Dan and Mary exited their tent at the same time as Kio's group, while Fae and the other elves were already on full alert.
As they quickly packed up their stuff, Ren and his girls finally showed up after a few minutes.
Saotome's clothes were disheveled, causing everyone to easily guess what they had been doing all night.
"Lecherous scum…"
Fae quietly cursed, as she felt disgusted by his shameless actions outside of the city.
Ren heard her remarks, which caused him to sarcastically reply to her.
"Heh, I can show you how great it feels to do it outside. Come find me later if you can't hold back."
"How dare you insult our leader!"
"Don't think we won't kill you!"
As the other elves heard his comment, an outburst of hostility erupted from them.
"Oi oi, this isn't the time for you guys to get into a fight. Something is coming this way."
Dan interjected as he pointed towards the direction of the northern gate of the city.
Although they were only able to see trees and bushes in that direction, rustling sounds could be heard as something was approaching them.
Dan moved in front of Mary, while Kio did the same for his girls as they braced themselves for whatever that's about to pop out in front of them.
A male and female appeared from the bushes, as they ran in their direction.
They were apparently lovers, based on how they supported each other.
"All of you! Get away from here! They're coming this way!"
The male shouted as they continued running past them, only leaving his warning behind.
Soon after, more rustling sounds could be heard from where those two had appeared from.
A total of five zombies came out, but they were quickly dealt with by the elven archers.
The elves had already remembered the weaknesses of these zombies, focusing all of their attacks on the head.
"Ahhh! Nooooo!"
Screams came from behind, which was the direction the two people from earlier ran towards.
"Let's quickly get out of here before we get surrounded!"
Dan suggested and started running while carrying Mary on his back.
Everyone else soon followed, as they didn't want to fall behind.
Even though their vision was partially blocked by the forest ahead of them, they had no choice but to go that way.
Behind them is the city, which they just escaped from yesterday, while the other sides most likely had more zombies there.
As they quickly made their way through all the trees, they reached a stone road which stretched to their left and right.
They could easily figure out that the road to the east led back to the northern gate of the city, since there was a group of people escaping from that direction.
A horde of around 50 zombies were hot on their trail.
A couple of these zombies were even faster than the townspeople, which allowed them to easily catch their prey.
"Kyahhhh!"
Mary shrieked from the sight of people being bitten and torn apart.
"Fuck!" Dan cursed as he didn't feel good about exposing his daughter to such a gruesome scene.
Based on the speed of some of these zombies, they knew they couldn't outrun them, so everyone stood their ground and got ready to engage.
As the elves fired the first volley of arrows, only a few of them managed to kill the zombies in one hit.
The faster zombies were still alive, as their speed caused the archers to miss.
"Fae! Get your archers to aim for the slower ones at the back!"
Kio quickly gave out instructions, as he was aware that the elves could barely hit the faster zombies.
As long as they can thin the numbers by killing the slower ones, the situation wouldn't be as dire.
"You guys heard him! Aim for the ones at the back!"
"Dan! Can you deal with the faster ones?"
"I'll try, but there's too many of them!"
Although Kio was able to give out orders to fight these zombies, a real battle is vastly different from inputting commands in a game.
A few of the faster zombies bypassed Dan and rushed at the others.
As one zombie was heading towards Kio, he used [Haste] to boost his leg strength.
After dodging an attack by using his speed, he kicked at the zombie's leg, before slicing at its head with his sword.
He told the girls to stay close to him at all times, so he would be able to protect them.
This time, two zombies rushed at him from different directions.
As Kio took a few steps forward to kill one before turning around, he realized he might've screwed up, as the other one moved faster than he expected.
The zombie was already closing in on his back, reaching a meter away from him.
"Oh, shi-"
*Woosh*
An arrow landed cleanly on its head, preventing it from harming Kio.
When he turned around to see who shot it, he noticed it came from Fae.
"Thanks! I owe you one!"
"Hmph!"
Looking around him, he could see everyone was engaged in a battle against these fast zombies.
Even the adventurers who fled towards their direction were trying their best to defend themselves.
One by one, injuries started piling up as some adventurers, elves, and even one of Ren's slaves got injured by the zombies.
