Knight and Wand

Chapter 355: Kingdom of the Dead

In the southern part of Usato Territory, on the border between Ruifen County and Bokuya County, outside a large abandoned old camp, hundreds of simple huts and wooden houses formed a village around the earthen camp. Thousands of Kantadar people lived in and outside the camp.

The locals call this place "Olhayden".

Some of the residents here were once refugees, criminals, or even deserters; others once fled to the mountains to escape the civil war, and now have returned to their hometowns that have been reduced to ruins, becoming homeless wanderers with nothing.

However, even though there are legends about blood-sucking monsters in the south, most of them have no intention of going north to Avim.

Recently, some people tried to leave because they were afraid of the undead in the south, but they soon returned here because there were no lords or tax collectors here.

Although life here is inevitably full of fear and hardship, there are large tracts of wasteland all around, so at least they are not unable to survive. They can save as much as they harvest. Occasionally, there are brave merchants passing through from the west on their way to the city of Avim, and they can exchange food for some daily necessities.

Initially, a group of thugs threatened the residents to hand over their property in an attempt to take control of the land and become independent lords.

But since the arrival of more than a hundred knights, a mixture of Kantadars, Orlanders, and Dinesians, the tyrannical thugs disappeared overnight.

Today, a flag with a sword-wielding griffin emblem is flying on the arrow tower of the camp.

Although these knights entered Orhaydun's camp, they did not occupy it, nor did they plunder or collect food.

Except for the occasional trade of materials and hiring of laborers after frequent returns from the south, outsiders and locals lived in peace for more than a year.

People in the border areas gradually got used to the presence of these knights. After all, thanks to them, this area was much safer than the surrounding areas.

Not long ago, they saw another army several times larger than them marching into Orhaydn from the north. The heavily armored cavalry marched into the camp in a mighty force, causing many residents to discuss and speculate whether these mighty knights were the king's army of Avim City coming to recapture lost territory. The locals, who could not recognize the griffin, even mistook the giant beast in the sky for a lion scorpion.

"This is the last living stronghold in the Usato region closest to the Roslava Territory. If you go further south, you won't see any living people anymore."

On the battlements of the camp wall, David introduced this large village to Leon.

When they first arrived, there were only a few hundred people here, but as the Crusade Knights hunted down the blood-sucking monsters that were rampant in the surrounding areas, this place attracted more and more refugees to settle here, so much so that the locals even used food to actively ask the Crusade Knights to maintain law and order here.

David had no intention of occupying or developing this settlement, but he had no way of interfering with the spontaneous movement of population in the surrounding areas, nor could he sit idly by and watch the chaos, so this delicate relationship has continued to this day.

Leon looked at the village settlement that served as a temporary frontier outpost, and in his mind he assessed the current situation in Usato Territory that he had learned about.

After the Battle of Usato, the Kantardar royal court was left with little army and wealth, and the population was mostly concentrated in the Avim region due to the civil war and the Undead War. Only a few lords were still scattered south of the river.

As for the original aristocratic rulers of the border areas close to the undead, they either died or fled.

From what David said before, there were some people who ventured back to the territory, but they disappeared without a trace within a year or so.

Later, the Crusade Knights went to investigate and found that among the local families of Kantadar who returned to the territory, except for a small number who died at the hands of the bandit gangs that emerged after the war, most of them died from assassinations by vampires.

The death of the Kantadar nobles killed by vampires was extremely miserable. According to the knights, being sucked dry of blood and turned into a mummified body was the most beautiful way to die.

This tragic situation is also the main reason for the current power vacuum in southern Usato. Most of the nobles in the two counties of Bokua and Ruifen who are still alive dare not return here rashly.

Thinking of this, Leon couldn't help but understand why the Usato nobles had been flocking to the Sobornitz Territory in the east over the past year.

Compared to the elusive blood-sucking undead, the real-life soldiers of the Jihad Alliance were obviously at least within their comprehension.

"Vampires only attack local nobles in Kantadar?" Olivia asked puzzledly.

David looked at the Golden Lion Knight and shook his head. “Not only the nobles, but also civilians have encountered many cases of vampires. However, those monsters treat civilians differently. There are roughly three situations.

