The first city they came across after having run for more than 4 hours, was the small city of Ore-Sei'O. The small city was just barely large enough to classify as a city. As their horses padded against their cobblestone floors, they weren't greeted at the outskirts. Everything remained eerily silent.

Their horses trotted through the streets softly. It was still evening, yet not a single soul was there. The wind blew through the streets. Open windows from the metallic, rusty, houses made horrendous melodies with each breeze that went by.

Rel turned to Aren. Perhaps other cities had been like this before? The look Aren gave back confirmed the oddity of the situation.

Oreilia was also clearly disturbed by the situation. She hadn't ever ventured outside of Luxe-Sei'O, so she wasn't entirely sure what to expect. The situation was much too quiet.

"Umu...g-guys...there's a problem," Ineiru said softly.

The group didn't hear her initially, but Zephise noticed her clutching her staff tightly. "Is there a problem, Ineiru? You're quite nervous..."

The wind blew ominously. Just as she was about to voice her concern, what she feared had come to fruition. Several villagers stepped out from within their houses. Their movements were entirely slow and uncanny.

"Um...guys..I'm getting a badddd feeling about this." For whatever reason, the sight was making his skin crawl. "Those guys aren't normal."

Zephise observed them closely "Don't tell me...this is..."

Thousands of the citizens slowly walked came out of their homes. There was a ridiculous amount of people stuffed into small tiny houses. As they all flooded the streets, the group soon realized they were surrounded. There were at least several hundreds of people there.

Rel jumped off his horse along with Oreilia. They both had trouble calming their horses down. Suddenly, one of the men that were in front of them jumped forward towards Oreilia. His body lurched forward in the creepiest way possible- Limbs all distorted and head upside down as he dived.

Oreilia was too unaware at the time. Her weapon hadn't even been drawn to protect herself. The moment she noticed the man, it was too late. It was already upon her, luckily for her, Rel was already watching.

Rel instantly punched the man, shattering several teeth with his hand and sending the man sprawling back into the crowd. Several of the others fell over from the impact. "Tch. What the hell kind of movement is that?"

"Listen up guys. We don't want to have to hurt you. But don't try and test me like that again...we're here to eliminate the mages."

"Umu...Rel...none of them are listening."

The man he had just knocked over and brutally de-jawed, got back up like it was nothing. It's jaw simply snapped back into place and it joined the rest of the group in their slow advancement towards the trio.

Ineiru was now entirely sure of it. What she was witnessing was indeed- "Necromancy!" She shouted. And everyone instantly shuddered. They had a feeling it was creeping up to something along those lines. It was one of the foulest of the arcane arts.

Illegalized in all nations currently. This was an utter disrespect for the dead. Necromancy was also outlawed to be practiced or researched, so it was quite a surprise at the proficiency in which this magician did it.

How many bodies were there before them? 400? 500? The numbers could easily have been 600. A mage who could necro over 100 bodies...this did not bode well. One could only reach this level of proficiency if Baerim had turned a blind eye to the practice.

This meant the atrocities they had allowed was perhaps even worse than envisioned. The swarm of the dead began to make their move. They swiftly ran forward in odd and unnaturally positioned ways. Some ran with their arms drooping behind them and their bodies tilted backward.

Others crawled on all fours, moving frighteningly quick. Either way, they had abandoned all lessons of human movement. The wave came upon them in just 3 seconds, covering the 10-meter distance.

Rel prepared to meet them head on and fight off the horrendous wave. As he prepared, Oreilia grabbed his shoulder and pushed him out of the way, wanting all of the glory for herself.

In one swift cut, she proclaimed "Divine Art: Slash of the Myriad" with one strike, a blade of wind carried followed through with tremendous force, slicing all of the men that resided within the arc's range. With just one move, she had divided over 120 people in two.

Rel had just regained balance to see the power she possessed. He was quite thoroughly impressed. But she was not the only one to be training under Galtz. Rel had learned quite a bit of divine arts as well. Due to his body composition, he was much more potent with it early on.

