Ancient Missing Link (4)
Mozriun, the Ghost City, was an abandoned city in Germania. Poetically speaking, one could call it the streets of ruins. Since it was a type of ruin just a day's carriage ride from the bustling Kudses, anyone hearing about it without context might think it was some kind of tourist spot. Like the Inca ruins or something. Especially since it sat in the highlands. "In reality, it's the otherworld's Raccoon City, though." —Hihihih!
Our carriage hurried away as I adjusted my grip on the spear. Five days had passed since we decided to launch the exploration. Our party had finished our preparations and arrived at this city where the magical hazard had erupted. Mozriun was, as the name bluntly suggested, a city of wraiths. A city reduced to ruins by some mysterious calamity decades ago! A deathly ruin where zombies and wraiths roamed! Yet when we reached the entrance of Mozriun, boasting such spine-chilling titles, what greeted us was a line of merchants stretching out like the school gates on graduation day.
"Senior, senior. You said there wouldn't be many people, but there are more than I expected?" Larilura asked after parking her marionette. Her well-manicured fingers pointed toward the peddlers setting up stalls at the city entrance. They looked as leisurely as vendors selling goods at a tourist spot.
"They're probably merchants doing business with the adventurers who come here. Those profiteers would set up shop in the neighbor's bathroom if there was money to be made." Even though the number of adventurers coming to hunt in Mozriun had decreased, there were still plenty of persistent humans. "It's like a completely ruined traditional market." If they were going to stick around here, they might as well try peddling goods. Maybe these were people who didn't know any other way to make a living besides spreading out their wares.
"Nothing worth worrying about, I suppose." I looked up at Mozriun's walls. With no one maintaining them, even the towering ramparts felt as eerie as a haunted house. Still, some sections where holes had been patched showed different colors, suggesting someone had roughly sealed them to keep zombies from escaping.
—Clack. Dana muttered while rotating her gauntlet wrist.
"It's better than the rumors made it sound. If it smelled like zombies too, I would've hated going in."
"It's fine. If you start smelling like zombies, I'll clean you up thoroughly with Clean."
"Yeah~ I'll be doing rear support again today~."
"Why is this eye-girl always freaking out about being a tank and pulling her butt back?"
We checked our combat supplies and headed for the gates. Mozriun was like a game dungeon where undead mobs kept respawning endlessly. The entire city had transformed into a kind of barrier, with the undead reviving at fixed locations. This infinite zombie refill buffet existed because the land drew in the flowing darkness and yin mana of nature. Mana pooling in certain places was common enough. My own mithril weapon had been metal that greedily absorbed mana from soil rich in earth mana underground, like wild ginseng. Deserts, jungles, and snowy fields each gathered their own natural mana. But Mozriun was different. This place had been incredibly fertile farmland until disaster struck overnight. Even Daegu, the self-proclaimed Korean hell of fire, would drive anyone insane if it hit sixty degrees Celsius and turned into a desert in a single night. Yet a perfectly normal city had collapsed in one morning and become an otherworld Raccoon City that endlessly duplicated undead from nothing?
"That's absolutely impossible in nature." Scholars with literature-polluted brains liked to say nature loved balance. It sounded so poetic it made me want to reject it, but it was true. From hot to cold. From high pressure to low pressure. Just as ice thrown into boiling water cooled it down, the laws of nature despised energy bias. Mana was no different. If this much darkness and yin mana had gathered, mana of the opposite properties should have collected as well. "But that's exactly why this mess is happening."
For some reason, this location had been gathering nothing but darkness and yin mana for decades. These were Germania's shameful secret—the ghost cities. Mozriun was merely one of them. Just hearing about it made you want to burn the whole place down without a trace, but even that wouldn't stop the zombie minion refill. The zombies reviving in the ruins would simply become zombies reviving on the plains. Still, as long as the barrier and walls remained, the undead supposedly couldn't escape outside. Left with no choice, the Germania royal family decided to manage these ghost cities in their own way. It was exactly like twenty-first-century Earth's governments leaving a city with a collapsed nuclear reactor untouched due to safety complacency.
"Halt! Are you adventurers? Without presenting a pass, I cannot permit entry!" Just like that.
"I'm Dana Berbeia from the archaeology field. Here's my permit."
