Chapter 3: A New Path to a Search

Chapter 3:
A New Path to a Search

 

THE REVENANTS WERE BURIED, and the adventurers moved on. Some of them suggested returning to Kaffa after the encounter. However, the quest had been ranked and issued by the guild with full knowledge that something truly dangerous lurked on the road, and those who had agreed to take the quest hadn’t yet encountered anything dire enough to warrant their return.

Before the corpses were buried, Loren looked through their belongings. None had anything notable save for their clothes. He found at most a coin purse or an accessory but nothing pointing to where they had come from.

Yet they had surely been normal denizens of some normal town before becoming revenants.

What few articles they gathered were stuffed into the wagon. If these folks had surviving families, it would be only right to return them. Even if that wasn’t the case, the items served as evidence of their fight with the undead. That said, carrying a dead man’s belongings wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Ultimately, the battle lowered the convoy’s morale.

At the same time, Claes’s party received recognition for the skills they had shown in exterminating the revenants. Their reputation was on the rise. Whenever Claes shot Loren a smug look, Loren just ignored him. The man was skilled, that much was certain. As to whether that had anything to do with Loren, the answer was a resounding “no.”

Not long after, their morale was lowered again. The driver of Scena’s wagon passed on.

There was no preceding attack. Loren merely felt something was strange about the wagon’s movement. So he tapped the man on the shoulder, only for him to tumble out of his chair, cold as a stone. Loren rushed to grab the reins and bring the horse to a stop. By then, the driver was already dead.

The cause was unknown. Lapis swiftly examined the driver, but his only external wounds were the scrapes from the fall, and she couldn’t find anything that could have killed him. If that wasn’t bad enough, he, like the adventurers before him, was in the process of turning undead. Loren was forced to burn his body then and there.

“What the hell is going on?” Loren muttered.

Beside him, Lapis kept hold of the reins. The knowledge imparted by her god apparently encompassed wagon-handling as well. If he really was such a convenient god, Loren wondered why his faith wasn’t more popular.

“Yes, what is going on?” she muttered.

On Lapis’s opposite side was Scena, leaning against her, the wagon’s rocking having lulled her into a peaceful sleep. While her expression was serene, Loren wondered what she thought of the situation. His own face clouded.

Scena had still hardly eaten a bite. She looked healthy, so she probably had stamina to spare. However, her refusal to accept food worried him deeply. She had to be under some great mental strain.

“There are a few of them over there,” Lapis whispered.

Her words were sudden, without context. At first, Loren couldn’t understand what she meant. A second later, he caught on and followed her gaze.

A gently sloping plain stretched out ahead of them, and he couldn’t immediately spot whatever Lapis was looking at. I’m overthinking again. He patted his chest. But Lapis wasn’t done.

“Human eyes can’t see them,” she said.

Loren recalled then that her eyes were arcane prosthetics, though it was impossible to tell from merely looking at them. Her limbs were also prosthetics, all of them replaced to better hide Lapis’s true nature.

On his first quest, Loren had learned his priestly companion was a demon. She wandered the world both to gain experience and to find her lost arms, legs, and eyes. Putting all that aside, the fact that her eyes were fakes made it plausible that they functioned in ways normal eyes did not.

“Over there too,” she said. “Just about twenty altogether.”

“What’s wrong?” He gave up on seeing whatever she did, instead lowering his volume to a tense murmur.

Lapis tilted her head, slightly correcting the wagon’s course, and then lowered her voice as well. Neither of them wanted to wake Scena. “A swarm of undead means they’re coming from somewhere—being produced,” she whispered.

“It’s almost nightfall. It’s just gonna get worse.”

Undead were more active after dark. If they were seeing some even during the daytime, he didn’t want to imagine how many would pop up after sundown.

“If it comes to it,” said Lapis, “we’ll run. You, Miss Scena, and me. It’s all right, we’ll be able to make it to Hansa.”

“Am I the only one who gets the feeling we’re just gonna run into more undead the closer we get to that place?”

Lapis laughed flatly. “You’re a glass half-empty sort of guy, I see.”

“It’s nothing to laugh about, good grief.” Loren sighed.

His worries became all too real in a matter of hours.

As the group prepared for the second night of camp, they were yet again set upon by undead.

“Dammit! They’re everywhere!” shouted Brosse as he swung his axes, sending flesh and blood splattering all over. Zombies swarmed around him, their bodies half-rotten, their muscles and viscera peeking through the tears in their tattered skin.

