We were woken up early the next morning and had a quick breakfast before we were asked to gather with our platoon leader and were told to gather so essentials pack before heading off into the tunnels.
Our platoon headed off into the east tunnel alongside another two platoons while the other three went into the west tunnel, leaving the last two remaining platoons at the camp.
Our group of thirty made our way through our chosen tunnel, led by Denosin. He was the leader of both my platoon and this whole operation.
Also, since there weren’t any of those weird roots, we were allowed to use torches once more to light the way.
As we trekked through the tunnel, all we could hear was the echoing of everyone’s footsteps. We tried to be as quiet as possible, but with how many people were walking it was hard to not make any noise.
We walked through the tunnel system for about an hour or two before we finally found a divergence in the path.
There were two different directions that we could go down. My platoon, which was labelled as the "Elite" platoon due to the fact that we had several incredibly powerful people part of it, went down the right tunnel while the others went down the left tunnel.
And like that , or groups parted ways as we headed down our chosen paths.
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Another hour of travelling and we still hadn’t found anything besides the stone we were familiar with. Which was thankfully interrupted by our scout, who was a futa wolf-kin who was the assassin looking fellow nad Verna.
She raised her hand, indicating us to stop.
"What is it?" Denosin asked quietly.
"Monsters." She whispered back.
I smiled as I would finally get a chance to fight, I’d been feeling a bit antsy for a while since I hadn’t had a chance to let loose in a long while.
"Can you tell what kind?" Denosin inquired further.
"Not entirely sure but I can say that they’re most likely to be beast monsters." Verna whispered once more.
We then waited for these beasts to reach us. And when they rounded the corner and their shadows were accented by the reflection of light, I was confused by their shape, so I waited for them to co a bit closer.
As they stepped into the light, I was confused by what I was seeing in front of . I knew that they would be beasts, but they didn’t look like anything I recognised.
They had features similar to wolves, with a pale dark green fur and wolf like face, but their bodies was what confused the most. They walked on four legs with claw tipped paws on the end of each one and was completely covered in fur.
’Wait... So of them are missing parts of their body...’
"!!!" I made so form of noise, indicating my surprise.
"What is it?" Cythistia asked as she was next to .
I dind’t answer as I summoned [Fireball] and hurled it at the undead creature closest to use imdiately.
It jumped straight at the projectile without fear but was engulfed in flas instantly.
Everyone was stunned by my sudden actions but I didn’t stop there as I conjured more fireballs and threw them and the living corpses, burning the flesh which emitted a foul stench behind that lingered on the now charred bones.
When there weren’t any more corpses erging from the corner, I cancelled the fireball I had ready just in case there were more.
[Ding!]
[You have received 9,500 EXP]
When I was done and took a deep breath everyone looked at with confusion. I imdiately felt the pressure of everyone staring at .
"What was that for?" Denosin asked with and authoritative voice.
’Those were undead sir.’ I said as I cast [Fire Runes] to communicate whilst twiddling my fingers together.
"Undead?" He asked further.
"...SHIT!" There was a mont of silence before he shouted and started to run back the way we ca.
We all followed him of course and eventually we were led down the path that the others took.
As we headed down the tunnel but found ourselves at a fork in our path.
"Damn it! We need to let them know about this! Quickly!" Denosin shouted in a panic.
I could understand his concern because although undead aren’t the most powerful of monsters, they certainly could be the most terrifying if left unchecked. Their ability to drain life is unmatched, even by succubi standards.
But the most terrifying thing is their ability to convert the victim into an undead and their endless and unyielding march to cull all life.
"Verna! Which path did they take?"
Verna then kneeled on the ground and inspected it before getting back up and saying, "They split up."
"Damn it!" Denosin was now panicking and muttered quietly, "What do we do now."
"We could split up temporarily." One of the mages said, a male bear-kin with thick brown fur covering his body.
"Nnnggrr... Fine! We’ll split up. You go down that path, you seem capable enough to deal with the undead, the rest of you co with . We’ll et back up here with the groups we find." He said pointing at before rushing down on of the pathways, the rest following him.
"... Be careful..." Cythistia said before rushing to join the others.
I smiled, and then quickly slithered down the other tunnel to reach the other group using my full speed.
I quickly managed to get to them, seeing their torches which allowed to see them in the darkness.
I slowed down so that I wouldn’t alarm them too much but then I heard signs of them battling sothing so I sped up again.
When I rounded the corner, I saw that they were engaged with regular monsters and not undead. Upon seeing that I let out a sigh of relief.
They quickly dispatched the monsters which looked similar to the ones I’d slain earlier, but had a dark blue fur instead, indicating that they were alive, well, at least until the platoon killed them. That’s when one of them noticed .
"Hmm? Wait, aren’t you part of the ’Elite’ platoon with the commander? Why are you here?" One guy asked.
’Commander ordered everyone to co back. I was sent to co and get you.’ I replied in writing.
They seed confused but followed back anyways.
We soon reached the intersection where they split up with the others, and it seed like they hadn’t gotten back just yet, so we waited. And they did eventually co out, although the group that originally went down that tunnel seed downtrodden. I took a look and saw that they were one mber down and two of them were missing their arms.
Seems like they weren’t so lucky.
We headed back to camp and dropped off the other two platoons while mine headed down the west tunnel to go and fetch the other three platoons so that we could regroup and update everyone on the situation, which was much worse than expected.
Thankfully there weren’t any splits in this tunnel and we brought them back without a scratch.
Denosin then ordered us to line up in front of our respective platoon leader and he began informing them of the situation.
"Listen up! I have called you all here to inform you that there is an undead infestation in this dungeon! We aren’t sure of the source yet but by clearing the dungeon I’m sure we’ll find out! Regardless, I wanted to inform all of you to be careful and take extra precautions against these foes as they can be extrely terrifying."
He then went on to drill into us how to counter the undead, such as burning zombies, crushing skulls of skeletons or purifying them with light attributed magic. Things I already knew about, he also went on to explained that we should always keep our distance if they looked ready to strike, as if they landed a blow on us, we would be infected and slowly turn into one of them.
If we were to be infected, by the zombies specifically as they were the only ones who could turn living things into undead without necromancy, we should either burn the wound imdiately or cut the infected part off.
He finished our speech and everyone was told to rest again before we would resu the dungeon raid tomorrow.
There was a solemn atmosphere that radiated throughout the whole camp that night and continued throughout this whole expedition.
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