Chapter 80: Aftermath [Swamp Mansion]

  Alabaster

  The sight that greeted Alley outside the clouded glass walls of the building made his breath catch in his throat. The courtyard had been transformed from a pleasant garden into the aftermath of a battlefield.

  There were the remains of Undead creatures everywhere, he couldn’t call them bodies exactly as not a one was intact enough to tell what it had been before its destruction. And that destruction had been comprehensive and spread all around. He could see bones embedded in stone walls, he could see a pile of dust he thought maybe had once been the bone golem from the metal parts scattered about it. He could see strange man-like vine creatures he didn’t recognize that had seemingly been strangled with their own appendages.

  While he still wasn’t sure what he was looking at in terms of the dead monsters, it was clear to Alley that this hadn’t been something so simple as the Undead had fallen to pieces or even exploded when he had slain Clataire. No the violence in the courtyard was visceral, personal, more than a little horrific. Maybe he had robbed the Undead of their ressurective abilities when he had slain the lady of the manor, or maybe the destruction that had been wrought here was so total that even the power of the Undeath Resonance had been insufficient to rebuild them.

  Whatever had happened out here Darius couldn’t have done this, as much as Alley respected his friend’s abilities he felt he had a pretty good understanding of their limits as well. This was well beyond what Darius even using his most powerful Cards should have been capable of, besides it didn’t have the flavor of Darius to it either. The hunter was a bit of a goofball sure, but when it came to fighting or hunting he had a sort of clinical nature to his actions and attacks. Not at all like the savagery that had been committed here.

  It made Alley’s worry for his friend’s safety only increase. It seemed to him that the only thing that made sense was that some powerful and aggressive third party that held some kind of grudge against the Undead here had swept in during Darius’ fight against what had to be a pretty sizable number of Undead, a small army of them really.

  It only took a few seconds to actually find Darius. At the center of the courtyard stood a newly crafted mound of bodies. If Alley was any judge at least twenty human-sized monsters had been piled atop each other until the mound stood almost six feet tall. Sitting on that mound with his spear sticking out of it, blade upwards and his chin cupped in his hand was Darius.

  For a second Alley couldn’t believe how cool he thought his friend looked, all nonchalant atop an enormous pile of his slain foes. That was until he realized the boy was both alive and asleep. He was even snoring, and when his head shifted slightly it revealed he had drooled all over himself while sleeping.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Okay.” Said Alley, really more to himself than anything. “What the fuck happened out here?”

  His initial thought had been some third party had done this, but seeing Darius there casually sleeping atop his slain foes had made him reconsider. Darius wasn’t the sort to take credit for other people’s achievements, in fact, it was something his hunter culture saw as morally reprehensible. So…had Darius somehow done this?

  Picking his way across the destroyed garden, Alley began to prod his sleeping friend in the arm and face until the other boy slowly began to respond. The fact that he didn’t come awake and leap into a defensive position told Alley his friend was absolutely exhausted. He could relate, though he suspected whatever had gone down out here, had been even worse than fighting a Challenge and then being flooded with unwanted Resonance.

  That had been a strange experience, Alley’s inside still ached like his whole body had a stitch, but he had been forcibly accelerated in his rank. That was a good outcome to be sure, but had he been someone without Undeath Resonance inside him the tree woman likely wouldn’t have been able to launch that attack at all.

  He still didn’t understand where the excess Resonance had been drained to, nor what had happened out here, but there would be time to research it. He was confident Darius had nothing more than superficial wounds especially when the redheaded boy muttered “Fuck off and let me sleep, Alley.” Without so much as cracking an eyelid.

  This whole mansion escapade was going to require a lot of thought, and research, and he was going to loot the place like mad too. Alley didn’t consider himself a greedy person, but even he could feel a touch of the money madness hitting him when he considered the sheer amount of rare Resonance Crystals the pair of boys were now sole owners of.

  Then there were the books and scrolls, and laboratories. Alley could already picture himself copying down passages, making sketches, and collecting books for days and days. As much as he felt regret for what he had done to Lady Astley he wasn’t sure he’d had a choice in the matter, and now…now he could learn from her works with impunity, granted probably not as effectively as if she had been alive to help him understand things.

  Speaking of understanding things, now that he was certain Darius wasn’t dead or at risk of death he opted to let his friend rest and go have some much-needed words with the little ghost girl that had potentially been haunting his footsteps since the day Soren Creed had destroyed Valeton.

  Setting his shoulders the dark-haired boy turned and began stalking back towards the weird glass building. He sincerely hoped the girl Denderra would be forthcoming about herself, the linked item she had been manipulating, and most importantly the castle and figure he had encountered underneath Cursed Isle.

  He wasn’t precisely hopeful as he stepped through the shattered remains of the wall that Darius and a bunch of the Undead had been hurled through. Alley was almost a little surprised to see

  that the ghost hadn’t found some way to escape. But there she stood, arms crossed, scruff and hair grasped by the huge bone fingers, and the most annoyed pout he had ever seen on her face.

  “Like I said, you and I need to have a long conversation.”

  End of Part 1

  And thats the end of the first book. Don't worry the schedule will remain the same.

  A.M.L.B about an ancient cultivation warlord reincarnated into a cyberpunk LITRPG world.