“Hold on,” The old man said as he slowly lowered the aimed bow from the man next to him.
“You’re the boy from this morning,” the old man said.
Ludwig nodded.
“Banner, kill the zombies. We’ll discuss what happened with the boy later. Can’t you see how wounded he is?” the old man said.
“As the lord commands,” the giant man at the front nodded and simply flew forward, a massive tower shield in his left arm and a heavy sword that would be almost impossible for any normal human to wield in one hand in his other free arm.
The giant crashed into the first group of undead with his shield splattering their organs and spraying their innards all over the place from sheer impact. He slammed down his sword at the others, slicing, no, more like crushing brutally in half anything that was unfortunate enough to meet the massive sword.
Sliced, diced, crushed, and minced, everything was torn apart, the group of undead that would have probably mulched Ludwig. But for this massive-sized guy, they were nothing but a weed that he was culling without even breaking a sweat.
In a matter of seconds, the more than thirty undead were all rendered to bits and crushed pieces. He literally beat the Undeath out of them.
‘I’m glad I didn’t take option one…’ Ludwig thought to himself as he saw how easily the guy disposed of these things.
“Now that the danger is gone, how about you come down the tree,” the old man said.
Ludwig had no intention of stalling as he slowly began his descent. Seeing that Ludwig was taking too long to come down, Banner groaned and kicked the tree, causing Ludwig to fall from the tree.
“Shit!” Ludwig cursed but before he made contact with the ground, Banner grabbed him by the belt.
[-2hp]
“Ouch!” Ludwig groaned. “Careful man… shit hurts,” Ludwig complained.
“Shut up,” Banner replied as he dropped Ludwig down.
The group of soldiers spread out around the room to investigate.
“So, child, tell me what happened here?” the old man asked.
Ludwig was about to reply, but something almost instinctual told him not to reply to that question right now. So Ludwig followed his instincts: “Before that… what happened to the Urbaf girl? She hit her head hard. Is she okay?” Ludwig asked.
The old man had a wide grin showing on his face, “With that many injuries on your body, you still ask for the wellbeing of others. Quite a good lad. Don’t worry about her she is fine.” The old man said.
“He’s trying to fool us, Lord, this boy must have been the one who did all this, he’s trying to shift our attention,” one of the paladins said.
“Are you stupid?” the old man said. “Look around you, this Tree has been here for a pretty long while. And these two kids, they’re wearing Tower Academy clothes… I met this boy personally, he isn’t a preparator. Or at least from the first look of things. Regardless, you’ll have to come with us for further investigation, and treatment you look like you’re about to die any moment.”
“I’ll heal him,” One of the paladins said.
“I’m fine,” Ludwig said shaking his head, “Most of this isn’t my blood anyway,” Ludwig said.
“You still need treatment,” the old man said.
“Well, at least not from those guys,” Ludwig pointed at the holy order. “They killed one of my family members…” that was a lie.
The old man frowned. But Ludwig was betting his lie on what he learned from Hoyo. Hoyo’s entire family was killed off by the Holy Order. And that basically means that this Holy Order are able to kill off entire families with little to no worries or even by simple hearsay and rumors. Then it was very probable that Ludwig’s lie could be considered true.
“I see… here then,” the old man said as he threw a red thumb-sized vial toward Ludwig.
Ludwig grabbed it and inspected it.
[Medium Health Potion]
[Instantly recovers 20% of the user’s health and increases their regeneration rate by 100% for the next 300 seconds.]
He smiled inwardly his gamble worked. So things are good so far.
Ludwig popped the vial open and chugged it down, “Many thanks,” Ludwig said as his health recovered and some of the wounds on his body healed up, though that was all just an illusion and fakery applied by the lantern.
The blood and grime on him and his robes were still there, but for the onlooker,r he seemed to have recovered.
“Good then, you should be able to move by now,” the old man said.
“Yeah,” Ludwig said and stood up. “But tell me, who are you?” Ludwig asked.
“You’ll know in time, for now, I’m taking care of this whole mess… we need to know who’s responsible for this,” The old man said. “The whole city almost turned to ruin. And there are so many people who look like they’re puppets… we need to get down to the bottom of this.”
“Oh, about the puppet-like people… that should be solved, I think?” Ludwig said.
“What do you mean?” the old man asked.
“Ah, the preparator,” Ludwig pointed at the remains of a heavily mangled carcass, blood viscera and bitten bones were all that remained from it. “That’s the guy…he got eaten by the zombies… and once he died… well the souls got released, I guess.” Ludwig tried to sound as unconvincing as possible. He needed to act as if he had no idea what truely was going down here.
****
The old man frowned, “That’s a bit too convenient.”
“I don’t know how to explain it… but, this tree,” Ludwig said, “Made him pretty much unkillable as long as there were bodies around it. Whatever happened to him, he’d transfer it to the bodies…”
“And how did he die?” the old man asked.
“I kinda caused it,” Ludwig shrugged, “After I stabbed him in the head, and tore his ligaments… crushed his pelvis, broke his knees, and a few more gruesome methods… he switched to Necromancy.”
“And how would you know he used necromancy?” the old man said, “That a forbidden art.” The old man added.
“Remember?” Ludwig pointed at his clothes, “Black Tower academy, we’re taught ways to fight the Dark arts. All I did was disturb his necromantic ritual, though I almost died because of it,” Ludwig shrugged.
“Is that so…” the old man said while suspicion was growing clear on his face.
“He is right my lord,” another person spoke up as he approached with a crystal in hands. “All he said was the truth my lord.”
‘Huh? truth, when did that happen?’