On the high wall of the fortress,
a figure stood, draped in a tattered black dress.
Her black hair spilled untidily over her shoulders, swaying gently in the breeze.
Beneath the hair was a face as pale as a corpse.
It was a girl.
Or rather,
she looked like one.
Her cheeks had not a trace of color, like a mask carved from the finest marble: exquisite, cold, and dead still.
Orum felt a powerful aura of death pouring off the girl.
It was so thick it was suffocating, like a vengeful spirit that had crawled up from the depths of a grave!
A chill shot up his spine and into his skull.
Something's wrong!
This deathly pale girl bore the marks of a zombie from head to toe.
A shocking suture scar ran across her neck.
It looked as though someone had crudely sewn her together with coarse thread.
Every stitch was plainly visible, each one crooked, the work of some hopelessly clumsy tailor.
Her lips bore stitch marks as well.
Purplish-black lines of thread ran from the corners of her mouth down to her chin.
They lent her face an eerie kind of beauty.
Heavy dark circles ringed her eyes,
as if she had gone countless nights without sleep since the day she was born.
In the depths of those hollow sockets, a pair of purple pupils gleamed with a sinister light, carrying a melancholy like that of a corpse.
Her whole being radiated an inhuman beauty.
And what was more startling still,
strapped to the back of this petite girl was an enormous black coffin.
The coffin was at least two meters long and one meter wide,
wholly out of proportion to her slender frame.
Its surface was carved with intricate, eerie purple runes.
The runes glowed faintly in the dim light, giving off an unsettling ripple of power.
This is...?!
Orum's gaze fell on the girl's hands, and his pupils contracted sharply!
Black iron handcuffs hung from both her wrists, the chain between them snapped, so that they looked more like a pair of bracelets.
In her left hand, she clutched six metal runes shining with dazzling light.
The runes flickered in her palm like six miniature suns.
Even without an explanation, Orum knew what they were: the Blessing of Light!
Tension rose in the hearts of the Ice Hawks.
This was what they had come to the outpost for, their hope of surviving in Everdusk Forest.
Yet now the runes were in the hand of an undead creature.
And this zombie girl who called herself Aravia was clearly not in her right mind.
Her gaze was unfocused, as though she were not fully awake.
A strange smile hung at the corner of her mouth, like a child lost in a dream, sleepwalking.
Astonishingly, she seemed not to feel the burning in her left hand at all.
The Light runes were scorching her palm; the skin had split open, giving off the stench of charred flesh.
Her left palm had been burned to a bloody ruin.
Pale bone showed beneath, and blood dripped down her wrist.
Yet she showed no reaction. Not a flicker of pain crossed Aravia's face, as if that hand did not belong to her at all.
And in her right hand, she carried something even more shocking.
A blond head.
Blood still seeped from the severed neck, falling drop by drop to the ground with faint, dripping sounds.
From the twisted, agonized face, one could tell that he had suffered unimaginable torment before his death.
Judging by the head's bearing and appearance, he must have been a cleric in life. The mark of a holy sun symbol still lingered on his forehead.
Marcus...
Felix's body trembled slightly, and an ominous premonition instantly seized his heart.
From the intelligence and leads he had prepared in advance, he had already recognized the face.
That head belonged to Marcus, the outpost's priest!
The clergyman who should have bestowed the Blessing of Light upon them.
Now he was nothing but a head dangling from a hand, dead at the hands of this zombie girl.
Felix's brow furrowed deeply, and his fists clenched.
Beside him, encased in Copper armor, Cyrus's face instantly turned livid.
He abruptly drew the Runic Two-Handed Greatsword in his hands.
Golden sword aura surged along the blade,
burning fiercer than at any time before.
This was the rage of a Gold-rank knight!
He glared at the malevolent girl on the wall and demanded in a low, commanding voice:
"Did you kill the people at the outpost?!"
Cyrus's voice echoed through the empty fortress, every word carrying an unrestrained fury!
As a knight, he could not tolerate such wickedness.
"Hm?"
Aravia tilted her head, the motion at once innocent and eerie,
like a child who did not understand why the grown-ups were angry.
"Aravia didn't kill them, you know."
She spoke in that hoarse, strange voice. "It was the Voodoo Cannibal Tribe. If you don't believe me, you can look for yourselves."
The moment she finished speaking,
as everyone watched, Aravia lifted one bare foot.
