A moment later, the door opened, and a group of people clad in black cloaks filed out in single file.
Yet something was strange—there was not a single person to be seen on the main street. Beneath the fog, only a shallow trail of footprints stretched toward the outskirts of the village.
Outside the village, the ground was soft, making the footprints even clearer, but the thick fog spread everywhere, obscuring all of it.
Rustle, rustle… rustle, rustle…
"Captain, did you hear something?" a startled, uncertain voice came from beneath one of the cloaks.
"Stop!" the middle-aged captain barked sharply, and the team halted at once.
Rustle, rustle…
The middle-aged captain felt his scalp prickle. He spun around abruptly, scanning his surroundings, yet those faint sounds vanished just as suddenly.
The unease in his heart grew stronger.
At some point, the fog had thickened even more, turning everything a dull gray where nothing could be seen clearly.
"Could it be the ground settling after the rain?" one team member guessed.
That sentence exploded in the middle-aged captain's mind like a thunderclap. His pupils shrank as he shouted urgently, "Underground—move, now!"
Before his words had even finished, he drove power into his legs and shot forward. The invisibility effect dissipated for the most part, revealing a vague, blurred figure.
After running only a few meters, his movement came to an abrupt halt. He stared blankly at what lay ahead, his face turning ashen.
"Captain, you—"
The dark, wiry Ranger followed close behind, but as his gaze swept across the night shrouded in fog, he instantly found himself unable to speak.
All around them, dense mist enveloped the area. Things kept breaking through the soil and crawling out, swaying as they surrounded them—shadows everywhere, no one knew how many.
Bleached bones gleamed starkly, the stench of decay filled the air. It was as if they had fallen in an instant into the Shadowfell, despair spreading like the fog itself.
A bone-chilling cold seeped through the middle-aged captain's body as he murmured, "Undead…"
The dark, wiry Ranger let out a despairing roar, "Where are the sentries? Why didn't they report—"
The question was foolish. The scouts sent ahead had long since vanished into the mist.
Only by venting could he feel that his body still belonged to him, rather than being ruled by despair.
He turned his head to look at the captain, his heart filled with regret. The captain's instincts had been right—there was indeed something very wrong here.
The other team members had hollow looks in their eyes. They only drew their weapons instinctively, staring blankly at their surroundings.
"Isn't that the bodies we buried?" the Black Dragonborn said, pointing forward with a trembling finger.
The middle-aged captain followed the direction of his pointing and saw a group of zombies covered head to toe in bloodstains swaying as they closed in. They were wearing tattered refugee clothes, and there were no signs of decay on their bodies.
Judging by their appearance, they were shockingly the refugee corpses the team had dealt with over the past few days.
"We've actually been living in someone else's lair this whole time," the Black Dragonborn murmured.
"Calm down!" the middle-aged captain roared. "Do you still want to live?!"
He kicked at them one by one, forcibly rousing the team's fighting spirit. "Get a grip, take up your weapons, assault formation…"
Hearing the orders, everyone obeyed instinctively, a faint spark of hope rising in their hearts.
With a sharp clang, the middle-aged captain drew his longsword and pointed it forward. "Everyone, follow my command. Break through toward that camp—charge!"
"Kill—"
Barely more than a dozen people, yet they stabbed into the undead horde like a sharp blade, advancing with unstoppable momentum and quickly pushing forward more than a hundred meters.
But the undead that had just crawled out soon reacted. They rapidly converged toward the humans, surrounding them on all sides.
The squad was like it had sunk into a mire, unable to advance or retreat.
...
In his sleep, a powerful sense of unease surged up in his heart.
Anser jolted awake. The tent was pitch-black, and it was quiet outside as well. Everything seemed normal.
Click. The pocket watch sprang open, and on the faintly glowing dial, the hour hand had just passed two o'clock.
"This unease…"
He quietly got up, put on his shoes, picked up his staff, and had just pulled open the tent flap when a wave of damp fog rushed toward him, carrying a faint stench.
"Where is this smell coming from?"
He closed the tent again and stood up to scan the surroundings.
Soft snoring came from Bratt's tent. Not far away, a large bird was perched on a withered tree stump, and beside it sat a human silhouette.
