6: Exiled Lord — Chapter 6 – Rotten Corpses!
The Locals Are Overly Enthusiastic 6: Exiled Lord — Chapter 6 – Rotten Corpses!
Your votes keep this climbing.
Thanks!
Since the original host had laid the groundwork for social connections, Field might well reap some benefit from it down the line.
“Haha, Baron Bull and his son are famously — uh, forgive me, I’ve said too much.” Kao snapped his mouth shut.
Badmouthing one noble to another was the fastest way to shorten your lifespan, even if the man in front of you was notorious for being a spineless coward.
Not that Kao had any room to talk.
Back in the day, he’d stuck his nose where it didn’t belong, walked in on a noble mid-affair, and spent the rest of his career getting exiled to the Northern Territory for it.
Field wanted to press for more, but his attention snapped to the mini-map in his mind.
A cluster of red skull icons had just appeared, moving fast, straight toward his position.
“Huh.
Someone come to welcome us?” His mouth said the words, but Field was no fool.
Skull icons were never good news.
He immediately sent the manservant to fetch Knight Connor.
“Haha!
If I may be blunt, the Baron is simply being paranoid!” Connor laughed out loud when the manservant relayed the message, his face full of contempt.
“This is behind the walls of Kashan Fortress, the sturdiest link in the Empire’s entire defense line.
If there’s danger here, I will personally eat every pile of dung my warhorse drops!” In Connor’s mind, Field had already been stamped with a label: Desperate man’s final flailing.
“Tell your Baron that the journey to Nightfall Domain is under the joint supervision of law and family.
There will be no last-minute retreating.
That is not befitting of a noble’s character.” The manservant wilted under Connor’s aggressive lecture and trudged back to report.
Field responded with a flat “Oh,” and ordered the slaves to slow down.
Connor, still on horseback, found himself drifting to the front of the column.
“Coward,” Connor muttered under his breath.
“I’ll never understand how the Count sired something so spineless.” But his smug expression didn’t last long.
Because Field had just run into the “locals” who were so eager to welcome them.
“GRAAAGH!” “There they are.” Field chuckled.
“Looks like someone’s having horse dung for dinner tonight.” Amid a chorus of panicked screams, Field pushed past the slaves blocking his view.
What he saw: pairs of gray-white eyeballs in rotting sockets.
Corpse Monsters dressed in peasant rags, sprinting madly toward them.
A dozen or so normal humans were fleeing ahead of the horde, running for their lives.
Even at a hundred meters, the bone-chilling malice and the stench of decay hit like a wall.
Rotten Corpses.
Products of the Northern Province.
“What in the, we haven’t even reached the Northern Territory yet!
How are there monsters?!” Cavalry Captain Connor spat on the ground and cursed his luck.
He’d been this close to wrapping up his assignment cleanly.
Knights, prepare for battle!” What made it worse was that he’d just mocked Field not two minutes ago.
That burned.
Connor raised his lance, thoroughly unwilling.
But if he failed to perform his duty, he’d be cut off from the upper class forever.
Twenty cavalrymen formed a line, spurred their horses up the rise on the right flank, and then used the downhill momentum to launch their charge, screaming straight into the corpse horde.
Meanwhile, Field’s chest tightened.
He stared at the mass of flailing, lurching bodies and turned to shout at the slaves behind him: “Link the wooden carts together!
Any man with guts, grab a farm tool and fight with me!
I’ll reward performance!” The slaves didn’t move.
They just cowered behind the wagons, trembling, or with their eyes squeezed shut in prayer.
“Don’t count on those useless wretches.” The butler’s legs were shaking so hard it looked like someone had stuffed electric motors inside them.
He was seconds away from wetting himself.
He grabbed Field’s robe with both hands and pleaded in a quavering voice: “My lord, we must flee for our lives, er, execute a strategic retreat, I mean.
No need to worry about these mud-legged peasants.
If they die, we can just buy more.” Field pried his hands off and frowned.
“If this rattles you so badly, you might want to reconsider the Northern Province altogether.” As if I had a choice!
The Count personally picked me by name!
Butler Kao wanted to ascend to heaven on the spot.
His face went red, then crimson, then a mottled shade of humiliated purple.
“Huh?
Enemies?” Ashina dropped down from the wagon.
Days of rest had done her well, the gaunt, hollow look was gone.
Where flesh was meant to grow, it had grown without hesitation, fair and soft.
If not for the slave mark on her skin and the maid uniform, she could have passed for a noble’s daughter.
“My lord, I — I’ll do my best to protect you!” She raised her tiny fists and planted herself in front of Field, trembling head to toe, shivering like a kitten caught in a storm.
“That won’t be necessary.” Field watched her wolf ears flatten back into perfect airplane ears from sheer nerves, and didn’t know whether to laugh or feel touched.
He settled on both.
The meat and bread hadn’t been wasted after all.
Unlike certain ungrateful individuals who ate his food and still resented him for it.
“Help us!” The peasants at the front of the fleeing group spotted the convoy and threw themselves toward it, wailing for their mothers and fathers.
The corpse horde converged behind them.
“FOR GLORY!” Connor’s cavalry closed the distance and launched.
Three-meter lances thrust forward at full extension, aimed straight at the lurching mass of dead.
SQUELCH.
SQUELCH.
SQUELCH.
Seven or eight Zombies were skewered clean through and sent flying like burst sacks of grain, crashing to the earth in heaps.
That was only the opener.
After the lance charge, the cavalry wheeled and came back with chain hammers and sabers, slashing from horseback in rapid arcs.
Blood sprayed in bursts.
Rotten Corpses dropped like cut wheat.
Some were bowled over by the warhorses, their chest cavities crushed flat under iron hooves.
It wasn’t a battle.
It was a slaughter.
The corpses that slipped through the cavalry crashed straight into Field’s wagon barricade.
Whatever had once passed for brains inside their skulls was purely decorative now, they had no concept of tactics.
Several of them began biting and clawing at the wooden carts.
“MOMMY!” The slaves shoved each other in panic, trapped within the wagon circle, packed too tightly to escape.
The butler was in no better shape.
His waterworks gave out entirely.
His pants were soaked.
“Damn it all.
Bunch of cowards.” Field was scared too, he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
But it wasn’t quite as bad as the others.
He’d spent years before his transmigration reading apocalypse fiction and watching zombie movies.
Some things left a mark on you.
Guess I’m handling this myself.
He had not a single soldier under his command.
He watched the Rotten Corpses, agile, fearless, utterly indifferent to death, and saw that their movements were stupid and predictable.
Solvable.
This body had at least been taught some basic combat techniques.
He waited.
The moment a Rotten Corpse threw itself against one of the carts and got tangled up in the push, Field drove his longsword into its neck with a sharp shout.
Then he wrenched the blade sideways, hard.
The head flopped down against the corpse’s chest like a branch snapped by lightning, limp and pathetic.
The stench hit him immediately.
Rot and fermented filth, flooding his nose without mercy.
“Ugh—” He nearly vomited.
His stomach clenched and his eyes watered.
But beneath the revulsion, something else stirred, faint and undeniable.
Excitement.
Deep in his soul, Field carried the blood of someone who had been born for this.
➤ Next: Hitting a Wall!
No One at the Empire’s Strongest Defense Line