Zombies were easy pickings alone, and handling a swarm of them was still within the realm of possibility. However, when they came one after another in seemingly endless supply, even an iron-rank adventure began to feel the heat.

Flesh and blood adventurers grew fatigued over time. They would inevitably be rendered exhausted, immobile. But the undead knew no rest. No matter how they were sliced and diced, so long as their bodies still functioned, they never stopped attacking, ceaselessly grasping for the warmth of the living.

Another problem: The more formidable revenants were mixed in with the zombies. Alongside being sturdier and stronger, their movements were comparatively smoother, and as expected, they also never tired. They moved on adventurers who were surrounded and already slowed.

“Eek! S-stay away!”

“Ow, ow, ow, ow! Don’t bite me! Don’t eat me!”

The female adventurers who had been in Scena’s wagon the first day—who had lost consciousness and, while recovering, still felt some fatigue, ran out of strength relatively quickly. Once the zombies locked them down, they were bitten one by one wherever their armor and clothes didn’t protect.

The teeth of a revenant sunk into the windpipe of an adventurer who rushed to save his companion, as if it had been waiting for him to come. He was left writhing on the ground.

“M-Mister,” Scena murmured.

Naturally, Loren was on the attack as well. Lapis stood nearby while Scena clung to his waist. Loren reached for the weapon on his back, and once he had a firm hold on it, he let himself sigh. “The first thing I cut with this beaut just had to be rotting flesh.”

“Do you have the time to complain?” Lapis asked.

“Doesn’t look like it.”

He freed the blade from its cloth and drew it in one motion. His draw followed straight into a horizontal swipe, the overwhelming weight of his blade barreling through the deathly darkness of night. It severed zombie and revenant alike, smashing and scattering flesh into fragments that stained the campsite.

Loren’s attack didn’t stop. After the first brandish, he swung the blade in the opposite direction to return it to his shoulder, reducing even more zombies to lumps of meat.

“Holy—you can swing that?!” cried Brosse.

What Loren held when he returned to his base stance was a weapon so pitch-black that its blade stood out even against the night. Insignias inlaid with gold scrolled down the surface, but most surprising was its sheer size.

His new weapon was longer and thicker than the massive sword he had used before. While the blade was wider, the hilt was just a little shorter. But after swinging it around, he had determined he could use it without issue. The handle was wrapped in thin strips of a leathery fabric for grip, dyed as black as the blade.

“You just have to get used to it,” said Loren. “More importantly, what are we gonna do about this?”

Sword swung up against his shoulder, Loren patted Scena on the head to reassure her. His two swings had cleared their surroundings a bit, allowing Brosse to escape the zombies who’d cornered him.

The number of undead showed no sign of decreasing no matter how many they defeated. As a matter of fact, their numbers seemed to grow with time. Putting aside the question of where they were coming from, their party needed to decide what to do next, or they would be crushed by sheer force of numbers.

“What’s calling them here?” Loren asked as he once more swung his sword.

Lapis darted away from the grabbing hands of a zombie as she answered. “I presume it’s that we are the only living things in the area. Living souls are like beacons to the undead, and they flock like moths to a flame.”

“Don’t want to put this on you all of a sudden, Brosse—but, move forward or go back? What’s your call?”

At present, the adventurers on the escort quest were on the verge of annihilation, and their chances of success looked bleak. That left forcing their way through to Hansa or abandoning the quest and returning to Kaffa.

“It ain’t like I’m the leader around here,” Brosse bit back.

“Just wanna hear it. I won’t take issue either way.”

Brosse was supposed to have his own party members, but he had been fighting alone. Loren didn’t know whether they had been separated or if the rest had already become zombie feed. Regardless, it seemed to him that Brosse’s expert opinion was the most reliable guideline.

“In that case, we should go for Hansa,” Brosse said. “It’s got nothing to do with the quest. There might be less undead on the road back, but Hansa’s closer. I doubt the whole city’s fallen. It’s our best bet.”

“Any objections, Lapis?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Are you okay with that, Scena?”

The girl hugging his waist nodded.

“That settles it. Any wagons still usable?”

Strangely, zombies and revenants did not attack horses or any other animals. They only pursued the life-forms closest in nature to what they had been while they lived. However, while the horses were unharmed, they were spooked. They had toppled and trampled the wagons, and of the three, two were already wrecked. The remaining one was Scena’s. Loren had luckily detached its horse from the wagon and staked its reins to the ground.

“I’ll take care of the undead. Brosse, you hook the horse up to the wagon. Lapis, get Scena in there and get ready to go.”

“Understood.”

