Chương 11

As soon as I heard the words of the System, my entire body froze. I started sweating — cold, ice-cold sweats. What is happening? I thought. And that's when the nine figures in front of the haven started shambling toward us. I couldn't understand at first what was happening to these people. I had thought they were going to ambush us, but when I started seeing the way they walked, something finally clicked. The words of General Skullthrax came to me.

And I understood that the people I was seeing weren't humans anymore. They were undead. I tried moving my body, but it didn't respond. I could barely turn my head and see that everybody else was struggling with the same thing. Holy shit. Is this how we die? That's the thought that crossed my mind. But I immediately cut the negativity away. I don't have time for this. My mouth still worked. I shouted, "Undead. Tank, step ahead."

Marcus had been as frozen as I had been up until that moment, but hearing my words made his body twitch. Slowly, and shouting, the man seemed to tear himself free of invisible chains and walked forward a few steps. Nobody said anything. Marcus managed to walk in front of me, and I kept shouting.

"Mages, fire. Closest targets, headshots." Those were the same words I'd been repeating all day, throughout all of our engagements.

"Ranged, cover Tank." Slowly, ever so slowly, we recovered the use of our bodies after being stopped dead in our tracks by the fear effect of the undead. I saw Marcus Shield Bash the undead in front of him. It was the woman I had seen before, the one with the machete. Now, through my Sphere of Intuition, I saw that her skin was all torn up, and that there was blood around her mouth, as if she had just eaten an entire carcass of raw flesh. Marcus easily pushed her back. Tina and Hailey shot two more undead.

Hailey's shot slammed into the chest, caving in a massive hole where the heart should have been. That did not stop the undead. Tina's shot instead obliterated the other undead's head and the better part of his upper torso. The thing collapsed to the ground. So it is like in the damn movies, I thought. Lucas shot two undead in rapid succession. And I finally shouted, "Assassin, engaging. Tank, step back." I pierced the woman's head with my spear, thrusting so powerfully that I destroyed the upper half of her skull.

She dropped to the ground, and I felt a deep-seated rage starting to bloom inside of me.

"Save the mana. Stop firing," I ordered. The undead were extremely slow, and I didn't know if there were any more of them, or any stronger monsters, around us. That's why I used my Sphere of Intuition and, circling the undead, pierced each and every last one of them through the head with my spear. They all died pathetically, including the man who had been at the head of this group. Charles. That had been his name.

I looked at his pale eyes, his blood-smeared mouth, and thrust the spear right into his forehead, killing him. I turned toward the group after this was said and done. Nobody was saying anything. Hailey was crying — tears were coming down her cheeks, but she didn't sob. She clutched her staff tightly. I had the cold blood to say, "I will loot the corpses. One second. Lucas, help me out." Lucas and I quickly looted all the corpses of their belongings, not finding anything of value.

Their bodies had been stripped of their best items, only carrying the base equipment that came at the beginning of the tutorial. Marcus had stayed close to Tina and Hailey, who were whispering among themselves. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. I went back to them and said, "Let's get inside. This is fucked." The two nodded, and we made our way inside the palisade.

However, as soon as we entered, we heard a notification in our heads, and I don't know how to describe it — but unlike every other notification the AI had given us, this one felt red. Warning. This Haven has been put under siege. Time remaining for conquest: two hours, twenty-three minutes, ten seconds.

"Guys," I said between my teeth, "keep your eyes open." We walked slowly to the center of the haven. It wasn't too big, and we immediately saw the prisoners. Three men had been nailed to crosses right in the middle of the haven, and they were currently in the process of bleeding out.

"Fuck me," I muttered, looking at the biblical horror.

"Marcus, let's get them down." We soon helped all three off the crosses, and Hailey did her best to heal them. But the heal didn't seem to take. One after the other, they bled out slowly, over the course of an hour, right under our noses. We tried talking to them.

"Hey," I said to one.

"Please, for the love of God, wake up. What happened?" But they didn't respond. They just seized. They just seized, and died.

"For fuck's sake," I muttered as the last one of them stopped twitching and simply died. I had been kneeling by his side, and I got up, wiping the blood from my hands onto the ground. Congratulations! You broke the siege! You WON! You have received— I ignored the notifications. I didn't have the heart to look at them right now.

"Do we have to put an arrow through their heads?" Lucas asked me, looking unsettled.

"Well," I started, but I was cut off by another voice.

"No. They are not dangerous." I turned to find Bluemont.

"Fuck, Bluemont, where were you? Couldn't you have given us a hand? These people just died." Bluemont looked at me and shook his head.

"If the haven is under siege, I don't have access to it. The inn temporarily disappears until the siege is broken."

"What the fuck is even a siege?" I shouted.

"What is this? What is happening? Who the fuck did this?"

"Can't you guess?" Bluemont asked, looking straight at me.

"The goddamn Sorvos Empire," I said under my breath.

"Why did they do this?" Hailey cried.

"This is what they live for," our guide said plainly.

"They want to conquer your planet and turn the best of you into soldiers for their empire. They work on fear." He gestured at the crosses.

"Every undead belongs to the Sorvos Empire. They won that right a long, long time ago. So even though they can't quite interfere directly with the tutorial, these undead effectively act like their minions."

"But who turned these people into undead? Are there other zombies out there? Do you get, like, bitten and you turn?" Marcus asked. Bluemont frowned.

"No. The corpses must go through a complex ritual to be turned. At least when it comes to low-level undead doing the turning. If it was a higher-level undead, they would be able to reanimate the corpses with a simple spell instead."

"We need to bury the corpses," I said.

"And then I have questions. I want you to tell us everything you can about the undead, about how they work. If there's an alpha, a boss, mobs — anything." Bluemont just looked at me and said, "The corpses will disappear in less than an hour." He said it matter-of-factly, but it just made my blood boil. To see other people — whether they were murderers or not — treated like pigs for slaughter by some uncaring undead empire made me rage.

"I do not care," I said. Then, using my spear and all my Strength, I quickly excavated three shallow graves and placed the corpses in them with the help of Marcus and Lucas. Even though they would disappear soon after, this is what people deserved. Bluemont said nothing. He just stood there, watching us. Tina and Hailey had retreated to a hut. Hailey was in a state of shock. Tina had told us that they would join us at the inn as soon as Hailey felt better. And so Marcus, Lucas, and I went to the inn with Bluemont.

"What can you tell us?" I asked Bluemont.

"Who did this?"

"Well, I cannot tell you who did this," Bluemont said. He was not drinking now, which was somehow worse.

"Anything that reveals specific information about this instance of the tutorial — as in, a specific boss location, or how to defeat a particular undead if you don't already know — is not something I can tell you. I'm here to guide you on how to best approach a tutorial, but I cannot give you the solution to the Tutorial Dungeon."

"That's bullshit," Lucas swore.

"We don't even know who did that!"

"Undead can turn other undead. I can tell you that much," Bluemont said.

"So, you'll have to find who did that. I can tell you, however, that on the first floor of a tutorial dungeon, there's only one type of mob who can actually do something like that."

"A boss?" Marcus said.

"Yes," Bluemont nodded.

"Good guess." Marcus looked at Bluemont.

"It wasn't a guess. I was checking my notifications. We just got a quest."