That foot was also paper-white, the toenails a strange purplish black.
With a nudge of her toes, she kicked a headless corpse off the wall.
The body tumbled through the air and landed with a heavy thud on the ground before them.
Felix recognized it with trembling eyes: it was Marcus's body.
It wore a priest's robe, the white cloth soaked through with blood until it had turned dark red.
The corpse was a mess of torn flesh,
sword wounds and arrow wounds everywhere.
The wounds were deep enough to reach the bone, and some arrows were still lodged in the body.
Felix crouched to examine the wounds carefully.
His expression grew even graver.
Just as Aravia had said, the shape and character of the wounds were indeed consistent with cannibal weapons.
The curved blades the cannibals used left distinctive arc-shaped cuts,
and their arrowheads were usually coated with poison.
All of these features could be found on Marcus's body, and nothing about it suggested an attack by necromancy.
Though Cyrus had heard Aravia's explanation, he still watched her warily, without the slightest slackening in his gaze.
Facing this zombie girl of unknown origin, a deep vigilance rose within him.
Orum, Felix, Ronald, Raygore, and the other professionals with weaker perception might not have sensed it.
But in the eyes of Cyrus, a Gold-rank knight,
the aura Aravia gave off was unmistakably that of a formidable enemy!
Although her aura had not yet reached Gold rank,
it was very close.
Her strength was at least a perfected Mithril rank, and she might even have touched the bottleneck to Gold.
And moreover...
Cyrus's gaze lingered for a moment on the coffin on Aravia's back.
Inside that coffin was another presence.
Its aura was no weaker than Aravia's,
and it was deeper, harder to gauge.
It was like a bottomless abyss of darkness, its true strength utterly impossible to fathom.
Add to that the corpses strewn all around.
The power of the undead ran rampant through this fortress to an extreme.
The aura of death had nearly solidified, blanketing the entire battlefield.
If a fight broke out here,
both Aravia and the being in the coffin would be greatly empowered by that deathly aura.
Their strength might multiply.
There was a maxim on the continent that every adventurer remembered:
"Fighting a necromancer in a graveyard is an extremely unwise thing to do."
Though Aravia was not necessarily a necromancer,
she was certainly some kind of powerful undead being. The thick aura of death on her made that plain.
Besides, Cyrus sensed no clear malice from her.
Her speech might be muddled and her thoughts jumpy,
but it always carried a trace of innocence, like an ordinary girl talking.
Rather than fight a being of unknown origin and unknown strength in such an unfavorable environment,
it would be better to avoid the fight for now and wait for a better opportunity.
But the crux of the matter was this:
Aravia held six Blessings of Light in her hand.
And they were exactly what the party had come for.
Aravia swept her purple pupils across the group, and her stitched, scarred lips suddenly curled into a dreadful smile.
She spoke slowly.
"These are the last Blessings of Light, you know."
Her voice carried a childlike lilt,
as if she were introducing something fun.
"If you want them, you have to trade Aravia something precious."
Cyrus took a deep breath, suppressed the anger in his chest, and asked in a calm, low voice, "What do you want?"
"Oh, you're asking what Aravia likes?"
Aravia smiled.
That smile should have been innocent.
But on that corpse-like face, it looked especially eerie.
The instant the smile appeared,
the black coffin on her back suddenly shuddered violently.
The whole coffin gave off a dull thump, thump!
As though something inside were pounding on it!
The lid slowly opened a crack.
From the gap, several slender black tentacles wriggled out.
The tentacles were coated in slime, twitching excitedly in the air!
Hsssssss...
The tentacles moved like living creatures,
swaying in the air, their tips splitting into finer and finer feelers,
giving off a nauseating stench of rot.
Aravia's smile grew even brighter at that moment.
But that brightness made the skin crawl.
She grinned, baring neat, pale teeth,
and said in that innocent, eerie tone, "Aravia's mama is hungry."
The words made every heart present skip a beat.
The thing in the coffin on her back.
She called it mama?!
Orum's eyes froze on the tentacles reaching out of the coffin's gap.
The tentacles swayed in the air, their tips forking endlessly, reeking of rot.
Their surfaces were slick with mucus.
His mind raced, shaken by the sudden revelation.
That kind of monster was the mother of the zombie girl before him?!
At that moment, Aravia's strange purple pupils were like two gems burning with netherworld fire.
