Chapter 352

After about a quarter of an hour passed, everyone regained their senses.

Cultivating the sword means cultivating the mind. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Everyone in our group knew perfectly well how to govern their own minds. There was no way that we, who had continuously polished our minds and bodies, or the mercenaries, who always swung their weapons on the boundary of life and death, would easily give up on life.

I too had experienced governing my mind with jokes before a major undertaking many times. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Everyone laid out a few more hollow jokes and then stopped. I forcefully tore my gaze away from the sight of large and small Jiangshis gathered in swarms, standing blankly and dawdling.

Now that we were trying to devise a way to escape, it felt bleak again.

John, who had been tearing at his lips with both hands for a long time, subtly called me.

“Excuse me, Sir Ehrenhart.”

“Mm.”

I nodded my head once in a gesture allowing the question. John hesitated and hesitantly opened his mouth.

“How do you make a Jiangshi?”

“…What?”

“I just wondered how on earth they can mass-produce such things like that…”

“If I knew that, I would be a Demonic Cultist, no, a black mage.”

“…That is true.”

What I knew was how to fight a Jiangshi.

I knew that if you smashed them to pieces entirely or burned them in a fire, they couldn’t rise again, and since their movements were specialized in their lifetime methods, if you observed them carefully, dispatching them wasn’t difficult either.

But would I have had the opportunity to know about the Demonic Path’s sorcery? I completely didn’t know the method of manufacturing Jiangshis.

Stopping my solitary pondering, I placed my gaze on Marianne. Marianne, who noticed my gaze even without me asking out loud, made a groaning sound and distorted her face.

The guy, holding both sides of her short hair and cupping her chin in a pitiful shape, opened her mouth.

“I don’t know either.”

“…Uum.”

“Black magic spells or ingredients are mostly lost, you see? What I know is the answer sheet, not the formula development process.”

We hadn’t encountered a single Jiangshi since entering the Oasis’s domain. So even holding a vague unease, we didn’t worry greatly. Even if Jiangshis were lined up in rows on the path ahead of us, we were skilled enough to dispatch them without difficulty if they were around the level of an Iron Jiangshi.

However, hadn’t we already experienced the incident with the corrupted Trolls?

There is no way to win against a sheer numbers offensive. If safety on the path breaking through them wasn’t guaranteed, we couldn’t easily escape this domain.

Is it true that this place is safe?

Everyone gathered their voices saying we should first confirm if it was true that Jiangshis couldn’t barge into this Oasis’s domain. If we let our guard down and faced the enemies, there would be no greater disaster.

Just in case, we left the camels and two mercenaries at the place we were. We informed them that our group would retreat until we were barely visible, and if the worst case occurred, they should run toward the Oasis with all the luggage.

We decided so thinking that if we pleaded with the spirits at the water source in the center of the domain where the god’s power was at least the thickest, we might somehow be able to beg for our lives immediately.

The rest of the group also packed and tied four days’ worth of rations and drinking water to their waists. Thinking we didn’t know what would happen next, our nerves were sharply on edge.

We slowly approached the vicinity of the domain’s boundary.

The sound of sand grains crunching underfoot sounded exceptionally loud. It was midday without a single breath of wind. Under the scorching sun, looking more closely at the state of the Jiangshis seen more clearly, the group members clenched their jaws to stifle their sighs.

The prowling Jiangshis looked as if they hadn’t perceived that there were people on this side. Of course, even granted that Jiangshis often act as if they read presences rather than knowing by seeing a person’s shape, it was strange that they didn’t recognize us even when this number of people came within five meters.

There was another more astounding matter.

“…That, isn’t that a Troll?”

“I think that really is black magic. I can see a magic circle on the back of its neck over there.”

“Where?”

“The fourth from the left, the Troll with one ear cut off.”

There were more Jiangshis raised from monsters than Jiangshis made from humans.

Because all the Jiangshis we had faced so far were made of humans, I had thought that was all there was. Since the number of captured humans wasn’t relatively large, I thought their supply wouldn’t be immense.

Was it because they made these later that they hadn’t shown Jiangshis made from monsters until this day and time? Or were monsters first, and using corpses later?

While pondering, there was a sound of cutting through the wind. A flying dagger of a familiar shape flew straight toward the monster group. Mithril thread was wound right below the hilt. It was Hugh Benson’s.

The flying dagger bent at an elegant angle, and the Jiangshi didn’t run away. The Mithril thread wrapped around the waist of an Orc Iron Jiangshi that was relatively close. When Elwin, receiving Hugh Benson’s command, wrapped the middle part of the Mithril thread around his hand and pulled, the Iron Jiangshi was easily caught and entered inside the Oasis’s domain.

Only then did it seem to recognize us, as the guy opened its mouth wide and jumped up. As a natural sequence, Hugh Benson loaded sword energy onto the Mithril thread and severed its waist. He should have struck its neck next, but Hugh Benson didn’t swing his sword.