"Archaeology field? Hey, Hans. Any applications come in?"
When the bearded kingdom soldier asked, the young man nodded.
"Yes, there is. Dana Berbeia. Doctor's bronze badge. It matches her identification."
"Really? My apologies. Four people and one pony. Personnel placement recorded. You may pass. …A pony?"
We passed the Germania kingdom soldiers' checkpoint in the guise of an archaeologist-and-adventurer party. This was why people needed power. Having the academic world as backup meant no arguments and smooth sailing. It was damn convenient to hide behind our senior. Anyway, our party, including Veronica in Bicorn mode, smoothly entered the sun-drenched ghost city of Mozriun.
"Let's prioritize our original objective for the exploration. If we poke around, some clues might turn up." I said this after passing through the walls and barricades. Even if Erna had become a zombie elf somewhere in this city, searching the entire place would be a waste of time. Especially if she was hiding. We might find plausible clues while looking for the ancient civilization's frontline base. Getting bitten by a zombie didn't turn you into one like in movies—if that were the case, we wouldn't have come near—so let's explore at a leisurely pace.
—Step, step. We advanced through the city in formation. Larilura and I took the tank positions at the very front.
"Ahaha♡ Senior~. It's been a while since we worked together, hasn't it?"
"Yeah. It's been damn long."
"Exactly forty-eight days and half a day as of today♡!"
"Whoa, creepy." She actually counted that. I let out a dry laugh. Young people really were different. The older you got, the harder it became to even remember what day it was. Honestly, I could barely distinguish weekends from weekdays anymore.
"Oooooo!!" "Hyah—!!" While we were chatting like that, we spotted speed bumps a hundred meters ahead. Our adventurer party had excellent mobbing skills. The warrior and the priest with a shield handled tanking while bashing zombie skulls, and the mage was trading blows with wraiths.
"Magic Missile!!" "HEeeeeeee……." The female mage fired the standard attack of a magic damage dealer. The wraith hit by the spell let out a weakening sound and vanished. As its translucent body disappeared, something like coarse grains spilled out. The adventurer party ignored the vanishing zombies and only collected the wraith's drop items before quickly retreating. Maybe they didn't want to associate with our party. It made sense—people in the same line of work didn't necessarily get along.
From their skilled handling, they seemed like at least a Silver Class team. "So that's wraith bone dust." Zombies weren't worth a damn, but the bone dust dropped by wraiths—though it wasn't actual bone—was used in funeral rites by some religious orders. That was why adventurers came to Mozriun. I watched the zombie begin melting away without form. Would this guy also disappear without a trace and revive again in a few days? Every time, he'd probably get cursed out by adventurers for coming back to life. Like Caterpie that kept popping out when you came to catch Pikachu.
"ᚨ (Ansuz)." Feeling a bit of pity, I activated rune magic, but this zombie apparently had no soul. No soul vapor rose from the corpse as it should have. Seeing this, Veronica in horse mode sent me a telepathic message. 【My lord. Cease these meaningless offerings. These zombies are merely undead mimicking the humans who once lived here. They are no more than flash golems. There is no need to offer condolences.】
"Really? Then fine. Did this zombie's original self achieve enlightenment?" 【That is something I cannot know. Why not ask your rune instead of me?】 "Good point." I carved a rune into the ground and deployed Soul-Radar. It would be nice if there were souls from Mozriun residents with lingering egos, but I wasn't particularly hoping for that. What I was looking for was something else. "There were missing persons, right." Lillian had said missing people were appearing in Mozriun. We'd confirmed there were no alibis or suspicious points while monitoring that elf. After five consecutive days of social distancing in the lab, even I couldn't hold back tears. The fact-check on the information about missing persons in Mozriun was also complete. If any of the missing had died, we might be able to ask them something.
"Damn it." Even though I thought that, it was a bust. There were no fresh souls within my detectable range. Since the rune was installed on the ground, twenty-four-hour activation was impossible, so I'd have to use it frequently while moving around. "Franc. Got anything?" I asked Franc, who was looking at a map. What she had spread out was a map of Mozriun. A map of Mozriun with zombie respawn areas marked—made in Kudses. We paid twenty damn coppers for it. Franc quietly answered while examining it.
