Among the countless personnel in the police, only elites who had passed a strict examination could become secret police officers.
Perhaps because of that, the treatment they received from the state was far better than that of other civil servants, and when they completed a mission handed down from above, they received a certain performance bonus.
Since Rud had begun working as a secret police officer, he had already caught two dark mages.
There was still a long time until payday, but if he succeeded in this mission, he would be able to receive even more money.
SHAAAAAA……
It was late afternoon, and heavy rain was pouring down.
Rud wrapped himself beneath an umbrella and silently walked along a mountain path covered in thick smoke.
Each time he took a step, the dirt ground soaked by the heavy rain squelched unpleasantly beneath his feet.
It felt like walking through a swamp. The distinctive scent of the mountain, rising as the grass grew wet, hung thickly in the air.
The location written on the photograph had to be somewhere near here.
Rud stepped without hesitation through the rainwater pooled on the paved road and silently climbed the hill. When he reached flat ground, he slightly lifted the umbrella he was holding above his line of sight.
“Is this the place?”
A small village, horribly destroyed, greeted Rud.
As if to prove plainly that this had been the site of a massacre, most of the houses made of concrete had large holes punched through them.
In the places where people had lived, rainwater falling from the sky had gathered, leaving everything limply soaked, and the floor once stained with blood had turned dark, forming a pattern.
dark rain clouds covered the sky.
Rud entered the village, where the touch of human hands had vanished, and examined the scene in greater detail.
Originally, there had been no need for him to come here.
It was a tragedy that had occurred a week ago. Any evidence left behind would already have disappeared.
Even so, there was a clear reason Rud had deliberately come to the village, even while being soaked by the rain.
“Did they not say Shuran could use levitation magic?”
The deeper he examined the village, the more his doubts grew.
The police officer investigating Shuran had died after being shot.
Because of that, Rud had thought this place would be similar, but judging from the destroyed houses, they all looked as though they had been broken apart by powerful firepower.
Some houses even had holes large enough for a grown man to enter easily.
Rud entered an ownerless house through one of the holes.
Inside the kitchen, where the dining table and dishes had shattered into a mess, a bloodstained tablecloth caught his eye.
But its condition was strange.
Rud lifted the tablecloth with a hand covered in a dark glove and examined it closely.
It was damp.
Since it was raining now, that might have seemed natural, but this looked as though it had been wet since far earlier than that.
The bloodstain that had spread darkly through the water was proof of it.
Rud remembered that not a single drop of rain had fallen in the past two weeks.
“Can he use water-attribute magic too?”
Shuran was a dark mage who had lived for several hundred years.
Because Rud knew he would never be an easy opponent, prior investigation was practically essential.
Yet now that he had come to the scene himself, he was only falling into deeper doubt.
Water-attribute magic did not belong to dark magic. Moreover, the people capable of using it were quite rare.
Rud examined the inside of the house a little more, but he found no particular traces. Everything had been soaked by the rain and turned into useless rubbish.
‘What about the other places?’
Thinking he needed to investigate the village further, Rud was about to leave the house when—
Grrrrrrk……!
An unidentified, grotesque sound came from outside.
Rud’s body stiffened. The sound continued.
He could feel no lifespan.
It did not seem as though a human or a monster had appeared. Then what in the world was the source of this sound?
He had an ominous feeling.
Rud awakened the senses throughout his entire body and did not move even a finger.
At that moment,
BOOOOM!!!
Something unidentified suddenly smashed violently through the wall of the building and came inside without warning.
A thunderous roar that threatened to burst his eardrums shook his head. Rud stared blankly at the being that had entered, scattering a cloud of dust.
“That is……”
Its skin was rotting and had turned a dark gray.
The flesh underneath was fully visible, and its unfocused eyes looked like those of a vicious beast that followed only instinct.
The clothes torn like rags were smeared with dirt. The stench of a rotting corpse rose from its body, and filthy drool dripped from its mouth.
It was certainly human.
However, it was a dead human.
Rud’s eyes settled coldly. The nameless dead human let out a monstrous cry and glared fiercely at him.
“Grrrraaaah……!”
“Was it set to react when someone came to the village?”
It was a spell any dark mage would know.
Heros.
It was one of the worst forms of dark magic, reviving the dead and making them fight in the caster’s place.
Moreover, the opponent seemed to be an ordinary person with nothing particularly special about him. Under normal circumstances, he should not have had enough monstrous strength to destroy a wall.
“How many layers of dark magic did he smear onto a corpse?”
It was vile.
It was an act that went beyond insulting the dead.
‘At the very least, sending you off without pain would be the proper respect to show you.’
As if Rud’s short, breathy sigh were a signal, the zombie raised its fist and kicked hard off the ground.
“Urrrrraaaaah―!!”
The distance closed in an instant.
Rud calmly watched the zombie’s movements, then drove a shockwave into the zombie as it openly exposed a gap.
FLASH! BOOOOM!!
The zombie’s body flew away as though it had been struck, smashing through the wall of the house and soaring into the distance.
Rud slowly approached the zombie, which had collapsed on the ground.
He had intended to release the dark magic cast on it, but he felt countless gazes. When he turned to the side, he saw corpses that looked like villagers glaring fiercely at him.
