Chapter 191: Chapter 191: Two Odd Combinations
“Stop right there!” A hoarse shout suddenly came from the side.
Dizzy, I was so lost in thought that I didn’t even notice someone approaching. What a fail.
Anwina and I stopped in our tracks and looked towards the source of the noise, then simultaneously exclaimed in our minds, “How ugly!”
What appeared before us was a tall Skeleton Soldier clad in tattered chain armor, followed by a Little Zombie with a blank expression and pus-filled sores all over. From both a physics and biology standpoint, I figured the Zombie was the one who had just made the noise.
Though I pride myself on having nerves of steel, even akin to being unperturbed in the face of Mount Tai’s collapse, seeing a Skeleton and a Zombie standing in front of me for the first time… Honestly, it was quite the jittery experience.
Actually, since learning about the existence of Undead creatures, the only one I had really seen was the girl Anwina. Clearly, Anwina was quite beautiful, which had led me to an imprudently optimistic outlook on what Undead creatures might look like. As it turned out, now confronted with two genuine and rather common examples, I nearly threw up…
But this was, after all, the Undead’s domain; here in the Tirisfal Region, anything that moved was probably these high-calcium pieces or fatty flesh. Having wandered this foul-smelling hellhole for so long, it was quite a feat to encounter anything alive at all. I guess I shouldn’t expect my encounters to be so stunningly beautiful.
As Anwina and I were sizing up our new acquaintances, they were sizing us up as well.
Zaken was the name of this Skeleton Soldier. As an Undead Soldier who had shed the Mind Control of the Witch Demon King, he now served the Dark Queen, Sylvanas. Having been an experienced Reconnaissance Soldier in life, he had been tasked with patrolling the periphery of the Dark City. Though the Witch Demon King’s power had weakened, small bands of Undead creatures still posed a threat under the residual influence of his Spirit, endangering the newly freed Forgotten. Besides these scattered Catastrophe Soldiers, the areas were plagued by the mad mutated beasts, animal Undead, and the Bloodthirsty Crusaders, who harbored a blind hatred for all Undead (The Crusaders had aggressively expanded their reach almost to the outskirts of Dark City, making the conflicts between the Forgotten and the Bloodthirsty Crusaders far more frequent than I had anticipated—of course, I was unaware of this at the moment). In order to clear out these nuisances, massive numbers of Undead Soldiers patrolled outside Dark City constantly, and Zaken was one of these Scouts. Just moments ago, he had encountered and eliminated a few Skeleton Soldiers blindly attacking all moving targets under the residual influence of the Witch Demon King’s spirit. Now, he had stumbled upon this strange pair.
The girl exuding a faint glow and dressed in a Maid Uniform was undoubtedly an Undead creature. As a member of a race particularly sensitive to various kinds of essences, Zaken wouldn’t be mistaken about this distinctive aura of their kind. However, there seemed to be something else mixed within that aura, something that gave Zaken an uneasy feeling. Upon closer examination, the spirit girl’s eyes did not exhibit the crazed vacancy of typical ghostly apparitions, nor the lifelessness of those controlled by the Witch Demon King, so Zaken temporarily excluded her from the category of enemies.
But the man standing before the girl…
He wore a peculiar mask that looked a bit like an animal skeleton. Zaken wondered if it was some magical artifact necessary for some kind of witchcraft (if Zaken had known that the man wore it just to avoid the stench, who knows what expression he might have made—if his calcium-rich face could express anything…). However, Zaken sensed no magical power emanating from the man, only the continuous presence of a living person’s scent…
A flash of red light flickered in Zaken’s empty eye sockets. No wonder he felt an all-too-familiar and out-of-place aura coming from the masked man—it was the scent of a living human. Yet, something about it was a bit off, unlike any living human he had encountered before, which was why Zaken hadn’t thought of it at first.
Such a combination was indeed peculiar: an Undead creature traveling together with a live human, especially in a place like Tirisfal, which had fully become an Undead Kingdom. Could it be that this man was actually an Undead Wizard, and the ghostly girl beside him his Undead Slave?
Unlikely, as Zaken had not detected a whiff of Magic from him, and the girl’s eyes didn’t carry that bewildered look of being controlled. Moreover, being an Undead himself, Zaken was incredibly sensitive to the waves of Undead Magic—if the man was truly an Undead Wizard, Zaken would have sensed it immediately!
Ignoring what this super-analytic Skeleton Soldier was thinking, I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed…
No matter how you slice it, being stared at so intently by a clacking set of bones is enough to make anyone’s liver quiver, right? Moreover, standing next to this mobile calcium supplement, there’s also a rotting corpse of a zombie spectator, oozing pus. Paired with the bleak atmosphere of Tirisfal Forest… it’s starting to feel a bit like “The Ring”…
“Ahem,” I coughed up a smile that was slightly less ugly than crying, and greeted the two undead friends in front of me, “Have you eaten?”
Instantly, the air around us took on a subtly awkward vibe, and in my inner world, thunder boomed ominously… Had I never before discovered just how creative I could be?
“Master… so lame…” Anwina crisply snarked in her mind.
“Weird human…” This was the only thought that came to Zaken after being internally scorched by lightning.
Despite this odd man appearing different from those humans who blindly loath all undead creatures, and the fact that he had a ghost companion, Zaken didn’t let his guard down. In this world incredibly harsh to the Forgotten, he really had no excess trust to extend to strangers.
Zaken pointed his somewhat rusty longsword at me, and with a single thought, the little zombie accompanying him immediately spoke in a hoarse voice: “Human, tell me your name, and why you are in the Forgotten’s territory—don’t think about stalling for time. I don’t have much patience to spare for the living!”
It seems I’ve stumbled onto something interesting.
It was only after the zombie spoke that I noticed the Skeleton Soldier in front of me didn’t seem to talk, presumably because he lacked vocal cords. Whenever he wanted to say something, a spiritual wave would emanate from him to the dazed little zombie nearby, who would then voice his thoughts—It looked like the zombie next to him didn’t possess independent consciousness but was a mind-controlled extension of the Skeleton Soldier, like a disembodied voice box (…). Witnessing such a bizarre combo for the first time, I couldn’t help but be immensely curious, to the point that I temporarily forgot about the other’s super impactful appearance.
It seems that the laws of each world are indeed different. In the world of Azeroth, an undead being without vocal cords lacks the ability to speak, whereas I’ve heard from Sandora that in some worlds, creatures like “Skeleton Soldiers” have no such restriction. Faced with such starkly different world laws, I can only marvel: creation is truly miraculous!