The piled up corpses had been reduced to a pound of rotten flesh with jagged bones protruding from its bloated mass.
It was pulsating, squirming and moving.
Oozing blood corrupted by decay, it was dark and gooey, moving along the ground, crawling up the walls and covering the ceiling.
The undeads were being filled with death force, their hollow sockets burning with ghostly flames.
The mass of putrefaction emitted a visible smog, a miasma of death that searched for nothing more than filled every crevasses available, it yearned for life, to destroy and corrupt it until only death remained.
Loimos was the source of it all, putting his own rot manipulation to work, he had transfigured the corpses into what could be likened to a machine which purpose was nothing more than constantly pumping this murderous fog.
The undead had gained a greater understanding of his singular ability, he had understood even before the system had put this ability into words.
*Primeval Rot*
Its name wasn't of much importance, though the fact that the system placed it apart from the rest might have been deemed of interest to some.
Loimos didn't bother much with this system, it wasn't like he needed its help to use his rot.
Probing the swollen pile, he remained still and observed it for a while, soon coming to the conclusion that it wasn't going to remain in function for a long, multiple weeks wasn't a long time at all.
He was going to need to add more corpses to it, perhaps after a certain threshold, it wouldn't need anymore to remain in place for eternity.
The large skeleton, which had been standing in a corner and staring at the wall for an indeterminate amount of time, suddenly straightened its pose, turned and looked up, blighted blood drooping on its skull.
Its death force had been greatly empowered thanks to the miasma, it now seemed strangely active.
Grabbing its lower jaw, it clicked it back into place with a sudden jerk of the hand, its jaw now fixed it wasted no time and suddenly opened it, somehow emitting a loud roar in spite of lacking all the necessary equipment required.
'Not quite death force' Loimos recognised the feeling of death from the roar but it had clearly not been accomplished using the energy of the undeads.
He wagered that it had done this using the same sort of energy used in magic as he followed after the large undead as it began barreling toward the shut stone door.
All of the ancient undeads followed suit, though the strongest of them didn't require their help, pushing hard enough to flung the doors open and cause one to fall off its hinges.
Loimos hadn't gone to check it out himself, but he had expected this sort of scenery.
The path leading up to the door was quite long, it wasn't too surprising that they would all end up on solid ground in the woods next to the lake.
They should be fairly close-by to the goblin tribe, though there was another obstacle in the way.
Small shapes emerged from the trees, staring at the undeads with curious, glowing yellow eyes.
The bark dwellers didn't recognise the undeads for what they were, they were just like the goblins, ignorant.
Though, even the least intelligent of species didn't need to know what an undead was to feel fear at their sight.
The miasma, which had been locked up inside of the confines hadn't been able to expand beyond the door, at the touch of the soft tall grass, it began to travel a little bit faster, hungry for the plant's life force.
The bark dwellers were all running away, their survival was only thanks to The First Seed in the first place, they were under its protection and didn't know how to deal with conflict on their own.
So they all retreated into the woods, hoping that their godfather's manipulation of the woods would keep the terrifying corpses away from them.
The undeads seemed on the verge of giving chase but stopped upon hearing a distinctive 'Clack' noise.
None could actually communicate with one another but they all shared the same goal, they already seemed to acknowledge Loimos as an undead that should be followed, so they stopped and stayed still as he closed his jaw shut.
Seemingly unwilling to elaborate he simply began picking up the vegetation that had been drained of life and the rest followed suit.
There was no need to rush in, be destroyed and waste perfectly good chances of killing life, the simplest way of taking out all life in here was to feed the generator of miasma.
In the state that it was now, it could only restore the undeads to their true glory by filling up the missing death force animating them.
Case in point, Loimos hadn't seen much improvement at all unlike the rest who could now run around and burst through stone doors when they struggled with moving around before.
The miasma did have the property of enhancing the dead beyond their current limits but it was faint enough that it could be ignored.
It was also having a struggle with blades of grass, these living couldn't defend themselves at all.
The miasma was the bare minimum, goblins would be able to walk through it without much problem.
Instead of running after the bark dwellers, the small undead troop began to gather the drained vegetation and dig up whatever remains they could find.
They brought the swollen mass of rot out into the open too, accelerating the rate at which they could fuel it, the more they fueled it, the faster it drained the surroundings of life.
The faster life around it was killed, the more it could be fueled, resulting in an endless loop that could only end once nothing was alive and everything had been converted to death.
It was also to be mentioned that everything the smog eradicated counted as if Loimos had done it himself, because it was exactly what was happening.
The fog and rot were all his.
Once entire trees began to be drained, it was simply the beginning of the end.
Or rather, it was the beginning.
"Yeah, I knew something was off" surrounded by the utter chaos and collective hysteria his tribe had devolved into, Gobstroz felt oddly cold-headed as he stared ahead at the ever growing wall of dark fog.
