“So, want to head back to our place or to the Farm and give the people there an idea of what the city is like right now?” Lia asked as we made our way across the fields away from town.

“We probably should give them a warning, just to be on the safe side. We might have to spend the day there, would that be okay for you?” I grumbled, not completely liking the idea. Sure, there was no real problem with staying at the farm, the underground room in which I had created Lia was perfectly suitable to spend the day but it would mean a day wasted. If we went to our place, I would be able to use the time not spent sleeping productively, experimenting with Alchemy or trying my magic without risk of collateral damage but at the farm? There, I didn’t have the various precautions and notes I had from previous experiments, making everything less efficient and more risky.

“We could just tell the people at the farm to visit. If we hurry now, we should be able to get back to our lair before sunrise, even if we drop by the farm for a word,” Lia suggested and her idea got my immediate approval.

It meant a higher risk, as we didn’t sneak across the fields, the concealment magic around us muffling any sound and hiding any trace of our passing but we were running, pushing our bodies as much as necessary. It was quite exhilarating, something I hadn’t actually done since the change. Sneaking and concealing myself had almost become second nature, simply because there could always be something dangerous lurking in a ditch or hidden behind a tree. Staying hidden had become my safety net, both in reality and within my mind. If I was hidden, nothing could hurt me. There would be no respawn if I got jumped, I lacked the physical toughness to simply endure an attack and I wasn’t yet confident enough in my magic to rely on my ability to ward off attacks from parties unknown.

Intellectual, I knew there shouldn’t be any risk in running across the fields. We had moved around them more than once, the people at the farm had hunted the beasts that roamed them, though they had been incredibly careful to only go for singular cows or smaller prey, hell, even the beasts themselves would be easier prey than Silva, Lia and I, making any actual risk minuscule. And yet, my paranoid mind was conjuring visions of the strange Ankhegs, the insectoid monsters that we had seen on Mundus, and similar beasts, ready to burst from the ground. Amusingly, my paranoid imagination didn’t limit itself to what I had seen on Mundus, it gleefully added everything I had seen or read about in fiction, from the Sandworms of Arrakis to the Morlocks and everything in between. Anything that might jump out of the ground and kill us in some instantaneous fashion, regardless of how impossible it was.

That niggling, paranoid part of my mind was almost disappointed when the worst I suffered from the run across the fields was a slight shortness of breath, not that it was stopped from conjuring images of fungus-emitting spores that were tearing my lungs apart or similar airborne troubles to blame for that impairment. Sure, that I had just run a stretch longer than anything I had done in the last month didn’t impact my paranoia at all. Intellectual, I knew that my reaction was perfectly normal, especially as I hadn’t actually invested anything into the attributes that increased my endurance. My only gains in that came from my Dragon Touched trait, which also increased my agility and thus the speed at which I ran. That, in turn, also increased the amount of stamina I consumed while running, making it more or less a zero-sum game. Alas, paranoia wasn’t reasonable. It just kept me alive, though it sometimes was a bit annoying.

When the guards around the farm, hopefully on high alert given that the entire city had turned into Undead, didn’t detect the three of us running towards their entrance gate didn’t fill me with confidence. We had made no attempt to conceal our approach, no extraneous magic to muffle our footsteps, nothing. Sure, we were coming from downwind and it was quite the breeze going, so that might mask a bit of the noise we were making but really. They should be better. They had to be.

“Yo,” Lia called out, maybe to avoid the tongue-lashing I was ready to unleash on the guards, “Just dropping by, we checked out the Undead in the city. If anyone wants to know what we found, swing by the brewery in the afternoon.”

When the guard merely let out a yelp of surprise, obviously not tracking what she was saying, I began to wonder, did I put my eggs into the wrong basket? There had to be a better place to work with, a place where the guards weren’t glorified lampposts. The guy even managed to drop the torch he was holding, so he wasn’t even a glorified lamppost, but a shitty one.

“Undead, in the city? You’ve heard about them, right?” Lia asked, speaking very, very slowly as if she was talking to a rather regrettable child.

“We’ve gone to see how dangerous they are.” she paused again as if trying to make sure that the guy was actually following. “If anyone living at the farm wants to know, they can come to visit us in the afternoon. It would be wise, as there are a lot of Undead and there’s no need to add any more to their number,” she paused once more, waiting for an acknowledgement or any reaction, really. “Do you understand what I’m saying, or did you decide to make yourself immune to zombies by ridding yourself of your brain?!” she finally snarled, much to my amusement.

To be fair, I was relatively sure that the guy hadn’t really been listening. When he dropped his torch, he had managed to set the grass at his feet on fire and had to first collect the torch and then stamp things out.

“I’ve heard yah,” another voice called out, one that I couldn’t quite place but I didn’t really care. As long as the people had an idea that we had been here, they’d know where to find us. Or, really, if they heard that somebody not living at the farm had gone to the city during the night and checked the undead situation, they should be able to conclude that it had to be us. There simply weren’t any other groups primarily operating at night, at least not to my knowledge.

“Well, then we will be on our way. Try not to get eaten by anything, you’re supposed to keep watch, are you not?” she called back and both of us turned around, to continue on our way. I couldn’t quite hide a snort at the interaction, though I wasn’t quite sure why it amused me so much. The guards were, quite frankly, a danger to the people and yet, I didn’t really care. There were dangers out there, I had seen the racoons, or rather, I hadn’t seen them since rescuing the army of dog. I knew they had been sneaky buggers before mounting their hogs and I had no illusions that they couldn’t sneak with the best of them. If just a few of them tried to get on the farm, they would be able to cause a rather gruesome bloodbath, which would devalue my investment in the people here.

Maybe I should look into wardings and alarm spells once more, there might be something I could set up, or at least something the spellcasters could set up under my guidance. Something that would give the people a bit of a warning, if they were under attack because the guards didn’t make the cut. Not if we could sneak up on them while not even trying to sneak.

“Do you think they’ll drop by?” Lia asked after we were easily out of earshot.

“I would believe so, yes,” I nodded, “They’d probably even drop by without our visit, simply because there’ll be people who have yet to learn magic. That’s how I’d have done it, set up and get a bit of rest during the day, take tonight to fully recover from having to move, and tomorrow, try getting as much strength as possible. It’s why I wanted to head out tonight, so we could give them some information. I don’t want some weak fools to run into town and get added to the Undead. There’s already too few people left, especially people not completely under the sway of some cleric,” I grumbled, only to realise that Mrs Wu most likely had contacted the people at the YMCA - And their cleric.

Why did I have a feeling this was going to suck?