Her gaze slowly swept over every member of the Ice Hawks.
Orum.
Felix.
Ronald.
Raygore.
Cyrus.
Even Melina, asleep in the bamboo basket.
That cold, focused stare was like a butcher choosing livestock for slaughter.
Each time her gaze paused, the person under it felt a bone-deep chill shoot from spine to skull.
It was the gaze of death, the instinctive fear of the living, the most primal threat from an undead creature.
Aravia's gaze lingered on each person only briefly,
about three seconds.
But those few seconds were enough to leave one gasping for air.
She seemed to be weighing the worth of each soul.
At last,
Aravia spoke.
Her voice kept that eerie childlike innocence, as though she were asking about the most ordinary trifle. "Could you give the soul of one of you to Aravia?"
"And then let my mama eat it?"
She tilted her head and added the words,
and the motion made the suture scar on her neck all the more shocking.
The purplish-black stitches looked savage against her pale skin.
At that moment, Aravia's tone even carried a trace of anticipation and excitement,
as if this were a perfectly reasonable, fair proposal.
The instant she said it,
the black coffin on her back shook violently again.
The whole coffin let out a low, ravenous whimper,
like some enormous beast roaring.
The black tentacles poking out of the gap twitched excitedly in the air,
their forked tips thrashing wildly.
The stench of rot grew even thicker.
Aravia raised her left hand, burned to a bloody mess by the Light runes.
The six golden runes flickered blindingly in her ruined palm.
That light stood in stark contrast to the aura of death about her.
"Then I can give you these shiny, hot emblems, just like the sun!"
Her voice brimmed with innocent cheer,
like a child showing off a treasured possession.
She had no idea at all
how chilling and inhuman the terms she had just proposed were.
In her understanding,
trading a companion's life for an important item was somehow perfectly natural.
The moment he heard it, Felix's face flushed red, and open anger blazed in his eyes!
Aravia's mind was simply not human!
She was actually demanding that they give up the life of one of their own teammates,
that a companion's soul be devoured by the terrifying monster in that coffin!
This was not merely a cruel proposal.
It was a total trampling of humanity and moral decency!
In an instant, Felix rejected Aravia's proposal.
He would rather abandon this mission
than sacrifice the life of a single teammate!
The Blessing of Light was indeed precious.
It was the key to surviving in Everdusk Forest.
Without it, the Ice Hawks Company could not go on in this cursed forest.
And time was already pressing.
The bard Ith was waiting for rescue somewhere.
If they missed this chance,
Ith would most likely die deep in Everdusk Forest.
But,
however dire the predicament,
Felix would never make the insane choice of sacrificing a teammate's life!
This was his bottom line as captain of the Ice Hawks!
Felix took a deep breath, clenched his hands into fists, and said to Aravia through gritted teeth,
"Impossible!"
"I'd rather kill you than sacrifice any of my teammates."
Felix's voice was cold and firm,
every word seemingly squeezed from between his teeth.
Aravia tilted her head, and after hearing Felix's answer, a flicker of confusion crossed her purple pupils.
"Why?"
Her voice held genuine bewilderment.
"Once the soul is given to mama, you can have the shiny emblems, you know."
"Isn't that a fair trade?"
In Aravia's understanding,
this ought to be a perfectly fair trade.
One person's soul
in exchange for the survival of five others.
Wasn't that a bargain?
She simply could not understand why these humans would refuse.
Besides, these few teammates weren't even family.
Aravia tilted her head,
her purple pupils shining with sincere confusion,
as if she truly could not comprehend the choice the humans before her had made.
She looked down at the six Light runes in her left hand.
The runes kept on scorching her palm.
The golden holy power clashed violently with the necrotic energy within her body.
Her palm was already burned black,
bare white bone showing through.
Blood dripped along her wrist
and bloomed into dark red flowers on the ground.
Yet she still felt no pain.
Or rather, she had long since lost the ability to feel pain.
Aravia's gaze began to turn cold.
Her fingers slowly tightened.
It seemed she had lost her patience.
She was about to crush the Light runes that scalded her, destroying every one of them.
Felix's heart clenched.
If the runes were destroyed,
they would lose any chance of quickly entering the depths of Everdusk Forest.
It would likely take half a month to obtain new Blessings of Light,
and with a delay that long, Ith's life would very probably be lost.
