Chapter 7 - The Dead Raiser

"Is this the place Kurleun?" Mordred asked.

"Yep, yep. Under here." She hovers above a thick magenta bush.

"Allow me to scout the area first."

"DON'T! Dead Raisers are dangerous and could see souls, the baddie might do something awful to you even in immaterial form."

As he was about to split his soul. Kerleun hovers to his face with wide arms, gesturing for him to stop.

"I'll take it from here M'Love, I can share my visions with my soul golems." Her grip on his hand hardened as she locked eyes with him. They've always been walking hand in hand when their hands were free, so they could easily convey their feelings.

"Ahuh. Careful then."

A golem sprouts from the ground with a blazing vertical cyclops eye.

Combing out the leaves, it traces the bush looking for an entrance. Sharing its vision with her, the golem found a suspicious flat rock hidden by the thick bush. The rock's molds were fading and had traces of palm print, signifying that it was barely left untouched.

Pushing the rock away, a dark hole that could fit an adult human was on display.

"We've found the entrance. Good job, Darling."

"Good!"

"Good!" Alleges and Clux followed suit with the praise, they sure are learning.

The golem unhesitantly slides down the hole. It took a few seconds to pass before the golem reached the end of the narrow slope, evidence of how deep the downward journey was. Thanks to her night vision, the darkness did not obstruct the view of an underground cave.

Her sight was basked in the beauty of the hollowness of the underground mosaic cave, the high ceiling was glowing with blue hues of stones between its ivory body. Regretfully, before she was fully enthralled, a growl of a suppressed voice tilted the head of the golem to the side.

There was a man in ragged robes, limping as his figure enlarges in, walking out from one of the cave's three holes: the first was from whence her golem came, the other two were across the hollow cave, seemingly wanting for her golem to choose the next pathway.

The golem might not have smell receptors but just looking at the man's rotting skin is making Melantha's nose twitch in disgust. As she had expected, the walking corpse lunged at the golem and bit the latter's arm, funny enough, due to the golem's solid body, the man's teeth fell to the cave's ground to pieces.

"A walking dead body, a zombie? It was attacking my golem. It could be the frontline security cave's owner." She describes her view.

"Eeew! That could be the nasty Dead Raiser's ability. What it is called again? Aha! Necro Tempt."

"You seem pretty knowledgeable Kerluen, even tho you don't look like one." Mordred teased.

"Of cours— Hey! Whaddaya mean by that huh?"

With ease, the golem punched the man in the gut, downing him to his knees. What a silly fight, how will a body made of stone lose against a rotten corpse? Not only was the latter's power was weaker due to his decaying muscle, but he was also unarmed against an earth golem.

That was Melantha's thought until a group of rotten corpses swarmed out of the darkness. There are so many that they squeeze each other out of the narrow pathway, the same pathway where the first walking corpse came out, it was quite a horrific sight with their deformed bodies of decay.

They might be weak, but with overwhelming numbers, they are enough to swarm an ordinary small village and turn the villagers into their own soldiers of hideous zombies.

"Is this the power of yrihan? How come the controller can manipulate countless horde of walking corpses?" Melantha uttered with envy.

"Eh? The user has no total control of the soul, the Dead Raiser from Necromancy root is more of a soul whisperer than a controller. They guide the first soul not to immediately leave the body and wreak havoc by manipulating the soul's emotions. They were like creating aaaaaahh! What was that again?" Sitting on Mordred's shoulder, Kerluen paused midway through her explanation to find the right word and supported her chin with her tiny fist.

"It's like when someone gets tempted to rebel against the kingdom, you whisper do this do that, kick those royal baddies for freedom, then this first someone goes to other people and spread the idea of rebelling. That's why the ability is called Necro Tempt"

"You're quite good with your explanation that even a simpleton can understand." He gave her a thumbs-up of appreciation.

"Good!"

"Good!"