“Fine, got it! Ah, goddammit, they’re all gone, the lot of them!” Brosse wailed as he got to work.

Lapis pulled Scena away by the hand and clambered into the wagon, shoving their client under the canopy. Loren would have to buy them time. He took a swing, crushing any undead who got too close with brute force.

“Survivors gather here!” he bellowed. “We’re making a break for Hansa!”

Even if he wasn’t going out of his way to save people, he wouldn’t abandon them either. He continued to call out as he mowed through the hordes.

However, no one answered.

Already dead, huh? Loren’s mood darkened, but then he saw the glint of a blade tearing through a corner of the undead encroaching on the wagon.

“It just had to be the small fry that survived,” Claes snapped.

“Glad to see you too.”

Claes’s comrades were with him. Each was covered in grime and blood, but the fact that everyone was unbitten and moving spoke to their abilities. Although, they weren’t exactly the survivors Loren had most hoped for.

“Going to Hansa?” Claes asked. “You got a plan?”

“Nope, just don’t see a way around it. Don’t like that, then try someone else.”

Claes grimaced. There was no one else—they were the only survivors, and everyone knew it was too late to quibble about it.

“Claes, now’s no time for debate,” Leila said.

“She’s right, Claes,” Laure agreed. “We have to work together to break through.”

Claes grudgingly conceded. Loren had no intention of driving any survivors away; he nodded toward the wagon, urging them to climb aboard.

The party shot him sullen looks but followed the order.

Maybe we should’ve just abandoned them. Loren sighed.

Suddenly, something caught his eye—something behind the magician girl at the back of the party. “Get down!”

“Huh?” Ange hadn’t noticed it, her face blank. In the next moment, she was scooped up by something that burst up from the earth and lifted her body high into the air.

“Oh, that’s…” Lapis watched this with no sense of urgency as she assessed the newcomer. “A dragon zombie…no, a bone dragon.”

A dragon composed entirely of pure-white bone held Ange in its exposed maw—its head had sprouted from the soil. The ground shook violently beneath them and they dodged back, away from where the rest of the dragon’s massive body wormed out of the earth.

“It’s huge!”

“It is a dragon, after all,” Lapis said.

Given that it was all bone, it was presumably undead, yet it still boasted a majesty befitting its draconic nature. Brosse went pale, throwing himself under the wagon canopy. Claes’s party stood still, like they had momentarily forgotten the plight of their magician, able only to stare.

“Leila!” Ange called from above. “Forget about me! Take Claes and get out of there!”

“I can’t, Ange! I can’t—I’ll get you out!” Claes shouted back while Leila and Laure desperately clung to him to keep him from rushing forward.

“Let go of me! I have to save Ange!”

“That’s crazy talk! How are we supposed to contend with that monster?!”

“Claes! Value your own life!”

“You’re telling me to forsake her?! You think I can do that?!”

“What shall we do, Mr. Loren?” Lapis asked. Her tone urged him to forget about everyone else and run.

Loren sent her a troubled smile. Since the moment they had met at the weapons store, Claes had been nothing but condescending to him—and with that in mind, abandoning him was quite an enticing option. And yet.

“You know, I know what it’s like to lose.” He scratched his head. “So it’s hard to just let it happen.”

“I don’t hate that about you.” Lapis chuckled.

Loren nonetheless regretted dragging her into this mess. “We’re not going to beat it, mind you. I’m just a mercenary, after all.”

“On the count of three, I’ll fire something to distract it. Use the opportunity.”

“I thought the only blessing you knew was Healing.”

“I just picked up a new one, fresh out of the oven.” She patted her chest.

He nodded, then launched himself toward the massive bone dragon, unhesitating. On the count of one, he raced past Claes’s still arguing party. On the count of two, the dragon turned its hollow eye sockets on him. It clenched its jaw, and Ange let out a yelp.

Beasts like this didn’t need to eat to survive. However, they had a taste for the resentment, pain, and sorrow of living things. That was why it continued to hold the girl in its mouth without killing her, slowly letting its fangs sink in to absorb every last lick of despair.

But any human was frail in the clutch of a dragon. Blood spat from Ange’s mouth. By the count of three, Loren feared his efforts would be in vain.

In perfect synch with Loren’s count, Lapis unleashed her new blessing. “Shine in the name of the lord, Hold Light!”

A radiant light manifested directly under the dragon’s snout. It was so intense that it wiped away not only the darkness of night but the scent of undeath as well. It pierced the bone dragon’s nonexistent eyes and scorched the surface of its bones, all seemingly without touching Ange.

