The group quickly fell into a routine. After the first night, things were much easier as their sleeping schedules were fully shifted around. It always went with Omia on first watch with three or four others, then they slept until evening while the ones who’d gotten early rest would burn the bodies and hunt. When she woke up, it was her job to purge the building undeath in their pyres and de-mana their food.

  Draining the mana from their food was, frankly, fucking difficult. It truly did not want to leave the bodies, and Omia was shocked that the creatures didn’t simply reanimate at the moments of their death.

  Her musings led her to wonder what the difference was between the dead creatures and the undead. Of course, the difference might be obvious to some as one of them walked around while the other didn’t, but she looked deeper than that.

  Carcass Wolves, Bone Bender Snakes, and Carrion Boars were all thicker with undead mana than any undead monster, but not a single one was reanimated by the time they reached the camp.

  Omia wanted so badly to run experiments and test at which point they’d become undead, but this really wasn’t the time to start testing things. All of her focus had to be on securing their food sources, because she was already barely keeping up with the demand.

  What she could inspect was the effect of Undeath mana on her Glimpse though. Life mana made her stronger, that was known. She thought Undeath would as well but… nothing. She noticed that over the course of the first few weeks, there was no difference in her physical abilities at all.

  It was true that it might be that her Glimpse only applied to Life mana because the undead giant she’d gotten it from only ever ate the Life mana of Death Eater grass, but she just couldn’t accept that. It had to do something because she clearly sensed her Glimpse devouring it.

  She sort of managed to get an answer one day when she was playing around with the mana from her Glimpse during one of her few breaks, and zoned out for a few moments, idly swirling it around.

  When she came back into focus, she found that it was much closer to her face than she would be comfortable with, and quickly took control of it again, pushing it away.

  Looking at it curiously, she started to idly swirl it once more, and found that it subtly nudged its way towards her head- specifically, towards her exposed flesh.

  Undeath mana was notoriously bad at penetrating any form of clothing, and she wasn’t willing to remove her armor, but she also didn’t want to press it into a vital place for fear of it being dangerous.

  ‘Ehh, the cheek isn’t a vital place’ she thought, so she broke off a tiny wisp of undeath and pressed it against the side of her face.

  Any other time she’d tried this, the mana utterly failed to break past the first layer of skin. Now, though, she found that it felt like she was pressing into a particularly dense portion of meat, in the same way that she would to purge them of their Undeath mana.

  ‘Great, I really CAN make myself poisonous now’ she thought ruefully, before genuinely thinking it over. ‘No that’s not it. It would be better to say that I’m getting better at piercing flesh with my Undeath mana. Now, I really could mimic the effects of a purge potion. Last time I tried, I wasn’t able to get past their skin, but if I can do this now, I might have some success.’

  Absorbing Life mana made her strong, Undeath mana made it easier to pierce flesh using her Glimpse mana. Did this mean there were other uses? Could she absorb water mana? How would she even go about doing that, because she’d already tried before.

  Thinking back, it wasn’t as easy as just “absorbing the mana in something,” It would be closer to say that she could absorb the excess mana in magical things. She couldn’t take the Life mana out of normal grass, but Life Grass had a lot of it, so she could easily drain it.

  Or maybe it was something else… what if she hadn’t been able to drain mana from things because she wasn’t able to properly pierce it? Maybe that’s what Undeath mana did. Perhaps it lowered the threshold for how much mana had to be in something before she could pull it out.

  The curiosity was killing her, but there wasn’t any way to test anything.

  She sighed, standing back up. Her break was over, and it was getting close to night. One more day in this hellish place, getting harder by the hour.

  * * *

  It was almost exactly a month in now, and Omia could almost feel the quaking of the people next to her. They were going to crack.

  The tide of undead were nigh unending at this point. It was a constant battle of cut, push, cut again. She slammed enemies down into the ground using the weight of her claymore, bisected weaker undead easily, and continued to cover for the cadets around her.

  She was also relying more heavily on her Undeath mana, pulling in swaths of energy from the opposing undead. She’d been pulling out mana from her Glimpse whenever she felt it was full again, so her cloud of undeath had nearly doubled in size. Same as Life mana, it seemed that Undeath mana did wonders on repairing it, and there truly was no better source of constant foreign mana than right where she was.

