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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 238
🕑 Added 2025-06-24 15:14:32 +0000 UTCAN: Sorry for the late upload, just came back from overseas a few hours ago.
It started with one undead head bursting open, then another, then five more. When I headshot the twentieth or so undead with my Stone Bullet spell from beyond the boundary of the chest-high graveyard wall, something happened.
There was still no reaction from the undead, but a dense fog seemed to have appeared from the center of the graveyard at an unnatural speed. Another clue that the fog was unnatural was the prickly sensation of mana as it spilled beyond the walls of the graveyard and washed over me.
This told me a couple of things. First, the Death Knight may have some kind of connection with the undead on the surface, and it can somehow sense their deaths. And second, it must really be trying to protect whatever is in the catacomb to the point that it does not leave its post to come and deal with me or send the lesser undead after me.
And now that the fog has hidden the undead to prevent me from sniping them, I am forced to step into the graveyard and endure whatever psychic pressure emanates from this place. This means I have to put research on mental defence enchantment on my to-do list when I get back home.
But I have already wasted enough time with the harpies. I am just going to have to grit my teeth and power thru what ever mental bullshit is sprouting from the graveyard.
As I drew my sword and entered the graveyard, I felt the pressure on my mind, whispering incoherent words to me in a language I was not familiar with. The only thing I could do was shake my head, grit my teeth, and keep my mind on my sense of self.
As I got not more than ten paces into the graveyard, the fog was so thick that I could no longer see the tip of my sword, and when I raised my hand outstretched before me, I could barely see the outline of my hand.
It was also around this time that I started hearing the sounds of feet stepping and dragging their way to me. With a swiping gesture of my off-hand, I used instinctive wind magic to blow away the fog before me, only to reveal that every shambling undead was slogging their way toward me, and I am sure that there were a lot more in the fog beyond what i just cleared.
But just as quickly as I cleared the fog, it rushed back to envelope me with a vengeance, and before I knew it, the sounds of the shambling undead were just before me, and I barely dodged out of the way of a lunge to grab me.
I followed up that dodge by bringing my sword down on the undead I just dodged, cutting its rotting body in two just below the shoulder. But I had no time for respite, the job said for me to clear the undead, and that is what I would do; the fact that they are all coming to me just saves me the effort of going to them.
Another two make a grab for me, so I bisected one and kicked away the other, and by the sound of it, it seems to have crashed into those behind it.
A few minutes into the fighting, I found that my eyesight was not doing me any good with all the fog around, and was directing my blade at the undead just by the sound of their footsteps alone. But what I was doing was no high-level technique, to the undead’s detriment and my advantage; they were loud, slow, and their bodies were… structurally compromised, making it easy to cleave through them.
Fifteen minutes into swinging my sword nonstop, I was starting to get winded, so I decided to exploit any loophole the undead might have to stay in the graveyard. The only issue was that after all the fighting and with the undead all around me, I had turned around a few times… I didn’t know which way led outside the graveyard.
So I decided to pick a direction and run, so I ran straight, shoulder-checking a few undead out of the way.
As I got out of the encirclment, the density of undead got lower, so I thought I was on the right track. The problem with that was that after a while, I was pretty sure I ran twice the distance I knew the graveyard to be.
Something was wrong... Could I already be under whatever mind-fuckery this place was doing? Making me run in circles? Is this why no one has ever made it out? Is it because of the fog? Nobody has ever reported it before. So many questions. Need to find a way to get answers.
Even in my short stop to contemplate my problem, I could already hear the undead closing in on me. So I ran some more.
As I was running and thinking up a plan, the only thing I could think of to help my situation was to get rid of the fog, even for a while, so I could get my bearings. To that end, I started spinning up a wide-scale wind spell instead of instinctive magic to save mana.
It took me a few seconds of chanting, hand signs, and light jogging to keep a distance from the undead. When my spell was ready, I unleashed it, creating a gale that blew away the fog, but from what I could see of the spell's results, it only reached about fifty meters or so, and at the edge of my spell, I could clearly see the fog fighting back with my wind to flood into the empty space.
I took this opportunity to look around for the borders of the graveyard, but found none. What I did find was a hole in the ground, not five meters to my right. “Is that the hole the previous mercenaries fell into? Well, that saves me the trouble. All I have to do is go down and deal with this Death Knight to solve the undead nonsense going on.”
Before my wind spell faded, I jumped into the hole.