Loren had been warned, and he shielded his eyes. Thus he arrived at the dragon’s feet without losing his sight and smacked those bones with a sword driven by centrifugal force.

Steel rasped against bone, and the point where his blade hit smashed to smithereens. The dragon’s body crumbled, having lost one of its support pillars. Loren raced up the toppled body, jumped from its back, and slashed at the back of its head.

“She’s too good for you! Spit her out!”

While the dragon’s head didn’t shatter like its severed leg, the impact forced its mouth open and freed Ange’s body. Loren—already in freefall after his attack—caught Ange, landed, and took off without looking back as the dragon recovered itself.

“Move!” he bellowed.

“Got it! Everyone who’s not aboard gets left behind!”

The sound of Lapis’s whip on the horse’s back snapped Claes’s party from their stupor and they scrambled to get on. They were soon joined as Loren rolled in with Ange, not a moment before the horse hurtled forward with the wagon.

The dragon let out an enraged roar, raising an earthquake as it lumbered after. They watched it kick against the earth with a newly regenerated limb.

“Thankfully the bastard’s all bone, so it can’t fly.” Loren muttered, lowering Ange.

A normal dragon’s wings were like a bat’s—covered in a membrane that let them catch the wind. While the bone dragon had the skeletal structure for wings, they were bare. Their horse wouldn’t have been able to outrun the thing if it could have chased them through the air.

“Dragons fly via magic,” Lapis corrected from her seat up front. “Wings have nothing to do with it.”

“You mean that thing can take off?”

“Most undead have low intellect, so they’re incapable of deploying spellwork. Which is to say, that one shouldn’t be able to. Probably.”

“Then…” Maybe we can get away, Loren hoped faintly.

Lapis smacked him down with cold, hard reality. “But it’s still far faster than a horse. It will catch up soon.”

The moment it caught up, their only option would be to fight. Loren doubted they had the capability to oppose it in earnest.

A violent bump in the road sent Ange into a coughing fit. She spat up another trickle of blood.

“Ange isn’t doing too well. Can’t you drive better?!” Claes snapped, his face pale.

Brosse grabbed him by the lapels. “You goddamn fool! Just try slowing down and see what happens next!”

“But Ange—”

While she wouldn’t die in the next few seconds, her wounds undoubtedly ran deep. Spitting up blood meant internal bleeding, and this violent shaking couldn’t be good for anyone in her state. But Brosse was right. The dragon was already gaining on them, and slowing down would only spell their demise.

“You’re saying to just let her die?!”

“If those bones catch us, we’re all going to die!”

Damn. If Brosse also figured they couldn’t win, they really were in a bad way. Loren let out a deep sigh.

A dragon could not be trifled with. Loren had managed to rescue Ange from its maw only because he had launched a surprise attack while it still underestimated them. He was well aware they had now lost that advantage.

“Priest—Laure, was it?” Loren addressed the blue-haired girl desperately clinging to the wagon bench. “You can use blessings, can’t you? Doesn’t matter if you use them up, just treat her.”

“Oi, you sure about that?” said Brosse. “If we do end up fighting, then we’re fighting without a priest’s blessings—that’s near a lost cause already.”

“We’re done the moment we fight anyway,” Loren countered. “If there’s no use healing then, might as well heal here.”

“You…” Claes stared at Loren, dumbfounded.

Even if loss was guaranteed, it was a fundamental tenet of fighting to preserve the limited number of blessings at hand. As the leader of his party, Claes knew this, and he had the right to make the final call. But this tenet was so deeply instilled that even in this situation, he hadn’t thought to use a blessing, even if it might prove a lifeline for Ange.

“I’m not spending my priest on it. If she’s beyond healing, give up on her.”

With that, Loren cautiously moved through the shaking chassis, peeking his head through the canopy to see Lapis. The moon was out, but the world of night had no other light source. Visibility wasn’t great. What’s more, the road was ill-maintained. Yet Lapis kept the wagon moving at top speed as they dashed through the dark.

Contrary to Loren’s fear, Lapis’s face showed no unease. She stared ahead, focused and earnest.

“Can you actually see?” he asked.

Lapis glanced at him. “Of course I can. I can see clear as day.”

“I don’t know how I’ll explain to the others. They haven’t noticed yet, but they will.”

“Tell them I have exceptional eyesight. Otherwise, say I’m driving on pure intuition.”

“Let’s hope they accept that.”

“More importantly, could you get the red-haired child out here?”

This demand came quite suddenly, and Loren failed to see her intention. “Red-haired… You mean Claes?”

