Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

It was easier said than done however, there was a reason why all of these undeads were stuck wandering aimlessly here.

The room, which wasn’t crumbling down like the rest but still bore marks of the ages had four ways leading out of it, one led to the pit Loimos had come from, two others led to dead ends blocked off by a strange, flesh-like growth.

It wasn’t part of some being, he would have been able to tell whether it was of the living or undead, it just happened to look like meat.

The last way, the one facing Loimos as he entered the room wasn’t a dead end per se, it simply required one to scale a wall, something that was beyond the feeble preserved corpses.

It was easier for him to accomplish but not quite as simple as his earlier feat, this wall was also partly covered in the flesh-like substance, resulting in his first few tries to end in utter failure.

Quickly facing the fact that the outgrowth was too slippery for him to climb no matter what he tried, he focused his time on biting and scraping it off the rock instead.

His careful work slowed down by the fact that this thing seemed to refuse to be removed from the territory it had grown over.

This work, which would have typically been considered arduous and downright inhumane, was the sort of thing a court would come up with to punish an especially terrible criminal, or the sort of punishments inflicted upon characters of mythology.

For an undead, it was nothing.

The parts that were peeled off the rest quickly withered and died off, falling apart like burnt paper.

Accompanied by the sounds of his fellow undead prowling around behind his back and of the more distant than ever falling debris, he eventually managed to outspeed the outgrowth and render it nonexistent.

’Clearing the other passageways should also be possible, if it did not grow over the walls as well’

First, he made his way up the wall and crouched down close to the edge, he didn’t have much room up there, the platform only large enough to fit his feet, his skull close to the ceiling.

Looking down, the poor lighting coming from the room behind was of no use right now, thankfully, down into the pit, another light was coming from around a corner.

It was bright and powerful, a shine unlike any other Loimos had gotten to witness before.

The light seemed somewhat distorted, not certain what was causing this, the undead brushed off some pebbles and dust off into the pit.

Resulting in a few low splashes to ring out, Loimos realised that he was faced with water.

Carefully climbing down, he entered the cold water, making certain that he would be able to go back up, he began to walk toward the light.

Unable to swim or gain any sort of traction underwater, it was all he could do.

The light couldn’t blind him, but the water was still dark and obstructing his vision, as he walked, he kept on moving lower and lower.

Until he reached the bottom of a body of water, its true size unknown.

Since he could easily go the other way at any moment, Loimos walked at the bottom of the water, causing dirt and sand to rise up with his steps, he looked around for any sort of wildlife but everything was empty.

No fishes, no amphibians, nothing, not even some dreadful monster of the dead, or if there was, it wasn’t willing to move for an unappetising pile of bones that was most certainly capable of sending even strict scavengers straight to their graves for attempting to sate themselves.

The rotten spots on his bones ejected the viscous rotten blood from time to time, tainting the waters around him.

The liquid was so vile and heavy that it sank directly to the ground.

Walking in a perfectly straight line in spite of the utter lack of landmarks around to guide him, he eventually began to rise up again, the soil beneath his feet turning into sand only.

The water was so opaque, that even when he was barely a millimeter away from breaking to the surface, he couldn’t see anything outside.

As such, he carefully stuck his skull out until just the the top of his eye sockets was outside, it was well enough for him to make out what sort of land he was walking toward.

It was a minuscule batch of sand with only a singular tree on it, the sole vegetation was grand and ridiculously sized compared to the surroundings, adorned with some sort of fruit Loimos couldn’t identify.

Seemed like the random bits of knowledge that were popping up in his mind didn’t cover this sort of thing.

It was green and round, seemingly around the same size as his skull.

He diverted his attention elsewhere once he confirmed that nothing necessitated his attention on the island.

Heeding closer inspection to everything else, it was clear that he had found much of what he had been searching for.

Further away from the island, much further, the body of water, which he would classify as a large lake, vast expanses of greenery stretched further than he could see, basically, all directions, save for the one he had come from, were filled with thriving life.

Insects were buzzing around, pollinating flowers, birds chirped happily, small animals that one wouldn’t be able to imagine themselves petting, preys, predators lived in the perfect harmony that was the cycle of life.

It seemed that closer to the shores, the waters were also vibrant with action.

Everywhere he looked, he was faced with different wonders life could come with, varieties of flora and fauna, the sun up above casting its nourishing light upon them all.

Of course, everything was still underground, the walls of the dungeon behind Loimos confirmed that while seemingly unrelated, he was still deep within the earth.

The sun wasn’t real, or maybe it was, the undead had no way of truly telling whether this sort of thing was possible or not.

He hadn’t even known the sun was a thing until a few seconds ago when he looked up.

Lastly, populating the beautiful areas were various sorts of monsters as well, some more intelligent than others.

Monsters and animals were very distinct categories, even if the line could get beyond blurry.

Loimos himself was technically a monster after all and yet, things that were truly just big wolves were monsters as well.

Seeing the refined cycle all around him and the achievements achieved by the more aware of monsters, he felt nothing of course.

One thing was certain however, all of this wouldn’t fly in his presence.

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