Soul of Negary

Nala wielded her knight’s sword and cautiously observed the corpse in front of her.

Abruptly, the walking corpse charged towards her. She accurately thrusted her knight’s sword forward and pierced the heart of the corpse, but it was still moving as normal, trying to claw and scratch at Nala to bring her down. Nala scowled and swung her sword again, cutting the monster’s head off.

“So only by chopping their heads off can they be granted slumber?” with that in mind, Nala hurriedly ran towards the victim who had fallen on the ground.

The man’s neck was already ripped open as his blood continued to flow out without stopping, obviously a hopeless cause. His eyes were looking up at the sky, almost as if to blame something above.

Nala put down her knight’s sword and took the man’s hands, then prayed for him with the wish that he would be able to ascend to Heaven above and obtain eternal peace.

Soldiers riding their horses quickly arrived behind her with torches in their hands.

“Princess, what are your orders?” the soldiers all drew their weapons as they looked down in confusion at the rotten corpse on the ground.

“The dead seems to be coming back to life” Nala stood up and looked down at the corpse that had lost all signs of life yet still managed to crawl back up at her feet, she then picked up her sword again.

“My god, what is that thing!?” the soldiers raised their swords towards the staggering corpse in fright, they had never seen a person whose neck was messed up so badly yet could still remain alive, combined with Nala’s words just now, all they felt was fear.

“Calm yourselves!” Nala swung her sword and chopped off the newly reanimated corpse’s head, then turned around to this squad of soldiers: “There’s an evil presence that’s causing these dead bodies to be resurrected, those who are bitten to death will also turn into the same monsters”

“Send two people back to report the situation and have them send more people to reinforce us. The rest of us here only have a single job” Nala could still hear frightened screams coming all over the village: “Cut down these monsters’ heads and grant them eternal slumber, understood?”

“Under…stood!” the soldiers hesitated briefly before loudly responding.

After giving out her orders, Nala quickly ran towards the screams. Seeing the Princess acting without hesitation, the soldiers also felt a sense of power running through their bodies. The Princess was only a 17-year-old girl, yet she could fight without hesitation, so what reason did they have to refuse?

“Villagers, do not panic! Remain in your homes! If anyone sees a moving dead body, run towards the military camp at the south” Nala loudly shouted: “We are soldiers of the Kingdom, we will ensure your safety!”

A large number of walking corpses turned and charged towards Nala’s group. Without a hint of fear in her mind, Nala’s sword was without hesitation, she was such a person, once she had determined something to be the right thing to do, she would do it without hesitation.

Just like how she decided to come forward and become the ‘Saintress of Salvation’ as it would please her mother.

The ugly corpses fell one by one as Nala had granted them a silent slumber. Furthermore, as the report was brought back, Rhys who had taken control of the situation also sent out many soldiers to aid her in cleaning up the walking corpses.

After a bit of confusion, the situation finally calmed back down. A few of the villagers who were bitten suddenly went berserk and caused a bit of trouble, but in the end, they were only a bunch of unarmed corpses. Fully armored soldiers with weapons in their hands could easily win against these monsters as soon as they got over the fact that they were fighting dead bodies.

“Princess, we’ve asked the villagers about what happened” Rhys walked up to Nala who stood by the fire with her sword in hand and spoke with heavy words: “All of these corpses were people of the village. But all of them were supposed to have been buried in the village graveyard”

“Then bring some people with me to the village graveyard and check the situation there” Nala said. The act of desecrating bodies of the dead was an evil act regardless of the place, and it was hard to say that this wasn’t a scheme of Royas.

With how infectious those moving corpses were, if it had been able to spread behind Interkam’s supply lines, then the frontline would collapse almost instantly, and there would be no reason for them to go to the frontlines anymore.

Of course, there was no guarantee that it had to be a scheme of Royas, because the current Royas could finish their conquest of Interkam even without resorting to these methods.

Since this matter couldn’t be delayed, the group quickly made their way to the graveyard, only to see empty plots of land behind the tombstones created by the corpses inside leaving them. Nala used [Respiratory Art] to constantly check their surroundings, but she couldn’t notice anything abnormal either.

Rhys cautiously moved forward while observing his surroundings with his sword in hand, then all of a sudden, a walking corpse jumped out from behind a bush and attacked Rhys.

Rhys wasn’t much of a fighter, but his reflexes weren’t slow, this was a result of practice from the various ‘accidents’ that he had experienced so far. As soon as he noticed the ambush, he jumped back and thrust his knight’s sword forward.

The walking corpse that charged at him was squarely pierced through the head by his sword. As the corpse’s blood splashed everywhere, his face was seen by Rhys, the man had a plain, unassuming face, but carried a satisfied smile even in his death. His right hand that was so dried up it looked almost like a twig was clutching a small book around the size of his palm.

“Red blood? Did this man die recently?” such a thought flashed through Rhys’ mind, as he pulled his sword back, the corpse completely stopped moving and fell to the ground, the book slipped from his hand and fell right in front of Rhys.

As soon as he saw this book, something in Rhys’ mind turned and made it so that he couldn’t help himself moving one step forward to conceal it.

Nala and the rest who heard the commotion quickly ran to him, as they saw the corpse on the ground, they asked Rhys out of concern: “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine” Rhys smiled bitterly. Inexplicably, he chose not to reveal the book on the ground and instead glossed things over with the others before silently picking the book up.

Rhys only needed a swift look over the content of the book to realize that it was the reason behind this walking corpse incident. The book had a total of 9 pages, each of which detailed the process of creating a certain monster, for example, the first page showed how to create a monster through a few drugs and surgical modification.

Each of these monsters had their own picture depiction that despite being drawn in simple black lines, all appeared very life-like as if they could step out of the book and manifest in real life at any moment.

And the 5th page described these walking corpses that they had just fought, but this page didn’t have a picture.

Rhys carefully stashed this book away with a chilling look in his face. There was a type of monster in this book that would greatly benefit their war efforts, but anyone could tell even without thinking that Nala would never use it to win the war. On the other hand, Rhys desired and craved the light, but he was not someone who would shy away from using a few shady means to achieve his goal.

After their search produced no results, the group could only return to camp.