By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 15 - Chapter 12

Chapter 9, Episode 21: The Manor in the Jungle

“So that’s how that happened,” Glen said, watching the mimic slime sprinting through the grass with a trail of following Undead. Now that it was noon, he’d come back for lunch and asked how my morning was.

“Unfortunately, I’d be little more than dead weight on its back,” I explained. “That mimic slime survived this long in the woods, and it can run faster without the extra weight. It’s much easier and safer this way. Besides, it draws in more Undead than I can. The humanoid Undead move as if to hunt the ostrich, and pretty much all the beast zombies fall for the luring ostrich’s power.”

“Huh. Sounds good to me. I get to enjoy my lunch in peace,” Glen said.

“We can relax since both the pitfall digging and Undead luring are being automated by the slimes.” I’d spent the extra time on cooking lunch. Yesterday’s fried snake left a little to be desired on the flavor side, so I used plenty of garlic and sandwiched it in fresh-baked bread and crispy greens, served with a side of fries. Just in case he didn’t want fried food two days in a row, I’d prepared egg sandwiches and potato salad sandwiches, but Glen had no qualms with whatever food I served him.

Just when I was about to finish my sandwich, a vision poured into my head. “Oh!”

“What is it?” Glen asked.

“The mimic slime is being chased by some living raptors. It must have accidentally lured them along with the Undead. It’s on its way here.”

“Time to work off this lunch,” Glen said. Just like that, we were ready to catch the raptors in pursuit.

“Here they come,” Glen said.

“I see them. I’m going to separate the living ones from the dead. Holy Flame Curtain.” I cast the spell just as the mimic slime darted past. A thin sheet of fire laced with Light magic draped in the air.

Frenzied by the luring ostrich’s pheromones, the pursuing horde didn’t run or go around the flame. It didn’t burn the live raptors too badly, though. I’d prioritized the size of the curtain over the heat of the flame. The zombified raptors, however, were another story. The Light in the flame damaged their legs, sending them tumbling to the ground before they burned to ash. So, only the live raptors made it through the curtain of flame. Those we could take out like we always did.

“Take that!” Glen bellowed. Charging raptors were normally a dangerous torrent that threatened to trample over their enemies, but they couldn’t have made it easier for Glen. Whirling the adamantite hammer, he knocked raptor after raptor aside.

With magic and sword, I picked off any raptor fortunate enough to avoid being crushed by Glen’s hammer. By dividing and conquering, we took out the raptors in less than a minute.

“Done and done,” Glen announced. “You’re going to leave that fire like that?”

“It should be fine with all this humidity in the air. And the fire only spread because of my magic. It won’t grow too large on its own. Even if it did, the daily downpour will extinguish it,” I said. The initial plan had been for me to do all of this alone. When I studied and prepared wide-range spells, I was careful to choose ones with minimal damage to my surroundings. “The Undead nearby disappeared more quickly than I anticipated,” I added.

“Huh? Yeah, the village was surrounded by Undead when we first got here. You think the live raptors came sniffing once the Undead dwindled?” Glen asked.

“I think so. I only told the mimic slime to run along the inside of the village’s perimeter walls. Before, I’d accounted for a minimum of a day to take out the Undead around the village. At this rate, we could start dealing with the manor,” I said.

“Sooner we get it over with, the better.”

So, we decided to sack the central manor that afternoon. When we set out to do just that, we encountered very few Undead along the way.

“Not completely gone,” Glen noted.

“No zombie beasts at all. The ones that are left are Undead that used to be villagers—noncombatants that don’t even go out to hunt.” I pointed at one of the decrepit buildings close to the manor that must have been a blacksmith’s forge. A skeleton silently clanged hammer to anvil within what had become more a pile of rubble than a house.

A zombie sat at a broken loom in another building, going through the motions of weaving thread into fabric. Even in death, they mimed their life in perpetuity.

“They never fought for a living, so they don’t attack. That’s why they never took the bait,” Glen said.

“Let’s leave the remaining Undead to the slimes. My grave slimes from the pitfall can handle the Undead, and if I leave an emperor scavenger with them, they won’t be killed by other monsters,” I said.

“If the Undead hightail it from the village, they’re not our problem,” Glen said.

We marched right up to the manor, and as expected, we didn’t meet any resistance on the way. The villagers-turned-Undead all recognized us as the enemy. Every time we got close, they scurried off towards the manor. What gave us more trouble was the state of the roads. The Undead had apparently tried to maintain them, but it was a drop in the bucket—there were piles of sandbags and metal fences in the grass that got in our way. In fact, some Undead were tripping over those structures that were probably meant to be barricades. We carried on, the grave slimes sucking in those Undead as we went.

“Hey, do you get the feeling that we’re the bad guys? Like we’re here to snatch them or something,” Glen said.

“I was thinking about that. That’s exactly what it’s like for them, I suppose. If we follow the theory that they don’t know they’re dead, they find strangers raiding their village, chasing them down, and locking them up in a slimy jailhouse,” I said, feeling a twinge of guilt as I heard the words out loud. This was no different from a monster hunt, though. And this would help their spirits move on too.

