Chapter 54 - I Found the Cause

Chapter 54 : I Found the Cause

===A Certain Undead With Communication Disorder===

「~?! YOU DAMN FLASHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!!」

The female Holy Knight poked at me with the spear in her hand.

And I ended up being blown away when she thrust her spear at my chest with all her power.

「Eh? Just now…」

Don’t “Eh” me… If anyone other than me received such a thrust, they were going to turn into mincemeat, you know?

Propping myself up while covering my nether regions, I finally regained a little bit of composure thanks to her thrust just now.

Nevertheless, I got the feeling that I often found myself naked nowadays…

Since we were literally in the middle of the forest, I took the biggest chunk of my clothes that fell just now and tied that around my waist to cover my nether region.

My upper body was still naked, but… Well, I had to bear with it for now.

The female Holy Knight then apologized to me after I somehow managed to cover my nether region.

「S-Sorry… W-Well, it’s not like I wanted to see your filthy thing either.」

Stop, could you please stop referring to my nether region as if it was the vilest thing in this world?

「N-No… proble…! Be careful! More of them are coming from underground!」

「!!」

The moment I finished my sentence, the ground around us rose along with the ascending figure of the predator plants.

It seemed there was more than one of them.

「No… it might be just the spawn of a single monster!」

And the monster who gave birth to these predator plants might have numerous predation organs.

The predator plants we destroyed a while ago were only part of it.

But I wanted to know how they increased their numbers.

The surprise attack from before aside, this situation was clearly bad fo―

DOBADOBADOBA!

―Just when I was thinking about that, a shower of digestive fluid rained upon us.

Naturally, even the last of my clothes would melt if I got hit by those fluids…

「「RUN!!!」」

Unexpectedly, both of us were thinking the same thing as we retreated from that place at once.

Running away from the predator plants was easy since they were moving slowly on the ground.

We only stopped after we confirmed that we were far enough from them.

「That was dangerous…」

「And I almost get stuck with a flasher whose hobby is showing that filthy junk.」

「Please stop calling it something filthy…」

「You think it isn’t…? Haha.」

Just when I thought what’s wrong with her, the female Holy Knight suddenly started laughing.

「Aren’t you able to talk longer than you thought? No, maybe it’s better this way. You should get used to it.」

「!!!」

I couldn’t help but notice that fact too.

Sure enough, I got this feeling that I was conversing normally with the female Holy Knight since a while ago.

「I see, so that means I can have proper conversation as long as I open my heart.」

「…Stop talking like some sort of old man.」

「Am I not? I was supposed to die a really long time ago after all.」

We decided to take a short rest after that.

Since the sun had set, we decided to restart the search tomorrow morning.

If it was just me alone, I could keep going on, but…

The female Holy Knight who sat on a tree’s stump was in the middle of chewing preserved food.

「You’re not gonna eat?」

「…I’m an undead, I don’t need to eat or sleep.」

「Then how do you maintain your body? That’s clearly strange.」

Come to think of it, she was right.

Even when one part of my body vanished from an attack, it would regrow immediately. Thus, the question was where did that part come from?

After finishing her meal, the female Holy Knight laid down there.

「I’m going to take a nap…. don’t you dare escape.」

「I-I know. I’ll do something about the monsters that try to approach. Sleep with ease.」

「I see, I guess there’s no need to use magic tools that repel monsters then.」

It seemed that matter was still the same as when I was still alive. I always prepared countermeasures against monster ambushes whenever I slept outdoors.

The method when I was alive to do this was to burn a foul-smelling incense. However, they now had magic tools that accomplished the same feat.

Five minutes later, I could hear the rythmic sound of the female Holy Knight breathing. It seemed she was already asleep.

「…Don’t sleep so carelessly in front of an undead whose true nature is unknown to you…」

I unintentionally muttered upon seeing the female Holy Knight’s defenseless sleeping figure.

Well, it was not like I wanted to do something naughty to her…

Well, I had a lot of spare time until morning.

