Gregory had to move slowly and far away, he had to go through paths only filled with lower undeads, he crawled through the dust that covered the ground.
Despite being nothing than dark dust, it felt as though he was crawling through a corpse, even the soil seemed to have been turned into an undead of some kind, which seemed impossible, the ground itself wasn't alive like animals or plants were.
Undead plants already sounded off in his mind but he had seen some during his trip in the dead lands.
Nothing was out of question here.
Gregory froze, waiting until the last moment, to roll out of the way and stand up, an undead had spotted him, it wasn't unusual, even his incredible stealth wasn't enough here.
It was one of those undeads wearing dark hoods, thankfully it wasn't one of the caster variety but only a small one, relatively small one...
He had thought it to be one of those assassins or mad knife wielders but this one was unarmed despite not being of the large variety, it was a new kind Gregory hadn't had the honor of meeting yet.
It walked slowly and creepily, it kept its feet in the air way too long before suddenly slamming it down and trying to grab him, it was easy to evade and from what Gregory sensed, it wasn't hiding any strength with that pathetic display.
He didn't cocky however, he knew that he was still far from reaching the center, this was still the outskirt of the undead lands, and deeper one went, the stronger the undeads would be, although, not many went so far, the New Undead Empire was devoid of life, nothing to eat and nothing to drink was to be found inside of here, few could have gone far even without any undeads.
Gregory waited for it to do its small charge again as he unsheathed his sword, waiting too long could result in more undeads coming.
Slamming its foot down, the undead reached to try and grasp the otherworlder, Gregory weaved past the undead and sliced its head off, the hood fell off, revealing the skinless appearance of the undead, all of the hooded undead looked similar, they lacked much decay.
Those undeads were risen quickly after death.
He crushed the still moving head of the undead, causing its body to go limp, Gregory waited for the kill notification to come before getting back on track, he had gotten lucky this time, no other had wandered close enough to notice him.
He resumed his slow crawl toward his old fashioned revenge, unlike most, Gregory's body was sturdy in more ways than one, it easily supported the consumption of raw meat and could eliminate things that would surely kill most other, so he sustained himself on the rotten and dried remains of the undeads, he could feel the death mana trying to reduce his life force to shreds but overcame it every time.
He drank their putrid blood for days and days as he kept on crawling, occasionally having to face an undead that noticed him, one time, he had to go back as a whole bunch of them had been alerted but he didn't give in and continued.
The further in he went, the more undeads there were and the stronger they became, they were also even more sensible to life force and the fights became more and more common, slowly wearing him down.
After a whole day of nothing but crawling, Gregory rose his head in wonder, it seemed like the area was much less populated for some reason, he wasn't anywhere near his destination however, he looked around, expecting an assassin's dagger to appear or for an arrow or spell to come to him but nothing.
The few undead trees and plants were all that stood out in the desolated landscape, turning his head the other way, he thought that there was nothing either but straining his eyes, he saw further as he noticed some movement.
An ungodly amount of undeads were gathered around a pit, Gregory couldn't see what was inside but the moment he noticed it, his instincts told him to back off, he felt himself grow colder and his heartbeat slow down just by looking at it.
It had actually drained his life force and HP as well, whatever it was that they were doing, it was dangerous, too dangerous for Gregory to risk getting any closer.
He instead took the opportunity that all the undead in the area were busy to take up the pace, running from the pit as primal fear etched itself in his heart.
One of the members of the ritual turned to look at him without Gregory noticing anything, someone that looked a bit too fresh to be an undead, the man smiled a bit at him before turning his attention back to the ritual.
His experiments regarding the primeval rot had been a long time coming, he couldn't be bothered by Gregory thinking he sneaking around this place.
Ithelisemou walked closer to the edge, despite most of those undeads being mindless and lacking in critical thoughts, they all observed the rot with interest, Theli himself was quite intrigued, the primeval rot had been nothing but a legend before that one undead had somehow managed to invoke it.
What was weirder was that he felt a strange sense of kinship with the rot, as if they were one and the same.
The legend said that it was an undead that had created the primeval rot, however, that undead had never existed in this world, Theli was certain of this and yet, the rot did exist, without an actual creator.
The rot had a very specific and pure death force to it, this wouldn't be possible it was a natural construct, the rot maintained the purity of the death force as well, it had intelligence.
Looking into the pit, Theli wondered aloud.
"Who could you be kindred?" he asked as his deep purple eyes seemed to slightly brighten for a split second.