Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Dark Crow Guard, Death Scene, and Living Dead
Standing on the lifeless trunk of the Tree Demon, Louis took out the Curved Saber and swiftly cut off the useful materials from the Tree Demon’s body.
"So, does this count as completing the task? It seems that once skills are mastered, these magical creatures that originally seemed difficult aren’t so hard."
Alice’s lips twitched slightly.
He definitely opened it!
Absolutely opened it!
How could a typical professional achieve such power and accuracy with a sling?
"Your muscle control ability is better than I imagined," Alice shook her head and said, "A regular professional can’t play the sling this way."
"Because it’s hard to control?"
Louis rubbed his sore muscles and asked curiously.
Alice shook her head:
"Not just that, because practicing it improperly could injure teammates."
"Moreover, when reaching the exemplar level, common professionals usually have some remote attack means."
"Under such circumstances, a weapon like the sling, which requires extensive time to train, will inevitably be phased out in the mid to late stages."
"But for you, it’s just right."
Alice was too embarrassed to mention that although she could easily defeat Louis in close combat, as a level 9 Celestial Punishment Sword, her furthest attack range might still not be as far as Louis’s.
Louis understood her implication, lifted his helmet excitedly:
"In this case, it can indeed be used as an early response method."
Pop!
Alice closed Louis’s lifted helmet again and revealed a slightly forced smile:
"You’re not strong enough yet, armor is your protection, don’t expose weaknesses lightly."
Hiss.
Luckily, she had Louis wear the full body armor early.
Otherwise, someone might see the sunlight shining on his face and see his cool demeanor bathed in a hazy glow...
Alice worried someone wouldn’t be able to resist.
"You’re right."
Just as Louis and his team were prepared to leave, Alice stretched:
"The Tree Demon is dealt with, how’s your condition?"
"I can fight all day!"
"Shall we run along the edge of the Dragonbone Prairie?"
Louis gave a thumbs up: "After all, we promised someone."
He hadn’t forgotten the promise for a meal.
Furthermore, his intuition told him that might find answers behind Grace’s father’s disappearance.
Louis looked at William: "William, they have always been around, right?"
William nodded, knowing Louis referred to the Dark Crow Guards secretly protecting him.
Alice’s eyes widened:
"Seriously, for just hunting a level 3 Tree Demon."
"With us two here and that thing in your backpack, this setup is quite enough."
"Why call more people?"
Actually, just Alice, William, and Louis’s setup was enough to fight a pureblood young dragon.
Not to mention the other "monster" in Louis’s backpack.
With such a setup, even facing a young dragon wouldn’t result in a loss!
Louis said seriously: "Even if we have a 95% chance of lightly injuring a Sapphire Dragon, there’s still a 5% chance of change, isn’t there?"
I, Louis, am a cautious player!
"Absolutely right!"
...
The carriage started again.
Along the Dragonbone Prairie’s edge, the distant sky revealed the stretch of the Burning Smoke Mountain Range.
While resting inside the carriage, Louis suddenly noticed the carriage slowing down and immediately heard Alice’s voice:
"There’s something up ahead."
Louis opened his eyes and stepped out of the carriage, seeing Alice already off the carriage, squatting under a dead tree.
As he approached, he saw a corpse torn beyond recognition, decaying with blood.
"The bite marks appear to be from some wolf-type magical creature."
Wearing leather gloves, Alice calmly examined the body and made her judgment.
"Prairie Wolf? Or Storm Demon Wolf? Near the Burning Smoke Mountains, these two wolf-type magical creatures are quite common."
As for the Dragonbone Prairie, it doesn’t have wolf packs.
The Ense Empire once killed a pureblood ancient dragon here, and the dragon’s dying blood rain fertilized the land.
This land will be shrouded in the residual power of the ancient dragon and won’t dissipate for nearly a century.
Some sensitive beasts might not even want to step onto this land.
Unless necessary, magical creatures also avoid entering here.
So they directly focused on the most likely groups of wolf-type magical creatures in the Burning Smoke Mountains.
"This outfit, is it the missing shepherd?"
Louis glanced at the shepherd attire similar to Grace’s and asked quietly.
William nodded: "It should be, but it’s strange, only bite marks without signs of feeding, scared away by something?"
Alice chimed in: "Maybe those Demon Wolves were scared off by the dragon."
Louis’s eyes flickered, directly seeing such a bloodied scene gave him a significant visual impact.
"Let’s go, not much clue, let’s continue forward."
Without finding more information, they opened the Dragonbone Prairie map, marked the approximate location of the body, and boarded the carriage, ready to leave.
The carriage creaked as it moved forward.
The afternoon light fell on the old vines and trees.
Suddenly!
That decayed and swollen corpse face, its eyes covered in dirt, squeezed from the sockets, connected only by a few bloodied tendons and nerves, moved slightly.
The body seemed to come to life and slowly moved.
Suddenly, a round pebble flew like a cannonball.
The corpse that had just moved a bit was immediately shot half a leg off.
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
A heavy footstep echoed.
In the afternoon light, an armored figure approached not quickly and not slowly from afar.
Sunlight fell on his armor, as if coating it with a layer of blood; the shadow cast by the tilted sunset dyed the gleaming armor with a cold color.
Even more noticeable was his constantly trembling hand.
Swoosh, swoosh...
The crazily spinning sling emitted an agitated crane cry.
When the "corpse" slowly raised its head!
Like a falling meteor!
A pebble wrapped in flames flew again, blasting off half the "corpse’s" head.
"What is this thing?"
Drawing near the old tree again, Louis said coldly.
William said seriously:
"It’s a living dead, a hybrid existence between the living and undead, rumored to be created when strong resentment gathers, clinging to the freshly dead.
When they rise again, they become something not quite human and not entirely undead."
Alice revealed the hidden cloak, decapitated the zombie, and laughed cruelly:
"This Dragonbone Prairie is getting more lively!"
The living dead, also called zombies, are tricky to identify without specialized methods.
Just as Louis boarded the carriage, he heard Alice assign a task.
She required him to constantly use {Hunting Senses} from the moment he got on the carriage.
The reason was that she didn’t find any remaining wolf footprints or traces of struggle at the supposed wolf-torn bloody death site.
She suspected it wasn’t the actual death site.
Even the body might not be a real corpse.
Thus... when the carriage traveled a certain distance, Louis, who had locked onto the corpse with hunting senses, sensed its movement.
At that moment, Louis shivered all over.
A terrifying thought flashed through his mind.
"No way! Grace, you’re so... lucky!"