To avoid boredom, I tried to play a single-player board game in my head.

◇◇◇

===A Certain Female Holy Knight===

…It seemed he had no intention to escape.

I was convinced that he wouldn’t escape while lying down on the side of a tree.

Well, he has had a lot of chances to escape before.

And just to be sure, I pretended to sleep while looking at the situation.

Not that it was needed since if he really wanted to escape, he would have done so long ago. With his strength, there was no need to lie to me.

After all, if this guy was serious, someone like me was no different from an ant who was waiting to be squashed by a giant.

Nevertheless, it sure was strange.

Even though the other party was a detestable undead, I couldn’t find it in myself to hate him.

Even now, when I was testing him, I didn’t feel any kind of danger from him.

Naturally, I’d long since realized that ever since we entered this forest, my life was in his hands.

Having caught up to this being hailed as the world’s most dangerous undead, I confirmed that he had no intention of building a kingdom of undead.

Quite the contrary, he was actually looking for a way to purify himself.

Good grief, just where in the hell was the part that made him the great disaster-class being?

Well, his power definitely was worthy of that class, but there was actually nothing to be feared from him.

On the inside, he was nothing more than an ordinary young man who happened to gain an immense power that he never wished for.

And to think that the world was afraid of the man who was harmless to men and animals.

What a joke.

◇◇◇

===A Certain Undead With Communication Disorder===

「…The number of monsters increased again, huh.」

「Yeah. We might be close by.」

The next morning, we went even deeper into the forest to continue our search.

Since there were more and more ferocious monsters we met the deeper we went into the forest, we realized that we were already close to the source of the monster parade.

And then, we finally arrived in an open space.

「…Building?」

We arrived in an unnatural open space inside the forest.

The thing that made it feel unnatural was the building in the middle of the open space.

「Though various parts of the building are broken, by appearance, it looks new.」

The female Holy Knight muttered while looking at the partially destroyed building.

And then, while observing the open space, a few monsters suddenly appeared from the hole on the wall of the building.

They rushed at us the moment they saw our figures, but I dispatched them with one hit each.

“

「Are those monsters coming… from inside the building?」

「Most likely.」

We went into the building at once.

「It doesn’t seem to be a fortress or home either. Just what in the wo—?」

When I took a peep into the building, I saw that it had several rooms inside.

Though there were several unknown instruments lining the top of the desks, a noob like me had no idea what those instruments were for.

But looking at the female Holy Knight’s reaction, she seemed to know.

「…It looks like some sort of laboratory.」

「Laboratory?」

「Yeah, though I don’t know what kind of laboratory it is until further inspection.」

Although the room was ransacked by monsters, it didn’t seem like the source of the monsters either.

Thus, we went even deeper into the building.

And then, we arrived at the biggest place in this building.

「What… kind of place is this?」

「Is that a black… vortex?」

In there, we saw a jet-black vortex that covered almost the entire room.

It could be formed due to miasma or extremely thick mana.

「…! Monster!」

「GRUAAAAAAAAAAA!」

Just when I thought that I saw a black mist rise from the vortex, that same black mist suddenly clumped together, forming a bear-like monster.

Okay, it seemed we finally found the reason behind the abnormal monster parade.

And then, another monster formed right after the bear.

The saturated mana that could be seen with the naked eye coiled around the vortex, giving birth to one monster after another.

But I’d never heard of or seen this kind of phenomenon before.

Looking at the female Holy Knight’s dumbfounded face, I guess this was also her first time seeing that kind of vortex.

「A-Anyhow, destroying that vortex should be enough to stop the abnormal monster parade…!」

The female Holy Knight readied her spear after she snapped back from her trance a moment ago.

And then, the moment the appearance of monsters was interrupted, she went into the center of the vortex.

「HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!」

And then, she stabbed the tip of her spear that shone with holy light right into the center of the vortex.

…Did we do it?

===

TN: FLAG?