Chapter 278: From Pursuing To Arriving

Proofreader: Xemul

During the night, the party took turns to keep watch in pairs, rotating between Gula – Dia and Loren – Lapis. The next day, after having plenty of sleep and rest, they began their activities as soon as the sun rose.

Loren was somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of a vampire who began activities at sunrise, but he knew he had to accept the fact, as the actual vampire who did that was right in front of him.

“Is there something on my face?”

Dia curiously asked Loren as she had noticed him looking glancing at her from time to time, to which Loren replied shortly that it was nothing and forced his mind to focus on something else.

About the orcs that had attacked yesterday, the corpses that had been turned into zombies and sent to search for their home, had provided some rough information about the location of their base to Shayna. But even without such information, there was a clear trail of where the zombies had gone, and it was of no difficulty to follow the blood tracks.

“I thought we’d done a pretty good job of cutting them down yesterday, but it looks like there’s still a lot of them left.”

The first zombies were created by Dia. Because of this, their information was obtained by Dia, then passed on to Loren and the others. Loren was worried about how she could receive information from the zombies created by Shayna, but his worries proved to be in vain. As the highest-ranking vampire, it was no problem for Dia to interfere with the magical connection between the zombies created by Shayna and Shayna herself to obtain information from them.

“There seems to be a cave in the middle of Fire Flute Mountain. It seems to be where the orcs live.”

“Are there any survivors?”

Nim asked curtly, and Dia shook her head.

“I don’t know. Zombies are not intelligent enough to distinguish between orcs and humans. The only thing they can tell is that there is something alive out there in large numbers.”

“I want to help the survivors.”

Nim stated somewhat firmly. Loren also wanted to help as much as possible, but the first priority was their own safety. If that were to be threatened, he believed it would be necessary to give up on the survivors. However, he thought it would be best to remain silent as it might aggravate Nim’s feelings. But the elf glanced at him and, sensing that he was being asked to say something, Loren thought for a moment before offering a bland opinion.

“If possible.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

After such an exchange, the group left the camp. They loaded their belongings onto the wagon, carried only what they needed, and left the wagons inside the ruined village. Loren was uneasy about leaving the wagons in the ruined village without guards, but Gula and Dia took care of the matter.

“I’ve left a protective ward and a magic formula to keep monsters out, so I think it’ll be okay.”

“I’ve set up an interceptor on the wagon, so it should be able to handle a few monsters.”

“Do you want me to do something too?””

Loren gently turned Lapis’s offer down. The magical formula used by the Elder and the Evil God alone was more than enough. If the power of the demon tribe was also used, it was impossible to know what would happen. If they were not careful, they might end up with more damages than just a lost wagon.

Although it was not a great distance from the wrecked village to Mt. Fire Flute, the path was quite steep, and there was no such thing as a mountain path. This meant that neither people nor animals would venture into this mountain, and it was very troublesome for their party to have to climb it.

Nevertheless, they chose a route that seemed relatively easy to follow and began climbing. But there was one person who could not climb the mountain, but climbed on Loren’s back instead.

“Don’t you have any spare clothes or something?”

Clinging to a stunned Loren’s back and looking somewhat pleased was Dia, wearing a dress.

Of course, it would not be impossible to climb a mountainside with undergrowth and short trees wearing such a dress, but the dress would obviously suffer from tears all over. Dia immediately gave up climbing the mountain and clang to Loren’s back as a means of keeping up with the group.

“As an Elder, I don’t have any plain clothes.”

“When we first met, weren’t you wearing something more plain?”

“I was not a full-fledged Elder then, but I am now.”

“You always just say whatever…”

Loren was taken aback by Dia’s manner of speaking, but it was no great burden for him to have the small Dia clinging to his back. The only thing he worried about was that she might get in the way a little when he drew his greatsword. As he thought that he should just let her do what she pleased, he noticed Lapis turning to him with a grudging look, and hurriedly decided to pretend not to know.

And so, Dia was being carried up the slope of the mountain while humming on Loren’s back.

After a while, the Elder tapped Loren on the shoulder and pointed in their direction of travel.

“There’s a zombie over there.”

Loren looked over and saw a motionless, half-destroyed orc corpse leaning against one of the trees growing on the side of the mountain. Thinking what a grotesque sight it was, he approached and stopped when he saw another dead orc hidden in the undergrowth at the zombie’s feet.

Peeking out from Loren’s back, Dia looked down at the fallen orc corpses and immediately guessed the identity of the corpse.

“They seem to be intelligent enough to send out patrols. It seems they ran into each other and got into a fight.”

“So, the zombies over there are stuck in a battle.”

“That seems to be the case. The fallen one is a little bitten off, but it seems less damaged than the standing one, so I will let this one lead the way.”

As Dia said and waved her hand lightly, the zombie that was leaning against the tree collapsed to the ground, and the fallen orc began to slowly stand up. The orc, whose cause of death was apparently having its throat ripped open, did not appear to be too badly damaged, and as not much time had passed since it was killed, its appearance was well-preserved. However, it was still completely naked, and although Lapis had gotten used to it, she still found it hard to look directly at him. She quietly looked away and hid behind Loren.