"Divine Art: Normal Punch!" This was just a gag technique that Rel had affectionately named. It was just his regular punch with slight divine arts augmentation to increase the amount of force output. When he came in contact with the flesh the creature's back exploded from behind.

Fresh droplets of blood released outwards and the man was sent flying through several of the zombies that were before them. He had managed to take out 13 of them. Though notably, all of the people he hit were blown into disproportionate values.

He stomped his foot as hard as he could, bringing up a huge boulder from the ground. "Divine Art; Rockslide." With one punch he fragmented the boulder and sent tiny chunks flying outwards at the creatures. Another 20 fell.

Still completely unremarkable when compared to Oreilia's earlier devastating attack. Rel and her glared at each other.

The others watched them with complete disinterest. "What a bunch of..." Aren bit his tongue. If Rel had heard him it would mean game over.

Aren and Zephise huddled in front of the lone magician girl. She remained with a worried expression on her face. "Don't worry, Ineiru. We should be strong enough to protect against it."

"Just..please avoid getting bitten by them."

"Eh? Bitten?"

"This is necromancy utilizing inscription based magic."

"T-that's why their bodies are moving like that.."

Inscription magic is basically placing coding onto certain objects with moveable parts. The coding then gives instructions to move certain ways when activated. Amongst inscription based magic, Golems are the most popular. However... there are much darker uses.

Amongst the plethora of Inscription magic uses, there are subdivisions known as curse arts. They're used on humans to prevent certain actions, words, or even thought processes. Their rules are enforced in a manner of ways, usually through pain.

In this specific case, the magician had already mortally wounded everyone and utilized inscription magic to animate the corpses. It was a disgusting tactic to resort to.

"If they bite you, they may be able to transport this curse of written instructions into your body...you'll become a living zombie."

Zephise shuddered. "Then... You said that its inscription magic...then the user must be nearby, funneling magic into the inscriptions, right?"

"Not quite..."

One of the creatures tried to lurch forward and Zephise withdrew his relic. "Circle Star Dancer!" Both Aren and Ineiru looked unimpressed by the name he had just called out.

With a scowl, he tossed up a single chakram. They split into 7 in the sky and he immediately sent them forth. This was one of the relics used by the guards in the initial attack. It was quite useful for taking down multiple opponents.

Once thrown, they were able to be directed and controlled by the user, traveling continuously in various different paths and trajectories. Zephise had been practicing with it recently.

The chakrams zipped forward, making a high-pitched buzzing noise similar to that of a cicada. With a very accurate precision, they began cutting off the heads of all the zombies before them.

2 of the chakrams rested back beside him, floating in the air. They were kept for defensive purposes. When Zephise was training with the relic, he could only produce 5 of them. Now he had practiced to the point of utilizing 7.

Aren looked in awe, this was definitely a very nice way to use a relic.

So far everything appeared to be going very well. Rel tore through several of the zombies, crumpling them with each hit. Oreilia's high-speed blitz saw to it that several 100s were gone within just a couple seconds. She was almost as fast as Galtz himself.

When it came to raw power, she could use work, however. Aren decided to lay low and not use his relic. It was not needed. This battle was going to be over within the next 2 minutes or so.

Every one of the zombies was eventually destroyed. Rel and Oreilia accounted for much of the damage. They stood at the very edge of the group, panting and covered in blood. "huh...not bad, Knight girl. I guess you can hold your own in combat."

"Hmph. And you have much more room for improvement."

The statement visibly irked Rel and he held back the need to lunge at her. She might have been Galtz student, but he was certain one hit from his fists would topple her armor.

As they took the time to rest, something went grievously wrong. Everything was defeated yet...yet there was so much movement. Individual bodies got up without their heads. Limbs began to move at them by themselves.

Bodies that were too wrecked to stand, still managed to stand up on their broken bones. A head jumped from the ground using only its tongue and bit onto Rel's shoulder.

