CHAPTER 76: BACK TO WORK

"I must say, I’m not particularly surprised that Maya used to be an assassin." Calen admitted. "I’m more shocked that Alison decided to take on a massive criminal organisation by herself."

"Right, what were you even planning to do before you met Maya?" Alfred questioned.

"I’m not even sure to be honest." Alison shrugged. "I took that mission mostly to spite Damien, and I didn’t particularly think it through."

"You wanted to go against your boss? Not really something I would expect you to do." Cassian commented.

"You’d understand if you’ve met Damien." Alfred shook his head. "I spoke to the guy only once, and he was the most insufferable piece of shit I’ve ever met."

Maya nodded in agreement.

"I asked around after becoming a guard, and it seemed like Lady Sylara was just looking for a pretext to fire him - our mission was not only helpful, but also very convinient for her."

"Interesting..." Cassian hummed. "And what that Boris guy? How come you’re the captain now?"

"Nothing dramatic like this story I’m afraid, Boris simply retired around a year ago and appointed me as his replacement."

"Maya, you said that you used sickles back then, but you wield a mace now - why the change?" Calen asked.

"I still use sickles sometimes, but I started preferring a mace when I got one as a present from Ally."

"You she gave you a weapon as a present?"

"Uh-huh, and for our first anniversary no less!" Maya giggled. "I loved it of course, but it wasn’t the most romantic of gifts."

Alison coughed in embarrassment and looked away, but Cassian spoke up in her defence:

"I’ve gotten weapon as a gift from Cal before, it’s not weird."

"Yeah Cass, but we’re not a couple, you’ve explicitly told me that you liked that dagger many times, and we were twelve - it was a completely different situation."

"...whatever."

"As fascinating as that story probably is, we have to go back." Alfred pointed out.

He was right, they ate their food during Maya’s story, and it was now late afternoon - it was time to go back to work.

"You go ahead." Alison said. "Maya and I will tell the waiter we’re done and catch up afterwards."

Once most of the group left the building she turned to her blonde companion and crossed her arms.

"Did you really have to tell them everything about that mission?"

"Of course, how else would they be able to immerse themselves in my tale? Every single detail was important."

"Not you embarrassing me, that could’ve been skipped."

"Oh come on, it’s so difficult to get you all stutter-y nowadays, you gotta let me relive those great moments."

"You can relive them in silence, in your own head." Alison rolled her eyes. "Now let’s go before they start getting suspicious."

***

Gary was already waiting for them at dig site, which was still as busy as in the morning.

"Good timing." He greeted them. "We had a bit of a hiccup, and only just finished setting everything up a few minutes ago."

"Something we should be worried about?" Alison asked.

"Nah, don’t worry." The foreman waved his hand dismissively. "Someone just didn’t properly secure one of the fatties, and it fell on one of the workers - no one was injured, but the resulting mess took a while to clean up."

He paused and became more serious.

"There’s something I must warn you about though - around half an hour ago we heard a rather loud noise from the tunnel you’ll be entering soon."

"What kind of noise?"

"Difficult to say with all the things out there, it could’ve been a monster or an explosion. Best case scenario, the tunnel partially collapsed and my people will just fix it when they reach it - worse case, some big beast found the tunnel. Either way, be careful."

Alison looked at the tunnel and her eyes glowed.

"I don’t see anything out of ordinary nearby, must have been deeper into the tunnel." She announced.

"Well, we won’t know what it was until we reach it." Calen shrugged. "Let’s go."

***

"There’s nothing here." Maya complained after ten minutes of uninterrupted walking.

Alfred frowned.

"I think you jinxed it, I can sense something moving around hundred meters in front of us."

Alison also used her aura to scan the tunnel, and squinted at what she saw.

"It’s a human...? Oh, no." She sighed. "It’s a withered."

"What stage?"

"Definitely below two, probably zero but could be also a low one."

