The dead townsfolk staggered forward on stiff limbs, as though every drop of moisture had been drained from them in a single instant. Withered and rigid, they possessed not the slightest trace of life.
Lacking it themselves, they craved it, making Wayne and William the prime targets of their swarming assault.
Wayne didn't know how to describe these things—undead, or perhaps zombies. If the Death Walker's ritual had succeeded, this was far too sinister. It hadn't merely killed the entire town in an instant; it had erased all vitality, scouring even the scent of the living from the air.
Over a hundred corpses milled about, including a fair share of livestock like chickens and dogs.
Wayne weighed the crowbar in his hand, compared the combat strength of both sides, and followed his heart: he shut the door and started the car.
"Where are we going?" William asked, sliding into the passenger seat.
"Find Veronica and get the hell out of this damned place."
Wayne looked grim. The zombies moved slowly and were brittle. Give him a crowbar and he could hack his way till dawn; they were nothing to fear.
To put it into perspective, give a rowdy kid a wooden sword, and not a single rapeseed plant within ten li would stand taller than a meter.
Yet the warnings from his supernatural senses couldn't be faked. Something terrifying permeated the town, omnipresent, posing a dire threat to his life.
Knowing little about extraordinary magic, Wayne chalked it up as a curse for now.
"Do you know where Veronica is? The town's huge. How about you pull back first, and I'll go look for her and Monica?" William suggested.
"I know where she is. We just have to follow her scent."
Wayne threw the car into reverse, backed up a short distance, shifted gears, and floored the accelerator straight into the horde.
The family sedan had low clearance, and its reasonable price tag meant it was hardly built to withstand collisions. The tires crushed desiccated corpses, and the chassis jolted and swayed violently. After only a brief sprint, it ground to a halt.
That was enough!
The car had punched through the encirclement, forging a passage and fulfilling the task Wayne had entrusted to it.
William was the first to bail out. The crowbar in his hand whistled through the air, shattering any approaching zombie to pieces. Not a single one remained intact under his blows.
Out of sheer respect, Wayne kept a healthy distance. Swinging his own crowbar, he shouted, "Veronica is at the church! We don't have much time—hurry over and get her out!"
William let out a low shout. With bar in hand, he proved invincible, turning the fight into a full-blown hack-and-slash frenzy.
On Wayne's end, zombies and ghosts were two completely different creatures, so he wasn't panicking at all. After an initial flurry of awkward flailing, dormant muscle memory awakened, and his body instinctively applied simple force-exertion techniques, sustaining his damage output while conserving stamina.
*EXP up, +1, +1, +1...*
Passing the inn, two hunched, withered figures blocked their path. Mummified and horrifying, their living features were completely lost.
Wayne recognized their clothes—the voluptuous, generous young ladies. He was the one who had tucked the banknotes into their collars.
Their smiles and laughter still felt fresh in his mind. Silently mourning the loss, Wayne tearfully swung his crowbar, scooped up the cash, and hurried after William.
Flames soared into the sky throughout the town, the dry, blistering heat hastening evaporation. Bizarrely, no matter how fiercely the fire raged, it never reduced the wooden buildings to ash, nor could it ignite the brittle, dried-out zombies.
Panting for breath, the two reached the church at the end of the street—the only structure untouched by flames. Compared to the surrounding inferno, the quiet church seemed utterly out of place.
A gunshot rang out. Both men froze in surprise, then charged through the picket gate across the lawn and threw their combined weight against the church doors.
Inside, rows of pews stood neatly arranged. Before the crucifix, candlelight cast dim, flickering shadows.
The priest wore a black cassock, neat and impeccably kept. But his withered face was beyond hideous, no different from the mindless zombies outside.
The priest had lost his life to the sacrifice as well.
Veronica held a pistol, confronting the priest. She had just fired a shot straight through his chest, leaving a visible, gaping hole.
"You do not need to halt the ritual. This town died many years ago; it is time the townsfolk found their rest." The priest's jaws clicked together, producing a decayed voice that sounded as though it had been dragged from deep underground.
Veronica called out to William, who caught on immediately. Striding forward, he swung the crowbar toward her.
A white ring of light bloomed at Veronica's feet, enveloping her in a holy halo. It formed an inescapable cage that prevented her from leaving and barred her from casting magic from within.
The cage was a spell cast by the priest, known within the Holy See as divine arts—power bestowed by God to restrain evil, compelling it to remain silent and listen to the Lord's glory.
It sounded formidable, but it could be broken from the outside and was hardly invincible.
Besides, its version hadn't been updated in ages. While firearms had gone through several generations of patches, the Holy See's divine arts remained the same old routine, utterly failing to keep with the times.
Thanks to William's vigorous efforts, Veronica was soon freed. She threw a punch to her side, shattering another column of white light to release Monica, who had been imprisoned separately.
The black cat blended seamlessly into the gloom; without her speaking, no one would have spotted her at all.
"What do you mean the townsfolk have been dead for years?" Monica demanded coldly. The bizarre moon made her profoundly uncomfortable, carrying a whiff of desecration toward the Goddess of Moonlight, and she needed an answer.
"Fifty years ago, the Town of Kafuno was struck by a curse, and the townsfolk became living dead. They did not know they had died. They breathed, their hearts beat, they bled when wounded, and they could grow old and bear children. Everyone was still alive..."
"Yet the dead are dead after all. Members of the Nelson family uncovered the truth, and those in the know were summoned to a meeting. I was one of the insiders back then..."
"The Nelsons were believers of the Goddess of Death. They demanded an immediate ritual to return the dead to death's embrace. The mayor and councilmen refused. No one wanted to throw their lives away, nor did they have the right to terminate the lives of others. Besides, people were not truly dead; they could live out their lives just like normal mortals."
"I supported the mayor and councilmen..."
"The Nelsons remained stubborn and unyielding. They summoned their relatives from afar, determined to carry out the ritual, and unleashed a slaughter that night..."
"We won. We swore to bury the secret of that night. We agreed that as long as we concealed the truth, the townsfolk would never know they had died. Everyone would live, age, fall ill, and die like ordinary people, until the next generation took over the town."
The priest spoke mechanically like an NPC, recounting the past fifty years. Thanks to his magical attainments, an obsession had endured within him, wishing for the Nelson heir to complete the ritual.
Yet that was all. The priest's mind had long since decayed. He answered whatever was asked, holding nothing back.
"Time proved us wrong. Every year on this day, blazing flames sweep through the town, returning us to that night..."
"The dead crawl from their graves, and the living reveal their true forms. The town has no future, because the moment a child is conceived, it loses its life. Outsiders who enter this place are tainted by the curse as well..."
"This is not a curse. It must be permanent death, an absolute law, tormenting us so that we can never rest."
"I gradually realized our mistake. Back then, to keep the pustule alive, we excised the healthy tissue..."
"Wait a minute!"
Wayne interrupted, his expression grave. "Outsiders get cursed too? What do you mean by that?"
Chapter 14