Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead
Chapter 843 - 843: Corpse Beast

"Fancy seeing you here, what is a pretty girl like you doing? I am certain there are far better sights to look at than this thing"

"Hello, Rummy, it's been a little while since we last spoke, how is it going with Spula?" Antieeld turned to address the vampire hunter, both arms held behind her back.

"Spula? I don't know what you- Did she tell you?"

"She rambles when concocting potions, and surprisingly, her success rates increase sharply when doing so, but anyways, although I agree that staring at a flower field would be far more enjoyable, even if deliberate by the undeads, getting to observe one of them from so close is a rare opportunity, especially such a… Peculiar one" explained the commandant, slightly readjusting her eyepatch.

"Is that brand new?"

"It is, the wound still bleeds sometimes, so Minli insists on checking up on me everyday, sometimes, it feels like that little woman is an overly worried mother, but her treatments are top notch, so there is no room for complaint" Antieeld formed a small smile that vanished as quickly as it appeared.

Considering that healing wasn't that common in the Emerald Realm, and mostly limited to simple treatment or energy-based healing, the talented healer was filling a very big niche nearly all by herself.

"I was waiting for our dear bespectacled friend from another world to arrive so that I could put his appraisal ability to work, but it seems like he is running late" eventually, Antieeld switched the subject back to the elephant in the room, indeed, even the two women, who had seen their fair shares of horrible things, could not ignore the creature nearby.

Rummy chuckled as she flipped the tinted lenses of her own glasses on.

"Well, he is a young man full of vitality with a wife that shares the same habits as a rabbit, you have to excuse him for not being able to get out of bed in the morning, heheh"

"Ooaluz is… She is indeed quite the character, but well, that is fine I suppose, you are a specialist of vampires, but certainly you have plenty of knowledge about undeads in general, right? So do you know what that one is?" the red haired woman asked, as both of them stared directly at the beast that was just lying down on the ground in the same manner that a dog might, pretending to be asleep.

To know that it was pretending one just needed to think for one second, this thing was an undead, it didn't need to sleep, but admittedly, if someone did not know what an undead was, they would be fooled for certain, its acting skills were impressive, even mimicking a steady and slow breathing.

"Although I have memorised all recorded types of undead in the books, I am afraid that I do not have a single clue what the hell that thing is, clearly, it's not a simple animated corpse and more of a special class of undead, but it's weird features are not something that I recognise, and furthermore, the beast that was turned into an undead in the first place is unknown to me" unfortunately, Rummy had no wisdom to offer.

"I see, that is unfortunate, I too have no idea what this creature is, from the shape of its skull, I would say that it's something of a lizard, but I fear that skeletons are often not a very good representation of the living animal it used to belong to" having documented herself on the undead back when she was still in Tamaris, there had been wide spans of tomes available from the Underground Tower concerning the undead, it made her wonder for a second what had become of those reclusive scholars, amongst the livings, even the death hunters could not match their knowledge of the dead.

She had attempted multiple times to try and summon the fighting spirit of one of such knowledgeable tower dwellers to ask questions, but unlike usual when she tried to summon a spirit and failed to, it wasn't because the spirit refused her call, or because she was not strong enough or anything of the sort, but she just could not find any spirit that fitted the description, it was like, either the Underground Tower had not fallen to the undead, or all of its members had somehow lack even an ounce of fighting spirit, both options sounded impossible.

"Right, but at least it has legs, so we know it isn't the weird skeleton of a marine creature, unless it's an undead that is made up of different corpses"

"I mean, I have seen lots of weird things, a sea monster with legs seems pretty plausible"

"That's true as well…"

The problem was that the empire could have sourced the corpse from anywhere, they had no idea how far its borders reached now, for all they knew, they might have just reached Yoreterre and now had access to the great creatures that inhabited the ancient continent.

In any case, the beast they were laying eyes upon was a most bizarre one, its skull was small compared to the rest of its body, and seemed to lack eye sockets completely, lizard-like in shape but a maw full of very humanoid-looking teeth.

As for the rest of its body, it was covered in black sludges and thick strands of what looked like hair and rot intertwined together, forming a most repulsive fur, four paws large enough to crush a person underneath, adorned with claws of mismatched sizes.

The most prominent feature however, was what seemed to growing out of its back, which, whilst definitely linked to death, was most bizarre to see, as instead of rot, bones, dust and other less than appetising things the undeads tended to be made of- What grew upon its back were tombstones, blank tombstones to be exact.

Each emitting a pale, white haze, each of the seven tombstones were intact as well, looking brand new, as though having just been carved from stone moments ago.

And for some reason, it had decided to settle down, barely a few meters away from the barrier, in an open clearing, where it could be observed at leisure.

Antieeld had first suspected that it was because looking at it would enable some sort of insidious attack, but nothing of the sort had occurred, which only added to the pile of strange, and seemingly random things the undead had been doing since stepping into the Emerald Realm.

"...Should we destroy it?"

"We were told not to step outside the barrier"

"Well yes, but the undead already killed some of us, and we destroyed some of them, so I don't think they would think much if we sliced up that big pet of theirs"

"How about we decide what to do after Toby arrives and provides information?"

"It is very hard to argue against you, Miss Commandant"

"I know"