Accustomed to the fact that over half of her companions weren’t familiar with the post invasion world, she explained what they were talking about.

The Withered, just like the undead, were separated into different tiers, but they had a few fundamental differences - for one a Withered couldn’t start higher than stage two, so the Blightborn couldn’t just create an army of superpowered corrupted undead.

Due to the fact that to kill one you had to completely destroy its body there were many unknowns about the Withered, but there were a few more subtle facts that people of Mountainfall knew:

The power of a Withered, and therefore its stage, was dependent on the amount of Blight in it’s body - since they accumulated it overtime by simply being near tainted places and creatures, every single Withered was constantly growing in strength, albeit at a very slow rate.

To distinguish between stages you should look at how deformed its body is - the further from a humanoid shape the stronger and more corrupted the creature. For example of Calen didn’t respect Koravel wishes and destroy him, he would’ve likely become a high stage two Withered.

"The high tiers are much stronger than even vampires." Alison explained. "On the bright side they’re dumb as bricks, since their intelligence doesn’t increase with their power, but you should avoid them anyway."

"You shouldn’t be too scared though, tiers above the fourth were seen only a handful of times in the five hundred years since the invasion." Maya added.

"I’ve fought a few tier threes during my battle trial." Alfred shared. "Aside from the fact that they were physically pretty strong, it wasn’t much different from fighting a humanoid pack of animals."

"Yeah, the actually problematic ones begin from fourth tier onwards, since they use Blight directly in battle." Alison confirmed.

"And you’re saying that the one in the tunnel is at most tier one?" Calen asked.

"Yes, worse case scenario it’s about as strong as a barehanded adult."

Finally they reached the Withered in question - from far off it didn’t look that strange, only once you’ve gotten closer its nature would be revealed.

It looked like a severely dehydrated person, with dark gray skin and milk white eyes - well, eye. From ine of its eyeholes a rotten flower was sprouting, covering half of the Withered’s face.

"A mid-stage one, huh." Alison mumbled.

"You said ’probably stage zero, but could be also low one’." Alfred pointed out.

"Please, there’s barely any difference." She huffed. "Besides it’s not like I can see facial deformities with just my aura sight."

"Sure, sure." Alfred chuckled. "Let’s kill that thing and find where it came from."

He prepared his sword, but Maya stopped him.

"Wait, weve been travelling with someone who can use literally the most effective weapon against the blight, but we haven’t seen it in use even once." She addressed Calen. "Care to show off?"

"Sure." He shrugged and stepped closer to the former human.

Calen summoned a small ball of fire in his palm, and without thinking hurled it at the Withered.

Whether by luck or skill, the flame hit the monster squarely in the flower on its face, which immediately started burning, the fire spreading not only outside, but also down the stem going inside of the creature.

In lest than five seconds the Withered looked like a living torch, it’s body quickly blackening as it trashed around.

But the most astonishing part was that it wasn’t making any sounds - even the regular undead grunted or growled from time to time, but here a monster was being burned alive and it didn’t produce any noise.

When the fire did it’s job and the Withered was nothing more than a blacked skeleton Calen extinguished the flame, and crushed the body into a pile of ash for good measure.

"Ok, I don’t think it’s standing back up." He announced. "Can anyone tell me why it was so creepily silent?"

"No one knows." Alison shook her head. "For some reason none of the Withered can produce sounds - and it’s not like they are under some sort of blessing that allows them to silence all sounds or something, since we can still hear their footsteps."

"I personally think Blightborn made them this way, so that they don’t have to listen to the constant groaning and moans of the undead." Alfred stated.

"Ridiculous, if anything it’s the Blight itself destroying any unnecessary organs, including vocal chords."

"Guys, your theories are cool but I think you should see this!" Isara yelled from the other from a dozen or so meters away.

She was crouched over something when they got there, but Calen couldn’t see what it was until she moved.

"We’ve found where our undead friend came from."

In the wall there was a deep circular opening, leading straight into darkness.