Chapter 507: Body Bank
The landscape was gloomy from above but after touching down, it was simply downright depressing. Zero didn't even know if there was any kind of life in such a place. If it was black and grey, it was brown or red. No signs of blue or green, the colours of life that Zero liked to see most.
"I'll gather some dead wood for a campfire," Truen said. "Bob, rest up. Leave the rest to us."
Zero looked around and grimaced at the dried creek. "Truen, don't go too far! I'll get everything else we need using magic. The creek's out of the question."
The archer nodded and left Zero to decide the dinner menu. There really wasn't a need to collect dead wood for the fire as they were all capable of using light magic or had night vision. It wasn't even cold because they had temperature regulating spells on their clothes. However, he needed some sort of excuse to scout the area for possible dangers.
Walking over to the swampy lands, Truen had to hold his breath. This stank worse than the sewers and he frowned. Something wasn't right. He turned back to look at the chapel. Zero and Bob were already setting up tents and the archer couldn't understand why there would be a chapel in the middle of nowhere. The fields appeared to be used for farming a long time ago. Normally, they should have dried up and started cracking like the wasteland that stretched for miles. The creek was dry so why is there a swamp?
Weighing his options, the archer eventually sighed. His clothes had self-cleaning magic so it shouldn't be a big problem but the psychological impact of deliberately walking into a dirty pit like this and not taking at least a shower was going to scar him. With a last prayer to whichever God or Demon listening, Truen put his first food into the muck.
Unsurprisingly, the swampy goo tried to suck him in greedily without signs of stopping and Truen allowed it, trying to see if there was a limit before he touched solid land. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any kind of stopping. In fact, Truen had a feeling this swamp was deeper than it appeared. It wasn't a crop field at all.
Zero noticed that Truen was taking a while to gather wood so he left the chapel to search for Truen using the mini-map. It didn't take too long to get to where Truen was and Truen kept his word not to go too far but what Zero saw made him panic.
"Truen!" the doctor screamed loud enough for Bob to har him in the chapel. Without hesitation, Bob transformed and flew over to where his master was.
With a powerful yank from the dragon, Truen was pulled out of the swamp that he'd fallen into. Zero was checking over Truen to see if his friend was alright.
"Are you hurt? How did you fall in?"
Truen had a hard time explaining himself. No, he wasn't hurt. No, he didn't fall into it, he was walking into it.
"This swamp is strange," he told Zero once the doctor calmed down. Bob's stomach rumbled so Zero gave the dragon five pork sandwiches to munch on while they talked.
Zero looked at it and made a face. Earlier, he had been too concerned about saving Truen from getting buried alive that he failed to notice the stench. Bob didn't appear to be affected by the strong smell and Zero risked a breath to ask why he wasn't affected.
"Huh? Oh, this is the normal stench that comes from masses of dead bodies. It's a common thing in wars but not so common in peacetimes like this."
Truen blinked and Zero looked at the dragon who was on his third sandwich. They glanced at the murky swamp and Zero swallowed. Truen felt uncomfortable knowing that this was not just an ordinary swamp. If Bob was correct, this would be filled with bodies below like a body bank.
"T-this is filled with dead bodies below?" Zero stammered. "Why would anyone do that? If it still smells, they must not have rotted completely yet..."
Bob licked his fingers as he polished away the food completely. "It's common for necromancers to store bodies for future summoning. This is just a simple body bank created by a low-levelled necromancer who hasn't attained the status of a lich yet. We don't need to worry too much about it if we're only staying here for one night. That chapel smelled of dark magic, it isn't completely unused even if it is abandoned."
Hearing that, Zero felt uneasy and Truen shivered. The idea of sleeping near a pit full of dead bodies made his skin crawl. Zero looked at Truen with hopeful eyes. "Can I purify this place so that we can at least sleep knowing that we wouldn't get haunted? I might have divine possession but the thought of getting possessed still makes me uneasy."
Truen nodded. "I'll allow it, please do. I hope we don't come across something like that again before we find Misana, my heart won't be able to take it and I need a bath."
Bob laughed. "Welcome to the United Nation of the Uncanny. This isn't the worst the crazy folks here can do, as we get closer to the warzone where civil war takes place, you'd have to start getting used to seeing more interesting things. Abandoned body parts are just some of the things I heard you'd witness here. It's already become something akin to a tourist attraction according to the frequent travellers in the southern district."
Zero made a face and Truen lost his appetite as they slowly trudged back to the broken chapel. Thankfully, it wasn't going to rain tonight because Zero didn't want to have to deal with leaking from the roofs with so much to think about. Truen simply turned his back to the swamp outside and Zero retrieved the bath basin from his inventory to fill it with water so that they could 'cleanse' the uneasy feeling with a nice bath. The doctor didn't eat much either after returning from his purification ritual.
Bob slept soundly while Truen offered to keep watch and Zero set up triple layers of protective spells, including one for those who didn't belong to this plane just in case he missed a few stragglers from the mass purification spell earlier.
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