The next day, the team left Ectamel on foot, walking toward the undead dead zone at the dawn of Fireday. We departed just after the nightly horde of skeletons was decimated.

  The terrain immediately surrounding the city had been deliberately stripped bare. Trees were chopped down to stumps, grass burned to ash, and shrubs torn out at the roots, all to maximize visibility. Nothing taller than a knee remained for several hundred meters in any direction. After that artificial scar ended, the land slowly reclaimed itself, giving way to open meadows.

  Short grass brushed against our boots as we entered it, broken here and there by clusters of black lilies. Ja’a crouched briefly to inspect one before standing again.

  “Worth a copper each,” she said.

  That put them well below our team’s pay grade, so we ignored them and continued deeper. No one slowed their pace.

  There were no maintained roads this far out. Instead, faint trail-roads cut through the grass, pressed flat by years of skeletal patrols marching toward Ectamel night after night. The paths were crooked and inconsistent, sometimes splitting, and sometimes vanishing entirely. We traveled on foot because wagons would never survive the terrain, and mounts would be little better.

  Nature here felt wrong.

  It was eerily silent. No bird calls echoed across the fields, and insect buzz was very rare. Even the wind seemed subdued, as if the land itself were holding its breath. Visibility was poor, not because of obstacles, but due to a thin mist hanging over the horizon. It wasn’t thick enough to blind us, but it dulled distances and made everything beyond a few hundred meters feel uncertain and unreal.

  Mana density was noticeably higher than average. I could feel it prickling faintly against my skin, like smoke after a bush fire. That excess mana affected the local flora as well, strengthening their souls beyond what you would normally expect.

  Every living thing possessed a soul, even plants, and here the plants often had soul strength comparable to a weak skeleton. That caused problems.

  Ja’a’s soul-seer ability struggled to distinguish weak undead from background life. When grass, flowers, and small animals glowed as brightly as a wandering skeleton, everything blurred together. Fortunately for us, this only applied to the weakest mobs. Any stronger variation or true aberration still stood out clearly, its soul burning far brighter than the surrounding landscape.

  As if to punctuate the thought, Katar suddenly stiffened and shifted position.

  A skeleton burst from a patch of tall grass to our left, its movement clumsy and uncoordinated. Katar reacted instantly, dismantling it with practiced efficiency before it could even raise its weapon. It wasn’t the first time this had happened since we started traveling.

  “How come we find skeletons shambling around solo or in pairs,” I asked as Katar wiped bone dust from his blade, “when they form hordes at night?”

  “Undead are anathema to life,” Calr explained. “They will always move toward the nearest living thing. Their detection range increases dramatically at night. Anything within a couple of days’ walk of Ectamel will slowly start moving toward the city after sunset.”

  He paused, then continued.

  “During the day, they lose that extended perception. They stop, wander, or get lost, only to resume the journey the next night.”

  “That’s why there’s only one city bordering the undead dead zone,” Raik added. “Ectamel is both a lure and a trap. It draws the undead eastward and keeps them from spreading further.”

  He gestured vaguely toward the horizon.

  “Fortkana serves the same purpose to the north, allied with High Rock. To the south and west, the ocean blocks the spread entirely.”

  I looked back once, toward where Ectamel now lay hidden behind mist and distance.

  A city standing watch at the edge of death, night after night.

  And we were walking straight past its protection, deeper into danger.

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  I don’t know about anything else, but this kind of journey tickled my chuunni side just right. Marching into unknown territory, the promise that something strange, terrible or wondrous might be waiting just beyond the fog. I really hoped we would stumble onto something big. An ancient relic, a forgotten ruin, or maybe even proof that the telepathic ancestors held more knowledge or technology. If we were going to risk our lives, I wanted it to be for something memorable.

  We kept traveling westward.

  Katar took the lead. He cut through tall grass when it grew thick enough to slow us, his blade flashing in short, efficient arcs, and dealt with the occasional shambling skeleton that wandered too close. None of them posed a real threat. I could tell the monotony was getting to him. Every fight ended before it began, and there was no satisfaction in dismantling something that barely resisted.

  Calr walked just behind him, focused on navigation. He carried a map, cross-referencing landmarks and terrain as we moved, subtly adjusting our path to guide us toward a point Raik had chosen before we ever left the city.

  Shingo followed next. His primary role was simple and absolute: protect Ja’a. His barrier Soulbook was ready to snap into place at a moment’s notice. If a serious fight broke out, he would shift seamlessly into his role as a tank, but until then, Ja’a was his priority.

  Vena and I flanked Ja’a on either side. We stayed close enough to shield her if something slipped past the front, but far enough to react independently. It was a safe-ish position, if such a thing existed out here, and one that suited both of us. Vena’s presence was steady and reassuring, while I kept my awareness spread wide, watching the fog, the grass, and the empty spaces between things.

