse fell.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

He took them down one by one, until all the resurrected corpses lay still on the ground once more.

Once the bodies fell, the vines on them went limp.

"Keep a watch on them," Leech said, handing the musket back to the Soldier behind him. "If these corpses stir again, or if any more of these things show up, inform me at once."

"Yes, sir!"

This was an excellent opportunity to study the characteristics of these "risen dead." The walls were high enough that he could investigate them safely.

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