Nornoth slept standing close against the tent. Hearing the movement, it padded over in small steps, its big head rubbing into his chest and nearly knocking him over.
Finn came over carrying a lamp. When he saw the grave look on Anser's face, he froze for a moment. "What's wrong?"
"Something's not right," Anser said uneasily, unable to put his finger on it. "This fog—when did it get this heavy?"
"Probably… before dawn," Finn replied, not very sure.
"Get Gray Hawk up there to take a look, immediately." Anser patted him on the arm.
After receiving Finn's order, Gray Hawk let out an irritated cry, but still beat its wings and flew up into the air, circling low around the area several times.
"There's nothing," Finn said, shaking his head at Anser.
"No, no, no…" Anser murmured.
That uncomfortable feeling surged up again. His chest felt tight, yet he could not pinpoint the source.
His gaze drifted to the staff in his hand, and his heart jolted. A word slipped out of his mouth: "Magic Power!"
There was something wrong with the magic power environment here, very subtly so. His magic power control had sensed the abnormality, yet could not see through to the root of the problem.
"Go pack things up."
Leaving those words behind, Anser swung himself onto Nornoth and spurred it eastward toward the grassy slope.
The sound of hooves shattered the stillness of the night, startling many people awake.
Just as Anser crested the slope, the holy symbol against his chest suddenly grew searing hot. Radiance spilled out through the gaps in his cloak, lighting his face clearly.
But before him was nothing but gray fog. He could see nothing at all.
He turned back at once, without the slightest hesitation.
Nornoth galloped hard, charging straight into the camp and leaving the night watch wide-eyed in shock.
"Wake everyone up. Leave immediately—now!"
Emon hurried out of his tent, bare-chested. "What happened?"
Anser said nothing. He grasped the chain at his neck and lifted it, and the holy symbol set on the diamond necklace slipped out from his cloak. The blazing radiance left everyone dazzled.
"The holy symbol!" Emon froze for a moment, then immediately reacted. "Quick, quick—wake everyone up."
He did not know what had happened, but he recognized the holy symbol of the God of Justice!
"Forget the tents, forget the supplies—put on your shoes, grab your weapons, and run…"
Emon rushed through the camp with an axe in hand. Anyone who moved too slowly got a slap as he passed, his agitation growing by the second.
Anser returned to the campsite. Finn and Bratt had already packed everything except the tents into their backpacks.
"West."
As he spoke, he tied the packs together, slung them onto the horse's back, mounted up, and rode off without waiting for Emon or the others.
Finn jogged after him. Bratt struggled internally, hesitating for several seconds, but ultimately chose to follow Anser as well.
"What's going on?"
"I don't know."
"Huh?"
People from the Stonemasons' Guild camp also trickled out, running in small groups with resentment written all over their faces, trailing far behind.
It took several more minutes before Emon and Alva emerged. They ran while constantly glancing back, but behind them there was nothing but fog—not even the sound of insects or birds.
Just then, a powerful light suddenly flared up behind them, drawing everyone's gaze.
Within the roiling fog, a searing radiance burst forth, tearing through the mist and the night sky and spreading outward for dozens of meters.
Wherever it passed, one shadow after another was knocked to the ground. The fog collapsed, and even the moonlight seemed a little clearer.
The remaining thin mist could no longer conceal what lay below. Vague outlines revealed hundreds of dark figures, the faint glimmers in their pupils—ghostly blue, sickly green, or ashen white—joining together into a single expanse, like the descent of the netherworld, making one's scalp prickle with fear.
"Undead!" Emon forced the word out through clenched teeth.
Among the undead horde only a few hundred meters from the camp, a line of indistinct figures dashed left and right, yet never managed to break out of the encirclement, falling one after another.
With the fog gone, the undead on the outer edge sensed the presence of the living. They paused for a moment, then in twos and threes began to give chase in this direction.
Everyone stood frozen for an instant, then turned and ran, using every ounce of strength they had left, with not a trace of their earlier resentment remaining.
"This really has nothing to do with me. Even if I hadn't come, they would have run into all this anyway."
Anser had a mount and was not particularly panicked.
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