-Vol 6: Dusk Of An Era-

-Outbreak(5)-

“That’s what I should be asking, Cosmic Criminal!” to Kenshin’s accusations, the bone fairy snorted disdainfully and chose to remain silent. That’s all she could do anyway, neither she knows about these weird things, not she can refute him of the accusations on her. A wise person always knows when to stay silent and when to speak up.

“Don’t call me that, also, answer me… how can you summon intelligent zombies?” Tar’el masterfully avoided the topic and even changed it swiftly. Kenshin could only give her a look, before shaking his head “secret.”

“Lies, it must have involved some secret procedure which you don’t want to reveal, right? I may look like this, but I am undead too, you know, things like zombies directly come under my field of expertise.”

“What do you mean you look like that? you look perfectly like an undead; in fact, you look so perfect that even a blind person would recognize you perfectly at first glance.” Kenshin continued to observe the thing before sighing out, he found nothing on this.

[Bleep!!]

“What is that sound?” Tar’el asked, confused.

The communicator in his pocket started to beep loudly, it was something given to him by the DCB when he left for this island. It had two functions, one to send distress signals in time of danger to any nearby hunters and two he can also receive distress signals from nearby hunters.

“Heh! It's such a convenient item!” after hearing the explanation from Kenshin, she exclaimed.

“Don’t you have things like this in your world too?” Kenshin asked in honest curiosity.

“NO, we didn’t need anything like this. Back then, when I was a living fairy, we didn’t need to kill monsters to grow strong. It came naturally to us by breathing in the magic in the air. We didn’t have things like war or quarrel and live our life peacefully. After I became undead, we didn’t need such things as we weren’t afraid of death.” As she explained, Tar’el sounded pretty depressed. She seemed to miss her home.

“That’s a very wonderful place to live in… no war, no killing… must have been a very peaceful place, I guess.” Kenshin remarked, feeling a sense of longing to such a world. No sane human would ever come to like the violence of war and the pain that comes after.

“It was a nice place to live in until some people cast their greed upon us… sigh.”

“Anyway, let’s go and see who it is that calling for help. By the way, can you turn yourself invisible to others?” Kenshin tactfully changed the subject and ran towards where the signal was coming from. After a few twists and turns, and miraculously not coming into contact with any undead monsters despite its being a land filled with undead monsters, he arrived at a post-war like zone. The ground had black trenches, slash, and holes could be seen everywhere. Broken parts of armors or weapons could be seen on the ground.

“I am basically the spirit of your sword now, so only you can hear and see me, period. And what is this, a war zone?” Tar’el quipped, but Kenshin was busy scanning with his map. He quickly found the one who might have sent the signal, it was a neutral person who was hiding beneath the rock to the left of him. Going there, he asked, “Are you the one who sent that signal?”

“Thank god someone approached!!” it was a pretty young voice, making Kenshin guess the age of the person might be under 25. A young man appeared from beneath the huge rock, he had dug a hole and hid there before using the rock to cover it. Pretty neat trick, Kenshin exclaimed.

“Y, yes. I am the one who sent out that signal. My name is Isamu, a hunter from the north of Tsukuba.” Although shaky, the young men till introduced himself according to courtesy. Nodding his head, Kenshin reciprocated, “I am Kenshin, from Mito. So what happened here?”

“I, I don’t know. After we killed a monster, this thing wrapped in a red cloth appeared. A teammate touched it and transformed into a d, devilish figure and started killing everyone in sight. I don’t know why, but it suddenly runs off, leaving me alive. I was hiding there, sending SOS since then.” Isamu stuttered.

“Wait, what?” Kenshin showed an expression that he didn’t get what Isamu was saying, “what do you mean by a thing appeared in red cloth after killing a monster? is it like a drop or something?”

“Y, yes. After the monster dropped dead, this thing appeared with a bunch of gold coins and a ranked item. We are supposed to distribute them according to the contribution, but suddenly one of our members turned into that thing and… and…”

“Oi, bone fairy, do you know what’s happening?” as an old entity, Kenshin instinctively asked her, but the later's reply made him sigh in disappointment.

“No! No idea what’s happening. Also, items appearing after killing a monster is the first time for me. During my time, there was no such thing. We have to make our own weapon with the remains of the thing we killed. It was very hectic; I told ya. People who can use the remains of truly strong monsters to craft equally powerful weapons were pretty rare and far in between.”

“Sigh!, it's my fault for asking an old-timer… eh! Wait, it wasn’t there during your time?”

“No, we have to kill the monster and feats on its flesh or drink potions out of their blood to level up. Of course, training day and night also helped. In fact, most of us who were bound here didn’t stress that much on levels, what we care about is our strength.”

“I see, compared to that time, I think things changed a lot… though who made the changes?”

“That too, I don’t know.” The bone fairy shook her head negatively.

“Hello? Kenshin? What are you doing, spacing out like that?” Isamu shook his hand in front of Kenshin’s eyes, seeing him spacing out like that suddenly.

“Hmm, ah, don’t mind me. I was just checking out the perimeter. It seems those things are no longer here, and there are also no survivors.” Kenshin found a very viable excuse. Well, although he was talking with Tar’el, he was still using his maps to scan out every nook and cranny of everything surrounding him.

“I see, so, do you know any safe place for now… these guys are damn terrifying. They are immune to all kind of attacks…” as Isamu was freaking out, Kenshin pointed out something calmly, “They aren’t immune to all kinds, only physical attacks. If you have an elemental or pure energy type skill or magic skills, then those guys would take severe damage from it. It's not hard to kill them if you fight using those.”

{says the one who used zombies to fight while deep below the ground, that’s hypocritic and cowardly.} to Tar’el’s snarky remark, Kenshin’s response was just a shrug of his shoulder. He didn’t explain as he felt there was no need for one. In a fight between monster and hunter, what matters were surviving, everything else comes later.

“Eh! Magic skill? But the only skills I possess are sword skills and stamina based skills, I don’t have a magic skill.”

“No prob, you can use your WIL and Intent to deal extra damage too.” Giving him a thumbs up, Kenshin strode towards the place where he had seen Hack and Satoru surrounded by a group of red dots, clearly hostile targets, though he wasn’t sure if they are monsters or these hunters who had turned into greasy things.

“Hey, where are you going?” Isamu followed after Kenshin, seeing him running off, leaving him behind, “also, how did you know so much about these monsters? Have you hunted one before?”

“Yeah, I think, probably the one I hunted was your teammate who was going to kill you.”

“Seriously?”