  Raik brought up the rear, deliberately. If anything tried to follow us, circle us, or test our formation, it would meet him first.

  Every so often, Ja’a would point out a soul signature to Raik. A flicker in the distance, but each time it was not quite impressive enough to justify the time and risk of hunting it down. Each time, Raik would consider it briefly before shaking his head, and we would keep moving.

  We walked for hours.

  We only stopped to eat and rest, then pushed on again. If you had asked me back on Earth whether I could walk for hours in armor and still function, I would have laughed in your face. Now, it felt… fine. Not easy, exactly, but manageable.

  I was stronger than I had been six months ago. That much was undeniable.

  I wasn’t inhumanly strong, not even close, but my rate of growth didn’t match the amount of training I had actually done. I had stayed fit back on Earth, sure, and the training here, outside of the month of hell with Edmund, hadn’t been dramatically harsher than my usual routine.

  Something didn’t add up.

  Kindred magic was my working theory, the idea that simply existing in this world was reshaping me at a fundamental level. But I still had no concrete proof, maybe if I managed to evolve or at least break a tree with a kick or something equally dramatic.

  Until then, all I had was the quiet certainty that I was changing.

  That feeling would have scared a normal person. I learned long ago that I wasn’t normal in that way.

  Most living people start the same way. As children, they believe in magic: Santa, the tooth fairy, monsters under the bed. They cheer when a superhero saves the day, raise their hands when Goku asks for energy, and play pretend with their friends, making rules on the spot and breaking them the next day without caring.

  Then life does what life does.

  The pretending slowly stops. Hardship and reality scrape away at that sense of wonder, year by year, until most people become adults who can’t run down the street playing tag without feeling embarrassed, who can’t laugh until their chest hurts without worrying how they look.

  I wasn’t like that.

  Not because my life had been easy, or because nothing ever went wrong. I mean my family fell apart, and there were years that hurt more than I care to remember. But even then, I made a choice, sometimes consciously and sometimes out of pure stubbornness, to keep that child inside me alive, to stay curious, to stay hopeful, and to keep believing the world could still surprise me.

  I won’t pretend privilege had nothing to do with it. I was wealthy, at least my parents were. I never had to worry about starving. I was lucky enough that my father stepped up when the university refused to cover more than half of my travel expenses for my Japan field trip. I was lucky that war or famine didn’t crush the joy out of me. That safety gave me space: space to believe, and space to recover when things went wrong.

  But I also know people with the same advantages who lost that spark anyway.

  So I don’t feel guilty for it. And I don’t feel arrogant either.

  I am who I am because of everything that came before, the good and the bad. And the me of yesterday, the one who refused to stop believing in magic even when it would have been easier to grow cynical, is the reason I am here now, walking in a new world, heading toward a place literally marked on the map with a warning that says: Here Be Undead.

  My past self would be proud.

  And that, more than anything else, made me walk a little taller.

  The yellow sun had begun to dip lower by the time we stopped for a water break, already past the point where most freelancers would start heading back to avoid spending the night in the dead zone. We gathered near a narrow stream, but instead of drinking directly from it, we used Raik’s water purification artifact first. The device hummed softly as it worked, turning questionable water into something clean and safe.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  As I drank, a stray thought crossed my mind. I wondered if someone with a death affinity, like Ki’a or his mother, Lady Jarra, would benefit from drinking water saturated with death mana. If mana shaped the body and soul over time, maybe intake mattered for bloodline people as much as it did for kindred people. It was the kind of question that needed testing in a lab, on some poor unsuspecting mice.

  Ja’a stood up abruptly.

  Her chair scraped against the ground, sharp and loud in the quiet.

  “Something big is coming our way,” she said. Her voice was tight. “It’s stronger than anything we’ve faced since the start of the challenge.”

  Every one of us was on our feet instantly.

  Weapons were drawn, stances widened, and our loose resting formation snapped back into order. I felt my pulse quicken as I scanned the fog and tall grass ahead, bracing for whatever horror Ja’a had sensed.

  The something big emerged a moment later.

  It had expected a towering monster or a twisted abomination.

  Instead, It turned out to be a corpse, a desecrated body.

  The remains of a freelancer shambled toward us, leather armor still strapped to its frame, cracked but intact. Blond hair clung in dirty strands to a skull that still held most of its flesh. A sword hung firmly in one hand, a shield strapped to the other arm, both still pristine somehow. It looked wrong in a way that set my teeth on edge. The contrast between clean weapons and ruined armor.

  Behind it came the horde.

  Regular skeletons poured out of the mist, dozens of them. Ja’a had missed them because they were nothing special. Weak souls, indistinguishable from background noise. They blended into the mana-saturated landscape, too subtle for her soul-seer powers to detect.

