Cemetery Village Semek (2)
The road the carriage traveled was smooth and even.
The route running between the Infula Holy See and Carpatia Port was an important thoroughfare to begin with, and it saw constant traffic from the farmers who worked the Medial Plain, so it was naturally well-maintained. The road to Semek branched off it toward the right, and they hadn't yet reached that fork.
"That's the point, Yona — you're way too weak to praise."
"I'm not, I told you."
Yona sat sprawled with her legs stretched straight out, propping herself up on her palms behind her — leaning back so far she was practically lying down.
Alec, seated across from her, tapped the roof of the carriage and pressed his point again, but Yona didn't seem to be listening to a word of it.
All four members of Yona's party had climbed up onto the carriage roof. Days of traveling by carriage had worn on them, and this was right around the point where everyone had started craving a bit of fresh air.
When Alec asked whether they could open a window, Ceres had answered with a breezy "Getting bored, are we?" and pulled the cord draped beside her seat. With a heavy clunk, a hatch in the roof had swung open, and a rope ladder had come tumbling down through the gap.
"Feel free to ride on the roof. There are railings installed all around, so it's perfectly safe. Make yourselves comfortable. Comfortable."
Leaving Ceres and her plastered-on smile behind them, Alec, Yona, Kayak, and James had all scrambled up onto the roof together, and now they rode along with the wind in their faces.
Which was when Alec had abruptly brought up the subject.
"Hey, Baldy. Don't spout nonsense either. When have I ever been weak to praise?"
"Oh, come on... seriously. Everyone here knows you're weak to praise. Everyone except you, that is. Just you."
"I'm not! Hey, I'm a priest, whether I look it or not. A priest. You know what that means? A priest who has trained body and soul. And you're telling me that priest is weak to praise? What kind of baseless speculation is that? You're going to get yourself in real trouble someday, you know. The Heavenly God sees everything. Got it? Ah — though in your case, She might be looking down and unable to see past your shine."
"You two are actually insane."
A thick vein throbbed on Alec's forehead.
There was a saying that had made the rounds at the Evian Adventurer's Guild:
In other words, the fact that Yona was unusually weak to praise had been common knowledge since her days at the Evian Adventurer's Guild. She was a precious Healer with skills to match, so everyone wanted her in their party — and if it hadn't been for Alec, she would inevitably have ended up trailing after whoever flattered her, and something would surely have gone wrong.
"Hey, Lizard. Say something. He doesn't believe me."
"I have no idea why you keep dragging me into this."
Even so, Kayak strode over and plopped himself down squarely between Yona and Alec. Then James, declaring that this looked like an entertaining show, came and sat down beside him as well.
"So we are currently discussing whether or not Yona is weak to praise. Is that correct?"
"That's what I'm saying. It's a well-known fact that she folds the moment you compliment her. Am I wrong?"
"I'm telling you I'm not. Honestly, why do you people keep slandering me?"
"Hmmmm."
Kayak, however, gave no real answer. Instead, he stroked his jaw and appeared to sink into deep thought.
When he went on like that for quite a while without replying, it was James beside him who chimed in first.
"Now, to be fair, isn't that a bit of an assumption on your part? I haven't known Miss Yona all that long, mind you, but she does have her serious side. She's hardly the flighty sort to be swayed by a few compliments."
"True enough. Yona does seem, hm, a bit flighty on the surface, but she's regarded as someone who delivers when it counts. Which would mean..."
And with that, Kayak stole a sidelong glance at Yona's face.
Her cheekbones were threatening to climb into the sky. Her lips had already stretched nearly to her ears, and between them gleamed a row of blindingly white teeth.
"...Yona?"
"Ah, ahem! Yes, that's right! I may look a bit flighty... which I don't! But I'm certainly not the kind of person who falls for cheap tricks like flattery."
Yona had her chin lifted so high her nose pointed straight at the heavens.
Anyone watching would have worried she might tip right over backward.
"...And you're saying, right now, looking at that, that you are not weak to praise?"
"No. That's not the point."