If it were just regular zombies, they wouldn't be struggling as hard as they are now.
However, these zombies weren't just quicker, they were also stronger as they could knock away the weapons held by the adventurers.
Due to how the zombies had better equipment than before, Kio and a few others were able to guess that these zombies were perhaps former adventurers.
"Shit, so these zombies do get more powerful if they infect stronger people."
*Rustle*
As they were halfway done killing these zombies, another group of zombies rushed out from the forest to their south.
"Fuck! The zombies from before must've heard all the noise and ran over here!"
Kio cursed since were already having a tough time from the first group of zombies.
With the addition of 30 more zombies from their back, he was sure they would incur more casualties.
As the elven archers were in the rearguard, they were the first to engage the second group of zombies.
Normally, they would've turned around to shoot, but they were preoccupied with dodging the attacks of the zombies that made it past the others.
With the battlefield in chaos, all these different groups of people had no semblance of teamwork, which easily allowed the zombies to reach the elves at the back
"Ahhh!"
Getting attacked from two directions, a few of the elves were unable to defend themselves and became food for the zombies.
"Fae! Do you still have anymore of those vines from earlier?"
"We should have enough to make one more wall, but these things can easily go around it, given the wide-open terrain here."
"That's enough. You just need to make a wall of vines with a narrow passage in the middle. Then focus your attacks on the zombies that go through the choke point."
"Got it."
Fae felt like his idea sounded quite good, so she ordered her remaining elves to do as Kio advised.
*Woosh*
Two walls of vines, reaching 5 meters in height, quickly grew and blocked off the zombies temporarily.
In between the walls, there was a small passage in the middle, where the zombies were currently trying to squeeze through.
"Hey! Can a few of you guys hold the choke point over there?! Otherwise, more of us will get killed!"
Following Kio's words, a few of the adventurers went over to the narrow path in the wall, easily killing the zombies since they only had to focus on one at a time.
Fae and the elves were also shooting at the zombies that walked around the wall of vines, reducing the pressure on the people defending the hole.
"[Weapon Control]!"
While Kio and Fae's group were busy with the zombies at the back, Dan used his skill to deal with multiple zombies at the front.
By controlling the weapons around the dead adventurers, Dan was able to quickly clean up a few of the zombies at the same time.
With weapons flying all around him, he was able to decapitate one zombie every couple of seconds.
The fight continued as more and more zombies died.
Once both groups of zombies had been cleaned up, they all looked around themselves to check out the casualties.
All of the townspeople had been killed, while a few adventurers were still standing.
Kio and Ren's group were mostly fine, since they were in the center, where they only had to deal with a few zombies at a time.
Dan was also unharmed, even though he had been protecting Mary closely since the start of the fight.
Fae's group wasn't as lucky, as more than half of her elves had been killed or injured. From her initial 20 elven archers and 10 elven slaves, only 6 archers and 4 slaves remained unscathed. The rest of them are either dead or injured.
The only reason they had such a large amount of casualties was due to the second group of zombies flanking them while they were preoccupied.
"You guys…"
Although Kio withheld a lot of information from Fae and the elves yesterday, they had seen the horrors of these zombies with their own eyes.
Before the two groups had met, Fae's group witnessed the scene at the plaza, including the part where some dead people turned into zombies.
"Leader, don't look so sad. We know what our fate will be, and we would like to thank you for everything you did for us."
"..."
For the first time since they met, Kio finally saw the change in Fae's emotionless face. A few tears leaked out of her eyes as she patted her subordinate's shoulders and thanked them for everything they've done in the past.
Before long, the few infected elves separated from the group after bidding farewell to Fae and the other elves.
Kio and Dan's group also thanked the elves for their rescue yesterday, yet they were ignored by them.
The infected elves left in a different direction, as they didn't want to turn into a zombie and attack their friends.
As some of them were still in a depressing mood due to their departure, a shriek sounded nearby.
"Kyaaah!"
Looking over to the source of the voice, it was one of Ren's slaves who screamed, as he directly stabbed one of them to death.
Dan instantly covered Mary's eyes, as Kio looked over towards Ren and questioned him.
"What are you doing?!"
"Mind your own business. This girl is infected."