  But they were also a bit different from the others we had encountered. Their movements were more coordinated and purposeful, as if proximity to the aberration was sharpening their focus, or maybe it was actively controlling them. I couldn’t tell, but it was clear they were no longer acting alone.

  “Shingo, put a barrier over Ja’a and Alice,” Raik shouted.

  He turned his head just enough to catch my eye. “Alice, if the barrier breaks, take Ja’a out of here.”

  I didn’t argue. I sprinted to Ja’a’s side as Shingo stomped his boot on the ground, and an opaque, hex-shaped dome snapped into place around us. The barrier was transparent enough to allow a clear view of the outside world.

  “Vena,” Raik ordered, already repositioning the team. “Heal the enemy and let’s see how well it works.”

  Vena didn’t hesitate.

  She clasped her hands and began to pray, a talisman made of sand trapped in glass between her hands, her voice steady even as the horde drew closer. Golden light spilled outward from her, washing over the undead like sunlight breaking through fog.

  The effect was immediate.

  Skeletons collapsed in waves, their bones clattering uselessly to the ground. One after another, the horde disintegrated until nothing remained but scattered remains littering the field.

  Except for the corpse zombie. It stopped and looked down at the fallen skeletons, its head tilting slightly, almost in confusion.

  “Thirty-five SB,” Ja’a called out sharply. “That thing has a soul strength of thirty-five. Almost twice as strong as you, Raik.”

  “I can tell that I hurt it,” Vena said, breathing. “I can target it again, but if I overuse my Holy miracles, I won’t be able to sanctify the camp later.”

  “No,” Katar said calmly, already stepping forward. “No need for that. I’ll handle it.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ja’a warned. “It has seven times your soul strength.”

  “And I keep telling you,” Katar replied without looking back, “that soul strength isn’t everything.”

  Raik exhaled slowly. “Let him have his fight,” he said. “I think he can handle it.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Calr, ready your crossbow in case things get dicey. Kan, be prepared to step in.”

  The corpse raised its shield.

  Katar smiled, walking forward in small, deliberate steps, blades already loose in his hands. The longer messer rested low in his right hand, angled forward like a probing spear, while the shorter gladius sat close to his left hip. He did not raise them in an exaggerated guard, trusting his movement more than posture.

  The corpse answered by stepping into him. The first blow was direct, a jumping high strike. The monster was probably hoping to end things with one blow. Katar was able to sidestep it. The monster’s strike hit the ground, leaving a large crack in the stone beneath. It was fast and strong, maybe as strong as Sergeant Yon, and almost as light on its feet as Nakera.

  The onslaught continued, the monster taking charge of the tempo with a series of heavy blows while Katar refused to meet it head-on.

  He slid half a step to the side and caught the sword with the gladius, redirecting rather than blocking, letting the force slide along the shorter blade while his messer flicked out in the same motion, biting into the corpse’s thigh.

  Leather split and dead flesh parted. The monster did not slow. It did not even bleed, yet some sort of smoky dark fog seeped from the open wound for a few seconds.

  It answered with a shield bash that would have crushed a lesser fighter. Katar retreated a single step, boots scraping, then pivoted around the rim of the shield and cut again, this time at the knee. The messer blade rang against bone.

  Still, the corpse pressed forward.

  A normal opponent would have stumbled by now. This one absorbed the damage like it barely registered.

  The corpse swung again, a wide horizontal cut meant to force Katar back. Katar dipped low, the enemy blade hissing over his head. As he passed under it, the gladius snapped up and slashed across the sword arm, carving into muscle.

  The arm sagged for a fraction of a second.

  But not enough.

  Katar retreated again, always sideways, and never straight back. He kept circling, forcing the corpse to turn to keep its shield between them. Every time it did, Katar punished the movement. Messer to the knee. Messer to the hip. and Messer is scraping along the inside of the shield arm.

  The corpse roared, a dry sound dragged from lungs that no longer worked, as black smoke kept leaking from carved flesh.

  Its aura flared.

  I felt it even from behind the barrier, a tug like something trying to pull threads out of the world. Shapes began to stir at the edges of the field. Skeletons. Half-formed dead things clawing their way out of shallow ground. It was disturbing seeing something from right in front of my eyes. It was some sort of spawning magic. From what I had read, monsters occur when normal beasts get saturated with mana, but some monsters, like golems or elementals, could spawn naturally or magically. I couldn’t help but wonder if the earth where those skeletons emerged from became less fertile from the loss of calcium and phosphate, or if things like that just got handwaved by magic.

  Kan moved without being told.

  A crack of force from her chains whipped through and shattered the nearby forming skulls, never letting them fully take form. The monster roared even harder, attracting nearby undead that were easily dispatched by a fireball from Raik. I guess the team decided that this fight should remain a one vs one.