She perked up on his shoulder and displayed her nose raised in pride.

"If those were soul-enticed, then my old friend here can definitely help them break free from the enticement." He scurried beside the carrier bear, now made of stone.

"Don't go near, Aleges and Clux, stay there both of you." He gently clutches a black ball out of the carrier's crude huge box of intertwining tree branches, stitched together with plant fiber knots.

"Is that a Nightmare Slime?" Kerleun scanned the ball curiously.

"M'Love, pass the ball to the new golem." Melantha urged, her visage was lax even when her one golem was currently swarmed by the enemy.

Thanks to the narrow entrance, her sole golem was enough to block the swarm due to its large frame. The swarm of walking corpses was stuck like liquids on a clogged drainage, clogged by the earth golem.

Melantha could not help but think that the Dead Raiser's choice of base was quite unsmart. Even a single strong individual could clear out the horde due to the narrow passage, allowing an advantage of 1 versus 1 battle. Was the latter's plan to kill someone in disgust?

As if to answer her question. Before the second golem jumps to the hole entrance equipped with the black ball.

The ground shook, making their sights slightly tremble because of the close distance. The bush that conceals the entrance and the area around it cracks and caves in, creating a sinkhole.

Her last shared vision with the golem shows the walking corpses bloated before they pop like balloons, except that the balloon explosion is as strong as grenades, collapsing the cave walls and darkening her vision due to disconnection.

The soul on the golem was unshackled from her grasp, briefly slipping away but was recaptured together with the other souls that were squeezing out like thick fog trails from the cracks of the shallow sinkhole, they were the remains of the undead army engulfed after their own explosions.

Nothing too major to worry about, as a cautious woman, she got four extra soul reserves in her wooden canteen, in case of any emergencies.

Since she had enhanced the container to only trap the soul, preventing them from dissipating, it was not mind-burdening at all, similar to how she naturally breathed.

"The walking corpses bloated and exploded, causing the underground cave to collapse." She summarized through her hanging mouth in surprise.

"So it was all a trap. Burying the victim on the collapsing cave." Mordred stated the obvious. "The Dead Raiser was expecting the owner of the goldies, Kerleun to head into the cave to be caught. How does the physical collapse of the building catch her when she's immaterial?" He rolled her eyeball upward in ponder.

"Bohoooo! Ma goldies!"

Before she rockets downward to the underground ruins, he clips her wings with his pinch. "The Dead Raiser might have a device or a tool to entrap you near your goldies. The guy's after you Kerleun, since the trap was triggered, they could be coming now. Stay on alert!"

In haste, Aleges and Clux climbed the top of a short magenta tree and stretched out their bows after hearing his signal while Melantha unsummoned her golems excluding the carrier golem bear.

When tree branches rustle from a slope, shadows envelop a portion of the magenta fields as three humanoid dons in elegant gothic mage robes take form. The man in the middle was holding a thick pitch-black book, while the other two were walking on misaligned shoulders: both were holding wooden blunt maces in their right hands; and on their lefties, an antique bird cage and a flaxen net.

The man with the book took off his hood as if so that he could spy better. His face was washed by the orange sunlight, similar to how the passing of time swiped away his youth to leave the sagginess of his wrinkled cheeks.

"Elves? Two Natuzrhels at that." The man spoke in a hard raspy voice.

If this was back in their old world, he certainly would attempt a civilized peace talk since there were no language barriers, credits to Kerleun. But against the people who have ill intent on burying them alive, Mordred and his co had only time to spill their blood.

The wrinkled man squinted his eyes only to bulge out in the horrors of the blazing midnight purple soul aura from Melantha and Mordred. "N-no what are they? Why was their soul aura so dark and erratic."

He stepped back and was about to make a run when an arrow spiked his toe into the ground. The other two men were alerted and stood shoulder to shoulder to block the following arrows using their chests fearlessly, not even flinching upon the arrow's impact.