The Orc, with only its upper body remaining, stood still abruptly. As if its fierce behavior was a lie, it only rolled its cloudy eyes a couple of times. Everyone watched quietly without letting out a single breath.

Then the Orc crawled out of the domain. It joined the other Orc Jiangshis as if nothing happened. The halved lower body of the Jiangshi boiled right under our noses and then sank beneath the sand.

Is this the power of a god?

Elwin abruptly opened his mouth and said this and that. Hugh Benson familiarly translated.

“He says from the Oasis’s perspective, those Jiangshis… it seems those things are treated as monsters.”

“Pardon? Those things don’t have souls, do they?”

“Apparently they might.”

“…Yes?”

“You know how earlier you said something about Michael’s soul being fragmented or whatever.”

I recalled the very small fragment of memory I had regained. For some reason, I didn’t feel good. A few letters of a name, and fragments of pleasant or unpleasant memories that I had forgotten like a dream. The things the god had kept with his own hands, saying even just that much could tear the world.

Listening to Hugh Benson’s voice with my ears, I stared at Elwin’s face.

He had a calm expression as always.

“Like that, if even a very small amount of soul remains tangled and attached to that physical body, it seems the Oasis treats those guys as living things until they are completely extinguished.”

“How can that be? That’s crazy!”

“It seems certain that they aren’t under the Oasis’s jurisdiction, so he probably won’t let them into his domain, but apparently he also has no intention of killing them indiscriminately.”

“Then.”

“We have to find our own way to live.”

Still, it is a fortunate thing that at least our immediate safety was guaranteed.

When I asked Elwin if he was still hearing oracles, he said what he occasionally heard wasn’t oracles transmitted in real-time, but rather closer to the traces or remnants of the god.

My desire to strictly ask what on earth that meant was like a chimney (very strong), but since he said it required theological contemplation, I just set it aside.

Joining the mercenaries who had stayed far away, we devised a plan for our future again.

A horizontally long oval circle was drawn on the ground.

“From the easternmost part of the domain to the Felix border line, it takes 2 weeks running with full power day and night, and exactly 4 weeks assuming we move safely as usual.”

“…2 weeks?”

“Viewed as positively as possible.”

Unless using Qinggong (Lightness Skill), moving on a camel is several times faster than moving on foot. And yet, we spent a whole week crossing the third Oasis domain from north to south. Even granted that we skipped two days of that to rest, that safe zone wasn’t on the small side.

“And from here, the southernmost point where we are now, to the holy site of the Sun… Three days if we run with full power.”

We didn’t assume a normal speed. Just looking at the clusters of Jiangshis, the words to drive the camels leisurely like taking a sightseeing tour breaking through them couldn’t come out, so that was why. The tip of the flying dagger held in Hugh Benson’s hand circled around the outside of the roughly drawn oval and drew again.

“If we see a path we can break through in another direction, we won’t necessarily go towards the holy site. Even if there is a guy calling us at the holy site of the Sun, we can’t trust him enough to risk our lives.”

“What happens if all four directions are swarming with Jiangshis?”

Leon half-raised his hand and asked. Ruben provided the answer to that.

“Aren’t we promised to meet Ranunculus at the holy site of the Sun at the end of the year. If Ranunculus fails to discover us normally and the new year comes, the guy will return to Widro again… And a rescue team for our group will be dispatched immediately.”

“Right. Very fortunately, we have the Prince in our group. Since another kingdom is situated in between, they won’t be able to send very many, but they would send at least two hundred from the Knight Order. Then whether it’s Iron Jiangshis or Blood Jiangshis, it won’t be a problem.”

Then the mercenaries’ expressions brightened considerably. Marianne quickly asked.

“How much of our rations are left?”

“Uh… There’s still more than a year’s worth left. Thanks to Tedros telling us to pack generously from the beginning.”

“And since this is the Oasis’s domain, drinking water will also be resolved.”

“Then…”

“However.”

Everyone gathered their gazes at Hugh Benson’s abruptly cut off words.

“It would be better if we could deliver our words directly to Ranunculus at the holy site of the Sun. Whether requesting a rescue team or whatever, having a large-scale military force pass through another kingdom without certain information would be a huge penalty.”

“…”

“We look around, pick the best possible path, and go to the holy site. Michael, Peter, Giselle.”

“Yes.”

“Yep!”

“Let’s run a lap with me.”

We are the four fastest-footed among the group. Hugh Benson drew a line vertically once and horizontally once across the boundary of the domain drawn on the floor, assigning areas. Our goal was to confirm what scale of Jiangshis were in our assigned sectors, gauge how many Blood Jiangshis were mixed in, and then return.

The rest of the group decided to go wait at an area a day’s distance north from our current location, where Jiangshis couldn’t be seen. I felt extremely bitter and anxious inside at being separated from Ruben for the first time in a while, but it was an unavoidable matter, so I suppressed it firmly.