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Chapter 80: Wasteland

“What’s going on here?” I asked the Dryad as we walked. “Do you know what it might be?”

“No,” she said. “I am not home. I do not know here. Something strange, killing plants. Hurting animals. Do not know if poison or something else.”

She bent down and examined the gray dirt more closely while I turned to Erani and repeated to her what I was told.

“You know anything about that?” I asked her.

“Well, we’re getting pretty close to Kingdom’s Edge by now, right?”

“Yeah, probably gonna be at the base of the mountains within a few days. Why?”

“If we’re close to Kingdom’s Edge, then we’re also approaching the wasteland.”

“The what?”

“The wasteland. It’s the dead area that surrounds Kingdom’s Edge. When the Dragons and other powerful monsters there fight, the shockwaves of their power go out and destroy the nearby environment. Powerful Spells and other abilities have totally devastated it. I mean, hells, you know why Kingdom’s Edge is infested with Ghouls, right?”

“Yeah. Few hundred years ago, right? I don’t remember his name, but some super high-Level Wizard tried to clear out the entirety of the mountain range single-handedly. Cast some huge Spell to resurrect all the dead in the area and concript them to fight the monsters in the mountains, but he got killed pretty fast, and now the Ghouls are just wandering around and attacking everything on site.”

She nodded. “Gisharth Wyndinlost. And the Spell didn’t just resurrect the corpses as a one-time thing. Nobody knows his actual Spell path, so we have no idea what the effect exactly was, but whatever it was, it’s a continuous effect. So, even to this day, anyone who dies on the cursed soil gets revived as a Ghoul. So we’re probably on that cursed soil now, and that’s why it’s all gray and wilted.”

I looked back down at the dirt, suddenly much more suspicious of it.

“There shouldn’t be any negative effects for as long as you’re alive,” Erani laughed. “Just promise me you won’t die and eat my flesh.”

“I don’t know,” I sighed sarcastically. “Might get a certain craving. Who knows what’ll come over me. Why don’t you promise to lightly season your arm, just in case?”

“I’ll get right on that,” she rolled her eyes. “Do stay on guard, though. If we’re approaching Kingdom’s Edge, we’re bound to start seeing some shit we need to hide from.”

“Yeah,” I said and relayed all that information back to the Dryad.

“So,” she said when I was done, “Human tried to destroy natural environment that was not harming anyone, did not succeed in effort to destroy environment, left permanent scar because of failure. Am not surprised.”

Despite the content of her statement, I couldn\'t help but feel proud of the Dryad. She was becoming more and more linguistically talented as we talked – though much of that was because of Erani’s teaching and from me getting used to translating what she was saying.

“Well, did you get any crazy Dryad powers that might be able to cleanse the land, or turn the undead back into normal people?”

“...No. If Dryad get those crazy powers, another Dryad would already have done it. Stop being stupid.”

Yeah, I was still working on figuring out a way to convey jokes over our telepathic connection. Or, it could\'ve been that the Dryad knew exactly that I was trying to be humorous, and was just intentionally misunderstanding that as an excuse to insult me. I’d have to ask Erani to try telling her a joke and see how she responded to that.

But still, I did want to try and repair my relationship with the Dryad, at least a bit. She seemed to like Erani well enough, which was good, but I still didn’t want to do one little thing wrong and wake up without my head. Plus, I felt pretty shitty about what’d happened.

“Uh, hey,” I said, “sorry about my attitude toward you the past few days. I can get kinda single-minded sometimes, and I ended up viewing you in a pretty unfair way. I’ll do my best to keep that from happening in the future.”

“It is okay. You do not kill me. You are still one of the good Humans. Just a bad good Human.”

“Like, a medium Human?”

There was a pause, and then I got a new sensation from the Nymph. It wasn’t words being communicated, but… something else. It took me a moment to figure out what was happening, before I realized she was laughing. Well, not really laughing, but the telepathic equivalent. I was a bit surprised – that was how I finally got her to laugh? I was barely even trying.

“Clever! You clever! ‘Medium Human’, haha! Like middle of good and bad! Medium! Hahaha!”

…Somehow, I felt like I didn’t even get the joke that I made. It seemed like what I said ended up being much funnier in her language. Maybe it was some sort of play on words for her, or something. I was glad to make a good impression on her, but also a bit worried that I apparently didn’t even know what I was saying to her sometimes.

“Uh, hey, Arlan?” Erani asked me, looking confused.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know what a ‘medium Human’ is? And why the Dryad is calling you one?”

While we walked, I took a moment to cast Ethereal Armor and summon Dark Plate. In the past, I’d thoroughly enjoyed the benefit of the Dryad’s empathy calming the nearby wild monsters and keeping them from attacking us. But now we’d have to worry about Ghouls, which weren’t natural monsters – they wouldn’t be affected by her. So in this case, I’d rather be safe than sorry, especially when I was still waiting on Time Loop to recharge.

When I cast the Spell, the glowing Light Plate I previously had donned disappeared into sparkling mites of mist, and the new shadowy armor clanked to the ground. This one, as opposed to the constantly-glowing Light Plate, seemed to absorb all light that came near it, making it even more difficult to put on than its counterpart. Since it absorbed all the light that hit it, I could barely see its parts and straps, let alone see the places they were supposed to go. Still, I eventually figured it out.

This set was slightly heavier than Light Plate, but still completely manageable. Its other main difference was that it just felt like it covered more. The joints were tighter, there was less cloth and more metal, and, most noticeably, it was closed-faced. A visor covered my entire head, obscuring my vision partially. It had wide enough holes for me to see, of course, but still, it was jarring to have something in front of my face at all times. I found myself reaching up to scratch an itch on my cheek, only to be stopped by steel multiple times.

It was a shame that, by summoning a new type of armor, the previous type disappeared. It’d have been nice to have multiple sets of armor lying around. We’d tried it out and it seemed like Light Plate wouldn’t work on anyone other than me – Erani’s hands passed right through it when she tried to grab it and put it on – so it unfortunately wouldn’t have worked to give Erani her own set either way. But even if it only worked on me, it would’ve been nice to be able to have backups lying around in case I wanted to switch without paying any Mana.

“See, the Light Plate made you look like some holy knight,” Erani commented once I had it all on. “But with that, I feel you look more like the Demons we’re fighting than my ally. I can’t even see your face!”

“Well, unless you want me to turn into a Ghoul and eat your deliciously-seasoned arm, you’re gonna have to deal with it,” I laughed.

We continued to walk for a bit as the sun continued to set in the sky. I kept myself equipped with Dark Plate, trusting my surroundings less and less as they just became more and more dead and gray. I didn’t manage to make much more leeway with the Dryad, though – it seemed a single successful joke could only take me so far in her eyes.

I was a bit surprised that I hadn’t seen any Demons or soldiers around, at this point. Even if we’d successfully escaped from their barricade in the confusion, they still must’ve been able to keep track of our general location and direction. So why hadn’t we seen any of them? There must’ve been something going on with them.

Or they were planning something big.

It began to get dark as I pondered the many explanations for the silence of our enemies, and once the sun had just finished setting, I noticed a sound. Ahead of us came this wet snarl and series of shambling footsteps. And, just as I signaled to Erani and the Dryad to come to a stop, the source of the sound showed itself.

Stumbling out from behind a dead tree was a rotten corpse of a Human – one which walked nonetheless. The bones in its leg were completely visible, the flesh having fallen from it seemingly long ago, and the rest of its body was similarly in tatters. A few more similar-looking monsters shambled around corners with their eyes fixed on us.

It was obvious what they were. Ghouls. And it seemed they could smell us.