  Katar didn’t relent and went on the offensive, scoring a couple of hits as the monster was distracted trying to call for help, before retreating once more.

  He was breathing harder now. The constant motion was costing him. Every dodge, every deflection, and every half step added up. He could not keep this pace forever.

  The corpse sensed it.

  It lunged, shield-first, sword stabbing past its own guard. Katar barely got the gladius up in time. The impact jolted through his arm, teeth clenched as he redirected the blade just enough to avoid being skewered.

  The messer flashed again, carving into the back of the knee.

  This time, the leg buckled.

  Just for an instant.

  Katar took it.

  He stepped inside the corpse’s reach, closer than was safe. The shield smashed into his shoulder, knocking him sideways, but his messer was already driving down.

  Straight into the bent knee.

  The blade punched through rotting flesh and bit deep past the bone into the ground beneath. Katar did not try to pull his blade free. He stepped away from it, leaving it pinning the leg in place.

  The corpse staggered, unable to stand from its kneeling position, balance broken at last.

  It raised the shield to bash Katar again.

  Katar backhanded the shield with the gladius, knocking it aside just enough, then kicked hard at the rim. The strap snapped. The shield hit the ground with a dull clang.

  The corpse’s sword hand moved too slowly.

  The gladius flashed one final time.

  The head came free and rolled across the dirt, eyes still burning for a heartbeat before fading. The body collapsed a second later, finally resting now that nothing held it together.

  Katar stood there, chest heaving, one blade dripping dark ichor, the other still embedded in the earth.

  He pulled the messer free and wiped it on the corpse’s armor.

  Only then did I notice that I was barely breathing, and I took a breath of relief that the fight was finally over.

  After the fight, the tension bled away, and each of us burst into motion.

  Vena was the first to move. She hurried to Katar’s side, hands already glowing faintly as she checked him over, her expression tight with worry despite the victory. She murmured prayers under her breath, fingers hovering near bruises and scrapes before finally relaxing when she confirmed there was nothing serious.

  Calr went the opposite direction, practical as ever. He crouched near the scattered remains and began collecting the condensed death mana cores left behind by the lesser undead, carefully stacking them into a pouch. Each one was worth bronze coins, and some of them were a bit larger than standard, making them worth an extra penny, especially if we sold them in Hano rather than here in Ectamel, so close to the source.

  Ja’a ignored both of them.

  She approached the corpse’s discarded equipment, kneeling to examine the sword and shield with intense focus. Her fingers traced along the metal as she searched for lingering enchantments or residual magic. The equipment was solid enough to survive despite the lack of maintenance.

  I drifted toward Raik.

  He stood apart from the others, crouched beside the fallen corpse, but he wasn’t looking at the body itself. His attention was fixed on the insignia pinned to the armor. Two crossed swords, worn smooth at the edges made out of bronze. A sergeant’s badge from the freelancer guild.

  I hesitated, then spoke anyway. “That was far too reckless,” I said, unable to keep the edge out of my voice. “We should have attacked it as a team. That thing was as strong as the troll, maybe stronger, and just as durable. Especially after Ja’a confirmed it had a large soul.”

  Raik didn’t look offended.

  He smiled and rose to his feet. “I had three reasons why I made that choice.”

  He raised his index finger.

  “First, I know Katar’s strength better than anyone here. I know exactly what he can handle, and where his limits are.”

  He raised a second finger.

  “Second, that zombie was leading other undead. A large part of its soul strength came from leadership and control powers, and not raw physical power. Unlike the troll we fought, which invested everything into personal strength and regeneration, this one’s power spread was more outward.”

  Then he raised a third finger, slower this time.

  “And third,” he said quietly, “this used to be one of us once.”

  He reached down and unclipped the freelancer badge, holding it for a moment before slipping it into his bag of holding. Then he removed a ring from the corpse’s hand, turning it once before setting it aside with the badge.

  “I felt we owed it to him to give him one last duel as a send-off.”

  Then he solemnly lifted one hand, heat magic gathering around his palm, misting over the air. Flames bloomed, controlled and precise, washing over the armor and the remains beneath it. He guided the fire carefully, feeding it with mana rather than wood. The corpse burned cleanly, the blue flames consuming flesh, cloth, and bone alike. With no opposing aura to counter his own, burning the corpse to ash was a matter of a couple of minutes. A fist-sized black monster core was the only thing left untouched; whether it was strong enough to withstand the heat or purposefully left unharmed by Raik, I didn’t know. Probably a bit of both.

  I lowered my head, the urge to argue draining away as I watched the last embers fade. Whatever words I had left felt small and unnecessary in the face of that quiet act of compassion toward a fallen adventurer.