28 - Chapter 28

Burris didn’t rest well last night. After returning to the room, his mind was filled with all kinds of thoughts, from whether the goal of the Skeleton King was possible, to whether he should seriously consider learning the way of life of young people… Then he thought about love, sadness and joy that he had heard and witnessed in the past and carefully considered the advantages and disadvantages of them.

Reason told him that it was time to go to sleep. Thinking so hard before going to sleep would cause the brain to be overactive and insomnia, but he couldn’t control himself. Even if these doubts were suppressed, his thoughts would drift to “When will the problem of asynchrony between body and soul be solved?”…Finally, he got rid of this issue, and his excited spirit quizzically thought: “is the dog that has been kissed by a demigod superior in intelligence or amazing in strength?”…

In short, he tossed and turned until dawn. The prince’s knights got up to wash, and Burris was awakened by the friendly morning call service of the post station before he could sleep soundly.

Today, after going on the road, Tarina stopped crying and just stared at a corner of the carriage. Seeing her, Burris felt sad. If the child really suffered a “forced influence”, then no mage could help her. This was not something mages could get involved in.

It would be great if the Red Vulture in the Moonset Mountains hadn’t gone mad. If he hadn’t said anything about the curse of durian and was not driven out of the castle by the prince… then he might be able to find that the prince’s daughter is talented and give timely guidance. Even if Tarina didn’t go to the warlock, even if she is not good at learning and can only pick flowers in the air, it is enough for her to avoid ending up insane.

At this moment, Burris suddenly thought of another question. According to rumors, the prince’s wife also died strangely. From the perspective of a spellcaster, her cause of death is very much like magic out of control. The Red Vulture has known Prince Lanto for a long time, so he should have known the Princess a long time ago. He should have been lucid back then… Had he never noticed anything unusual about the Princess? Or is the death of the princess really just an accident, and there’s another reason for Tarina’s symptoms?

The carriage passed a rough dirt road, and there was another violent jolt. Tarina was so confused that she couldn’t even keep her balance. Burris helped her in time again.

A silver necklace slipped out of Tarina’s neckline, and a shell-shaped pendant inlaid with pink opal hung on the chain. The pendant could be opened like a real shell, with a small portrait embedded in it.

Burris helped the girl to sit in a straight position and lifted the pendant in one hand. The painting showed a woman with a young face, pale skin, and flaming red hair…As for her appearance, he couldn’t see clearly. The size of this commemorative portrait was too small, and the depiction of the person in the painting is often inaccurate.

The person in the painting should be Tarina’s mother. It turns out that Her Royal Highness was red-haired… Burris imagined that she should be a beautiful and cheerful person. This is a common stereotype that most people have of red-haired women.

Prince Lanto was blond like the king, and his children had inherited his blond hair. It seemed that Her Royal Highness was the only red-haired person around the Prince.

No, there is another redhead that the prince knows… that is the Red Vulture. It is said that his hair is very red, but the top of his head is very bald, so he had the nickname “Red Vulture”. But…what is the name of the Red Vulture?

Suddenly two screams came from outside the window. One voice was Heisong, the other was unknown. Burris hadn’t reacted yet, and Charles opened the carriage curtains: “Something’s wrong! Your excellency, come out and have a look!”

“Did the prisoners escape?”

“It’s not that… Come down and have a look, I don’t know how to describe it to you.”

Charles stayed beside the carriage to protect his sister. Burris got out of the carriage and found that Roth and the prince’s knights were gathered on the slightly raised hilly grass beside the road, seeming to be looking at some amazing picture in the distance.

The people who screamed just now were Heisong and Nollard. Heisong was levitating beside the team. First, he saw something on the other side of the hill and shouted. Nollard was not far from Heisong, and after hearing his call, he rode his horse up the hill and then screamed louder than him.

Seeing the situation behind the hill, even Burris took a breath. It was a very large cemetery. Looking around, there were at least a few hundred stone tablets in the park. The tomb under each stone tablet was dug, and the coffin in each tomb had a big hole.

The ground was dug out from the inside out, and the coffin was also pierced out from the inside out…everywhere in his field of vision, the tombs were like this.

“Look!” Seeing Burris coming, Roth excitedly pointed to some of the tombs. Some of the corpses in these tombs were stuck in the gaps in the coffin, some were unable to climb out because the soil was too slippery, and some had left their tombs but could not stand up due to mutilated lower limbs and were squirming forward desperately. There were still some trailing traces on the nearby land, which should have been left by the corpses who had left, and all traces were facing the same direction.

Burris looked at Heisong. He now had calmed down, and was frowning detecting nearby some magic fluctuations. In retrospect, the elf had been timid in the tower, often startled, but at least he wouldn’t scream. Burris never understood why a necromancer would scream when they saw a corpse, maybe just like some priests were afraid of ghost stories…

Burris looked around. “What is this place?”

Nollard leaned close to the mage, as if it was safer. “There is a small town not far from the cemetery, and most of the people buried here are the dead from the town. Ah! That dead man is watching me!”

