Chapter 43: Conversation and Pursuit
“Hey Lapis. What happened to the anti-evil ritual?”
“It’s just for warding off evil. It doesn’t make the building stronger or anything like that.”
Loren looked at the part of the clinic that was blown away and asked Lapis in a scornful manner, but she replied in a flat tone.
The ritual that Lapis performed was impenetrable against the undead from outside, but that was just for keeping the undead away, and didn’t affect the building itself at all.
“Also, it keeps things from coming it, but it doesn’t have any effect on something that is trying to get out.”
“Not as useful as I thought it would be.”
“The same thing has been protecting you this whole time, you know?”
As Lapis replied to Loren’s disappointment with a scornful gaze, Loren immediately looked away and played dumb.
Klaus shouted loudly at their exchange, continuing to mow down zombies after zombies that continued to flock towards him.
“The clinic’s defenses have been breached, you know? Panic a bit, will you guys!?”
“Even if you say that…”
Loren’s gaze was still focused on the rubble of the demolished part of the clinic.
His eyes were glued onto the shadow that stood above it all.
“Seeing something like that just takes it around and doesn’t even make me want panic.”
The figure that Loren mentioned was indeed humanoid but displayed a form that was far from a human.
It definitely looked like a person.
The figure wearing normal women’s clothing looked like someone that you wouldn’t even take a second glance if you walked past her on the street.
But the large difference was the yellowish mist that was being emitted from her entire body into her surroundings.
The figure wearing the mist that sent a chill down the spine and gave off a bad vibe just by looking at it, had an unconscious Shayna in her arms and stared at Loren with eyes the same shade of yellow as the mist.
“You’ve changed quite a bit, haven’t you Shutel?”
At Loren’s call, the figure, whose brown hair floating around her, bent her lips into a smile.
“I knew you were suspicious, but I didn’t think you had quit being human.”
He didn’t have any evidence, but the uncomfortable vibe that he got just by looking at her and the eerie yellow mist around her, made it seem obvious that Shutel wasn’t anything close to a human being.
That was exactly why Shutel slowly walked down from the rubble and onto the street, right in the middle of all the zombies.
If she were a normal human, the zombies would’ve flocked to her and started tearing at her flesh, but they just stood where they were, paying no attention to her.
“What are you going to do with Shayna?”
When Lapis threw a question at her as Shutel turned her back towards them and started to walk away, Shutel stopped and answered without even looking back.
“It is none of your concern. This girl is the one that he has put his hands on, and has granted the treasure upon her body. He has pa.s.sed on, but I have the responsibility to complete what he had started.”
“She actually spoke.”
Although zombies used to be human, they were unable to speak human tongue.
Even revenants, which were known to have some intelligence, did spout things that sounded like words, but it is known that they couldn’t have a meaningful conversation at all.
Loren didn’t actually know all this, but since he had believed that undead were unable to talk with humans, he couldn’t hide his surprise because he thought that Shutel was some sort of undead, due to the fact that the zombies didn’t attack her.
“That’s probably a Wight. They’re undead that are a bit smarter than revenants.”
“So undead have different names based on how smart they are…”
“no, not exactly…”
Suddenly the yellow mist erupted from Shutel’s body and covered the area, interrupting Lapis.
Loren tensed as he expected it to block their sight, but it was far from a smokescreen, something more atrocious than that.
“Wights are users of powerful energy drains. If the yellow mist touches you it steals your mana and life energy.”
“I don’t have any business with you lot. Become prey for the zombies, is what I would like to say, but…”
Shutel finally turned towards Loren and Lapis, with a quizzical look.
“An ordinary human would immediately be unable to move a finger, but why are you two not affected?”
“Of course, that’s because we have means to deal with it.”
Lapis said proudly, but Loren wasn’t sure if there was much meaning at all taking such an att.i.tude against an undead.
Shutel continued to look at Loren and Lapis, but after a while she turned around once again.
“Whatever. In any case, you wouldn’t last long dealing with all these zombies and revenants, anyway. Even if you did, once I complete what he started, there’s no way the living could resist it.”
“Hey, wait!”
Loren tried to stop Shutel from leaving, but at that moment the zombies stood in his way, blocking her from view.
“This isn’t looking too good.”
Even though Shutel left, the yellow mist did not disappear, and was still surrounding the area.
As she looked at it, her words contained a bit of panic inside them.
“Klaus and I are fine. I won’t succ.u.mb to an energy drain of this degree, and Klaus has the protection of his Gift.”
“Am I the problem, by chance?”