Kayak raised a single index finger and waggled it back and forth — a rather odd gesture for a Lizardman who only had four fingers to begin with.
"You've just proven it yourself. Look at you. All James and I did was offer a little praise, and now you look ready to follow us straight into hell."
"Wh-what did you just say, you insane lizard?!"
Only then did Yona catch on to the scheme.
"You bastards, you've been playing me this whole time?! Hey, get over here! Why aren't you getting over here?! Alec, you damn bald bastard! Get over here right now!"
Kayak was too frightening to charge at, so the easiest target was, as always, Alec.
And so it was, with Alec's head clamped under her arm while she furiously ground her knuckles into that perfectly smooth skull, that—
"...Shh. Quiet a moment, would you."
The instant James spoke, Yona released Alec's head and fixed her gaze on the direction he was pointing.
Not just Yona — Alec and Kayak too.
A thick, grayish-white fog was billowing up from that direction. It was so dense that nothing could be seen even a hand's breadth ahead, and in this region, where there wasn't so much as a breeze, it exuded an unnaturalness that made it impossible to believe it had arisen on its own.
Heat began to rise from Yona's right arm. Her face flushed red with excitement once again, and she felt she could roughly guess by now why this heat always came over her.
"...So that's them. The tide of the dead that overran Semek."
A dark, murky gray-white fog with not a shred of holiness in it.
And it was the foul miasma lurking within that fog that was drawing Yona into her state of excitement once more.
"That would make sense. They wouldn't still be huddled where they rose, and running into them out here wouldn't be strange at all."
Ceres unfolded a map, her expression somewhat tense.
The carriage had already come to a stop.
Nobody knew for certain yet how large the tide of the dead actually was, but one thing was clear: those things had legs, and legs meant movement.
The map was drawn with impressive precision.
Taking the Medial Plain as its starting point, it depicted in considerable detail the roads between Carpatia Port and the Infula Holy See, and there in the middle, clearly marked, sat the village of Semek.
True to its nickname, the graveyard village had only two entrances — one coming in from the Infula Holy See, and one from Carpatia Port. Seeing as its gates numbered just those two—
"If we're lucky, the ones that came this way will be few. If we're unlucky, many. Shall we assume the latter?"
"It won't matter."
Ludwig picked up where she left off.
"We should assume the vast majority of them are headed our way."
"On what basis?"
When Ceres — regent and First Elder — turned to look at him, Ludwig simply shrugged as if it were obvious.
"What do you suppose woke them in the first place? These are creatures whose stomachs twist at the sight of the Hero and the Saint — restless things that can't stay put in their graves the moment a stone rolls out of place. So there's your answer."
"...You're saying that because the Hero and the Saint are here, most of them will come this way?"
"That's exactly it. And honestly, there's no real reason to be hesitating like this anyway. We simply go and sweep them away, don't we?"
Ludwig looked entirely confident.
Skeletons and zombies were, at the end of the day, all uniformly dim creatures — a quick sweep after patching up their rotting skin was all it took.
Ghouls might have changed the equation somewhat, but for a Gold-Rank Adventurer who was also the Hero, even ghouls posed no particular difficulty.
"Either way, we'll have to fight them. But the bodies interred in Semek number in the thousands. If we assume all of them have risen — and that all of them are coming this way..."
"The carriage is safe, so you needn't worry about it."
Vigrind stepped forward to stand beside the Hero.
She wore the same confident expression Ludwig did, and the moment Yona saw it, her nose wrinkled.
"The Hero will strike down the monsters on the front line, and I shall faithfully support him from behind. And I will fight them myself as well. Fortunately, those dead stand opposed to the Heavenly God — I believe I am more than capable of doing my part."
Vigrind tilted her head slightly and looked at Yona. There was something that seemed almost like mockery in her eyes, but Yona swallowed it down.
"Don't worry about the carriage. I can provide support from the rear as well — you focus on doing your utmost for those fighting up front."
"...Fine. Got it."
Well, she was an adventurer either way — she'd just hang around the back, bashing in the skulls of whatever dead things trickled through, and wait it out.
Or so Yona thought.