Chapter 46: I'd Like to Try That, Too

Across the wilderness, a silver-white cadre of knights charged forward at full gallop.

Their armor gleamed with a faint, sacred radiance, and even their steeds shone with the same divine light.

These were the Knights Penitent of the Lyon Empire, an elite unit composed of high-ranking paladins. Even their celestial warhorses came from a heavenly realm by invocation of a divine ritual.

The knights had long since forsaken their birth names and were known to their comrades only by their code names.

The knight in the lead was known as Starfall. For three days and nights, he had led the Knights Penitent in a relentless charge. He was determined to reach Alkhemia as swiftly as possible.

It was the first time in the order's history that they would face a legendary undead head-on. The thought filled every knight with sleepless excitement. They could hardly wait to smite all evil in the name of the Radiant Dawn.

But the distance between nations was vast, and the Lyon Empire was not on friendly terms with its neighbors. A powerful military force like the Knights Penitent could never simply teleport within the borders of another kingdom.

Thus Starfall had been forced to take a long, winding route. Only a single canyon now stood between them and open plains. According to their intelligence, however, that canyon was home to a massive gnoll tribe.

Gnolls—twisted, cursed creatures—were born of savagery and evil. Since claiming this canyon, they had butchered countless human travelers. Starfall had already decided that he would purge the tribe, a fitting warm-up before facing a legendary undead.

Though there were at least a thousand gnolls, and the knights were exhausted after their long ride, Starfall was certain that ten of the Knights Penitent were more than enough to exterminate the horde.

But they had barely reached the canyon's edge when one of his companions called out, "Starfall, there's something concerning ahead."

Starfall narrowed his eyes to scan the terrain. He immediately saw the issue.

A thin, hazy mist drifted through the canyon.

"The lingering fumes of a Cloud of Death?"

As an undead specialist, Starfall was well-versed in necromantic spells. Cloud of Death was wide-area necromancy in which its caster conjured a poisonous cloud to engulf the target zone.

In common parlance, it was often called the City-Killer.

When cast by multiple necromancers in concert, it could blanket an entire city and wipe out thousands in minutes.

But gnolls lacked the talent for necromancy. They couldn't have cast such a spell. A necromancer must have gone through their territory and initiated a fight.

"Activate toxin wards. We're going to check out the situation."

At his command, the knights' armor flared with pale green glyphs, forming shimmering shields that would nullify almost any poison.

𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

They spurred their celestial steeds onward into the canyon.

The poisonous cloud had mostly faded and posed little danger, but when they reached the crude encampment within, all ten knights froze.

The ground was carpeted with carcasses. There were hundreds upon hundreds of gnolls, all slain in horrific ways.

Starfall dismounted and knelt to inspect them, his expression hardening.

Many had not been poisoned at all. Some were pierced through by weapons, and others torn apart by brute force. Some were half-eaten, their torsos gnawed away: an unmistakable sign to any hunter of the undead.

"Skeletons, zombies, ghouls, death knights, abominations... too many traces of high-level undead," Starfall murmured, uneasy.

The gnolls hadn't been ambushed. This was two armies clashing head-on. And the gnolls, a force numbering over a thousand, had been completely annihilated.

"We'll head deeper inside. No undead army can appear or disappear at will. There must be bones, fragments, something. A tribe this large should've had shamans, a chieftain... They couldn't have died without a fight."

He was speaking as much to reassure his men as himself.

The scene before them was too unnatural, too... precise.

As they advanced, they found only more gnoll carcasses. There were no skeleton fragments nor undead remains. Here and there, they spotted hoofprints, deep and wide.

"Death knights," Starfall realized grimly. "An entire regiment." The nightmare steeds of the dead could trample through rough terrain with ease.

Judging by the marks, the gnoll shamans had been impaled by lances before they could even start chanting.

Farther ahead, they finally found a mangled ghoul corpse, left behind only because it had been torn apart completely. Around it lay a heap of gnoll dead—and atop that heap sprawled a massive gnoll chieftain, nearly the size of a grizzly bear.

Its body was hollowed out, chest and abdomen caved in, its organs devoured. These were characteristics of a ghoul attack.

Starfall examined the body closely.

The gnoll chieftain had been run through by a death knight's lance, then tossed aside as food.

The chieftain hadn't even managed to wound his enemy: the twin blades of his massive greataxe were spotless.

The dismembered ghoul nearby, Starfall deduced, had likely been torn apart in a quarrel among its own kind over food as the undead army's only casualty.

But what struck him most was this: the Cloud of Death had been conjured after the battle. Not as a weapon, but as a way to clean up the battlefield.

"They weren't here to harvest corpses. Nor for loot," Starfall said coldly. "They were just... passing through. And these gnolls were unlucky enough to stand in their path."

The air grew heavy. Every paladin could read the signs. A massive undead army had marched this way, heading straight for Alkhemia.

Dozens of death knights. Thousands of skeletons. Ghouls. Other horrors. And worse, multiple necromancers among them.

What kind of being could command such a force? What host was so mighty it didn't even bother to scour its enemies for loot?

Starfall looked toward Alkhemia, his unease hardening into resolve.

"Be ready," he said. "We may be facing more than one legendary undead."

The knights stiffened, but before fear could take hold, one spoke up: "If that army's moving toward Alkhemia, perhaps it means to attack the city. If so... we might consider joining forces with Alkhemia's defenders."

Starfall's eyes lit up.

"Good thinking. We'll fly on ahead and warn them of the danger."

He unfurled a Mass Flight scroll. Moments later, ten streaks of silver light shot into the sky, soaring carefully past the ground below, past the marching horde of the dead.

None of them noticed the vast shadow concealed higher still, hidden within the clouds.

When they had vanished, the clouds stirred as a colossal bone dragon, thirty or forty meters long, descended from the sky. It landed before an ornate silver carriage drawn by sixteen nightmare steeds, gleaming like a mobile palace.

The bone dragon rumbled, "Sister Rose, why didn't you crush those annoying paladins?"

From within the carriage came a cool, silken reply. "Didn't you once tell me that you saved Gareth in the Lyon Empire, and that was why he fell for you?"

There was a pause. Then, with alarming interest, Black Rose continued, "I'd like to try that, too."