“The evil warding ritual does increase your resistance, but if you continue to be within the range of this energy drain, either your resistance will fail or the ritual will lose its power.”
What Lapis had provided Loren wasn’t something that completely mitigated the effects of an energy drain, but only raised his resistance so that he would withstand the effects.
That in addition to Loren’s natural resistance, was why nothing happened to him until now.
But while he was within the mist that Shutel had emitted, which had the energy drain effect, he was constantly being exposed to the effects of the energy drain, so Lapis was saying that eventually his resistance would succ.u.mb to it or the ritual would lose effect.
He had to escape to a place outside the effects of the energy drain before that happened, but if he did that he wouldn’t be able to chase after Shutel, the source of it all.
“I guess I’ll have to take it as it comes. Can’t be helped.”
“Not going after her isn’t an option, I see.”
From what Shutel had said, her top priority was getting her hands on Shayna, and didn’t seem to want to chase them down or anything.
Although they would have to get through the ring of zombies, backing off would be much easier than chasing after Shutel, but Loren didn’t choose that option.
“Shutel said something about completing his work or something like that. I don’t know what that means exactly, but if something that humans can’t overcome happens, it’ll be really troublesome if we don’t stop it.”
“I feel like some nation will do something about it once it starts getting out of hand, but stopping it before it happens can’t hurt, I guess.”
“You’ve been expecting something like this to happen anyway, am I wrong?”
“I expected Shutel to make a move, and I did feel a weird indication, but I didn’t expect her to be a wight.
She apparently let Shutel in because she knew Shutel would make a move, and that would give a signpost to the key to this whole incident, but even Lapis didn’t know that Shutel herself would be an undead.
“Higher the rank of the undead, the better they are at masking their presence.”
“That’s pretty annoying.”
“So, I’m fine with chasing her, but what should we do with the clinic?”
If Loren and Lapis chased after Shutel, the defenses of the clinic would decrease drastically.
There were still many undead around the area, and exterminating them before chasing would take too long, and by the time they finished, it would most likely be that Shutel would be done with what she was planning to do.
“I’ve got this.”
While Loren was wondering what they should do, Klaus made the declaration.
“The protection on the clinic still works, right? And the undead that get close are all attracted to me. If I keep killing the zombies at the hole, The building should be fine.”
“That might be true, but that means you’ll be on your own until dawn.”
Once the sun rose, there was a high possibility that the light-hating undead will go back to wherever they were hiding during the day, but there was still a long way until sunrise.
During that time, if Klaus had to continually deal with the undead all by himself, the undead would infiltrate the clinic through the hole that Shutel had made.
Once that happens, it wasn’t hard to imagine what would happen to the people inside.
“It’s for my friends. Leave it to me. Is what I would like to say, but this is going to be pretty hard, even for me. So it would be helpful if you guys… the two of you could defeat the wight and come back as soon as possible.”
When they heard those words, Loren and Lapis glanced at each other and said to Klaus in harmony.
“‘That way of talking is pretty disgusting’”
“I-I can be sorry for things, okay!? I owe you one for saving Ange as well.”
The second half got quieter and was hard to make out, but Klaus immediately recovered and looked back at Loren and Lapis, and said clearly.
“So leave this to me, please.”
“Well, since it looks like you’ve made up your mind, I guess we could leave it to you.”
If it was Klaus when Loren first met him, he would’ve scoffed and would’ve told him not to be so full of himself, but to Loren it seemed he could trust the Klaus he was seeing right now.
That’s why when Loren replied to him like that, he thumped his chest with his fist and undertook it.
“I promise that I’ll protect this place until you two get back.”
“Buy me a drink when it’s all over.”
“…Shouldn’t that be I’ll buy you a drink when it’s all over?”
“I don’t have the money to even if I wanted to. I’ve become an adventurer because I was a broke mercenary, after all.”
As Loren said something quite pathetic, Lapis grabbed his hand and started pulling on it.
“We’ve got no time to lose. I’ll track Shutel so let’s go.”
“Got it. Alright Klaus, you’d better not die.”
As Loren said that to motivate him, Klaus held up his longsword and replied.
“Unfortunately, until I have a household with Ange, have a lot of children, a lot of grandchildren, and have them see me off, I won’t feel like dying.”
“That’s a pretty luxurious dream you’ve got there…”
“Roll and Layla will be my concubines.”
Klaus said something completely unexpected with shining eyes.
“Isn’t it better if we have him die here?”
Loren was being quite serious as he asked Lapis, but she didn’t answer. Instead, after sending an ice cold glare resembling a blizzard in the far lands of the north, she started running after Shutel, still holding onto Loren’s hand.