Luckily Oreilia was watching very carefully, for she had already placed her sword flat on Rel's shoulder just as it landed. Its teeth were stopped short of clamping onto Rel, instead, clamping onto the sharp edges of the blade.

"Be careful. It looks like it's not over." She flicked the head aside with her blade.

"Inscription magic doesn't just stop when you crush the head or deal a killing blow. These are already dead bodies.. y- you'd need to find the inscription point, or find the power source that's healing them."

They filled in space to the group rather quickly, and though they were attempting to hold their own against them, it proved to be ineffective against the smaller pieces.

Ineiru sighed. If she was by herself she could perform some AOE attacks, but something like that would harm her allies. She clutched her staff tightly and prepared to say a spell, but at that instant, Rel grunted.

"Dammit! this is aggravating! We're pulling out."

"Agreed." Oreimi nodded.

Then all of the sudden, everything stopped. The bodies completely lacked the ability to see or detect them. They began looking around frantically.

Oreilia looked entirely confused. "Huh...? Can they not see us?!"

Zephise smirked. "So that's how it works..."

"How what works? What's going on?!" Oreilia asked.

"This is Rel's relic, Ethiri. It allows him to cloak himself and his allies from view. When they are under the cloak, they can't be sensed, smelled, heard, or seen."

"Huh...fairly useful relic." she seemed pretty impressed.

"Thank you~" Rel said proudly.

"I'm talking about the relic, not you."

"Anyways, let's get out of here," Zephise added. His chakrams all floated back into one single disk and shrunk to a small bracelet sized diameter. - Which he, unsurprisingly, placed on his wrist.

"Sigh... I'd look for the magician, but we have no one in our unit with the ability to see energy." Zephise complained. "It's fine. We're getting out of here anyway, aren't we?"

Even their horses were under the effects of the Ethiri. They all mounted and began to gallop off, making sure to avoid touching any of the bodies and alerting them.

"J-just to make sure... did any of you guys..g-get bitten?" Ineiru asked quietly. They could barely hear her over the sound of their horses.

"Did you say something, Ineiru?" Rel had his hands over the back of his head, riding his horse all carefree and cool.

"None of you got bitten, right? If so, you can possibly contract the inscriptions that were set on the bodies." Zephise reiterated.

Rel's face went pale - a very hard feat for a plague child with stone-grey skin. "Ehh??? They can do that?!"

Oreilia also shuddered. "Luckily it doesn't look like any one of us got bitten."

"Aye. I don't recall any of us taking damage from the creatures."

Aren changed course up ahead of everyone.

"Oi Aren, we're we going?"

"There's a pond nearby, about 20 minutes that way. If we go to the next village looking like we do now, it will not bode well."

Oreilia just took the time to survey everyone with her eyes. It was true, they looked like the most brutish group of villains. If they were to visit any one of the villages covered in blood like this, everyone would surely flee.

They got to the pond and Rel began to wash off. Oreilia also hoped into the pond after stripping her clothes. "What's this now, so not only are you weak, but you're a peeper too? Keep your eyes over there, grey-boy."

Rel hadn't even turned around towards the girl. What vulgar creature. His eyes locked with hers as he turned around to see her in her underwear, bathing.

They stared at each other intently for over ten seconds. It was a test. So long as Rel maintains eye-contact, he can feign disinterest.

30 seconds...

Then he failed and his eyes shifted down. A rock was flung at his head. "Pervert!"

"Grr.. Just stay over on that side!"

Meanwhile, Aren and Zephise just had an expression that said 'kill me now'.

Luckily, Rel's cloak had been largely waterproof so just simply dipping it into the water had gotten rid of most of the stains.

He dressed back up and placed the cloak over his shoulders.

It was at the point when he was placing the cloak over his shoulder that he realized something harrowing... "Had that always been there?"

His hand had a huge gash that had healed a bit over their time getting to the pond, just along the knuckles. "....it can't be."

He tore off a piece of his pants and tied it around his knuckles. He didn't feel any different, so nothing bad should have happened to say at the least.

After completing their preparations, the group all mounted their horses and traveled to the next village.