The smog was high, seemingly expanding in height faster than it spread on the ground.
Its effects were obvious, seeing the plants and trees falling apart, growing strange, tumour-looking fleshy protuberances, oozing a dark and gooey substance, it was clearly something no one would want to touch under any circumstances.
He had no clue whether or not this was related to his previous problem of mysterious creature and he frankly didn't care, at the rate this thing was progressing, it would engulf his tribe in a week, and that was being optimistic.
This deadly smoke wouldn't care for their improved defences and might, it wasn't something he could face in a fight, it was a natural disaster, the first to ever befall the inhabitants of this underground world.
"Chieftain?" a mousy voice called out to him.
"Go on" he gave permission to speak as he turned around, not bothering to identify who was speaking, any ideas, no matter how idiotic was worth listening to at the moment.
'Oh, it's that kid, what was his name again?' he recognised the goblin that had spoken to him about Gobert's disappearance, an unremarkable member of the tribe, easily forgotten about.
Gobstroz still managed to remember this fellow's name.
"Imigob, what is the matter?" he added as he saw that his tribesman was still hesitant about giving his opinion.
"Hurm, chieftain, I, I have an idea to slow down the mist" he looked away as he spoke.
"Then go ahead, explain" Gobstroz nudged him to continue, grabbing him by the shoulder and forcing him to stand up as he brought the smaller goblin next to him, both facing the unstoppable miasma.
"Well, I noticed something about it…" he was still fidgety but kept on nonetheless.
"If you could look over there…" he pointed at the ground in front of the death cloud.
"The grass and flowers die faster than than bushes and trees, and the mist advances faster into those areas as well, so-"
"Oh!" The chieftain slammed his fist into his hand as he understood, he hadn't thought of it like that, but hearing about it from Imigob made him realise this obvious fact.
"So it would seem that the mist progresses at the speed at which it can kill things, growing over the areas it had already grazed…" the young goblin finished his thought.
"I think I see where you are going, but go on Imigob!" the chieftain slapped the goblin's bald head, encouraging him.
"O-Okay! I would suggest that we burn the ground and vegetation in between the mist and the tribe, so as to slow its approach" Imigob stared into the miasma as he spoke.
"That's what I thought, how come I never heard that you had such a good head on your shoulder" the chieftain began to walk away, scooping some of the panicked goblins to go and do some scorched earth tactic.
Imigob remained in place, staring at the approaching smog with a fearful expression, looking from behind the false safety of the fence, he saw something move.
He tensed up, his eyes widening as he stared at the vague shape moving and pushing through the dense mist.
'It's… Getting thicker?' the miasma was turning darker and proliferating faster, it was all happening so fast, he could hardly believe it.
With a thud, a huge, skeletal monster emerged from the fog, covered in a dark, oily liquid, it yelled out toward the tribe.
Before the sound could reach Imigob, his mind had already gone into overdrive, analysing in too much detail every single thing within his sight.
The large beast wasn't alone, smaller beings similar to it were following, all appearing like walking corpses.
Their empty eyes smouldering with dark fires, they didn't rush forward and simply stood there after making their presence known.
Imigob's attention was centered on what filled the largest monster's ribcage, the mass of pure rot was pushing against its ribs, sticking to its body and entangling around its bones.
The miasma was coming from within this creature.
The young goblin opened his mouth as he turned around, ready to shout about the danger when the roar reached him.
Him and all of the other green monsters suddenly grew pale as their muscles tensed up, their heart rates suddenly slowed before growing stronger and harder, this roar had just instilled something into their minds.
They had been forcefully made to realise that they could die at any moment.
The roar wasn't powerful enough to paralyse the strongest members of the tribe and only halted their steps for an instant, still, most of the goblins were left stumped in place.
Unable to do anything as the undead troop got into action, grabbing chunks off of the rotten mass, they began throwing those torn pieces over the fence, at the foot of the fence and nearly everywhere else.
The small bits quickly began to start growing, corrupting the rich life in the air, much richer than anywhere else due to being so close by to the dwelling place of the goblins, a species with more lifeforce than the mundane plants and trees.
The undeads then retreated back into the miasmic cloud, disappearing from sight after leaving the goblins to deal with the rot, which had seen some severe improvement after being nourished so much.
"Burn the crap they threw at us! Don't leave any stone unturned, burn it all!" the chieftain yelled out, dragging the mortified goblins out of their stupors.
'Damn, those things got all the way over there? Then does it mean that The First Seed was taken out?' the mist had since long covered the entirety of the bark dwellers's living space, but Gobstroz had still been hesitant to count the old tree as dead.
It was, by all means, the mightiest being of this miniature world, nothing got close to even matching its power and control.
If it had fallen, there was little hope for them, mere monsters.
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