"He got away" Robert moved some of the still bubbling and writhing rot to reveal more of the filthy bones beneath.
"Huh, he looks pretty dead to me" Cassi chimed in, kicking a larger mass of decay, which seemed to be moving on its own.
"Yeah, we even felt the XP and all that business" Lynn backed her friend up.
Zola stepped forward, the bright moon up ahead illuminating everything clearly in spite of the trees, the rain of black blood had certainly reduced the amount of leaves all over the area.
"Oh, the head is missing" he quickly mentioned after scanning the remains, that was a rather suspicious part of the skeleton to be missing.
"Between the bones, whatever that crap it spewed out before blowing up and the freaking stench permeating the air, it seems pretty obvious that our murderer was an undead in disguise" Eppie ran her hands through her hair, getting rid of some of the decay that had gotten stuck.
"That would certainly explain why this guy never flinched at all, though, with that sort of behaviour he has shown, wouldn't that make him a superior undead? Have any of you actually met one of those walking corpses?" Zola spoke up again, only Robert had ever even seen an undead before today, and they had all been mindless ones, not even natural undeads, they had all been minions for a necromancer.
This one definitely seemed like the real deal.
"Undeads are supposed to be rare, the most common that have actual intelligence are vampires and the sort…" the captain was feeling anxious, one other thing he knew was that undeads didn't typically more by themselves, skeletons and zombies generally formed in groups, since the amount of ambient death force needed for corpses to become undead was quite large.
Everyone remained silent for a while as the very real possibilities that this was the early sign of a horde dawned upon them.
Although the records and knowledge of the last war against death had been mostly lost, the living still remembered one term associated with them.
Travelling in groups, they stampeded over villages, forests, everywhere where there was life, converting the people, beasts and monsters into moving carcasses, growing and growing in numbers to the point where their sheer strength as a group became simply overwhelming, necessitating war-like efforts to clear.
Not to mention that such a large mass of undeads, packed up together would lead to them destroying the life in the air wherever they went, replacing it with death and leading to the growth of a real bizarre ecosystem.
The place a horde was destroyed would become an undead breeding ground if not properly cleared up, one of the most devastating things a horde could create was death miasma.
"I'll go report to the mayor immediately-" Robert was about to leave immediately.
"Hold on, are we not gonna, like, search for this guy's head? He couldn't have launched it that far" Cassi interrupted him.
Sure, hordes were dangerous, but this singular thing was also dangerous in its own right, it couldn't be allowed to get away from here.
"I fear the skull was launched over there" Eppie pointed toward the cliff.
The ravine here was simply enormous, it had used to be a hotspot for adventurer missions when there were still crystals and minerals to be harvested near the surface, but it had all dried up, not to mention, depending on how strongly the undead had launched itself, it could have sent its skull into the deeper chasm, which was mostly unexplored territory.
"Hold on a second, why is everyone acting like it's not dea- I mean, double dead? Anyways, we got the XP is what I mean, that is confirmation" Lynn expressed herself, Cassi nodding her head in approval of the question.
Eppie had no actual clue why Robert didn't believe this, so she just turned and looked at him.
"It has already tricked me this way" he simply responded.
In truth, he didn't know exactly what was at play here, he could only suppose that it was the effect of a skill or technique perhaps.
"Now I'll be going" he ran off, for if a horde had really formed somewhere, they would need to call the specialists immediately.
The professionals that made the destruction of the dead their all time job, the death hunters.
The adventurers were left by themselves, with what Loimos had left behind with his escape.
Zola turned around to look for his brother, who hadn't participated in the talk at all for some reason.
'Huh' he remained in place as he bore witness to a most interesting scene.
Saul hadn't spoken up because he was busy with important business, namely, flirting with the fourth member of the other team there, Tahnee.
'In any situation…' right after a literal mass of rot and pungent blood had blown up in their faces didn't seem like the most optimal moment to approach a woman, but Saul was definitely doing it.
He wasn't even fazed by the fact that Tahnee never said a word and just made small sounds at most.
Waiting for his brother to finish the conversation, he then pulled him a distance away as they began making their way back.
"So, I didn't know you were into women taller and bigger than you"
"Oi, she is only, like half a head taller than me-"
"A head taller alright, and what's the problem?" Saul coughed a bit.
"Nothing, I just didn't realise you were the submissive sort" Zola had to stop himself from dying of laughter at his own words.
"You're a real piece of shit man, just because it's the truth, it doesn't mean you have to say it!"
Saul rubbed his chin.
"But if we are playing this game, then does that mean I get to mention the time you said you wanted to marry our sister?" he snickered back.
"Hey now, I was five years old, and I was told that marriage was with a girl you liked! I didn't know any better! I just thought she was the neatest girl I knew!" Zola defended himself, his stomach turning upside down as the memories resurfaced.
The two brothers continued this back and forth all the way back, completely unconcerned.