Ha…?
What kind of request is this…?
Although Ileya didn’t quite understand, she subconsciously nodded.
Let alone letting Amisa rest in her shadow—if she wanted to sleep in her arms right now, the young Lady wouldn’t refuse.
Thank you, Lady!!
Bliss (><)☆!!
Whoosh! Right before their eyes, Amisa turned into a shadow within Ileya’s embrace, slipping into the shadow beneath her feet.
Everyone fell silent.
Just now… that look of someone on the verge of death… was it all an act?
Holly’s face was full of confusion…
Normally at a time like this, wouldn’t someone pull out a photo or something, and tell you, “This is my master’s mother, daughter, or wife”?
Why did she… suddenly come back to life?
She stared blankly at the Lady’s shadow at her feet… the Holy Sword Bearer scratched her cheek in puzzlement.
“Anyway, it’s good that everyone’s alright~”
Ileya shook her head a little helplessly and began to size up her surroundings.
She hadn’t noticed it in the tense moments just now, but now… for some reason, the Lady found this place surprisingly comfortable.
“There’s a thick Death Energy here~”
Before she could understand what was happening, Veil blinked, glanced around.
Then she stretched lazily, looking quite content.
“Indeed… the Death Energy here is at least twenty times greater than outside…”
Ileya stroked her chin, scanning everything around them.
“Is that so?”
Holly sniffed around in confusion, but all she caught was a musty smell.
It seemed like they were in a plaza… but looking at it now, it wasn’t particularly big.
Roughly… a hundred square meters or so.
At the moment, they’d landed right in the middle of the plaza.
Above them was an oval-shaped dome, with yellow dirt and sand still falling down from above…
The dome was very high, its top nowhere in sight. Looking up, there were massive beams arranged in neat squares… no telling if they were made of wood or stone.
In any case, they were lucky—the carriage hadn’t smashed into those beams…
If the carriage had been destroyed, that was nothing. But if the beams collapsed and caused a cave-in, they’d have all been buried alive.
Still… a man-made plaza a hundred meters underground—no matter how you think about it, this is not normal.
Thinking of this, Ileya wanted to walk around the edge of the plaza to see if she could find any clues.
But… as soon as she raised her foot and put it down—
“Hmm (-=)○~”
From beneath her foot came a rather suspicious sound.
Ha… huh?
It was loud enough that everyone turned to look at the Lady.
Especially Reliel—her gaze clearly said, “Was that sound… from you?”
“No, no, no! It absolutely wasn’t me!”
Ileya shook her head firmly, then tried stomping her foot a few more times.
That sound… didn’t appear again.
But the Lady felt like she heard… deep, heavy breathing.
Ha…?
This must be… Amisa, right? Was she too badly injured?
Of course, this little episode didn’t stop the group from exploring the area.
They spread out and circled around the hundred-square-meter plaza.
Then… discovered this wasn’t a plaza at all, but a… Burial Pit.
On the surrounding walls, many horizontal rectangular holes had been dug, forming rows of “bunk beds” recessed into the stone.
And on every stone bed—or rather, burial bed—lay a withered corpse.
A rough count put the number at over a hundred.
“Ugh…”
The scene made Holly instinctively take two steps back.
So… the spot where they’d just been standing was the dome of this Burial Pit?
And thanks to the recent earthquake, they’d all fallen in…
Although her own power was far greater than before, and she’d even killed vicious bandits with her own hands,
When it came to human corpses… she was still a little afraid.
At this moment, compared to the Holy Sword Bearer’s fear, Ileya—whose eyes already flickered with Soulfire—felt something odd.
There were plenty of corpses here… but not a single soul.
Was it because… too much time had passed, and all the souls had faded away?
However…
Under everyone’s astonished gaze, the Lady actually reached out and gently pinched the arm of the ancient corpse before her.
Mmm~ Quite tough~
It didn’t feel like an ordinary withered corpse.
Maybe these were all Burial Slaves. The bodies must have been soaked in oil, then air-dried, to be preserved so well.
Such materials are truly hard to come by!
The Lady was instantly excited, but to everyone else… this… was just a little bit creepy.
Of course, Ileya didn’t care in the least.
She simply turned sideways and waved her hand.
Whoosh!
In an instant, all the Death Energy in the area surged to Ileya’s side.
Under everyone’s puzzled gaze—and Veil’s startled eyes—a massive Formation with a radius of over two meters appeared behind her.
The next moment, accompanied by the crisp clacking of bones, a dark light shone from the Formation…
Then, as if the ground beneath the Formation turned into a black-purple swamp,
A dozen or so pale, human-shaped Skeleton Soldiers crawled out.
These skeletons were even holding broken swords and battered knives…
And their weapon styles looked… familiar to everyone…
No matter how you looked at it, they seemed to be the very weapons carried by the bandits they’d slain along the way.
“Not bad~ Looks like that place… was quite a help to you~”
At some point, Veil had produced an orange, and she nodded approvingly as she peeled it.
The others, however, were a little astonished.
That included Amisa, hiding in the Lady’s shadow at this very moment…
These skeletons weren’t unfamiliar to her—half a month ago, when the Lady teleported her to that gray, dusty place…
These things were everywhere, blanketing the mountains.
She had reported her findings to the Lady, based on her own experience.
At the time, she felt the Lady’s strength was roughly at Sub-Bronze Rank… If you counted that self-made “fishman zombie” Insmouth,
Maybe it could reach the threshold of White Silver Rank.
But now she realized her earlier estimation of the Lady’s strength… was completely wrong.
In fact, back in Stream Town, when the Lady casually turned the ordinary Mein into a zombie with “Brass Rank” strength…
She should have realized it then.
And now.
Though the skeletons’ strength barely matched an average adult’s, their numbers…
And thinking back to that Gray World, where the mountains were covered with such things…
Perhaps… the Lady’s strength, in certain circumstances—especially in warfare—was by no means weaker than her own.
A fifth-tier at thirteen years old.
Is it… truly possible?
Amisa, who had once been a little proud of training a genius disciple like Holly, now only felt that this world…
Was far too fantastical.
Holly, on the other hand, was trembling all over.
One of the Skeleton Soldiers had glanced at her, and the Soulfire flickering in its hollow eyes sent a chill down her spine.
\Sigma \left( \triangle \text{III} \right)
Who knew… just how strong these Undead really were…
Compared to Holly, Reliel remained much calmer.
Expressionless, she looked at the moving skeletons before her and saw at a glance—
These were nothing but small fry.
She could shatter them all in an instant.
But… her fists clenched slightly.
If she could summon a dozen so easily, then… just how many of these could Ileya bring forth at full power?
After all, in a world without absolute strength, many ants can bite an elephant to death…
In this world, that’s only natural.