Marc was nervous as the zombies approached. It was a lot of uncomfortable firsts he was about to experience. First time fighting a horde of enemies, first time killing a humanoid. First time being set on fire was just an uncomfortably likely cherry on top.


    He took a step forward. The morning grew brighter by the second to reveal gray overcast. The undead limped forward without stop, their jaws slack and steps still silent. Marc''s grip on his axe tightened. It was almost time for him to charge them.


    He really didn''t want to charge them. They were too human. Killing deer was one thing, but these were people. Former people, but it felt like a line was about to be crossed. By now, they were only 20 feet away.


    Lloyd started throwing knives. They sunk into the undead flesh and allowed an ungodly stench to exit the walking corpse.


    Nico pulled the trigger on his contraption. A blast of blue fire exploded forwards. The scent of rotten flesh turned into that of burning meat, and Marc thought he was going to be sick.


    Instead he grit his teeth, and charged forward. Three of the zombies had already fallen to the burst of flame, and Marc chopped through the rotting bones of another. Each time they tried to grab Marc, Lloyd''s knives cut through fingers or wrists, letting him go free. After the fifth definitely-not-human went down, the horde''s attention was on him alone.


    His axe kept swinging, with his eyes so squinted he could barely see. The dead seemed to bring their silence with them, so he could barely hear. But the smell was enough to know they were close.


    “Brace!” Nico called. His voice muffled as if behind a thick door. Even Marc’s breathing was quieter than it should be.


    He braced, preparing to tug on the sensation of Estrange. He felt the heat wash over him, but where it should sear him just as much as the undead, instead it felt like he was much too close to a bonfire.


    He opened his eyes. Only one of the mob was still together, but it was trivial to destroy it. Not kill, they weren''t alive, and certainly not human, destroy.


    Marc took the chance, morbid curiosity taking the reins. He utilized Spectator Effect on the monster.


    SOLEMN ZOMBIE


    A zombie of low strength. Instead of mundane plagues, their bite inflicts {Silence}.


    He tapped the button to view Silence.


    [SILENCE]


    Causes muffled speech and impedes casting of most spells.


    Focus Reduced by 1.


    Silence can stack to further reduce focus and ability to speak.


    Lloyd was retrieving his daggers. All things considered, this ended far better than it could have.


    “More, behind us.” Marc wanted to scream when Nico said that. He turned, and sure enough, there were more. He scanned the horizon. In every direction, there they were. What was ten became dozens, if not over a hundred.


    “I only have 6 knives guys.” Lloyd chimed in. Against anything else, they''d be enough, or he could go in close, but the zombies proved resistant to his sneak attacks. Even Marc''s axe did little besides break their bones. No direction was safe.


    “Lloyd. Hold this.” Nico threw the Alchemists’s flamethrower at the rogue barely able to maneuver the bulky machine. He began casting a spell on the earth around them.


    “Guess that''s one benefit of this.” Marc said, “plenty of time to cast while they limp on over.” he wasn''t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry at the situation.


    Nico’s spell took a full 40 seconds. The Horde was over a minute away still, but there were ever more ranks behind them. Marc was considering climbing another tree, but the last time he only got down alive through luck and Barry being a healer. At the end of the incantation, a moat formed around their campsite, and the trio was lifted another 4 feet into the air, with the cart and horses an extra few feet as well.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    They had a trench and the high ground. From his vantage point, Marc looked over the horde. It ended, but he couldn''t count the number they had to destroy.


    “Can''t do much more. Lloyd, my Dragonmaw?” He got the contraption back. “My bag. Find the bottle that looks like it has Milk. Not the green one. Then, the censer. ”


    Lloyd nodded, diving to the pack and beginning to rifle through everything.


    “Marc?” He looked to the Elf, “Does your bag have anything useful?” He took a second to think, remembering the two items he''d never used.


    “Uh, A Potion of Steps that heals, a dagger, and whatever an attunement lozenge is.” Marc opened his bag to find them, and the zombies were beginning to fall into the moat.