While I was explaining all that to Glen, we made it to the gate of the manor. Naturally, the manor was defended with a metal fence and heavily reinforced double gate.

“So go ahead and hit it anywhere—as hard as you can,” I said.

“You got it!” He had his hammer raised so fast that I could have sworn he didn’t even wait for me to finish my sentence. One swing, and a grading clang reverberated through the air. Glen clicked his tongue. “This crap again,” he muttered amid the clanging.

I couldn’t blame him for griping... The same blow had blown a crater into a heartwood trunk yesterday. The gate was hardly bent. What’s worse, the metal bent back into pristine shape as if I’d played a tape of it in reverse.

Then, the voices of countless lost souls cried out from within the manor, every window clattering in their cells, creating a cacophony as if the manor itself were screaming.

“Finally, we get a reaction,” I said.

“I swung to break through that damn gate,” Glen said.

After a few seconds of wailing from the manor, a deluge of armed Undead poured out of the doors. Most of them were visibly Undead like zombies and skeletons, equipped only with a simple spear or bow. Amid the horde, though, I also spotted advanced ghouls and Undead more powerful than them, as well as Undead that looked no different from a live human going by looks alone.

One of them, clad in a noble’s armor, bellowed from the head of the Undead army. “You villains! First you attack our villagers, and now you insult us by hammering our gate!”

“Come say that to my face!” Glen bellowed right back.

“I sort of expected that reaction, but I didn’t expect them to speak so clearly...” I said. I’d heard of some Undead muttering a specific word or phrase but none that could articulate this much—almost like he was still alive. If their souls were really bound to this realm, that shouldn’t have been surprising. Still, they weren’t alive. They were Undead.

“I am Baron Alice Destoria! At the behest of His Majesty the King, I led a platoon of pioneers to explore the Sea of Trees, and this is the most strategic location for a base! Consider this—attacking our base is tantamount to treason!”

“How dare you come ransacking our village?! You’ll regret this!” another Undead shouted.

“Why are you doing this?! God weeps at your barbarism!” a third said.

Those indistinguishable from humans tended to speak more clearly, but there was no cohesion to what they were saying. Rather than repeating what the monster in the manor told them to, they seemed entranced in their own world.

“Blah blah blah... What’s the call?” Glen asked.

“No changes to the plan,” I said. “Let’s throw some attacks out there until they come all the way out. Holy Flame Curtain.” My answer—a wave of flame—was blocked by Baron Destoria’s shield. Even the embers scattering from the impact seemed to burn the other Undead, but the more alive they looked, the less they were affected by the fire of Light magic. Their moans of pain triggered a volley of arrows and magic from the manor window, so I ducked behind an emperor scavenger slime.

“Hey! Keep your eyes on me!” Glen barked, running along the fence and dragging his hammer along the fence while the Undead on the other side were trying and failing to skewer him with their spears—Glen was moving too fast for them as he countered every attempted stab with the swing of his hammer. “Come on, come on, come on! Quit poking at me from your little hiding places, you cowards!”

Meanwhile, I was casting Flash Bombs from behind my little hiding place behind a slime... Oh well. I’m sticking to the plan—safety first. 

After some time of attacking the manor, the gate finally creaked open.

“Finally, they’re out of their den!” Glen shouted.

Undead flooded through the gates, but they weren’t a problem once they were beyond the gate. Glen continued mowing down Undead with his hammer as usual while the emperor scavenger slime used its enormous mass to crush swathes of them at a time, the grave slimes capturing the immobilized Undead in its wake.

After ten minutes or so, Glen approached me as he smashed the horde around him. “Hey, Ryoma. There’s your invite.”

The manor gate was left open, but no more Undead were coming out. It was the perfect opportunity for me to make my way into the manor—too perfect. “I have to go in sooner or later,” I said. “If everything goes well, I’ll be out before sunset—by noon tomorrow, latest. If I’m not out by then, consider me dead.”

“You can’t clear the house until you take care of that ungracious host, right? Leave the outside to me,” Glen offered.

Trusting Glen and the slimes to handle the Undead out here, I stepped through the open gate, then the front door. As soon as I made it into the manor, the doors slammed shut behind me and locked—like a horror movie cliché. I glanced back at the door for a moment before turning back around. When I did...

“This kind of illusion...” I said, genuinely astonished. I had stepped into a bare-boned manor—old but sturdy. The blown-out entrance hall had a grand staircase leading up to banistered hallways stretching to either side...or at least, it was supposed to.

None of that was there when I turned back around. What I saw was a sliver of smoggy sky squeezed between rows of skyscrapers. I stood on a perfectly paved asphalt road bustling with men and women in business attire who all looked exhausted. Japanese street signs and billboards fought for my attention at every glance I made.

It was a typical Japanese street where Takebayashi Ryoma had walked countless times. Part of me felt nostalgic—happy, even—to see something like this. Another part of me wished I had never seen it again.