“He didn’t look at you, he was just swinging his head.” Burris took a step away and didn’t let Nollard hug him. “Did you walk this way when you came? Was there anything unusual about the cemetery at that time?”

“We didn’t pay attention to these at all when we came. By The Three Good Gods, what happened to them?”

“They…” Burris looked to the north. The corpses below seemed not interested in living people at all, and they didn’t even look at him. “Maybe their destination is the same as ours…”

Silver Falcon, the territory of Prince Lanto, and the northwestern border of Sago -the Moonset Mountains. Judging from the traces on the soil, the corpses that crawled out were all heading towards the Moonset Mountains, and the mutilated corpses were slowly creeping north.

Burris sighed and walked to one of the corpses, hung his palm over its back, and muttered a spell silently. The corpse gradually lost its vitality under the spell, stopped moving, and turned back into a real dead thing.

Seeing the action of the “Little Mage”, Heisong hurriedly followed up to find a corpse and cast the same spell. Between casting the spell, the elf frowned and mumbled: “It’s strange. If we can inactivate them so easily, does it mean that the person who evoked them is not so powerful? But if that person is weak, how can he raise such a large number of corpses and manipulate them…?”

Burris had made his judgment in silence, but he did not dare to say it immediately. He was afraid to frighten the prince and his children.

He believed that these corpses were not awakened by someone, but attracted by a stronger force. They were not advancing towards the Moonset Mountains because of orders. If there was a manipulator, Burris and Heisong must first break the spell of that person before inactivating the corpses; but now that they could directly appease them, then that meant that these corpses were alive by themselves.

‘An evil person manipulating the corpses’ was not something terrifying to the knights. Everyone knows that the corpses are just a weapon, just kill the manipulator; but ‘the corpses resurrected on its own and gathers to a certain place” was a bit beyond common people’s perception… Even Burris had a chill in his back, not to mention what other people would think.

They couldn’t stop too long, they had to hurry. The more bizarre the situation was, the more they had to make sure they arrive at Silver Falcon Castle sooner.

When they were on the road again, Heisong followed the cavalry closely, and Nollard was quiet. Charles and Roth rode left and right by the carriage. Inside the carriage, Tarina eyes were empty, her fingers twitched from time to time, and her lips moved without making a sound, as if she was silently speaking to something that others could not see.

Now there were abnormal magic waves everywhere, just like the rushing wind. Burris was sleepy and worried. He wanted to take advantage of the quiet to sleep, but he was afraid of the team’s unexpected accident.

Another day later, the team arrived at the official post station in White Goose Village ahead of time. They originally planned to have lunch here and take a short rest, then walk for a while in the afternoon, and enter the Silver Falcon Castle before the evening… But when they arrived near the post, the knight in charge didn’t know whether they should stop.

It was getting foggy. The official road outside the village was just a little misty. The farther you go, the thicker the fog will be. At noon, the village of White Goose was silent. No one was working in the fields and orchards outside the village, and there was no sound of children running home crying hungry in the distance.

Walking further inside, the knights were surprised to see that all the houses in the village were closed, even the dogs were not in the yard. A soldier knocked on the door of the post station. After a long time, a crack was opened in the wooden window on the second floor. The boss of the post station yelled excitedly from the crack of the window.

After welcoming the prince and his party into the house, the boss quickly locked the door again. A waitress brought food and briefly described the situation in the village with lingering fear.

Not long ago, a terrible phenomenon of resurrection of the dead occurred in several nearby villages. The cemetery was opened one by one, and the dead crawled out day and night. The mutilated corpses struggled to crawl, the complete corpses ran as fast as a living person, and even the crunching bones swayed behind. The village guard and some courageous farmers went to intercept them, but they no match for the corpses. At the same time, a heavy fog enveloped several nearby villages and towns. While the local corpses continued to recover, corpses from other cemeteries swarmed through White Goose Village…

Fortunately, these corpses didn’t seem to care much about the villagers who escaped. They rushed and ran towards the Moonset Mountains. Even so, some people in the village were injured or even died in the chaos. Some guards were besieged and bitten by trying to stop the corpses from advancing. There was also a farmer who was crushed alive by his father’s corpse.

After hearing the statements of the waitress and the station boss, the prince decided to take food and go on the road immediately. The nearby villages and towns were already like this. What will happen in the Silver Falcon Castle?

When leaving the post, the fog outside thickened. Burris just wanted to get into the carriage, but he saw Roth standing aside with his horse, staring at the north in a daze.

“My lord?” The mage walked over and asked softly: “Did you feel something?”

Roth was in a daze before turning around. He didn’t answer immediately, but instead asked Burris: “Look at the mist and the fluctuations flowing from the mountains…Did you feel it too?”

Burris nodded: “Yes…I not only felt it, but also cast a spell to distinguish it.”

“What do you think this is?”

“This is not a necromancy at all.” Burris lowered his voice. “This is infernal elemental magic.”