Before anything else reached us, after riding the cart three or four dozen miles we smelled a terrible rotting smell. A mind-numbing cloying reek assaulted the nose and could be tasted on the tongue with each breath.
"Undead!" Rose called from inside the caravan and the merchant quickly pulled the reigns to stop the horses as we were rounding around a corner.
"Let's go look." I said hopping off the bench on the front carriage with the driver and the driver said quickly.
"Yes, there is supposed to be a checkpoint just around the corner. I will just wait here for twenty minutes at most, or unless undead comes out of the tree line. So come back before then lest I need to leave you to return to New Atha with you all assumed dead." He warned us and I got what he meant.
He being a merchant needed to know what had happened to the roads major checkpoint. And as adventurer's, we were obligated to poke our nose in and see if we could gather as to what had happened.
But if some kind of Earth Dragon or great monster was the one who did it... We would need to back trek a dozen-plus miles to take a detour.
"Drakia, you can fly right?" I asked but whereas I expected a simple nod, she blinked and looked at me in utter confusion as her own moonlight silver wings popped out from her back.
She asked with complete confusion in her voice as she saw my own thunder gold wings pop out from my back. "What do you mean? No dragonkin can fly except for pure-" Her voice cut off as my wings beat against the air and her face went blank as I easily flew off the ground using the magic in my wings.
The merchant coughed and it was clear he didn't want to stick around with the stench of the undead around so I quickly said. "Let me fly into the air to make sure there aren't a bunch of enemies around the checkpoint."
I swiftly flew up into the air and once I flew past the tree line I could see over the coming bend in the road. I saw the checkpoint.
What looked like a somewhat fortified Inn was surrounded by a large crowd of hundreds if not a whole thousand undead people, animals, and larger humanoids that had to be orcs. But all wasn't lost as I could see arrows, bolts and spells being shot over the short wall that was pushing back the wall of undead trying to push into the inn.
I quickly dropped down out of the air and reported what I had scene and the merchant grunted and said coldly. "Its one of the Orc Chieftaness's Necromancers in that crowd of undead... She trains up necromancers and they then go harvest more bodies to be added to her own troops and to train up new necromancers. Should the necromancer be killed, all the undead will just fall down back into death."
I grimaced as the man sighed and reached into his pocket and threw me a small coin bag. "Here is a quarter of your payment, I am returning to New Atha. Are you coming with?" He asked bluntly.
I shook my head swiftly and said with some understanding. "No. We are adventurers... And I want to try to kill the necromancer."
The merchant simply inclined his head towards me, got back into his carriage, and turned around back towards New Atha as I told Drakia and Rose about the siege of the undead.
"So, any advice on how to ferret out the undead's controller?" I asked with Rose took a breath and said slowly.
"My holy light is anathema to necromancy... If I show myself on the battlefield the necromancy will have no choice but focus on killing me." She said and I nodded with an evil smile coming across my face as I told her what to do and she told me the spells she had access to.
"Alright Rose, I want you to summon a holy light barrier above the undead and then using your control over the barrier, just smack the barrier down on the heads of the zombies," I said with full knowledge that the barrier wasn't really a weapon as she couldn't move her barrier with much speed and the barrier itself had zero mass with which to do damage with.
But the holy light would act like acid upon the zombie's heads which was their central control area.
"Drakia, you protect Rose. I will look for the Necromancer to kill them." I ordered the dragonkin and in response, she used her own light magic to create a spear of silver moonlight.
We moved closer towards the battle and although we were low level and I could tell the undead were fairly strong though slow with their rigor mortis probably. But we had the advantage of a surprise and as Rose whispered out a prayer to the Light Goddess a five meter wide square wall of light formed above the heads of the undead and with a hand wave from Rose.
The wall of light slowly moved down a couple few inches in every second but after like ten seconds, green smoke and wailing rang out as her shield of holy light collided with the undead heads and began melting through their heads.
"No! No! Nooo! It's not fair!" A manic voice screeched through the crowd of zombies and I lasered onto a large undead bear that was walking on the outside of the siege as though looking for a proper way to break into the inn and past the defenders.