Even so,
Felix could never agree to Aravia's mad proposal.
Never sacrifice a teammate.
That was the bottom line.
At this critical moment,
Aravia's gaze suddenly stopped on someone at the back of the group, the young man who had remained silent all along.
The one in fine adventurer's gear,
the black-haired youth with the Flame-steel glaive on his back.
Orum!
Aravia's purple pupils widened a fraction the instant she saw him.
A strange, indescribable sense of familiarity
welled up from the depths of her heart without warning.
The feeling was like suddenly seeing a warm lamp burning
after a long stretch of darkness.
"Hm?" Aravia's eyes went wide.
The sense of closeness was so strong
that her whole world seemed tinted with different colors in that moment.
In a field of vision that had been gray and cold,
Orum's figure was like the only source of light, luring her to reach out and touch it.
An irrepressible impulse rose in Aravia.
She wanted to, badly wanted to, jump down from this high wall right now!
To go before Orum and look at him up close!
Aravia wanted to ask his name.
She wanted to ask where he came from.
She wanted to ask why he made her feel this strange feeling.
These questions surged wildly through her mind.
Her body had already leaned forward involuntarily.
Her bare, pale toes were already on the very edge of the wall.
One more step,
and she would leap down from the height.
However...
Aravia tilted her head, her purple pupils fixed on Orum.
Her gaze swept over the others in the group and finally came to rest on the tall knight holding the runic greatsword.
Cyrus was staring at her with wary hostility.
That formidable Gold-rank knight, clad head to toe in Copper armor, stood like a fortress of steel, ready for battle at any moment.
And it was not only Cyrus.
The other members of the Ice Hawks were also on high alert.
Felix's hand was already on the weapon at his waist, his emerald eyes glittering coldly. The gentle noble-scion air had vanished completely, replaced by the calm decisiveness of a seasoned company captain.
Ronald gripped his warhammer, his young face full of wariness, body leaning slightly forward, ready to unleash a divine spell.
And Raygore stood silent, the pitch-black greatsword shaped like a tombstone held steady in his hand.
His expression could not be read beneath the black iron mask, but the pressure radiating from him was enough to chill any enemy.
They had noticed Aravia's gaze and placed Orum in the middle of the group, as though protecting a precious companion.
This defensive posture told Aravia plainly: if she dared to approach rashly, or to attack Orum directly, she would be met with a merciless head-on blow.
The light in Aravia's eyes dimmed a little.
Those purple pupils were now like starlight veiled by dark clouds.
She slowly drew back her forward-leaning body and steadied herself on the wall again.
That impulsive moment had passed.
Reason took the upper hand once more.
Aravia knew that if she jumped down now, these humans would probably treat her as an enemy launching an attack.
And then an unavoidable battle would erupt.
A suppressed, dark restlessness stirred deep inside her.
She was not afraid of fighting.
But she did not want to hurt the black-haired boy who gave her that feeling of closeness.
More importantly, she was not sure she could protect Orum in a fight.
Just then, the black coffin on Aravia's back shook violently again.
Thump, thump, thump.
The whole coffin gave off a pounding that was more urgent than before, full of prodding.
The black tentacles poking out of the gap began to slap restlessly against the coffin's surface.
They thrashed wildly behind Aravia,
giving off a thick aura of hunger,
like a caged beast frantically craving food.
Mother was reminding her that it was time to eat.
If she did not find food soon, the being in the coffin would grow more violent and dangerous.
Aravia was silent for a moment.
Her gaze rested on Orum one last time.
Then she made a decision that caught everyone present completely off guard.
The corners of Aravia's mouth suddenly lifted
into a strange but seemingly sincere smile.
"They're yours."
Aravia said it in a light tone, tinged with pleasure even,
as if mentioning some trivial matter.
The moment she spoke,
she flung the six Blessings of Light clutched in her left hand toward Orum without hesitation.
The golden glowing runes traced a brilliant arc through the air.
They were like six shooting stars,
leaving a bright trail across the dim fortress sky.
The instant the runes left her palm, her left hand, burned to a bloody ruin, was finally relieved.
The scorched marks on her skin began to heal slowly.
Necrotic energy surged again at the wounds.
Dense black-green vitality spread across her palm like vines, mending the wounds the holy power had burned into it.
Such regenerative ability was truly terrifying.
