How To Suck Honey With Extras [EN]: Chapter 148

163. My Duty is a Merchant! (6)

“I’ve heard that as well.”

Wool, of course, knew this, but tilted his head, feigning puzzlement.

“But would they really come to a place like this as enemies?”

“…I said the same thing when I was your age.”

Another soldier on the same mission chimed in. He was older, with thirty years more service than Wool.

“There was a war, way back when… Once, after those guys were defeated.”

The older soldier recounted a past event as a cautionary tale. “Guess what those bastards did?”

“…Ah, no.”

“They hid among the piles of corpses, wriggling around, trying to infiltrate our lines.”

“…Ugh, in corpses?”

Wool shuddered, picturing the gruesome scene. “That’s awful.”

“And it happened to be the middle of summer. We were lucky to discover them before… well, who knows what would have happened.”

He shuddered again, recalling the moment they found those figures crawling beneath rotting bodies.

‘You never know what humans will do,’ he seemed to be saying, a grim reminder.

“Well, things like that are rare. Still… that one time is always a possibility.”

Tellondel, looking ahead, also wore a disgusted expression. “But this time, it feels particularly unsettling.”

Even seasoned veterans felt a chill in the air. The atmosphere was undeniably strange.

“Somehow, being here feels like we’re cursed.”

Silence met Wool’s comment, but a shared sense of unease hung in the air.

“Anyway, let’s hurry. We’re already behind schedule.”

Perhaps driven by the oppressive atmosphere, their pace had slowed. Tellondel urged the soldiers to quicken their search.

They needed to complete their mission and return before sunrise.

“Even so, don’t let your guard down.”

“Of course not.”

“Understood.”

The soldiers responded in hushed tones, resuming their patrol along the designated path.

After about an hour of searching…

“…No abnormalities at this point…” Wool’s report trailed off.

“What is it? Report clearly.”

“Th-that is… I saw something like a strange tent… shaking.”

“What nonsense… Gasp?!”

Tellondel, who had been staring in the direction Wool indicated, his face paling, gasped in astonishment.

“Could it be my eyes are playing tricks…?”

“There’s no way, you idiot!” Tellondel shouted, drawing his sword.

What he had glimpsed was a horde of walking corpses – not just one or two, but dozens of undead.

“Undead!”

The word snapped the terrified soldiers into action, their grips tightening on their weapons.

-Gyaaaaaaaa.

A bizarre, fluttering sound echoed through the air.

The shape Wool had mistaken for a tent… it was a tattered military flag, impaled on the back of an undead, staggering forward.

“Undead…”

“This is a battlefield. It’s not uncommon, but it’s entirely possible for corpses that haven’t been recovered to become undead,” Tellondel said, trying to reassure the terrified soldiers, though a strange feeling gnawed at him.

‘Even so, aren’t there too many undead?’ he wondered.

Typically, only about ten undead arise from every thousand corpses on a battlefield. Moreover, they usually made efforts to recover bodies after a battle to prevent such occurrences. The sheer number appearing in such a short time felt unnatural.

At least that much was clear.

“Sh… Should we run?”

“They’ve already spotted us. …Damn it, I have no choice. I’ll stay behind! The rest of you, run! And warn the others!”

There was no way they could win if they all fought together. It was better for one person to hold them off, giving the others a chance to escape.

Tellondel made the decision without hesitation. As a knight of the Falzente Grand Duchy, it was his duty.

“Hiss!”

He channeled his aura into his sword. The aura’s distinctive blue glow intensified the blade’s cutting power.

The problem was that his achievement level was barely past the Practitioner stage.

How much could he fight when he hadn’t even properly passed the entry level?

‘I could probably handle up to ten, but anything more would be difficult.’

Therefore, there was only one option.

“I won’t say it again! Run!”

Having steeled himself, he was about to rush forward to buy the soldiers even a little time to escape.

However, Tellondel couldn’t even take five steps.

Someone jumped down and blocked his path, as if to hinder his charge.

“…Your resolve is admirable, but I think you shouldn’t think about dying so easily, at least?”

A slightly bitter voice echoed quietly, and the boy who landed in front of him rushed towards the undead instead.

“Even so, I acknowledge your determination to send your subordinates away first.”

The silver-haired boy, Sylvester, immediately slashed through the approaching horde of undead.

It seemed his sword only brushed past a few times without a sound, but in an instant, dozens of undead were cut down and collapsed.

It wasn’t just a simple cut.

The moment the sword touched, it swept through like an explosion of powerful aura, blowing away the energy residing within the undead themselves.

His own way of dealing with the undead.

“To be annihilated this easily, they must be ordinary undead… That’s strange?”

However, Sylvester muttered as if the result was rather unsatisfactory, still not lowering his sword and looking around.

“…Wh-Who are you?”

Tellondel asked, still not lowering his guard.

He didn’t recognize Sylvester, so he suspected he might be an enemy spy.

“…I also have a task to search around. Here’s the Grand Duke’s seal, so please verify it.”

Sylvester showed a certificate with the seal stamped on it, his gaze half elsewhere.

The seal shining in the moonlight was undoubtedly the Grand Duke’s.

Only then did Tellondel widen his eyes as if he recognized Sylvester.

“Are you perhaps the guest that His Excellency brought?”

Only then did the soldiers let out a deep sigh of relief, as if they had been saved.

Sylvester didn’t seem to care what their reactions were, only looking around.

“Anyway. That was close. To face that many undead of all things.”

“…We can’t believe it either. For so many undead to appear like that… Could it be… Is this also an effect of the war?”

“Well. I don’t think it’s easy to jump to conclusions.”

Sylvester answered, still looking around.

In fact, this boy had some reservations about the current phenomenon.

‘No matter how I look at it, those things from earlier weren’t naturally occurring…’

But there was something suspicious about saying they were deliberately created.

Like a side effect of something.

‘There’s something there.’

At least, Sylvester’s senses strongly suggested that.

‘But what on earth…’

Even when he looked around, no suspicious traces were found.

‘I couldn’t even find a trace?’

That was even more suspicious.

He was confident that he could detect even the signs of a skilled black magician if they had used their power.

Yet even his senses were being toyed with.

‘Anyway, I can’t stay here for long…’

Sylvester decided against delving too deeply for now.

He was worried about the rescued soldiers, but more than anything, he felt that rashly digging in would be disadvantageous to him as well.

‘First, I need to understand more and think about it.’

Sylvester didn’t neglect to sharpen his senses and returned to the fortress for now.

Nothing had happened in the meantime, but.

Rather, that made him feel even more uneasy.

* * *

And the place where they disappeared.

Long after their presence faded, four dark figures quietly emerged from the darkness.

“…Did they leave?”

“…Yes, they definitely left.”

“…How foolish.”

“…They didn’t notice until the end.”

They chuckled quietly at the humans from earlier and resumed the work they had been doing.

The undead from earlier were unavoidable byproducts of carrying out the plan.

It was annoying that the humans had noticed and intervened, but fortunately, they hadn’t noticed their existence yet.

Not even that terrifying silver-haired human knew.

If even the wary human had left without noticing, there was nothing more to fear.

They giggled and began their work as if they were enjoying it.

“…When this is completed.”

“…It will be as He wishes.”

“…If that happens…”

“…We will be saved.”

They murmured in unison as if imagining a pleasant dream.

“…And the earth will be our new home.”