As already just after watching the undead trying to push into the inn. I could tell, they had all but zero intelligence and were relying on building up a wall of corpses for them to climb up past the wall and into the walled-off Inn.
I grinned with my hand tightening around my sword Siren as I took a breath and then I zipped up into the air before flying downwards quickly at an angle to keep the undead bears back to me and as I got close another undead growled loudly seeing me coming in fast through the air.
But it was too late, I had rammed feet first into the side of the bear pushing its stiff form backward ever so slightly, but as I slammed my feet into the bear I also used all that momentum to slam my sword into the side of the bear with a scream ringing out from within the massive bear's hollow chest cavity.
"Found ya bitch Ha!" I shouted and then my form and the close surroundings were engulfed in a blinding explosion of lightning, as I didn't hold back in the slightest and used every bit of my fucking mana in that instant to all but explode like a bomb of plasma going off.
My slightly deafened form quickly flew back into the air even as my ears were slightly ringing by the noises of the lighting I had created going past my tolerance level.
'I may be immune to the heat, and actual electricity in my lightning... But only resistant to the sound.' I thought wryly as the undead bear jerked heavily no longer being a typical slow moving undead as a weak voice snarled from its form.
"Youuu... Low leveled bastard! I am going to refine your skull into a bowl to eat out of!" He snarled slurring his words struggling to properly speak at the nerve damage he had. But as the bear turned towards me and its mouth opened with a thick pillar of what looked like corpse poison billowed out from its mouth towards me.
Instead of fleeing used my Blink as I flew downwards towards the poison pillar to build up momentum so as I came out of my Blink my sword with a loud crunching noise sliced through and broke the bear's thick gore covered neck with the bear's body falling down stiffly as the mage hiding somewhere inside the large chest area of the bear and protected by its thick ribs.
"Get him! You worthless trash, get him!" He screeched manically and as the undead bear settled down after its head was removed, I saw the Necromancer crawling out of the undead bears stomach area with the man ripping open the hole sealed with ropes that hid him inside the bear.
The Necromancer was utterly revolting to look upon, his skin was yellow like muddy water and with deep wrinkles and all his teeth were black pits along with the whites of his eyes being a piss yellow. I literally couldn't even tell what race the necromancer was.
He wasn't a 'big' burly orc shaman like I thought they would be. Nor did he look remotely human with terrible wrinkles and gangly limbs with fingers that were almost half a meter long and tipped with purple and black fingernails.
But even as I saw the necromancer fill his hands with cursed green magic that stunk of decay, I ignored him as I had to decapitate another undead that rambled up towards but as he went to throw the ball of magic at me, an arrow rammed into his throat making him gargle as the broad-headed arrow went through his neck leaving a hole that was streaming blackened blood that killed the surrounding grass.
The magic filling his hands dulled and with my Blink having reset, I teleported forward with my sword coming down with a lightning-coated roar as I decapitated the monster in the shape of a humanoid.
{Level Up! X6 Stats Distributed!}
'Wow, six levels?' I thought as I watched all the undead fall down to the ground with a loud uniform thumping noise while Drakia and Rose made their way out of the forest and into the view of the Inn as I shouted out.
"The Necromancer is dead! Can we come in to discuss things? We are adventurers!" I shouted towards the walled-in Inn and there was a long moment of silence before a masculine shout reached my ears.
"Aye, come on in!" And then the metal studded thick wooden door leading into the walled-in estate was opened allowing us to enter and I saw a mountain of a man that was more than two meters tall with an even larger greatsword resting over his shoulder. And with an elvish woman holding onto his arm with the elf being armed with a large ornamental bow who was probably the one who shot the necromancer in the throat.
I nodded my head towards the man and he grinned with large teeth being shown in his grin as he spoke with a booming voice. "Thank you three very much for making the rat stick his head out of his hiding spot... We thought he was using earth magic to hide underground actually." He growled with irritation at the end before shaking his head and smiling. "Anyway, I am Eldrid, and this is my wife Kialas. We are also adventurers so let me treat you guys to dinner for a couple of easy level-ups Haha!" He finished.
'So they still got a share of the EXP? Did all those undead count as kills as well?' I thought before nodding seeing the inn workers come out with relief clear on their face with Rose and Drakia obviously being willing to accept a free meal.