Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Loimos put the rusted amulet down, leaving it inside of the caravan as he stepped outside, the overgrown grass, almost reaching up to his knees, glistening with humidity, lush branches getting in his face as he walked around, Dschungelland was heavily forested country, although they did their utmost to cut the trees down, vegetation here was persistent and hasty in its regrowth.

Lacking the means to properly fight nature, they had to all accommodate like this, the population was low here, and they still exploited everything they could with incredible ferocity, making it not very welcoming to the nature loving people and species, not to mention that was festering with wild animals and monsters, things could be hiding anywhere in this nation, many areas left unvisited for years, if it had even been travelled through.

The skeleton was sticking to the rough path the woods allow at the moment, having to force his way through the underbrush using violence, and he had yet to reach the madness that apparently was Laba, there, he would not be able of using his caravan to get around, there is pretty much no empty space from what he had heard, even by foot, he would struggle to get around.

Of course, simply unleashing his miasma would make everything easier, but that was not possible without alerting another nation that the dead were, indeed, out and about.

It was also rather difficult to find where the cities of Dschungelland were to be found amidst all of this blooming life, there was one that was rather easy to discern though.

A familiar tree sprouted in the middle of the road, appearing with a much different expression than usual, appearing to be gazing into the distance rather than at the undead.

"He may have divested himself of I, but his pride and duty will never leave him, oh, you loathsome copycat, the might of the living is much superior to the unfeeling coldness of your kind, you shall learn in time"

The First Seed, as per usual, said its piece and simply disappeared into the ground, leaving the space behind that it had obstructed visible to the undead, a knight standing in the way instead, garbed in stone armour covered in vines and moss, wielding a broken blade of the same material as its suit.

It was alone, or so it appeared, even with the blinding life of the tree messing with detection of life, Loimos should have noticed something approaching, so the conclusion was that the knight would have been capable of doing the same without The First Seed covering their approach.

The skeleton stepped off the caravan, grabbing hold of a most regular-looking spear, allowing the tip to rest against the ground, tapping it against small, protruding pebbles, paying close attention to the vegetation around.

Despite being seemingly made of nothing but stone, the knight was definitely animated by life, the source of which was rather odd considering the humanoid build, from their back, on the back to be exact, outside of the body.

Taking heavy steps, the overgrown guardian wielded their sword as though it was not broken, aiming to hit the undead with a thrust, dragging the spear against the ground, producing spark at the ground up against the pebbles.

Said sparks soon turned solid, taking the form of steel nails, which went flying straight into the chestplate of the enemy, not digging in deep, but cracking the surface as they remained stuck.

Loimos used the fact that the nails slowed the charge down, dropping the spear and running past the knight, grabbing onto the pretty, pink flower growing on and into the back of the stone creation, plucking it.

The entire sculpture collapsed, all strength and intelligence lost.

'Only one, must not have been due to The First Seed's intervention' reasoned the skeleton, this guardian was rather stalwart, difficult to face if in a group, but as the undead soon realised, those beings were few and far between, all in terrible shape, some of them had lost all of their limbs, or were crawling around, still fulfilling whatever purpose they had been created for.

It seemed that they had been purposefully maimed, but not destroyed by being picked up and raised up into the air, surviving the crash thanks to the many branches there to slow their fall.

He only encountered a few of them, but considering that they blended into the life and vegetation, there might have been many more that simply did not reveal themselves.

Loimos was moving slowly, having to eventually reduce the size of his caravan and continue on foot before even reaching Laba, after a few weeks of searching, the skeleton was faced with a small city, built inside of a clearing, a natural clearing.

Their true method of trade and travel revealed itself as soon as he stepped in, hot air balloons carrying rather expensive structures, obviously, travelling on land inside of Dschungelland was just asking for unnecessary trouble, they took off into the sky to do what most used carriages and their legs to do.

Even the smallest of those tools of transport had at least three balloons supporting the wooden structures they carried effortlessly.

The people leaving here were a blend of humans, beastfolks and even a few demons, although, sometimes making the difference between a demon and a horned beastfolk could be difficult, in fact, the terms beastfolk, demon and human gathered up together many different species that just happened to be related, but those three groups were known as the inhabitants of Dschungelland.

They lived together, and even blended in more intimate ways, although Loimos was not interested in a study of the population, approaching the first person that had the misfortune of being closest to him, he instantly questioned them.

"May I inquire about bat-like monsters in the area?" the one he had accosted was a small child with droopy rabbit ears that almost dragged on the ground, apparently not very rattled by getting stopped by a total stranger in armour, the young beastfolk brought a finger up to his chin, thinking really deeply about it.

"Me-mah, my mom told me not to go out at night, be-because, because there is a big, big bat that snatches children who go out at night, roar!" he was not very proficient in his speech but the message got across.

"Woah, you came here by foot?! You must be a strong adventurer or something! The big bat? Ah yes, it's not just a story to scare children!

My father told me that his brother was taken by this creature a few years back, it only comes out once every years, taking a single person from a few cities around the country, I hear, and I can attest to this, when it does come out, the night gets noisy, it keeps making the same noise over and over again as it flies just barely above the trees!" next, he approached a young woman, who was very enthusiastic about this abductor of people.

"And what noise does it make?" he asked, expecting a precise answer.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"It yells: Ah-ool! Ah-ool! All night long, I heard it twice in my life, let me tell you, I was not very confident those nights! Ahah"

The odd one went away, and Loimos felt a hand grasping his shoulder.