    He pulled out a plastic soda bottle reading Potion of Past Steps that looked suspiciously like Pepsi, a long fixed dagger that glowed in the dark of the bag, and a handful of what looked to be small jawbreakers wrapped in plastic.


    “Your world''s weird.” Lloyd said, eyeing the dagger.


    “Well deal without” Nico said. He pulled the trigger of his Dragonmaw, and a group of them went down. Marc heard him mutter something about needing more fire, but went to the other side of the platform they were on. He started swinging at anything that attempted to mantle over the top.


    The undead horde gathered up for minutes on end. Marc couldn''t fully destroy them with his axe, nor Lloyd with his knives. Only Nico''s fire could make them fully stop, or Marc breaking their bones so badly they couldn''t move. The moat was getting more and more full of newly re-dead corpses.


    After a short time searching, the rogue did find the right things and told Nico. It was an Anti-Undead poison of some kind, and the censer would mist it around.


    “Do I need to chant anything?” Lloyd asked. The poison came out like a white mist, and sunk to the ground far heavier than air.


    “No. Just swing it over them”.


    Whenever the poison touched their skin, it made a popping sound, and the few Marc had fully broken laid still at last.


    Minutes dragged on. Nico ran out of fuel after 10 minutes and he started trying to cast spells, only for most of them to be neutralized by the aura of silence around them. Marc had been bitten and clawed at successfully multiple times, but his might was enough to resist getting dragged into the pile


    After 20 minutes, the poison ran out, and Marc was the only one able to quickly damage the horde. The majority of it was gone, but there were still dozens remaining, now with a convenient ramp up to them.


    As he smashed a zombie''s head in, he got a notification.


    LEVEL UP!


    Level 10


    RSL - 30 + 1


    FCS - 24 + 2


    MGT - 21 + 1


    FNS - 14 + 0


    LCK - 6 + 0


    He dismissed it and kept swinging. His hesitation from before was suppressed through the onslaught.


    Lloyd was using his daggers and had lost the throwing knives in the pile. Nico had grabbed Marc''s dagger and was tying to make some kind of potion from the sap of trees and some of the ink they were transporting, all while still driving off zombies. Both of them had been bitten, clawed at, and would likely be ripped apart were it not for Marc shoulder checking their assailant.


    Without a way to cleanly destroy them, the opposing numbers didn''t actually decrease. They just got more parts cut off.


    Thirty minutes in and their numbers weren''t decreasing. Exhaustion had nearly overwhelmed Lloyd as much as the horde. Nico had been flagging for minutes.


    A bird called out overhead, loud enough to overwhelm the aura of silence. Marc and Nico looked up to see it. A vulture was circling overhead. It was almost painful to hear after the quiet they''d experienced so far.


    Marc was getting desperate. Cutting off their limbs gave a few seconds as they put them back on. Breaking bones stuck, but the undead didn''t need them to keep moving, able to just muscle themselves through. It took massive effort for Marc to destroy one, effectively needing to destroy the head and remove the hands from the body so it couldn''t repair itself.


    Marc heard the telltale sound of a soda bottle being opened, and turned to see Nico hesitate before chugging the still foaming potion. He stopped for a second, seemingly gagging, before continuing. As he drank, all of his wounds reversed in order. Climbing up to the cart, Nico lifted Lloyd up as well.


    “Marc, keep them down there.” He said, voice piercing through the silence. The potion had healed him of Silence, somehow.


    He began chanting as Marc tried to make them focus on him. They seemed to be drawn to the noise more than anything, but Marc pushing them together with the haft of his axe was enough encouragement to get them looking his way.


    As they tried to climb, Lloyd would cut their fingers off to go tumbling down, where Marc would kick them away. It took a full minute of last ditch defense, when Nico glowed with magic.


    A brown mist rose from the earth, and Marc scrambled up the ledge to the cart, assisted by Lloyd. The zombies moved slower and slower, before their body parts started falling off, becoming one with the mud.


    Hearing the flap of wings, Marc looked up. The vulture flew away to the west, eventually coming to land on the arm of a figure in pure white against the brown and green. With its hood drawn, it looked to the three, before turning and disappearing into the woods as snow began to fall.