“I’ve just been calling him ‘idiot’ in my head, so sure, but the red-haired one, yes.”’

If Lapis had singled him out, it was probably important. Loren ducked back into the wagon and grabbed Claes by the collar. He had been watching over Laure as she healed Ange.

“Wh-what are you doing?!” Claes demanded.

“What’s going on?!” Leila called after.

Loren dragged Claes—kicking and squirming—back to Lapis, who took one hand off the reins and held it out toward him.

“Pass him over.”

“You got it.”

Loren held Claes up. Lapis took over the grip on his collar before abruptly lobbing Claes toward the horse frantically pulling the wagon.

“Whoa?!” Claes screamed as he flew through the air. He clung to the horse’s neck as he landed on its back, doing his best not to fall off. If he fell, he would be trampled by the beast or run over by the wagon. If he luckily managed to avoid both, the bone dragon awaited him. “Th-the hell was that for?!”

“Please use Boost on that horse!” Lapis shouted as she cracked her whip. The whip was usually aimed at a horse’s rear, and it struck Claes’s instead. “It’s going to catch up no matter what we do! If you don’t want that, we need to use Boost to raise our speed. Now hurry!”

“I’ve never used it on a living—”

“The whining can wait, just use it!”

Another whip crack and Claes cried out. His hands burst with light. Then the light disappeared from his hands and permeated the horse’s body. Loren definitely felt it get faster, and he grabbed onto the edge of the wagon as the shaking worsened as well.

“See? You can do it if you try! Now stronger! No time to sleep! We need to keep it running until morning!”

“Will something happen in the morning?” Loren asked.

“The bone dragon is weak to sunlight. It should stop chasing us before the sun rises. Come now! I see your light weakening!”

The next lash sent Claes’s pained groan echoing through the still night.

“Well, uh… I guess he won’t die.”

It was a tragic scene, but Loren knew he shouldn’t stop his companion. He led Scena away before her curiosity compelled her to peek. Loren shut the horse, Claes, and the bone dragon out of sight, sat down on the rocking wagon floor, and gently closed his eyes.

Loren opened his eyes. The wagon still shook but not as violently as it had when he fell asleep. Light streamed through the gaps in the canopy, and Scena’s innocent sleeping face was pressed against his shoulder.

A quick scan told him the wagon itself hadn’t been damaged. Ange was asleep—no surprise, after all she’d been through—and for some reason Brosse was as well. Moreover, Laure and Leila’s eyes were somewhat reproachful.

“Rise and shine,” Laure said darkly.

The way Loren saw it, there had been nothing to do but sleep. He hadn’t seen the sense in staying on edge all night, and he couldn’t see now why anyone would criticize him for it. If the dragon caught up, he would either have had to fight and die or die in his sleep, and if he was going to die anyway, he would rather die at rest.

“We got away, by the looks of it,” he said. “What happened to Brosse?”

Ange looked a little better off, seeing as how she wasn’t coughing up blood anymore. But Brosse was pale. His breath was shallow, and he looked like he might drop dead at any second.

Loren looked to Leila. Had there been an attack from something besides the dragon?

The armored woman shook her head. “We don’t know. He got like that a little after we started running. He keeps getting worse too.”

“Did you try Healing?”

“Laure had to rest. We applied what first aid we could, but nothing took.”

Loren shifted Scena onto the floor, taking care not to wake her. He slowly approached Brosse and peered into his face. Indeed, the old adventurer’s complexion was visibly pale. His brow was covered in a sheen of sweat, and his mind seemed hazy. His half-open eyes failed to find purchase on anything.

“I don’t know if it’s an illness, but this is bad.” Loren had no medical knowledge, but he could tell Brosse was in a terrible state. This would likely prove fatal before long.

“Ange is in a bad way too. We used Healing twice, but her wounds are numerous and deep. She’s barely alive.”

Not that they could do much about it. The rest was in heaven’s hands. So, Loren turned his back to them and popped his head out the front.

“Ah, you’re awake, Mr. Loren. It’s a decently nice morning.” Lapis had kept her hands on the reins through the night, yet she greeted him with a smile, not a hint of weariness on her face.

Loren looked up at the sky. It was clear and blue, like the terrible night before had never happened. The sun was still low, but it bathed them in ample light.

Either the horse was particularly robust, or Claes’s power had worked wonders. The beast had stuck it out through the night ride and still pulled them forward, slow but steady. On its back, Claes looked weary as hell. He had a spattering of lash marks too, but he still held tight.

