Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Moving like a swift shade, the assassin moved with care and avoided getting anywhere close to any of the dead.

The camp was illuminated by pale blue sunlight, providing excellent visibility, though, tall shadows were cast in many areas by the towers seemingly placed haphazardly around the camp, and also by the sewed together pelts of best stretched in between each of them.

The way this place was constructed and its materials was certainly eerie in of itself, especially due to the fact that those who had created it were beings that he had never ever encountered or even heard of in all of his years of life and servitude to Watchful Undeviginti, they were bizarre, they were corpses that yet moved and acted as though alive.

There was something uncanny and sinister about each and every one of them, the direction in which their was turned didn't always seem to align, at all, with where their attention was truly was, as an experimented assassin, he could tell this sort of things, although with some difficulty concerning the pulseless folks around here.

Sneaking around, he searched for a good spot to place down a cylindrical object of some sort, after pushing it's underside, it would take five minutes for it to activate, creating loud and bright flashes similar to fireworks, it should suffice as a good distraction, he believed.

Such a thing going off without one's camp could only logically rouse suspicion and attract a good portion of them to investigate, but he couldn't just plop it down anywhere, these guys patrolled everywhere and he just knew that they would instantly notice even the smallest of discrepancies, so instead, he sought to find another tent that was devoid of occupants and place the item there.

Checking whether or not any given tent was empty was the most dangerous thing he could do however, he could conceal himself well, but if he started moving things around, he would just be giving away his presence, and he couldn't exactly be slow and steady about it either, the entrances were placed right next to to where the guards would pass by the most often, so he needed to be very, very swift about it.

'Not this one…' he thought, finding a four-armed skeleton busy sharpening some swords.

'Not this one either…' he didn't quite see what was going on, but some long-haired corpse, which he presumed to maybe be female, was making weird motions whilst mumbling something.

'What the… Definitely not this one…' he saw a bird-headed undead garbed in white with another undead dressed in the same manner busy dissecting something that was no longer recognisable at a glance, the two were carefully taking notes and drawing a very detailed representation of one of the creature's organs.

This was probably the fate that would await the knight if he wasn't successful in extracting him from this camp of lunatics.

'This one?' he hoped, but he slowly backed off from it, feeling his throat compress as the content of his stomach seemed to be yearned for escape through the mouth.

'What is wrong with these… Things?' he wondered to himself, but quickly ceased all unnecessary thoughts as he rapidly hid behind some crates that were lying nearby, making himself as small as possible so as to avoid any portion of his body or clothing to poke out from this hiding spot.

Just barely a few meters away from where the living currently was, two undeads that he was certain hadn't been part of the patrols walked by, one carrying a stone sword on his back, the other hold a weathered wand that seemed ready to be used at a moment's notice, the two corpses were discussing something in death tongue, but both suddenly stopped speaking, or walking.

To the assassin, who couldn't see them as he hid behind the crates, it was like they had suddenly vanished into thin air, all proof of their presence simply vanishing and replaced by a deafening silence.

The assassin, feeling like something was off, began to carefully crawl further away, still using the crates as a cover, the pale blue vapour still doing its job at reinforcing his stealth capabilities.

His current get-up wasn't ideal either, as the undeads had brought some sort of black sand from somewhere else as well as gravel and rocks to make up the ground of their camp, but the living was garbed in a cloak that was covered in grains of the white sand that sticked to its surface, after all, as a hunter of Watchful Undeviginti, his missions was to hunt in the white desert in the name of his ruler.

Infiltrating a camp wasn't supposed to be something he did when called upon.

'Huh?' he had genuinely expected to be found out, those two undeads carried a sense of superior power compared to those he had met before, but when his eyes darted around, he found that neither of the two was around, having seemingly never actually stopped walking, and instead, like they had simply gone perfectly silent out of nowhere, unrelated to the assassin.

'Strange-' he thought, but was cut short as the actual patrol showed up in the distance, forcing him to pick up his pace as he had run late compared to what he had calculated because of that encounter just now.

'Finally…' he found a tent that was empty, inside was a rather odd sight however, as many pieces of meat were hanging down, as though they were being left to dry, the place had a table with instruments useful for cooking and taking apart a creature, as well as strange spices and ingredients carefully arranged.

'They are corpses… And I haven't seen a single one of them eating or drinking, in fact, many of them are skeletal, what is the purpose of this place?' he wondered, once again troubled by the never seen before beings, but he didn't linger about for too long, stepping forward and placing the cylindrical object on the table after activating it.

'Done…' he turned to leave, and was met with the sight of a face, a surprisingly, not decayed-looking face, in fact, the flesh was rather rosy, not quite coloured like bare muscle despite having the appearance and visual texture of it.

There was no nose, only two nostrils, bright eyes that peered forth like those of a squid, yet with a strange glint of attention within them.

Pretty blonde hair tied into a ponytail, if not for the fact that her mouth was about three time too large, filled with two rows of predatory fangs both up and down, and that a string of cloudy saliva was hanging down, the assassin might just have thought that the creature before him wasn't that bad looking.

But most worryingly, he hadn't sensed her coming.