Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead-Chapter 412: Warriors And Thinkers
After the first confrontation between living and undead on Bellistian grounds, the south awaits for another assault, the camps erected by the vanguard saw a sudden improvement, turning into fortified holds nearly overnight, walls rising from the ground like blades of grass, clearly making it so there was no worth for the living in attempting to strike first, however, Loimos’s force did not strike either, or more accurately, they did not form into a small army again.
Indeed, although battle was declared, there were no specifics to how it should go down, Ourlst instead arranged his troops into small groups, forcing the living to spread thin all along their wall, preventing them from grouping up as well, harassing the soldiers and knights, launching attacks to damage the ramparts, balls of Loimosfire, shots from heavy crossbows, waves of black blood, clouds of miasma, to weaken and crack the sturdy defences, all was in use, the various castes of undeads roamed around, emerging from suddenly appearing swamps of rot, sinking back in before long.
A hit and run tactic, rarely engaging with whatever forces attempted to stop them, getting off the wall made it so they often made it much too late to stop anything, especially the soldiers, who could not just leap down without breaking a bone, the wall had been built high, Solast had told them that there were giants amidst the ranks of death, and although they had constructed something that was rather small compared to the largest of undeads, the warlords had managed to get everything above a certain height banned from this war, otherwise some atrociously large corpse would have been thrown at them already.
"Sir Aramap says that they are probably digging tunnels of some kind"
"Probably true, but we can’t do anything about it, we can only stand around and wait for them to show up"
This chapter is updat𝙚d by freeweɓnovel.cøm.
Ilte and Tarq had been assigned to patrolling the wall, the countryside was safe without the presence headhunters, and more workforce was required here anyways, so even though they were not the most skilled of knights, they were present as well, still followed around by Isilt, who was still a trainee.
Looking over the edge, absolutely nothing in sight, there were no camps of the undead around, tranquil waves could be seen in the distance, the dark yellow sand, the expanse of green, a dark mark upon the wall, sign of a previous strike, the spot the rotten marsh had appeared was indistinguishable from the rest, leaving no traces at all. Enjoy new tales from novelbuddy
"Hey, someone is coming" pointed out the trainee, everyone was focusing on the ground that they had forgotten to watch out for a more regular approach, and indeed, a singular undead was coming their way, a huge skeleton with cloth wrapped around its waist only, its ribcage and shoulders wide, bones free of clinging rot, wielding two great scimitars, two more of them strapped behind the waist, indeed, this corpse had four arms, each of them thick and incredibly long, the thought of facing such a creature in combat was worrying.
But there was no other choices, this particular caste of undead had yet to have made any move elsewhere, so they did not know the specifics of their abilities and style of fighting, but the three knights had to do something, alerting a few other patrols nearby, there were nine of them against one, but they were not going to discount other undeads showing up, they could literally come out of the ground after all.
Clasping two hands together, the undead waved them upward, producing a long cloud of dark miasma, spreading out relatively slowly, soon hitting the wall, trying tà break apart the stone, flaking it off bit by bit, this miasma was otherwise longer-lasting and more potent than that summoned by the black knights, a sure sign that this caste of four-armed undeads were specialists of the matter.
All nine of the knights moved down, the undead producing some sort of snort, stabbing both of the blades already in hand into the vertical mass of miasma, spreading them outwardly, making the fog cover a much wider area, engulfing all of the livings into its dark hold.
Isilt leaned back, narrowly avoiding a slash of two blades, within the miasma, not only was it harder to breath, and not only did it try to eat away at the skin, but the undead’s affinity went further than just wielding the miasma as a weapon, when inside, the massive corpse moved like a squirrel on a tree, appearing everywhere as though teleporting, the effect of massively increased movement speed and becoming near impossible to see.
Tarq thrusted through the fog, followed by Ilte, who swung her own spear, feeling like she grazed something, only for the undead to appear behind her, attempting to turn the knightess’s skull to mush by striking from two opposites sides using the flat ends of both scimitars’s handles, not only was she not standing still enough for that to work out, but Isilt and Tarq were also on the move already, the latter attempting to stick the blade in between joints joining the knee together, whilst the former simply tried to lodge his spear in the skeleton’s ribcage, neither attempts worked.
The undead using one of its free hand to get a hold of the trainee, grabbing him by the head, attempting to crush it like a grape, but the blacksmithing of the south proved effective as it barely gave in at first, bringing in the other free hand, Isilt managed to slide out of his helm just in time, caving in well past what could have been survivable, another group of knights arriving from behind the undead, one of them landing a hit squarely to the back of its skull.
Jumping away, the four-armed undead vanished into the miasma again.
"Did that deal any damage?" Ilte asked.
"Didn’t look like it" replied the knight, all of them expecting another attack, but it never came, the miasma eventually dissipated, revealing rather extensive damage to the wall, although not too deep compared to the thickness of the defence itself, it was non-negligible, the skeleton had made certain to focus on dealing damage to the wall.
"This bastard really got lightly hit once and decided that it was enough…"
Inspecting the wall, all nine knights had gone out without injuries, although the trainee had dodged certain death, one second too late, and his helm would have served as recipient to his liquefied brain and skull.
Clearly, that miasmic warrior had only been there to try something, the undead seemed awfully focused on targeting the wall itself, not caring for the few gates or the people guarding, even though those options were perhaps better than the ones they were going for, getting rid of enemies was worth the hassle, and the gates, although better guarded, were significantly easier to breach, durability-wise.
"I don’t know about you seniors, but I feel like they are purposefully playing the long game at every occasion, we are the ones that benefit from it, however, what are they after?" the trainee said in between a few ragged breaths, still not quite believing that he was fine.
"Mind games, diversion, just some probing around, maybe they only intend to have us be focused on defending our wall so that we can’t assist other regions?
There are many possibilities actually, but don’t bother about this Isilt, thinking is for the higher-ups, we just defend and fight when undeads show up, nothing more" Ilte shook her head, the advantage of not being in charge is that you just had to follow orders, trying to read the minds of sapient corpses was a much harsher challenge than clashing blades with them.
That much was certain, knights would rather be defeated in combat than go insane trying to understand the incomprehensible.