The runes, bearing their holy radiance,
spun through the air toward Orum.
He instinctively stretched out both hands.
The six warm runes, glowing with soft golden light, landed steadily in his palms.
Their temperature was just right, warm and comfortable, as if he were holding six tiny suns.
The surfaces of the runes were engraved with intricate, exquisite sacred patterns. He could imagine how much effort the priest Marcus, who had inscribed them, must have poured into every one.
Amid his teammates' astonished stares, Orum clutched the precious runes and raised his head.
His gaze passed through the dust drifting in the air
and met Aravia's purple pupils where she stood on the wall.
In that instant, time seemed to stop, and every surrounding sound vanished, leaving only the silent gaze between the two of them.
The moment their eyes met,
Orum's heart thumped hard!
A strange, nameless throb rose abruptly from the depths of his heart!
The feeling was like two rivers that had run side by side
suddenly converging at some incredible moment.
Or like two lonely stars
unexpectedly forming a gravitational bond in the vast universe.
A thought flashed through his mind.
He suddenly understood.
All of this was connected to the necromancer inheritance that Skull Sis Vivian had given him!
That ancient, mysterious inheritance
had not merely granted him the ability to command necrotic energy.
It had also given him a special mark,
a mark that other undead creatures could sense!
No wonder Aravia had felt that strange closeness toward him.
No wonder that complicated emotion had shown in her eyes the instant she saw him.
This was a resonance between undead creatures and a necromancer!
Orum held the six warm Light runes,
standing there dumbstruck, as if he had been struck by lightning.
Countless thoughts flashed through his mind.
They burst like fireworks, colorful and chaotic.
He had never expected the necromancer inheritance to have such a marvelous effect: from the deepest level of the soul, it raised undead creatures' goodwill and affinity toward him!
His heartbeat began to quicken. The connection ran both ways: just as Aravia had felt an inexplicable closeness toward him, when Orum looked at her, an indescribable stirring of emotion rose in his own chest.
The feeling was wondrous.
They were strangers meeting for the first time,
yet it felt like déjà vu, as if he had known her for decades.
But romancing an undead creature... was that really okay?
Orum suddenly recalled the many tragic human-and-ghost love stories he had seen before... the boldest of them being Ning Caichen, who somehow managed to get a ghost pregnant.
Then there was the zombie bride, which ended in a poignant, bittersweet love story.
The corner of Orum's mouth twitched...
"My kinks are perfectly normal!"
"How could I possibly like a zombie girl!"
"Skull Sis, what did you do to me!!!"
These absurd, outlandish thoughts flashed through his mind, but he quickly suppressed the untimely impulse.
He forced himself to calm down,
pressing the jumble of thoughts to the bottom of his heart.
Gripping the precious Light runes tightly, he looked up again at Aravia on the high wall. She had already turned around, her back to everyone, seemingly about to leave.
Aravia's curly black hair fluttered gently in the breeze, the strands like black silk drawing graceful arcs in the air.
Orum's gaze followed the drifting hair,
and an inexpressibly complex emotion rose in his heart.
It was subtle.
Somewhat like saying goodbye to a friend he had just met,
and somewhat like watching someone important walk away.
He forcibly suppressed these feelings.
Then Aravia gave a light hop, her figure drifting down like a black feather. Her weightless movement stood in sharp contrast to the heavy black coffin on her back.
"We'll meet again... at the Dark Conclave."
Her voice drifted over on the black wind,
faint and airy,
yet it reached everyone's ears clearly.
Anyone could hear the promise and anticipation in her tone,
as if she were saying that today's parting was not an ending, but a beginning.
Aravia's figure vanished on the far side of the high wall, leaving only the last afterimage of her curly black hair floating in the air, like a dream drifting away.
The moment Orum withdrew his gaze, he found himself surrounded by Felix, Ronald, Raygore, and Cyrus, each wearing an unfriendly expression.
"Orum, tell us honestly, why did that zombie woman give you something! What's going on!" Ronald stared into Orum's eyes and demanded!
Orum said helplessly, "What if I said... it's because I'm just too handsome? Would that do?"
"Of course not!" everyone said in unison.
"The captain and I are both way better looking than you!" Ronald declared with righteous indignation.
"Ronald, you've really gotten cocky."
Orum marveled inwardly: ever since this old man had turned young again, his face had become as thick as a city wall!