章 15: Beginning
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.
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