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1:00 PM.
Field led the slave guards into the gray fog.
Time had a way of dissolving in there.
Everything stayed the same dull, murky gray, hour after hour.
Only at night did it truly change, dropping into a darkness so complete you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
Ashina rode her Dragon-seed Wolf at the head of the formation, clearing the path.
A Chosen One’s eyes seemed to be built differently, picking out detail in this world that no one else could manage.
Behind her came Field and his newly assembled slave guard unit, pressing forward at a crawl through a forest choked with thorns and fleshy, reaching tendrils.
“According to the map, we should reach Rum Village soon.
It used to supply the city with most of its vegetables.”
“All I see now is corruption.” Ashina raised a hand to shade her eyes and strained to look ahead.
“Mm.
Watch our right front — seven Rotten Corpses closing in.
I think they used to be the villagers.”
“Let the new men get some practice.”
Ashina looked perfectly relaxed.
Field read that as confirmation: these were small fry, exactly right for blooding the recruits.
The new men heard him and gulped, nearly in unison.
Every instinct they had told them to run.
But the Lord was standing right behind them, so they didn’t move a muscle.
They thought of the eggs.
Smooth, rich, impossible eggs.
Many of these slaves had never tasted one in their entire lives.
At noon, when the eggs were handed out, half of them hadn’t even bothered to chew, just swallowed them whole in a desperate rush.
Several people choked.
It didn’t matter.
The happiness was real.
For the chance to feel that again, they’d take the risk.
“ROAR.”
A figure burst from the gray fog.
A woman, or what had been one, naked, her shriveled chest sagging to her stomach, her whole body glazed with slime.
She looked like something dug out of an ancient tomb.
The veteran guards moved without hesitation, leveling their long halberds and thrusting from every angle, pinning the Rotten Corpse in place.
“All right, stab through the head, or drive it into the chest cavity a few times,” Lynx said, matter-of-fact.
“Steady hands.
Don’t throw your whole body into it.” He grabbed the nearest new recruit by the collar, the man’s legs had already turned to water, and dragged him directly in front of the Rotten Corpse.
The recruit lifted his halberd.
Lowered it.
Lifted it again.
Couldn’t do it.
The Rotten Corpse hissed and snapped at him, and he wet himself.
“It’s a d-demon,” he managed, teeth knocking together.
Field had watched enough zombie films in his past life.
These men hadn’t.
“Do it.” Field’s voice cracked like a whip.
“Stop cowering like a frightened quail.” Fear spread.
He couldn’t let it take root.
If they started seeing Rotten Corpses as demons instead of things that could be killed, he’d lose them.
“Even if it is a demon — I’m here.
A Chosen One is here.
What exactly are you scared of?
We’ll kill a demon in front of you if we have to!”
SPLURT!
The scolding worked.
The soldier thrust forward with his eyes screwed shut, nearly stumbled into the corpse’s arms, and drove the blade somewhere in the general vicinity of its chest.
Shaky, ugly, barely counts, but it was the first step.
Then his legs gave out entirely and he sat down hard in the dirt.
“See?” Field pointed at the body and snapped his fingers.
“No curse.
No problem.
Keep your distance and these things are easier than hunting a stupid roe deer.”
The other six Rotten Corpses shambled in.
With a first example set, the remaining recruits found their nerve, one after another, and joined the fight.
They finished the batch without breaking a sweat.
Field led everyone forward, and they reached the outskirts of Rum Village shortly after.
“What is going on with these things?”
He stared at his mini-map.
The skull markers were trembling.
Actually trembling, vibrating against each other in little clusters.
Were they…
dancing?
“Mm.” Ashina’s eyes slid away from his.
A flush had crept across her white face from nowhere.
“Lord, I can clear Rum Village on my own.
It’s dangerous up ahead.
You should let me go.”
She was fidgeting.
Ashina never fidgeted.
Field’s curiosity lit up immediately.
What had she seen?
“We’ll all go look,” he said, rubbing his chin.
“Mm.
Uh….Fine,” she said, and found something very interesting to look at in the opposite direction.
The moment Field saw what was in the farmland ahead, he wished he’d listened to her.
A mass of deformed Rotten Corpses, spread across the fields outside the village, were going through the motions of reproduction.
Enthusiastically.
In full view.
The scene was absolute chaos.
Their relevant equipment had rotted away entirely.
It didn’t seem to be stopping them.
Field pressed his hand over his face. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Did I transmigrate into an adult game?
That explained why the female Rotten Corpse earlier hadn’t been wearing anything.
The soldiers took one look and erupted.
Shouting, laughing, elbowing each other.
Whatever oppressive weight had been sitting on the group evaporated on the spot.
“BOOM.”
Ashina had heard enough.
She wheeled her Dragon-seed Wolf forward and gave the command.
Blue fire, scorching, almost beautiful, poured across the farmland in a twisting wave and swallowed the figures whole.
The crackling of bones was constant and loud.
When the flames pulled back, nothing remained but ash.
Several Rotten Corpses at the fringes, still holding a rough human shape, screamed and charged from the rear.
Iron Hammer responded instantly.
His broad frame tilted back, loading like a drawn bow, and the moment the closest one reached him, he drove his shield into it.
The corpse flipped.
He stepped onto it without slowing, and the chest cavity caved in under his boot.
It stopped moving.
The guards surged forward, not about to be left out.
Each of these shambling wrecks was a walking silver coin.
Long halberds stabbed in every direction.
Unarmored, the Rotten Corpses fell in a line.
“Push through the village together.
Stay inside the fog-dispelling lamp’s range.” Field’s hands were itching, he genuinely wanted a piece of this, but he was the one holding the lamp, and the lamp mattered more than his fun.
One after another, SPLURT SPLURT SPLURT, they dropped into spreading pools of dark blood.
The guards advanced in a steady line.
Field noticed it almost without realizing, the footsteps around him were locking into sync, individual shuffling merging into a single rhythmic thunder.
A natural drumbeat.
Something about it straightened spines.
The recruits who had been lagging and hesitating felt it too, and before long they were pressing forward with the rest, stabbing when the veterans stabbed, stepping when the veterans stepped.
Most of Rum Village’s Rotten Corpses were dead within minutes.
Bodies everywhere, the stench absolutely vile.
Field walked to the center of the village.
There had once been a well here; now it was a collapsed heap of stone.
He set the fog-dispelling lamp on top of the rubble and called a rest.
Barely five minutes later, his mini-map lit up.
Red skull markers flooded the edges, then kept coming.
“Watch out!” Field was already reading the numbers, and the numbers were bad.
“More monsters incoming — a lot of them!” He opened his mouth to call the retreat, but the enemy was already moving faster than he’d expected.
Faster than a horse at a trot.
“My Lord, run!
I can see,!” The guard on watch came sprinting in from the perimeter, got three words out, and Field cut him off.
Leaving now meant marching straight into them in the open.
That wasn’t a retreat, that was a kill zone.
They needed walls.
They needed a chokepoint.
Right now.
➤ Next: Crisis Averted, Discovery of Strange Little Bok Choy