It was unclear to me for what reason the undead were eating. I doubt that they have a functional digestive system that is properly working. But, likewise, I will avoid asking certain questions now, and I will properly investigate later.
The monsters were distracted, devouring their poor victims. However, that trance was broken when I finished the blessing spell, and the arrow from Gerus hit the closest zombie to us. As soon as it hit the creature, it started to shiver and fell to the ground.
Gerus was trembling, and he said that he had never seen the undead. I think that the feeling of firing arrows at them and facing them directly was different. Of course, I don't know how his training went, but he was doing well; he quickly fetched another arrow to fire against our foes.
Jel was alert behind me, and due to Gerus' arrows giving off an ethereal, holy vibe, the undead started to run toward him. As I have thought beforehand, I am not using divinity now, as it can lead to more misunderstanding and aggravate the fanaticism in the goblin girls.
I chanted a holy circle spell to prevent the undead from coming close. Actually, it prevents intelligent undead—the stupid ones, however, will catch fire as soon as they ingress the holy land encirclement.
As soon as the spell finished, the skeletons and zombies that entered the divine spell range began to burn. Gerus was surprised but kept firing arrows against the monsters, even the ones that were burning. I summoned my magical staff and started to bash the burning walking corpses.
Fighting brainless foes was pretty easy, and that's why I can't follow Baron Mystral reasoning that the undead are so complicated. Perhaps he was worried about the intelligent ones or the abomination reports.
The knight dropped his bow, unsheathed his sword, and started to cut the skeletons. Poor choice. Did he know that he needed to bash these monsters? Even using almost the worst weapon against a skeleton, the holy blessing was enough to dissipate the necromancy magic that powered that bag of bones.
After a couple of minutes, the zombies returned to their deceased corpse state, and the skeletons went back to a pile of bones. Gerus was panting, not exactly fatigued, but recovering his mental state.
"Have you ever fought?" I asked him. Our swordsman lift his head to complain, I guess, but he was still catching his breath.
"I mean, fought the undead before?" I corrected myself.
"No, I haven't. I only received technical instruction about them."
"Should you have a club or something more adequate to fight them?"
"I was not expecting undead grade 2 here."
Grade 2? They have grading for monsters. Another relevant piece of information is available for free. It's pointless now, but it could be useful later on. "What were you expecting? I believe that zombies and skeletons were very similar."
Gerus recovered his bow from the ground and said to me, "Sir Cleric, your magic is the best way to deal with these foul creatures. You can fight using stones that we pick up on the ground. That's why I chose to fight with the sword."
He was on the defensive. I need to break that, as we are reaching the city soon. So, I said to him, "I am not saying anything about your choices in this encounter. But if you were warned about the undead issue, should you be more prepared to face them? Also in the caravan?"
Gerus caught the gist of what I was trying to highlight. He seemed nervous and started to look sideways as if he were trying to remember something. "You were not prepared to fight them. Are your caravan and your old man in danger?"
When we were walking to Wheatstone, I felt that something was amiss. Now, I noticed what my sixth sense was trying to convey. They continued their trade mission regardless of the immense risk of fighting the undead, poorly prepared.
"Do they have clubs or staves?"
Gerus was nervous, and seemed annoyed. He shook his head in denial while clenching his fists. "Nothing? Serious?"
"We had a discussion about that. We concluded that would be a useless additional burden to guards, moreover we had no room to store them. In the end, we opt for carrying the swords and bows because our issue is savage goblins," he explained. Blunt weapons were partially useful against meat bags like zombies, but were terrific versus their bone counterparts.
Taking the chance that Gerus became more verbose, I suggested to him a different approach: "I can create some makeshift magical holy staves for your caravan. They will last for at least one day. I can create ten, and you can take them to your father."
Jel and Matila were inspecting the former undead, when Jel called me, "Sir Rufus, there is something on this one."
Due to the sudden call, I left Gerus alone, thinking a little about my proposal. When I got to the corpse that Jel was verifying, I understood why she had called me. This zombie had a huge scar on his chest, big enough that one could see his heart. However, there was no heart, and in its place, Jel noticed a luster-black rock.
I have received no response from my divinities regarding that stone, but I feel arcane power stored inside. Thanks to my Authorities, I knew that the stone was not tainted; even if it were before, after the cleansing fire, it would no longer be affected by necromancy spells.
