Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead-Chapter 530 : Direction

The rot within began expanding, shifting its form, manifesting a small structure of black stone, which rapidly sunk into the sand, burying itself with vile limbs resembling that of a six-eyed sand spider, now hidden from sight, the decay was willed to inscribe countless runes, sigils and magic circles over all surfaces within.

Creating an array formation that had been refined ever since the first way into a realm was discovered, allowing to link the 'door' leading inside, to this spot in particular, made exceptionally easy since Loimos was on both sides simultaneously, forming a true gateway allowing passage from both sides by anyone that could move through it.

It was rather simple to recreate something down to the most minute details with the primeval rot, so soon enough, the realm was properly linked to the outside world, having manifested another small structure on the other side to prevent any stray creature from wandering in.

With that done, Loimos had found the perfect battlefield for Ir'Houwl to prove herself, it was exactly what she strived to conquer, a desert hammered by light that threatened to combust all under its watch, that left only three.

At this point, the skeleton should have already returned to his bird form and taken to the air, yet, he still stood still, back turned to the newly erected structure, unmoving, as if frozen in time, this subtle action that would have probably been chalked off had it been from anyone else was deeply unsettled coming for the pure undead.

One of the crabs, supposed to be wholly unaware of his existence, shuffled uncomfortably, as though feeling the need to look away, far from the typical behaviour of its kind.

The instant it did this motion, it died.

As it had always done, the system whispered the kill to Loimos, informing him that he had killed a most regular coconut crab, a variant from a far-away island, but just an animal nonetheless, which was not right.

The undead was a master in every discipline he had ever been introduced to, through a combination of the natural lack of any inaptitude, as well as his undeath to abuse every loopholes, there was seemingly nothing he couldn't somehow excel at, so of course, if he wanted to be unnoticed, no coconut crab would actually see through it, especially, a most regular one.

Decaying the creature, adding everything concerning it to his repertoire of rot, once again confirming that there was nothing special about it.

Now, who, or what- Could possibly pull something like this off? Had this crab been possessed by another being that perfectly erased its traces? Had that being been right there, or had this control been exerted from far away?

Much questions could be asked, but since nothing could be done right now, Loimos just scrunched up into the form a marine bird and flew away, no need to bother and waste time, having infinite amounts of time was one thing, but that didn't mean that one could just squander it on meaningless ventures.

After leaving that island, Loimos encountered no other land, be it regular ones or floating, just ocean as far as could be perceived, most of it was the typical water one would expect to see, but of course, there were much different sorts of seas one could encounter, at one point, he flew over multiple kilometers of bubbling waters, many raging volcanoes hidden just beneath the surface.

Another way to a realm was hidden in the guts of one of them, but it was only filled to the brim with liquid lava, nothing conductive to serve as a battleground for the minor lords.

The amount of portals leading to those smaller worlds was certainly high, but concentrated in places far from any of the continents, there were none of those to be found on Viridis or Belliste, the runaways of Tamaris had used another way to flee, the same Unacunerra was experimenting with to invade the elemental realms, access to them guaranteed much resources for the empire, and an influx of undead elemental spirits, particularly to be injected with Atsalinopalo's silver blood.

Loimos would remember their position, each and every last one of them, but although many were simply a single biome with its unique fauna and flora, not exactly large in the grand scheme of things, there were also those that were uniquely challenging to tackle, even for the undead empire, the champion was capable, but he was only a single undead, even his abominable, overwhelming power could not allow him to take care of every single thing, far from it.

Especially as life grew more resilient with every minuscule step death made toward utter sovereignty.

However, some of the realms he encountered carried a strange meld of life and death, or neither at all, these were certainly more difficult to imagine conquered than those with absurd environment that could melt something down in the blink of an eye, as specialised undeads could be trained to counter such things.

Down the line, the greatest challenges that awaited them where rather simple in essence, places were death was absent or different, and foes of incredible might, the latter being particularly aimed at Dragonnerie, whose pure power was simply blinding, but Loimos did not doubt that the other continents would also have something to offer.

Curiously enough, the first thing he spotted that was not some form of ocean was no land, but a ship, an actual ship sailing over calm waters, having seemingly been following the same overall direction as the undead, meaning that it was certainly passed through the storm-ridden sea and monster-infested waters he had just flown over some time ago.

And when monster-infested was used to describe the far ocean, it meant that there were basically more creatures flapping and tearing each other apart than there was water.

And there weren't many continents bothering with naval progress, not to mention that Loimos, even with all that travelling, had not gotten close to any of them, the only one he could reach relatively quickly was Dragonnerie, but the floating landmass was slowly but surely moving away.

Meaning that this had to belong to some advanced people that had established on neither of the continents, it wasn't that strange considering that an island could reach sizes great enough to house multiple kingdoms, but it had not been demonstrated to the undead just yet, all islanders having been budding civilisations at most.

Being a possibility that he might just manage to establish peaceful contact, Loimos, still as an innocuous sea bird, perched atop the mainmast, the stolen blessing of comprehension allowing him to understand the conversations being held.

Which wasn't much as the number of livings around was rather low, judging by the morale, the ocean had not been kind, their vessel was still holding strong but unmissable scars covered its surface, carefully packed into barrels, fish they had caught were still fresh.

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Despite the impressive stature of this ship, they were but fishermen, and they had been caught in an unexpected storm and spun around enough to destroy everything that might have helped them find their way again, they had to rely on the sun and stars to guide them, a method while not atypical, at least for the rare practice that was travel via the ocean, was clearly not their forte, usually relying on enchanted items to do the heavy lifting.

All that remained was one of these tools broken into countless pieces, and it was this shattered item that made Loimos think that they might hold intel on something he was looking for.

Dropping down in his regular form, only making sure to sprout black wings, manifesting a rain of feathers, keeping from splashing putrid blood everywhere however, landing right behind the ship's helm, and the person operating it by the same occasion.

Like he had demonstrated through pyromancy not so long ago, Loimos channelled specific aspects of death, oblivion to make them forget that he was not supposed to be here, love to make them believe that he was the one they had to refer to, and peace to calm their nerves.

They didn't even have time to gasp in surprise.

Now a magnificent and illustrious figure in their eyes, nothing opposed him he extended tendrils to go and search through each of their memories, unlike them who got confused and couldn't remember every detail clearly, Loimos was able to determine the exact direction they were supposed to go, which not straight ahead but absolutely to the left.

Before leaving for where they had come from, Loimos freed them of the aspects and instead rearranged their memories a little bit, also manifesting a creation of rot to make sure they made it back and could talk all about their radiant, undead saviour.