  She still battled off the tendrils of Undeath from the Wiltwood, and collapsed the swarm by threes and fours. When her Glimpse was full, she’d pull another wisp and keep trucking. The conversion rate between foreign mana and her own mana was atrocious, as it required her to devour around a thousand times the amount of foreign mana to make up for even the slightest wisp pulled from her Glimpse, but that wasn’t even particularly hard. Just tedious.

  If her fellow cadets heard her say that though, they would’ve felt affronted. Many were shaking, afraid and exhausted. She knew for a fact that, after today, they’d need to change something in how they were killing things. This was simply not enough.

  * * *

  As the remaining undead began to flee at first light, she heard the person next to her collapse to his knees, holding his face in his hands. She would’ve warned him off of getting gore on his face from his hands, but everyone was coated head to toe in rotting muck. Wasn’t really much of a difference at this point.

  Following their usual schedule, many people went back to their tents to sleep. A few followed what Omia had been doing, cleaning off their skin and gear using clean snow a distance from the camp.

  It was much easier now as well. As it currently was, the snow tended to be around a foot and a half deep in certain parts, so there was no struggle for getting enough to scrape off the muck. They didn’t struggle for water in general anymore really.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Some of the more patient cadets actually melted the snow to better clean their stuff now that it was more abundant, but a lot were just too tired.

  Omai herself was a “melt the snow, thoroughly clean” kind of gal, now that someone else had the idea and she’d copied it.

  Nonetheless, fifteen or so minutes later, it was Omia and some of the hardier cadets standing guard.

  First shift was no longer easy enough for her to cover alone, and they might need to ask for more soon if it got any worse.

  * * *

  Rolling out of her hammock, on guard, Omia was greeted with an odd sight. Many of the tents were squished closer to the center of the camp, with the fires, smokers, and body pyres still remaining spread out.

  Once more finding Rory, he explained “Ah, as I’m sure you’ve seen, we can’t maintain our current perimeter. I’ve pretty much taken charge at this point, and I’ve decided that we need to do the night in shifts now as well. Group one will fight for an hour, then switch with group two, so on and so forth. It should be easier on everyone by the end of the night, I think, as the undead struggle to reach us with how many there are now. We’ll just be fighting fewer and working half the time. That should also leave people with enough energy to help you and the others take up first watch which, by the way, thank you for always doing that. I know the other cadets tend to swap out occasionally, but I want to take a moment to appreciate you’ve been there every time. First watch is hardest after a long night, but you haven’t even complained!”

  She smiled. It wasn’t that hard on her with her better endurance, but it was still nice to hear some gratitude.

  After having things explained by Rory, she also went to her hammock and moved it closer to the center of the camp, a few cadets even moving their tents to give her some space. She wasn’t necessarily given preferential treatment over everyone, but she was treated something like the camp cook at this point, and you didn’t want to be hated by the cook. Her Glimpse made things a lot easier on everyone, so nobody wanted to get on her bad side and risk her not fully de-poisoning their food.

  She never would’ve done something so petty, but she also didn’t make an effort to quell the rumors that she might.

  Once her hammock was repositioned, she went about with cleansing the animals they’d caught today.

  * * *

  That night was much easier, but still not easy. The wall of bodies that continued to pour towards them still drew every bit of strength out of someone when it was their turn to fight, but they could now take breaks. Drinking water no longer had to be rushed or covered by your comrades, a quick bite of food could be taken slowly.

  More than ease of their muscles, the change in pace was a great morale boon as well. With some time to breathe, it felt less overwhelming. Not to mention how there was more wiggle room now- if someone was severely hurt, there was another cadet behind them to take their place. The formation was no longer at risk of buckling with every injury. Truly, it was an all-around improvement.

  She kept her eye on the two that’d been positioned next to her through most of this though. One of them might pull through, but the cadet that was usually to her right was downright panicked at this point. Even if he didn’t give up part of the way through, he was absolutely not going to become a second-year.

  * * *

  It was two weeks after their changed in formation that they started running into their first real difficulties. About a month and a half into the start of winter, Omia heard a call from somewhere far-off to her left.

  “UNDEAD GIANT!” an unfamiliar voice screamed.

  Glancing to where the noise came from, she saw a head peek around the trunk of a tree, an enormous hand gripping its gnarled bark.