Lapis’s abuse had all been in the name of getting away from that dragon, but seeing the evidence of it, Loren broke into a light sweat. He prayed the experience didn’t awaken anything too uncomfortable for the boy. But there were more pressing concerns than Claes’s future.

“How long to Hansa?” he asked.

Lapis thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if we’re going in the right direction.”

While startled by this confession, Loren couldn’t say he’d expected much better. A normal person wouldn’t have been able to drive under those conditions at such speed all through the night. One wrong turn was understandable.

“It’s been a straight path, for what it’s worth,” said Lapis.

“Then we’re probably fine.”

“We’re not so fine back there, it seems.” Lapis glanced over her shoulder.

Loren shrugged. “Nor up there either.”

“Oh, he’s fine. Halfway through he was moaning ‘oh yes,’ and ‘more.’”

Loren stared at her, aghast.

Lapis smirked mischievously. “I lied. But don’t you think a whipping from a beautiful girl is its own reward?”

That wasn’t a question he wanted to answer. He knew it took all sorts to make a world, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t met such people before. That didn’t mean he got it.

“Not my scene.”

“That’s nice. I don’t know what I’d do if it were.”

He couldn’t tell how serious she was being. A troubled look crossed his face, only to be replaced by a different form of bewilderment. Lapis was offering him the horse’s reins.

“You should be able to drive us down a straight path, right, Mr. Loren?”

“I guess so.”

“Then could I leave you to it for a bit? I’m almost at my limit here.”

Loren knew firsthand that there was nothing good about sleep deprivation. Changing drivers was hardly of any consequence, and he accepted. “You should probably go in if you want to sleep.”

The driver’s perch was no place for rest. While the wagon had one injured and one ailing, there was enough space to lie down.

Lapis shook her head. “Oh no, just lend me your shoulder. I’d much rather stay here.”

Her head fell on his shoulder before he could reply. In hardly any time at all, she was breathing the rhythmic pattern of sleep. Loren was startled by the ease with which she fell asleep, but he took it as the sudden onslaught of fatigue. He took care not to move her body and focused on keeping the wagon on its path.

“It would be helpful if I knew where we were…”

They were, most likely, on the way to Hansa. However, pressing on without knowing for sure made him anxious. If I just had a sign, he thought, when he felt a tug on his back.

He turned to see Scena’s hand reaching out of the canopy and pulling on his sword’s cloth wrapping. He turned back toward her as far as he could, taking care not to alter their course. “What’s wrong?”

“Mister…the ladies, they’re all…” Her voice was uneasy.

Loren peeked over Scena’s shoulder and saw that both Laure and Leila had collapsed beside Ange.

As they said, one bad thing often led to another.

Loren didn’t stop the wagon. What would be the point? He didn’t know the cause of their illness or what to do about it. “Something’s going on… This a curse or something?”

“What do we do, Mister?”

“It’s not ‘Mister.’ It’s Loren. But what to do?” He frowned. “Well, we can’t do anything. No treatment out here. We’ll have to reach town.”

“Hansa is just a little further.”

“You sure?”

Scena’s head bobbed up and down as she pointed at the trees and glades. “I’ve walked around this area for my father’s work before. I remember the scenery. It shouldn’t be long.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week. You think my luck’s finally taking a turn?”

Hansa was Scena’s home, and her information was therefore credible. Once they arrived, at the very least they would have access to medicines and other treatments. It would likely be possible to get a doctor to evaluate them. There was a good chance the four in the wagon could then be saved.

In barely any time at all, the walls of a city appeared on the horizon. As a city-state, this was the nation of Hansa itself as well as its capital. Its defenses were hefty, its ramparts high and thick. Loren made out a gate they would presumably have to pass through if they wanted in.

Would he be allowed to enter with one injured and three of unknown condition? He worried for a moment, but worst-case scenario, he could ask the guards to call a doctor. Surely they wouldn’t treat him too poorly once they knew he was escorting the daughter of the chancellor.

Before he knew it, Lapis was awake. She lifted her head from his shoulder. “Be careful, Mr. Loren. Something’s off.”

“What’s wrong?”

That warning wasn’t nearly enough to go off of. Sure, a city gate would usually have lines of people coming and going, and he didn’t see any sign of such folk. However, there would obviously be fewer people wandering around if undead were on the prowl. Then Loren realized it wasn’t just travelers who were missing. He saw no gatekeepers or sentries on the wall either. It was hard to believe they had all simply abandoned their duty. So that’s what she means.

Lapis slowly reclaimed the reins. “Be ready to fight at any moment,” she said.

“Got it. But you don’t mean…the whole town?”

