Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

A cow-sized, lizard-like creature stomped its feet down, its entire body covering in jagged horns, moving from side to side whilst presenting some sort of false head situated right behind the back of its actual one, all the while aggressively squirting blood of its eyes at the creatures threatening it.

The undeads were not impressed by the defence mechanisms being employed by the big lizard, the beast wasn't willing to attack them, wasn't willing to turn tail and make a run for it, but its physical defences were actually rather impressive, and strikes from weapons just bounced right off.

"This species would make for fine war beasts, any more of them in sight?" the elite mage asked, the scouts that were just approaching shaking their heads negatively.

"Seems like they are of the solitary sort, and we've the thickness of life floating in the air, we aren't going to be converting much to the glory of undeath any time soon… This guy will probably be taken apart instead and be brought back at a later date" the elite warrior said, indeed, another problem with this realm was that although the rejection of death wasn't nearly as severe as it was in some other, the levels of life force around were simply enormous, the undeads were faring alright despite it, but converting local creatures into undead would be harder, they were saturated with life force as well, which would be a good thing normally as it would mean that more would be converted into death force.

However, the lively environment wasn't very conducive to such activities at all, making it another obstacle, instead, stepping forward, the warrior grabbed his stone sword, and plunged it right through the creature's eye and reached its brain, killing it on the spot.

"Let's head back to camp, with that corpse, we're too encumbered to keep going and state efficient" spoke the mage, the warrior agreeing as the corpse was loaded into a carriage built of the same wood used for the camp, they hadn't had the opportunity to use such things before as only the scouts were allowed to move out of the camp, as they alone were fast enough to go around and return at the slightest sign of danger, and they weren't powerful enough to haul anything around.

Using beasts had been also out of the question as with the carriage latched onto them, they would be too slow to turn around and return before the effects of the heat got to them, but such concerns no longer mattered as the pale blue sun had arrived, or rather, manifested in the place of the previous one.

This made them wonder whether or not the original sun would return, and if it did, when that would occur.

Suns, moons, the stars and all that dwells into space, far above all of the layer of clouds and skies, have always been rather mysterious to all, some could be figured out and made predictable via mathematics, whilst others were simply unreadable, In Viridis, there was the sun that could change shape every so often, which every forms, could be seen atop a certain peak of the snowy mountains, in fact, that peak was special as suns that actually appeared much further away from the continent could sometimes be spotted there.

Now, all of the suns in Viridis had been conquered and made vassals to the king's dark sun, and more recently, to the queen's brilliant sun as well.

Although some of them were undeniably odd or showed signs of not being simple stars that happened to be very bright, it was truly the first time the undeads could see a sun that was undoubtedly intelligent for themselves, the eye was a dead giveaway.

The elite mage, ever thinking about the mysteries presented to him, felt like this sun may have more forms than the two they had already seen, and even theorised that perhaps, each form represented some sort of season here in this realm.

But the fact that the pale blue sun had called upon warriors for whatever reason seemed to be placing it was more of a leader or godly figure, it exuded no divine energy, but a sun that had an eye should definitely be the target of some sort of worship in some manner, and those warriors could be its paladins by that logic.

As the mage kept stringing up possible theories with little ground to actually stand up to build any foundations to such ideas, the group of undead kept on moving at a steady pace, scouts with birds perched atop the carriage and scouts crawling in the sand, they had a wide view of their surroundings at all time.

One group of scouts with great vision, and one that could sense any vibration in the ground, they had even brought with them two life hounds, especially skilled in the sensing of life force, as the name implied.

Still, the two elites did not relax, it would only be inviting trouble and also because they had already messed up once, no matter how well-intentioned, if they committed another mistake, they would get booted out of here and sent back to do some training where they wouldn't be able to cause problems by messing something up.

Not wanting their lord, or lady as they called her when she wasn't around, to view them in a bad light, they made sure that everything was done to the best possible level, at the same time, one of the scouts sharing the senses of their feathered companion suddenly rose their hand, words of death tongue imminent to emerge from them, the two elites also noticed something, which was piercing through the air at an incredible speed.

Reaching out with his hand as it would be faster than drawing his sword, the warrior grabbed something out of the air before it could reach anything, his thoroughly dehydrated flesh sizzling for a few moments as he held onto an arrow formed out of pure pale blue vapour, soon enough, it lost its solidness and dispersed into gas, vanishing entirely.

"Assume battle formation! We are under assault from afar!" the mage spoke up, already circulating his mana and putting barriers up, an act that was currently much easier as the ambient energies weren't being boiled.

"From very far indeed, the life hounds didn't react and the sand scouts didn't feel any vibration…" finding it hard to believe that this enemy could be on the same level as the assassin and also such a skilled archer, if it was the case, then this guy should have been the sent to the camp instead.

"If your ideas are correct, this living's augmentation probably makes him a most excellent archer, whilst his other ability would be to create arrows out of nothing but that pale blue energy" added the warrior.

"What is the distance separating us from the enemy?" asked the elite mage, addressing the scout who had seemingly noticed something.

"They are not within three kilometers of us, they must had set up a hidden spot within a dune…" the scout had actually only spotted the arrow soaring through the air after it was shot, not the enemy themselves, but did know the precise angle and direction the projectiles had come from, severely reducing the guessing work.

The instant another arrow was shot, the living revealed their position.