A club came swining down, bending the helmet it landed upon and converting the skull of its wearer to dust, the skeleton stumbled a bit before falling apart, its crappy armor making loud sounds as it landed on the ground.
"Another win for us, it would seem that evil truly cannot stand in the face of good, heh?" said the woman holding the club while looking directly at it.
Her words weren't directed at anyone, for she was completely alone, as always.
She was speaking to her only friend, her club, her trusty goedendag with its thick and durable wood as well as its powerful and threatening spike on the end of it, it was truly the weapon of her dreams.
This was Ilmna, a heroine, if the system was to be trusted with its assignment of titles, Ilmna went around to find quests to accomplish but it was mostly excuses to swing her club at things without repercussions.
She was currently investigating the sudden increase in undeads around a few kingdoms, as much of a stick swinging maniac she had been making good progress on the search for the cause of all of this, she had started by visiting graveyards and other places were many dead had been gathered and had been able to determine that the undeads did not come from these places, corpses weren't disappearing.
She had then visited the kingdom of Gloire with the bloody revolution that had gone down here, corpses were bound to be able to vanish without anyone noticing but as it turns out, Glorians seemed to be very organised about disposing of bodies and with the fact that the great majority had been beheaded using a very stylish machine, turning them into undead like the one she had just smashed seemed complicated.
So she just came to the conclusion that they either arrived recently from wherever or had been hiding away for a long time, that didn't change the fact that she would smack them until they died for real, the investigation part had mostly been to try and get to the root of it all.
Ilmna sniffed the air in an exaggerated manner before adressing her goedendag again.
"I feel like we are close, like in a literal sense but that we are still far from getting there, you see what I mean?" she said to her weapon.
"..."
"I knew you would understand me! We truly are made for one another aren't we?" the weapon didn't say anything but that didn't stop her from thinking it did.
The intuition she had just had told her that searching for it by her own means wouldn't amount to anything, so instead, she decided that it would be best to talk with the leader of the country she believed the undeads hid in, that country being Gloire.
"Which way is the right way?" she wondered out loud before picking one at random.
____________
The first general pushed away another elderly, despite the fact that she hadn't shown her face for a long while here, everyone seemed to recognise her in spite of the fact that she had changed a fair bit.
"Oh! Jeanne, you grew so much since the last time I saw you!" said an old woman, Jeanne waved at her.
'Who even was that? I should have kept my helmet on...' she thought, dejected at all that unwanted attention.
She had come by without any of her soldiers as it would definitely be awkward to bring them when she was just visiting a friend.
From what she was seeing, Sht'ole was still well named as this place was still a fair bit of a shit hole, the buildings were a bit outdated by even the previous standards, the street weren't properly tended to and everyone had that feel about them that screamed that they were part of such a place.
'It feels good to be at home' she thought as she had finally managed to shake off the inhabitants and was taking the road leading to Theli's house, calling it a house was an understatement as she perfectly knew what this place was all about.
The summer was still going strong, the suns were all shining without any obstruction, the air was dry and most people would have been cooked had they been wearing the same armor she was wearing.
She was wearing a full plate of armor coupled with chainmail and gambeson, one could never know when they would be attacked so she almost never took it off.
Suddenly, barrelling from behind the nearby trees, a group of unwashed rascals led by a washed rascal suddenly appeared in her way.
For a few seconds as when they actually took time to look at who it was they were trying to rob, they all turned back, except from their leader who recognised her.
"Jeanne? What are you doing here, I thought you had a good position, unlike me" spoke Venec, looking as if he was going to start pouting at any time.
"That's right, I am just coming around to see Theli" responded Jeanne.
"So you came back home? Understandable, if I lost my job I would come back too" she then added before resuming what she was doing and walking past the well-shaved bandit.
'Man, I need to step my game' he thought before going to retrieve his bandits, they were probably hiding in some holes right now.
Arriving before the impressive gate, she noticed that it had been changed as it hadn't always been this color, pulled on the bell like she used to back in the day and rapidly, the gate was opened, revealing the familiar face of Ithelisemou, quite changed since the last time they had seen each other as they been much younger but still very much similar.
"Par la sainte mère de belzebuth! Long time no see Jeanne!" he said, opening up the sentence something only him could understand.
The two of them exchanged what could only be described as a very manly hug before he invited her in.
"I heard that you got a promotion straight to the top" spoke Theli as he opened up the door.
"Yeah, just had to slice up some dissidents and slap a king around a bit" she responded casually.
"How about you? Have you been making progress, in whatever it is that you do in your sex dungeon?" she asked with a sly smile on her face.
"It's not a sex dungeon, I mean, it's not only a sex dungeon, it's also a normal dungeon and also a whole lot of things, it's pretty much anything you can imagine, wanna go take a look?" he answered wholeheartedly.
"No thanks, also, I can't help but sense more presences in this house than I had expected, did you find yourselves as crazy as you are to get kid with or something?" she asked.
"It's just a girl that lives here and acts as a sort of assistant for me and a kid I took as both an insurance and for one of my experiments, don't worry though, it isn't one of th experiments where I cut people open" he casually responded.
"So, what is it that you came here for? I don't think you would have time to stop by considering your new position" he then added.
"Long story short, the king saw your name on the patent for the guillotine and has heard abouty you from a team he sent here, he wants to meet you" she quickly explained.
"Sure then, Pepin The Third right? From what I heard, he will be quite the revolutionary king, pun unintended" he answered, as expected, there was no need to convince him at all.
"Just, promise me you won't do anything that normal people could consider objectionable, not everyone is used to you being yourself" she asked, knowing that it probably would be for naught.
"Do not worry, I will be very gentil with the king, I have already met a king before afterall, I know the etiquette perfectly, it's engraved in my memory next to how to cook a Manducatiris Cervus" he said with his finger pointed at his head.
"In any case, you must be busy but why don't you go say hi to Eka? You are the only woman alive she actually likes" he swiftly changed the subject and soon enough the first commander was gone, it was yet another things that was intruding on his schedule but this one was more than welcomed, he had many friends but she was sort of a childhood friend so it wasn't quite the same.
He was about to go back to his underground area when he noticed that yet another person was approaching the area.
He sighed and went to greet his next guest, he could somewhat guess why he was coming but maybe he would be surprised.