“I don’t know. I considered, perhaps, that they had closed themselves off from the undead threat, but the gates are wide open.”

Definitely proof that something untoward had happened.

“What now?”

“We have no choice but to go in. Even if no one’s there, perhaps they’ve left supplies behind. Or perhaps they’ve hunkered down for a siege farther in.”

Whatever the case, their initial objective had been to take Scena to Hansa. This was their destination; they had to reach it. What’s more, Ange’s injuries put them in a race against time, while Brosse, Leila, and Laure might soon end up like the adventurers who had died on the first day.

“I knew it,” Loren muttered. “I’ve got no luck.”

Whatever turn he thought he’d taken had been an illusion. There was no going back. Given this trend of misfortunes, the moment they tried as much, they’d probably run into that bone dragon again.

“I’m sure it will work out,” said Lapis. “Let’s go.”

Unlike Loren, Lapis evidently didn’t feel too nervous just yet. She urged the horse toward the gate, and he had no means of stopping her. Instead, he focused on the growing outline of the city.

For the first time in his life, Loren passed through a gate with no sign of travelers and merchants, nor the sentries who stopped such folk before letting them pass. It was uncanny as nothing in his life had ever been.

Beside him, Lapis gazed about at her leisure. She lightly whipped the horse, thereby striking Claes, still on its back. The boy convulsed, exacerbating the ghastly atmosphere.

“Shouldn’t we take him down already?”

Unsettling visuals aside, Loren worried Claes could technically be counted among the ranks of the injured. It was mainly Lapis who had injured him, but Loren decided not to think about that too hard.

This proposal earned a blatantly sour look from Lapis. “I don’t want to touch him.”

“Neither do I, if I can help it.”

Even if having Claes twitching on the horse was a bothersome predicament for the horse, that didn’t leave Loren feeling particularly motivated to stop the wagon and get him down. Mostly, he didn’t want to handle someone who looked that liable to seize up.

“Still, is there really no one around?” Loren asked.

The wagon proceeded slowly down what was presumably Hansa’s main avenue, yet they saw not a shadow and not a sound reached his ears. The phrase “ghost town” brought to mind a place ravaged by time, but Hansa had clearly been well maintained up until a matter of hours ago.

“And it doesn’t look like the undead attacked either,” said Lapis.

In that case, they would have seen traces of the assault in the streets and on buildings, but as far as Loren could see, there were no signs of combat. No broken windows, no bloodstains.

“Didn’t think such a pretty city could be this eerie.”

“I’d walk through this empty city with you—doesn’t that sound a little romantic?” Lapis said with a smile.

Loren narrowed his eyes and looked around warily. He had no idea where she got her nerves of steel, but there was no need for him to point them out and put her in a mood. Hansa was already bad enough as it was. “For starters, we should look for a hospital. You haven’t forgotten we’re carting around four people at death’s door, have you?”

“You do have a point. Miss Scena, do you know the way to the nearest clinic?”

Cities were best navigated by their citizens. Scena popped her head out and, after scanning the area, pointed in a direction. “I think there was one over there.”

“Then off we go.”

Lapis turned the horse’s head accordingly. After a while rolling down the empty streets, they arrived at a private clinic. There were apparently other hospitals run by the state, but this was the only place Scena knew.

“Father brought me here once, saying the man who ran it was a good doctor.”

“Am I the strange one for thinking there’s something weird about that?” Loren asked. Sure, it wouldn’t necessarily be strange for a town doctor to be more skilled than one employed by the local lord, but he didn’t know what to think about a head of state avoiding his own people.

“This may be for the better, you know?” Lapis said. Her eyes shifted between Loren and the girl clinging to his waist. Lapis stopped the wagon out front, detached the horse, and fastened it to a street post. “Since we don’t know what’s going on, I would rather avoid larger facilities,” she added.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t mean anything, really. Can you start unloading people? Hey, you help out too.” The latter she addressed to Claes, who Loren had finally let off the horse’s back.

Claes had taken a few blows, but he was healthy compared to his comrades. He had regained consciousness soon after he was put on the ground, though at first he had been weakly sprawled out. “You could let me rest a bit. We got away from that dragon more or less thanks to me.”

“Aren’t you forgetting it was our Mr. Loren over here who saved your Ms. Ange from that very same dragon?”

“Ah…”

Did it take that long to remember? Loren sighed.

But Claes stood, turned toward Loren, set his eyes on a point down and to the right, and spoke in a tone that was hard to pick up. “U-umm…for saving Ange, you know. I want to…thank you.”