“Just like the first time.”

“Please leave me alone.”

As the two people behind his back had this exchange, Loren followed the zombie, who had started walking, and began to climb the mountain again.

It was a long walk from there.

Halfway up, they found a place where they couldn’t pinpoint exactly what happened.

Hidden behind a large grove of trees nearby, they came upon a cave-like opening in the mountainside, where a group of naked orcs were locked in a grapple.

If that were all, it would have been just another unpleasant scene that they could have pretended to not see and forgotten about, but it was apparent that some of the orcs were in such a broken state that they were clearly not alive. It seemed that the orc zombies that Shayna had created and the orcs that were living in Mt. Fire Flute were in the middle of a battle.

“The zombies are doing pretty well.”

The living orc was completely naked as usual, but they had weapons in their hands. The zombies, on the other hand, were already broken to some extent, and they didn’t have any weapons. The zombies were strong enough that they would not stop attacking even if their bodies were broken. By the time Loren and his group arrived, a good number of the zombies had already stopped moving. However, the zombified orcs, who were originally sturdy and powerful monsters, had become zombies that wielded their power without concern for physical damage or limitations, and the orcs seemed to have suffered quite a bit of damage as well.

Thinking that the balance of the battle would tip to the side of the zombies if they interfered, Loren was about to put his hand on his greatsword, when he was stopped by Dia, who was clinging to his back.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Are you going to rush in? I don’t want you to.”

“We can crush those orcs guarding the entrance now.”

Since the cave on the mountainside was probably where the orcs lived, Loren thought that it was unlikely that the orcs engaging the zombies at the entrance were the entire force. However, there were not a small number of them, and he thought that if they were to be exterminated here, it would reduce the amount of work they would have to do when they ventured inside.

“We don’t have to rush in. We only need to crush them, right?”

Dia whispered to Loren, her mouth close to his ears, and snapped her fingers with her right hand. With that single movement, the orc corpses and zombie remnants that had been lying motionless on the ground began to gather together in one place, as if they had a will of their own.

The sight was so gruesome that Loren and the others were speechless. The muscle fibers of the gathered orc and zombie bodies were squashed together, the blood remaining inside dripped out, and with the sound of bones being broken echoing all around, merged into a single mass.

(Liz: just imagine how gross it would smell is enough to make me want to vomit…)

“Flesh golem. It’s not undead, it’s the result of alchemy.”

“It’s so disgusting that it makes me want to vomit.”

Lapis gave a scathing criticism to Dia, who was a bit proud of her performance.

Dia was somewhat disappointed by Lapis’ words, but from Loren’s point of view, Lapis’ remark was understandable. After all, it was a flesh golem made from orc corpses, both fresh or zombified, kneaded together like clay and formed into a humanoid shape. Even if no one said it bluntly like Lapis, there was no doubt that it had an appearance that would make anyone with normal sensibilities nauseous.

Moreover, when the flesh golem caught the startled orcs and began to try to push them into its body, even Loren, who thought he was used to such things, could not help but feel a small lump in his throat.

“Well, I guess that takes care of the orcs.”

Perhaps realizing from Loren’s expression that what she had created was unacceptable to the other party members, Dia hurriedly tried to change the subject.

Loren, however, was caught off guard by Dia’s words and questioned her, thinking that no matter how much she tried to change the subject, nothing would change as long as the actual thing was right in front of their eyes.

“How can you call that ‘taken care of’?”

It was true that the flesh golem had almost one-sidedly crushed the orcs. However, although the cave where the orcs live was quite large and spacious, it was probably too small for the flesh golem, which had assimilated many more orc corpses, to get inside. If it could not get in, it would not be able to exterminate the orcs inside, and the problem would not be solved at all. But something happening at the entrance of the cave began to overturn this thought of his.

Of all things, the flesh golem began to bend and twist its huge body and push its way into the cave.

“It was originally a mass of flesh and blood, so it’s easy to transform.”

According to Dia, it did have some kind of skeleton, but even if that skeleton was destroyed, there was no problem reconstructing it inside. Moreover, as there was no reason why it had to be humanoid, the size of the space it entered would not matter.

“After the orcs have been dealt with, the problem is solved by destroying the golem itself. How’s that?”

Dia boasted, and Loren was honestly impressed. Yet that feeling fizzled out when Lapis voiced her question.

“If there were survivors among them, that golem would pick them out and keep them alive, wouldn’t it?”

“Eh?”

Dia froze in her boastful pose, and that was the answer to Lapis’ question.

“What do we do, Loren?”

“You tell me.”

The flesh golem had blocked the entrance to the cave as it tried to push itself inside. As they could not stop it now, there was nothing they could do.

With nothing left to do but watch and pray, Loren looked up at the sky with resigned eyes, hoping that there had been no survivors from the beginning, or that some of them would survive.