Taking the chance of slight distraction from the enemy, Mordred bent his knee and twisted his torso to snap his pitch throw of a black ball. In synchrony, Melantha constructs soil golems to obstruct their escape.

With the sound of a water balloon being smashed, one of the men with maces strikes the ball in full force popping the poor Nightmare Slime into gooey smudges.

Mordred got used so much in battling wild beasts that he momentarily forgot the foes this round had better rationality. With annoyance, he kicked his feet to sprint, closing the gap immediately so they would be in the effective range of his soul attacks.

"Agh! Fuck these evil long ears." The old man opened his book and chanted. "Canticum mortiferum", the silver inverted tree on the book's cover shined brightly as the wind howls by the rustling of the leaves, sucking the air towards the flipping pages of the books.

A ghastly light curves from the book, molding into a transparent woman with floating deep ash-green hair and abysmal eye sockets. She screeched so loud that the air shivered as the sound obliterated the souls' connection in the golems' heads temporarily, crumbling them back to the ground. Afterward, the banshee rotated for another attack of blasting sounds, this time to the sprinting Mordred.

Due to the sound's speed, it was close to impossibility for Mordred to evade the sound waves. Uncontrollably, as he tides inside the banshee's screech, warm blood trickles on his ear as the whole world is drowned in an ocean of silence.

Old battles have left him with little to no scars, and this was the first time that his injury had decapitated one of his senses.

"Why does his brain not explode by the Banshee's cry?" The bald man in robes had bulging eyeballs in disbelief.

As he continues his unstoppable chase, Mordred grits his teeth to ease the searing pain in his ears and temporal head. Calculating the right distance, he jumps and whips his toe into a flying kick, sending a soul-disrupting frequency wave from his toe, serving as the extension of the range.

Credit goes to his goblin genetics, they may be weaker in raw power compared to humans but they were compensated with greater agility and flexibility.

A wave of soul attack tore through the banshee's screams and smashed the three enemies in a stun.

All guards were down. The rain of arrows from goblin rangers Clux and Aleges on the tip of the tree finally connect to the assumed ringleader's torso while golems are resummoned, and as if the golems were possessed by rabid gorillas, they smashed and smashed and smashed the three robed men till their bodies resemble meat paste.

Anger was an understatement when Melantha buried her fingers into her palms to bleed, pointing at the evildoer, the banshee gradually crumpled into a paper ball between her suppressed and distressful howls of agony.

Melantha's wrathful slasher smile was so menacing that even the air around her started to distort, scaring and retaining Kerleun behind the tree, and stiffening Clux and Aleges on top of it.

Remembering Mordred's face of grimace and bleeding earhole, her hand veins were seething in anger to the point that she wanted to shatter the core of the earth to smithers.

When a familiar figure zoomed in her peripheral. Miraculously, she was able to pull out her remaining sanity to puff out all her warm breath then she entrapped the shrink banshee on her wooden canteen.

"Injuries are unavoidable in battle, Darling." He tucked her into his embrace and ran his fingers to her hardened scalp.

Thankfully, the goblin's regeneration was topnotch, his hearing returned instantly the moment the banshee's sound waves were extinguished.

How were the goblins who grew fast and armed with quality survivability genetics haven't overwhelmed other races yet?

He pursed his lips in contemplation. They were severely lacking in intelligent networks. Oh, when the shadow of the Tuilën resurfaces on his mind, he realizes that goblins weren't that really commendable it seems.

"Y-yay! We made it. Are we not the best team?" Kerleun slowly hovers into the couple and tries to cheer them up.

"Best team!"

"team, good!" Even Clux and Aleges are displaying their growing emotional intelligence.

"Little Missy. Why were you not even a help? Can't you use your earth powers?" Melantha had tried to cover her indignance at her voice, too bad, her raised brow and crossed arms had betrayed her pretense. She seems like a mother who is questioning her disappointing daughter.