Their ages varied.
There were mummified corpses whose skin had shriveled dry, as well as a small child who looked no more than five years old.
It seemed all of them had been summoned from the graves near the village. The dirt clinging to their bodies proved it.
“It seems he was thoroughly prepared.”
When Rud took his stance, the zombies seemed to take it as a signal to attack and rushed at him all at once.
“Grrrraaaah―!”
“Graaaaaah!”
Would this be what the world looked like if a zombie apocalypse broke out?
Rud forcibly ignored the pity rising from deep within his chest and sharply thrust out his arm. A pure-white light radiated from the ground and caused a great explosion.
BOOOOOM!!!
The zombies caught directly in the explosion were launched into the air and fell to the ground.
The sound of the rain grew even stronger. Rud walked confidently toward the zombies that had collapsed helplessly.
“Grrrraaaah……!”
“Stay still.”
THUD.
Rud stepped on the zombie’s hand with his foot and placed his hand on its forehead.
Now that he was close, a sharp, terrible stench pierced his nose. Rud frowned, then closed his eyes and focused.
There were only two methods needed to undo Heros.
One of them was to undo the ring placed on the brain.
It would be an extremely delicate procedure.
This was already a dead person.
It would not matter if he handled the corpse roughly, but if he accidentally touched another part of the brain tissue, in the worst case, he could turn it into a vegetative body.
Moreover, a skilled dark mage would set up layers upon layers of security when casting a spell.
If Heros was dispelled, the corpse might explode or its appearance might change, so he had to be cautious to the utmost degree.
‘Fortunately, it does not seem there are any special mechanisms here.’
He safely released the ring.
Then the zombie, which had been twitching and letting out strange groans, went as still as a dead mouse.
Rud hurriedly released the dark magic on the other zombies as well.
There were about twenty left.
Fortunately, it seemed no particular mechanisms had been set, and just as he began to let his guard down,
The moment he lightly touched the ring placed on the brain, a click sounded at his fingertip. A chilling sensation, like some unknown button had been pressed, traveled across his skin.
“……!!”
His body moved before his mind could think.
Rud instinctively sensed a threat to his life and hurriedly threw himself aside. The corpse gave off searing heat and exploded.
KABOOOM!!
Explosion magic had been planted in the ring.
A terrifying chill ran over Rud’s entire body. If he had realized it even a little later, his limbs would have been torn to pieces by now.
“Damn it…… Did he deliberately hide it like a land mine?”
His heart pounded.
Rud wiped the mud from his mouth with his sleeve and steadied his ragged breathing.
The umbrella he had been holding lay on the ground. Rud noticed it belatedly and was about to pick it up again when—
“Wh-who are you?”
A boy around ten years old, who seemed to have come down from the mountain, was aiming a kitchen knife at him.
The short blade trembled violently. Since a suspicious person was touching the corpses, the boy was shaking with fear.
“Get away from those people right now. We definitely buried them all, so why did they come out again? Did you dig them up? Are you a dark mage?!”
There were occasional cases where dark mages stole corpses.
Rud raised the hand that had been reaching for the umbrella and obediently signaled his surrender.
“Friend, calm down first and put that down. I am someone who came here to investigate.”
“Liar! There was definitely a loud noise earlier. You did that, did you not? Why did you do it?! Are you trying to attack the village again?!”
“It is true that I did that. But I was only trying to undo the dark magic cast on these corpses.”
“Do you think I am going to believe tha……?!”
The boy’s words cut off unnaturally.
One of the fallen corpses rose on its own and stood upright. Seeing it, the boy was struck speechless.
“Th-that is impossible!! How can a dead person move……?!”
The boy’s words cut off unnaturally.
“W-wait. Are you Uncle Murray? It is me, Darren! Do you not remember me? I am Darren!!”
Even as Darren called out desperately, the corpse only let out a grotesque sound.
It seemed they knew each other.
Rud had not expected there to be a survivor from the village.
As he stood silently watching, the zombie lunged toward Darren.
“Grrrraaaaah!!!”
It was full of murderous intent.
Sensing the threat instinctively, Darren tried to pull the trigger of his pistol by force, but he could not do it.
Until only a short time ago, they had been people who greeted each other face-to-face. It was only natural that he could not.
“Uncle, Uncle!!”
Darren called out desperately, as if squeezing out the last of his strength, but the zombie naturally paid him no heed.
The distance between them rapidly narrowed. Darren’s face, frozen like ice, turned pale.
He was rejecting reality.
Seeing that, Rud quickly moved in front of Darren and slammed the zombie before him hard into the ground.
CRASH!
Rud had learned various martial arts while training under Gared.
Among them, he had naturally learned techniques to throw an opponent down, so breaking the posture of a mindless zombie was as simple as breathing.
Rud climbed onto the struggling zombie.
He pressed down on its upper body with his weight, placed a hand on its forehead, and released the ring placed on its brain.
“Grrrraaaah……!”
The zombie, which had been thrashing violently as if letting out a death cry, soon fell quiet.
It was an astonishing sight.
Darren denied the reality of what he had seen, as though he could not understand it. Then his vision suddenly turned white, and he lost consciousness and collapsed.
THUD!