  Most of the undead in the forest were animals, as they were the majority of corpses left behind. When a human fell then, more often than not, expeditions would be launched to retrieve the corpse. This was because undead spawned from human corpses were clever, with the barest sparks remaining of intelligence that once inhabited the host.

  It seemed that, somewhere along the way, one such body was missing. Omia saw that it had the rotting head of a normal human, stuck upon a goliath amalgamated body of different animals, skin taut and bones poking out from below.

  The juxtapose between its tiny human head and massive body made her want to gag, but she simply continued to focus on the enemies in front of her. As much as she wanted to go fight it, she couldn’t leave a hole in their defenses.

  Especially not considering the cadet next to her was frozen in fear, staring at the distant giant. Left open, she tsk’d her tongue and covered his flank as a reanimated cat tried opening his side.

  “Focus” she growled at him, causing him to snap back forward, still wide-eyed.

  Shortly thereafter, she felt a tap on her back. “Omia!” someone she recognized as a nameless second-year said, “I’m taking over for you. Rory wants you on that giant.”

  Grunting in acknowledgement, she quickly swapped out and rapidly made her way through the small camp, doing her best to not stomp tents.

  When she made it to the side she’d seen the giant on, she finally got a good look at it.

  On top of its mish-mashed body, she could see a ghastly intelligence in its smokey eyes. Even more enunciated by the fact that it wasn’t charging them.

  It simply watched. Continuing to peek out from behind the trunk, she watched as it made no move to close in upon them. She studied it, and it studied them.

  Drawing her smokey up and over her, she prepared to launch a rope of it towards the undead and pull a chunk from its aura when she saw a glint of recognition in its eyes.

  It glanced between her and the smoke, causing her eyes to widen as she realized it could actually see her mana. Before she had any chance to attack, it ducked behind the cover of the tree, and she felt its large footsteps rumble as it ran away.

  ‘It ran away??’ she thought absently to herself again.

  That wasn’t good… at all. It was clearly smart.

  ‘Just what are you planning?’ she couldn’t help but think, and it seemed Rory and Jamei were of the same opinion, both stepping up beside her.

  “That’s bad, yea?” Jamei asked neutrally.

  “Yea.” Rory answered.

  “That’s not the last time we’ll see it.” Omia quietly threw her two cents in. She didn’t want to break the morale of the first-years around her by voicing such a dreadful fact that they already knew.

  * * *

  The day after was a bit quieter than the previous, all the cadets still on edge after what they’d seen.

  There were also a few more injuries than were normal, the distraction of the giant very obviously playing a role. Omia finally got to test whether she could purge undeath from wounds as well, because Rory didn’t want to waste their potions if it wasn’t necessary.

  The Purge Potions were fast-acting emergency resources, potentially life saving. When the sun came up, Rory lined up those who’d taken nicks or scratches that needed to be purged, and Omia got to work.

  She found that it was significantly harder to pierce the skin of someone else in order to purge their systems. In theory, it was possible, but it was functionally too impractical. They’d need a few diluted drops of purge potions.

  She told Rory as much, clarifying that it might be possible in the future when her Glimpse was stronger or better at piercing skin, but right now? Not so much.

  Rory was understanding and helped the injured treat their wounds.

  * * *

  Four more days passed and the low alert felt through the camp since the giant still hadn’t fully abated, nor should it have. Aside from that though, they were doing exceptionally well for cadets.

  As night fell though, she realized that she should’ve said they were doing exceptionally well “So far.”

  In front of her, past the hordes of undead, Omia felt her heart leap into her throat as she saw the familiar fleshy hand of the humanoid giant around the tree. She opened her mouth to sound the call when a second large undead walked out from behind the tree.

  The second undead had a deer skull and massive antlers, standing on two hooved hegs with clawed animalistic hands. Through the dark holes in its eyes, she saw two white glowing balls of flaming undeath. The magical flames showed no intelligence, but pure hate.

  “ONE UNDEAD GIANT, ONE UNIQUE UNDEAD!” she screamed, preparing for the harsh battle ahead.

  It was clear that the intelligent giant was confident enough to face her now as it stepped out from behind the tree. It’d found a counter to her, most likely in the form of the unique undead.

  Her mind steadied under the pressure. If she was right, the two special undead would be striking at her specifically.

  She was ready.