“She’s not saved yet. If you’ve got the time for babbling, help me get her in the clinic.”

“Got it.” While Claes hung his head, his reply was sincere enough.

Loren grinned. “Come to think of it, when you were being whipped by Ms. Priest over here all night… That do anything for you?”

“What?! Of course not!”

“Never crossed your mind? Never thought, ‘this ain’t too bad’?”

“Like hell! That ain’t my kink!”

“So you know what a kink is, huh, kid?”

Claes was red to his ears, but after he glared at Loren, something seemed to dawn on him. He reached some new conclusion, turned his back, and began unloading his fallen party members from the wagon.

“You didn’t really have to,” Lapis teasingly whispered. “Riling him up to get him back on track.”

“That’s not me. I just felt like teasing.”

Loren brushed Lapis aside with a dismissive wave of his hand and then walked to the wagon to get the rest. He got Brosse, leaving the other three for Claes. It wasn’t that he wanted to give Claes extra work, more that the other three were women, and they were Claes’s party members. Having Claes carry them would leave the least room for problems for later. Not that he knew what Claes thought on the matter.

To make up for it, Loren got to work unloading the camping supplies the wagon had been stuffed with. He didn’t have what had been unloaded at the campsite. The items left aboard had been kept on the wagon because they had been deemed unnecessary. This included some food and a handful of medical supplies. While he doubted they would be enough to be much help, at least they would be better than nothing. But Lapis immediately found something genuinely useful.

“It may be private, but it’s still a clinic. They left behind plenty of medicines.”

There were beds as well. Their cleanliness was somewhat questionable, but Loren lay Brosse down on one and Claes did the same with his party members. Soon, Lapis made her entrance with Scena, their arms full of medicinal vials. She had ransacked the office while they were transporting the injured.

“We should be able to treat most things with what we have,” she declared.

“I see. Then please hurry. Don’t know how I’d sleep at night if they died after we got them so far.”

Loren hadn’t the skills or the knowledge to help. Apparently, Claes was in a similar boat. His party’s magician was the one with the know-how, but she would be on the receiving end of care this time around.

“Very well. I’ll try my hand at a few things,” said Lapis. “Would you two please take Miss Scena and leave?”

“You’re kicking me out?! Those girls are my comrades!” Claes snapped. They expected this sort of thing from him at this point.

Lapis looked at him with contempt, the intensity of her gaze shutting his mouth. “My treatment will involve loosening and stripping them of their garments… You’re telling me you want to see that?”

“Ah, no, uh, I—”

“And I’ll probably have to strip Mr. Brosse as well. My, to want to see a naked middle-aged man. You’re pretty hardcore, I’ve got to say.”

“Who said that?!”

As Claes’s face turned red, Lapis silently gestured at the patients. Why are you shouting in a hospital? Have some shame! her eyes seemed to say. Once Claes clapped a hand over his mouth, she pointed to the exit.

He followed her orders this time, dragging himself out. As Loren was about to follow him, Lapis spoke again.

“Mr. Loren, please leave this building’s security to Claes. Take Miss Scena and search the surrounding area.”

“Me? With Scena?” How did she get that combination?

“The thing is, I don’t see Claes getting much in the way of answers if I send him out. Nor do I want him looking after Miss Scena.”

“You can’t keep her with you?” Loren had no problem with searching. He just didn’t know why Scena had to come along. There was no telling what he’d run into, and he didn’t see the sense in exposing a young girl to danger.

“As I told you, I will be stripping their clothes for treatment. The women may be fine, but Mr. Brosse’s naked body might have a negative influence on her.”

“You’re stripping him bare?”

Loren didn’t think she had to go that far, but Lapis was the one who knew what she was doing, and how could he argue with that? He definitely didn’t feel like leaving Scena behind in that case. Still, he hesitated.

So Lapis gave him another push. “You just have to search around a bit. Miss Scena is a local. She should know the lay of the land.”

“I guess.” Loren didn’t really expect a well-to-do lass to know the town that well, but going off what she’d said so far, Scena was knowledgeable to a certain degree.

“Can’t you do that for me?” Lapis’s earnest expression was a complete reversal from how she’d looked when she dealt with Claes. She definitely had a real reason for asking this, and Loren wasn’t going to object any further. He gave a nod, light as it was.

“I’m coming straight back if it gets dangerous,” he warned.

“That goes without saying. Have a safe trip.”

Loren would do what she asked. She wasn’t telling him something—or he just didn’t get what she was trying to imply—and he didn’t feel up to digging. Still, he told Claes to protect the hospital as he left and slowly began his own search.