Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead
Chapter 852 - 852: Surrounded

The Zweihander crashed upon the ground where Milo used to be standing a mere second ago, and following this motion, a spray of black blood emerged from the zone of impact, stretching tendril-like limbs trying to grapple onto the living, it managed to latch onto his forearm, but was immediately expelled as a pulse of gold was created, sending the vile substance where it belonged, straight to hell.

But my moving back, he exposed his back to more undeads, and without any wait, a long, slender blade slammed right into his back, the razor sharp edge failing to draw blood despite the direct hit, but was followed by a burst of black flames, of Loimosfire to be exact, and that blaze was a nasty one that even his golden defences did not seem all-mighty in front of.

Milo remained unhurt, but had no other choice but to turn around and deal with the sneaky fire knight as the flames were actually putting up a good fight against his golden mana, if the living overused spells, or allowed himself to be battered too much by that sort of attacks, he would eventually run low on mana, and stranded amidst a sea of decayed creatures that wanted nothing more than to tear him apart, that would spell his doom for certain.

Swiftly spinning around, he swatted away the sword with the back of his hand, kicked the knight's knee in, the soot-coloured armour of little use against the strike and then grabbed one of the corpses arms, flipping him over his shoulder and launching the corpses right at the black blood user.

Milo rapidly expanded his mana senses, only to realise that despite their valiant charge, the livings had not managed to stop the advance of the dead right as the two fronts met, their enemies had managed to push forward a bit more, meaning that Milo was further into the undead lines that he had previously assumed.

He momentarily considered just leaping upward and joining up his fellows, but one look above was enough to convince him otherwise, during the short period of time since he had begun fighting, new undeads had showed up, a whole bunch of avian corpses, they did not seem all that special, just regular birds, some may be beasts or monsters, but at most, they really were just big birds.

The amount of them however, was simply obscene, and for some reason, they had precisely positioned themselves to not block out the sun, as though they had purposefully done that so that he wouldn't notice too quickly- In any case, jumping upward would make him easy picking and he wouldn't have a clue where he was when they all threw themselves at him.

Moreover, their main purpose was seemingly to act as shields for the troops below, taking the spells coming from beyond the barrier head-on, that was an odd strategy, even for the undeads.

'These are not actual undeads?' they were rotten golems or something similar… A few amongst the masses were probably absolutely real undeads however, hiding and waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Milo raised up his arms in front of his face like a boxer, blocking the path of a Bardiche, only for another corpse to attack from the side, the living getting to see the inside of a wolf's mouth as the corpse attempted to bite straight through his skull, only for the cadaver to break all of their teeth in the process, not that it deterred them, as the cadaver did not let go anyways, and began used their claws to try and cut through Milo's flesh.

Sensing a third undead already in the midst of attacking him as well, Milo created another pulse of gold, launching everyone around him flying, but he didn't let the Bardiche-wielder go, grabbing the undead by the ankle, pulling the warrior in and crushing their helmed head right against his knee, the injection of golden mana put that one down for good.

'What's happening here? I am using the gold, it should defeat them… So why don't I feel the flow of experience?' only Toby relied on the system for anything, but everyone knew how to recognise when XP flowed into them as a result of successfully striking down a foe, undeads were not an exception to that rule, yet, Milo was not sensing anything despite destroying them.

An excuse could be thought normally as those undeads were rather more advanced than any other even seen in history, them cheating their destruction somehow wasn't out of the question, but Milo's mana was a potent thing, it should be disrupting and tearing down their very death force, but as far as he could tell, he had not actually destroyed a single one of them yet.

With a cutting motion of his arms, he sliced right through a Loimoisian knight and multiple soldiers, pouring more golden mana to make sure, their entire body were consumed in an instant, but still, no proof of their permanent defeat reached him.

'What the hell is happening?' stomping down on another fire knight, he blocked the spear of a skeleton warrior, right as an undead appeared right in front of him with dire speed, a rotten carcass garbed in Tochian clothing, one hand on their sheathed blade, Milo knew what that meant, but before he could react, the battle art was already set into motion, and he was struck a few dozen of time by the Katana, which was doused in black blood.

It wasn't quite as bad as the Loimosfire, but the rotten blood was also a rather tough opponent for his golden mana, pushing away the spear-wielder, Milo slammed his back into another beast-headed undead, right as the Tochian corpse prepared another battle art, hand hovering above the blade of their sword.

All of it was covered in black blood, and the next slash expanded multiple meters, slamming into Milo, the second expanded slash was evaded, in a flash, Milo punched the battle art user right in their putrefied mug, filthy bodily liquids spurted everywhere, teeth, bone and flesh melding together as the undead was slammed into the ground, exploding their skull like a watermelon.

The Tochian undead disappeared as the golden mana spread through the rot and bone making up their body, and once everything was gone, all of the accompanying equipment vanished as well.

No experience, no spoils of war, and apparently, no defeated enemies… It seemed like they were fighting for nothing.

'Damnit, how did I manage to end up here?' Milo cursed, choosing to ignore the predicament and instead focus on what was happening right now as multiple more undeads were already coming for him.