I grabbed the stone and pulled it out of its chest. The stone reverberates with my arcane power as I drip a bit of mana inside. It was a mana stone, or, for those unfamiliar with arcane terminology, it was alike a arcane power battery. One could recover power from it to use instead of its own—quite useful, I may say. Skilled magicians could even increase their spell output by employing such mean.
However, the problem was with the recharging methods. Midgard was an abundant mana realm. Nonetheless, the mana condensation, i.e., mana stone creation procedure, required that mana to be compressed until it became like that. Thus, the natural occurrence of mana stones is treated like gold mines on Earth. On the other hand, unlike gold mines, they can be created from nothing.
(Okay, one may say that we can compress energy until we get hydrogen, then keep compressing until we get gold, but that happens in a star's center, so ultimately it is an unfeasible procedure, at least, while I was living on Earth realm.)
But here, the mana was different from energy, as it was a kind of ethereal thing that affected reality itself. According to the Arcane 101 books that I had access to in Olympus, the conventional methods for generating mana stones include highly skilled magical mana manipulation, which allows one to manipulate a mana vein into smaller cores; magical circles that transform magic materials into compressed versions; and two prohibited techniques, such as soul crunching, which involves capturing a living soul and destroying it. The resulting amount of mana is immense, provided the explosion is contained, and then the destroyed soul becomes a mana stone. The second taboo way is to directly convert life power into mana, and in this case, one stole life force from a living being, then converted it using a proper rune or magic inscription into a condensed version.
After recalling this, I comprehend why the undead were eating a bull because they were converting its life force into a mana stone. The meat was being transformed into the monster's core, and probably after some time, a necromancer would recover its "toys" and get the mana stone.
I was intrigued by the fact that even the skeletons were devouring the meat. But now it was clear. I asked Jel to inspect the skeletons for these same small stones, while I used an arcane detection spell to find the stones in the zombies' bodies.
Jackpot! All the corpses had mana stones within them. I would not start a degrading autopsy, so I just stored them in my bag. Jel came back holding three blackened stones, and she told me that they were inside their skulls. From my detection spell, I feel all the stones in the place of the heart.
I completely forgot about the knight, who was flabbergasted looking at me. I meekly looked at him and said, "Have you come to a conclusion?"
"I, I, yes, I have. Please, could you provide the staves? You have a subspace bag, sir, I was not expecting something so valuable to be hanging like that."
Another common-sense apprehension. I quickly make a mental note to avoid using my bag in public. If even a merchant noble son was impressed, I wonder how regular people would react or how criminals could ambush me. I mentally thanked him for this sincere and accidental lesson.
"Fine, I am glad that you agreed to my plan. I will resume my journey to Wheatstone. And as soon as I arrive there, I will look for your mother and your father's cousin."
"Thank you, Sir Costa." He called me Sir Costa, that sounded awful. I get goosebumps.
"Please, use Rufus, instead." Gerus was surprised by my out-of-place comment. He nodded and agreed to it.
Jel and Matila informed me that they didn't find anything else useful. I explained to them what our actions were going to be from now on. Then, I decided to use my divinity instead of my divine power, and created ten holy staves using my Authority of Healing. Jel and Matila were shivering all the time my divinity was being used. That caught me off-guard, as I was containing all my divine aura.
I noticed that Gerus, who had not any speck of divine or divinity within himself, remained unfazed. I guess once one gets attuned to a divine presence, he reacts naturally to it. The girls were flooded by an enraged aura, so a mark must be left. I need to explore this later.
"I thought that only mages could create things out of nowhere. But divine magic can summon stuff even without a circle. My mother would be impressed by this. Unfortunately, I am not versed in spellcasting, so I only know some basics, but I can discern advanced magic when I see it."
His analysis was pretty accurate, though I would not correct him. Actually, I didn't summon them, but I literally created them using my Authority, I was going to bless them now. Creating stuff with magic is advanced magic, as he said, but this is when we are talking about arcane.
"These are not permanent. They are temporary means to fight the undead, and only that. I don't believe it will be useful besides fighting them. As I explained before, they will last for one day, maybe two at the most."
Gerus said nothing; he just nodded with his head in the same way a child would when an adult explains to them how the Bohr Atom Model works. He took all the ten staves and rushed back to the caravan. Both of us were hoping that they did not meet any unliving monsters.
I was unaware at that moment, but later on, I will terribly regret making those staves.