First, just like the nobles who were massacred, some unfortunate ordinary people were also brutally murdered.

The second group was much luckier. They just fainted after their blood was sucked. We rescued some victims who were almost burned to death from the mob. After Master Weishan's examination, they were not transformed into vampires. Now they have settled in Orhaydon."

Hearing this, Leon looked at the wizard from Baldim County who survived the Undead War, was one of the Alliance's magic consultants, and was also a member of the Avalon School of Magic.

The old wizard in a crow feather robe nodded while holding his skull wand. He strictly followed the methods taught by the Marshal and Master Corvis to examine the physiological condition of the person being attacked, and found no signs of the undead curse.

David sighed and continued, "The third situation is that no one knows whether the person is alive or dead, and the person disappears without a trace. I guess that maybe the undead have eaten him, skin and bones, or maybe he was transformed into a vampire."

At the end of his speech, the second son of the Lord of Thorn Flowers frowned.

"Lord Leon, for those who have been transformed into vampires, is there any way to change back to their original appearance?" David asked in a deep voice, holding the battlement.

Everyone present fell silent. They certainly understood why David, who was eager to find his father, asked this question.

Leon thought about it for a long time, and then he said to everyone politely: "I want to talk to Sir David in private."

Everyone tactfully left.

When there was no one around, Leon turned to David and said:

"If Lord Elliver has really been transformed into a vampire, I have a way to get him out of that state."

When David heard this, his face was moved with excitement, but he was immediately froze in shock by Leon's next words.

"The prerequisite is that Earl Elliver must first die for real."

The Union troops did not remain in Olheim long.

The Knights of Avalon joined forces with more than one hundred Crusaders stationed in Orhaydon. After the army of nearly seven hundred people rested and reorganized, they prepared their baggage and food and were ready to set off.

Before setting off, Leon finally asked Corvis to activate the tracking rune.

When Akao sensed that the vampire who escaped that day had already fled far towards the territory of Roslava, with clear direction guidance, Leon assembled his troops and set off that day.

Although he seemed to be alone in danger, he was not too worried.

Under his command is an elite army fully armed with armor. Even if there are less than a thousand people, their combat effectiveness far exceeds that of an ordinary army of several thousand people.

What's more, he has a hundred holy war heroes and the war monster Callisto in his pocket who don't need any supplies.

With Olivia and himself leading them, Lohak, David, and other rangers, Leon was not afraid even if he faced a head-on undead army of over 10,000. He was used to marching alone into the sea of ​​undead corpses and plundering cities and strongholds. Besides, without the blessing of the Eternal Night Cloud magic, the undead were more than twice as weak, and dealing with the undead was already the specialty of the Holy War Alliance.

The Crusade Army, fully rested and equipped with horses, marched very quickly.

With the Death Claw and Corvis riding the Hippogriffs in turns for reconnaissance, the flying war beasts occupying the sky had a field of vision far exceeding that of ordinary light cavalry scouts. The entire army marched along the avenue of the Kingdom of Kantadar, non-stop strangling the wandering zombies that blocked the road.

Nearly a thousand war horses and baggage wagons passed through the southern Vogthorn County in just one day, following the direction of the rune magic and going deeper and deeper, arriving at the southern hinterland that had never been reached before.

Before nightfall, Leon looked around the terrain in the sky, estimated the marching distance, and speculated that the troops should have entered the territory of Morag County further south.

“What a pity that all the good farmland has gone to waste”

Riding on the Death Claw, Leon looked out at the land below, where zombies were wandering around like in the apocalypse.

He felt sorry for both the land in Roslava and the land in Sobonitz under the rule of the Alliance, where there were large tracts of fertile land that were uncultivated.

The population under the Alliance is too small.

If those lords who tried to return to the Sobornitz Territory were not already members of various factions, Leon would have considered allocating some land in the southern part of the alliance to them in exchange for their joining the Jihad Alliance.

However, such a naive idea is just wishful thinking. Without any common interests, it will undoubtedly cause endless troubles if all the forces with their own ulterior motives are so easily put into Sobornitz.

