Chapter 682 Arise, Fallen
Chapter 682 Arise, Fallen
There were already victory celebrations going on by the time that the group made it down to the walls, but the King seemed to have the same concerns that Wolfe did. That wasn’t enough of a threat to have come straight to him and expected to win.
Logically, they should have started with the outlying villages and made him split his forces, so he was already extending his senses and sending messages to make sure that none of his villagers were under attack.
He looked up to greet Wolfe as he came in, and smiled as he saw the armed Maids following him around, as well as the big Wrathbringer with her grenade launcher.
It was a much slower firing weapon than the rifles, but she was already running low on grenades, and she was going to have to get more of them very soon, unless this really was the end of the attacks.
“Ah, Wolfe. Just the man I needed to see. It looks like your experiment went well enough?” The King greeted them.
“Indeed it did. Everything worked out just as well as I had hoped, and the Maids are very efficient when working as a team. What is the situation down here? I’ve been getting the feeling that there is something that we’re missing.” Wolfe replied.
“I have the same feeling, but I have searched the Palace for intruders, I have looked underground for sappers, I have asked all the villages to have their scouts report any enemy movement. Even the portal they came through is closed, so they’re not trying to send more forces to aid a battle that’s already over.
I just can’t seem to find where this feeling is coming from.” The King replied.
“Do you think that they could have been spreading that curse to others? It was a pretty nasty one.” Wolfe asked.
“That’s possible. We didn’t have an opportunity to analyze it before everyone was cleansed, but I’m quite sure it was intended to be fatal. Perhaps they have curse masters hiding in the wilderness, aiming to curse the villages.”
The King wasn’t happy about that thought, but it was a logical one.
One of the Maids began to cough and dropped to one knee for a moment before righting herself. She recovered as quickly as possible, but there were black sludge handprints where she had fallen, and on her dress where she wiped her hands clean.
“That’s the sludge of a destroyed curse. The curse is still here and spreading.” Wolfe explained.
“Everyone back from the walls. A quarantine is in effect.” The King ordered.
This wasn’t the first time that a curse or magic resistant disease had spread, and most of the residents knew the procedures.
“Risa, you’re with me. Millie and Chloe, actually, you’re with me as well. If one of the maids was exposed, then we likely all are. Either it was in the tower, or it’s on the battlefield.” Wolfe explained.
Chloe looked concerned for a second, and then reached into her pocket and tossed a bit of fine sand in the air.
It blew back into the Palace, carried by the wind, and Wolfe began to understand what was going on.
“Your Majesty, I can’t pick out anything from among all the lingering magic, but can you check the bodies for signs of the curse? You were here at the wall when the first guards were affected.” Wolfe requested.
The King searched the battlefield for a moment, and then sent out a streak of lightning that destroyed something in the distance.
“They left a cursed talisman on the battlefield, just sitting in the bushes. It was designed to spread the curse, and the wind blew it across everything, and into the Palace. The maids are the weakest ones here, so they were the first ones affected other than the Palace Guard, but all the bodies are infected now.”
Wolfe sighed. “How particular are your people about funeral rites?”
The King looked confused. “The bodies are just bodies, bundles of memory and experience. Demon souls resurrect in new ones after they die.”
“Then you don’t mind if we get rid of them? I think that the Fallen might like their clergy back.” Wolfe suggested.
“Oh, and how do you propose that we do that without ending up with a lot more infected workers? Even if you gave them a Mana Purification amulet, they would still be suffering from the curse constantly.” The King reminded him.
“What I’m thinking is to have them go back on their own. If you can open a portal to their world, I will get them up and moving.” Wolfe offered.
The King smiled, and a swirling vortex opened on the far side of the battlefield, where the Command Group had been standing.
Wolfe focused his mana, and pulled a bit extra from the Pentacle to spread [Necrosis] across the battlefield.
Slowly, the dead began to rise. Mostly as zombies, looking just as they did at the moment of their deaths, but there were a few more powerful beings in the mix. Two had risen as minor Liches, and among the front lines, there were five Death Knights, powerful undead warriors.
[Arise, my friends, and return to your home world. Your goal is to spread the joy of the gift you were given to all the people you find. Now, return triumphant and spread the joy that gift giving brings.] Wolfe ordered the undead army.
There weren’t many Demons on the battlefield, as the majority of the fight had been done from behind the walls, but Wolfe hadn’t resurrected any of them.
Instead, he waited until the Crusade force had walked through the portal and then began to gather what was left, mostly headless corpses and the Demons, into a pile with wind magic. The King joined in, and once they were all gathered, Wolfe lit the fire with Unholy Flames, burning the bodies and everything around them, including the lingering curse magic, to ash.
“There. The battlefield has been cleansed, and as soon as we can verify that the curse isn’t still spreading through the Palace, we should be good to return to our daily activities.”