"……If it's a ruin, it would probably be in the lord's castle or somewhere similar. I mean, considering the area." "Let's lower the priority on the lord's castle. All sorts of people would've swarmed there looking for secret storerooms and such. If they couldn't find anything, it'll take us a lot of time too." Dana answered. Since the terrain and city locations differed greatly from the ancient civilization period, basing our search on Mozriun's buildings would likely end up being completely pointless.
—Twitch. Franc, about to nod at Dana's words, hunched her shoulders. "Guys. Four zombies. Right curve. Wraiths…… two?" Franc folded the map in two seconds and tucked it away while arming herself. Wraiths flying through the air were apparently hard to detect. I took up my spear and moved forward with Ring Ring 3.5 as the vanguard.
"GuOooooo……!!" "HEehheeehehe." The undead appeared exactly as many as Franc had detected! Their movements were as sluggish as part-timers unloading cargo with ten minutes left until lunch. "Go home, you bastards." I shortened my grip on the spear and swung it like a sword. One wraith was vertically bisected by the mithril spearhead and died instantly. But even after securing the clean first kill, I frowned. "Even in real combat, the mana doesn't move." I'd tried using 【Gertür】's opening technique, but nothing changed just because it was real combat. The mana in my mana-catheter moved as if it might or might not, then stopped.
"Senior? You'll get hurt if you space out~?" Larilura wiggled her fingers. Magic Missile fired from the marionette's fingertips and burst a zombie's torso. Ring Ring 3.5 spun its arm, light spewing from the launch port on its fingers. —Whoosh!! Its hook-like fingers tore a wraith apart with movements impossible for a human body. It had loaded Magic Missile onto its fingernails and ground up the wraith's ghostly body.
"Oh, what's with that application?" "I learned it from you~?" "Did I ever use something like that?" I answered casually while keeping the sluggish zombies in check, but those bastards suddenly stopped moving like B-movie characters with the pause button pressed. —Flash!! The zombies began melting while emitting light! Larilura looked flustered at the sight of the dissolving zombies, like vampires hit by an ultraviolet device.
"Huh? Wh-what's going on?" "Ah, that was Dana. Healing magic." I pointed to the rear. Dana was holding out a holy emblem. A sculpture of two snakes twisted like pretzels into an ○ shape! That was the medium she often used when casting several of her spells. It was a familiar object I'd seen often during my lab slave days. Apparently she was imitating the holy emblems used by the Romania denomination. Since the formula of priest's heal = undead F-kill worked well even in this otherworld, our senior was today's main damage dealer. 【Hmm. It's Pictish imitation magic (Pingere). It doesn't show from the outside.】 Veronica, who hadn't had a chance to step in, muttered via telepathy only I could hear. I was about to ask what she meant when I had to close my mouth before even opening it.
"Nord. Left side this time. Three zombies. One wraith." "Again?" We'd barely finished dealing with them and more were crawling out. We'd heard in Kudses that even combining the entire city, there were only about a hundred or so undead at most. "Damn it. With domestic affairs like this, no wonder they want to support pirates and raise them as the Seven Warlords." Since radiation had leaked onto their own country's farmland, they were willing to turn a blind eye even if hostile nation ships carrying rice got raided. How many countries that neglected diplomacy had decent domestic security? "Aooooo……." The zombies crawled out with world-weary expressions! Did they believe that if they moved sluggishly, the flow of time would respond in kind? It reminded me of my own foolishness on Sunday evenings when Bongsoona Academy was airing. But seriously, these bastards were swinging their junk around.
"Good grief, how unsightly is this!" I realized the blackened leather dangling in half was the trace of their junk. Clicking my tongue at the mental attack, I spun my spear. —Thwack! I turned the heads of two zombies into small balls launched by a soccer kick. The distance control I'd learned from Three Swords of the Flying Heavens style and juggling was shining. "Yoyo damn barbarian bastards. Who said you could make this real?" These guys had gone ahead and exposed zombie genitalia, something Hollywood had tacitly avoided. That hyper-realism filming philosophy deserved respect, but I couldn't forgive them for doing it where my wives were present. Besides, if there had been female zombies mixed in it might have been different, but imagining what three male zombies had done with their junk dangling in life was something I didn't even want to think about. I could only hope these friends had been born in bathhouses. —Slash! I became a cold-hearted zombie hunter and sent the last one to join its train-riding friends.