Leon sighed, and couldn't help but think regretfully. If only they could mass-produce the small "miner-seeker"-like structures of the ancient Helan people, and rush directly into the era of industrialized farming like a rocket.

The autonomous machines that use the high-energy crystal "Earth's core" as energy are more agile than the robots that were just starting out on Earth in the previous life. They are fully capable of performing general agricultural production work. However, it is unknown whether the energy consumption to drive them is proportional to the output value obtained from their agricultural production.
Shaking his head, Leon gave up the fantasy.

Not to mention that it is impossible to synthesize the energy crystal called "Earth Core" nowadays, the internal parts of the prospector alone have to be made by hand by dwarven technicians. Is this industrialization? Dreaming, unless the ancient Helan people left behind some artifacts like the STC construction template.

It was said that he had not heard from the ancient dwarves for a long time after the contemporary dwarf craftsmen of Steelforge took away the remnants of the ancient dwarves.

The northern kingdom of Heraen was too far away, even for me who had a flying war beast as my companion.

However, over the past year, the Dwarven Kingdom, which suffered heavy losses in the Undead War, has not sent anyone to cause trouble for Castle Avalon, which also indirectly indicates that the ancient realm gate should have been successfully reopened.
As he was sighing, he saw that there was no significant Undead cluster around and was about to order his Death Claws to return to the Crusade camp.

Suddenly, in the dusk, Leon saw a faint movement on the distant horizon in the southeast.

Becoming alert, Leon immediately called for the Death Claw to fly over.

The griffin soared and flapped its wings to accelerate, and it took more than ten minutes to reach the target airspace.

Taking advantage of the clouds to cover the ground, Leon leaned forward and looked down at the earth.

There was no deafening cry of battle from the armies of the living.

Two unprecedented armies of the undead charged at each other all over the mountains and plains, suppressing their roars.

One hundred thousand? Or two hundred thousand?

It’s not the imaginary numbers that an army of living people claims to intimidate.

Leon roughly estimated that there were actually more than 100,000 undead fighting madly on the earth.

The more I looked, the more frightened I became.

It’s not that he hadn’t seen such zombies all over the mountains during the Undead War.

But what really shocked Leon was that the undead under his feet were not just charging forward mindlessly as they had done in the past.

The neat formations and orderly attack and encirclement of the teams made their movements more flexible than the armies of the living.
When did so many intelligent high-level undead appear able to command an army of this size?

After calming himself down a little, Leon continued to observe the difference between the two seas of undead corpses.

The scale was so huge that the flags lost their meaning, but he still relied on his years of military experience to distinguish the distribution of the two opposing sides.

One side had fewer troops, only one-third of the opponent's, but was much stronger and its offensive momentum was very swift.

Cautiously descending the altitude, Leon could barely make out a hint of bright red from the hellish battle scene, different from the faint ghost fire.

Those blood-sucking undead, fighting against other armies of the dead?
After confirming that the intelligence about the Undead civil war collected by David and others was true, Leon was afraid of getting too close and alerting the winged corpses hovering low below, so he quickly urged the Death Claws to return in the direction they came from, away from the battlefield dozens of kilometers away.

Hurrying back to the temporary camp, Leon informed the army of the danger in the southeast and ordered the entire army to be on high alert at night.

The next day, the army avoided the original route far away and took a detour from the rugged fork road in the west.

With the griffins and hippogriffs taking turns to open up the field of vision, the knights were not afraid of rashly walking into an ambush or encountering the enemy unexpectedly while marching.

When they finally approached the location that Corvis had sensed, the army stopped marching and prepared for battle on the spot.

Corvis, who went to investigate, quickly drove his Hippogriff back.

"My Lord, there is a city ahead. The vampire should be in the city, but..."

The fallen Corvis pulled the reins of the Hound with a strange expression on his face.

"But what?"

"But there is a lot of smoke rising from the city. I see a lot of people walking around. There are even farmers working in the suburbs. My Lord, vampires don't seem to need to eat, right?"

A city with living people still in it, safely located in the heart of the kingdom of the dead?

Leon was stunned.

But in a flash his imagination gave him some speculation.

Vampires don't really need to eat.

But those living people might just be the vampires' "meals".
(End of this chapter)