Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead-Chapter 714 - Operation Arid Soil Part Twenty-Five

714: Operation Arid Soil : Part Twenty-Five

714: Operation Arid Soil : Part Twenty-Five

“A city, you say?

With its own oasis?” Ir’Houwl received a most interesting report, the time of the red sun had ended without anything else happening, and since then, for months on end, it had just been what was now considered the most common, and thus, regular state of the desert, typical sand colour with a warm still sun capable of seemingly multiplying alongside moving suns that moved in a recognisable pattern.

Progress had been good even with the scorching heat forcing the undead to be especially meticulous, lest they catch fire as a whole and turn to ashes, until now, the minor lord had managed to avoid any of her soldiers meeting this fate, and at most, a few had received damage from beasts or monsters, the quantity and diversity of which remained mostly the same.

Sometimes, a new creature would be found, but that was mostly it, there were no new challenge arising as they expanded their sphere of influence, the area with the quicksand was still under investigation, but nothing was discovered just yet, she had expected some sort of titanic bone-puppet to arise from the depths at one point during the reign of of the red sun, but no such thing had occurred, it hadn’t even quaked or tremored a little bit.

Truly, if they were not undeads, they might have been slain by boredom already, repetition and more repetition was a skill that all undeads had from the moment of their existence, so apart from training team compositions and testing their spells and weapon techniques in different ways, they weren’t really sharpening their skills much at all.

As such, the news of a what appeared like an actual city, built by the hands of beings in possession of opposable thumbs, was a big one, closely followed by Osla, who seemed to spend most of her time that was not used to deliver reports back and forth in the shadow of Ir’Houwl, the minor lord headed to see it for herself, wanting to be present in case the local sapient life forms were strong enough to be a threat to her soldiers.

However, it did not take long for her to notice a few details about the city that indicated that the denizens who had constructed it might no longer be around, the small wall that had been erected out of sandstone gathered from who knows where were clearly far eroded by the wind-carried sand, to the point that certain areas where thinner than someone’s arm.

Still, she sensed quite a few life forces inside, similarly to how they had done, the hide of certain desert creature had been stretched out above the city like some sort of huge tent to protect from direct sunlight, the few trees that were around were small and almost looked like bushes with their sprawling leaves that covered a wide area around the feeble trunk.

Some of these trees had been put in pots and lifted on top of the square-shaped houses, so that the leaves would cover the roofs and outer portion of the walls, and seemingly prevent heat from seeping in, using the plant’s defence mechanism against the burning temperatures for themselves.

But the state of disrepair- The cracks and crumbling portions that could be seen from outside the city upon the architecture made it look like a ghost town, abandoned a long time ago.

The city was rather small, packed together, which would normally be a bad idea in such an environment, which told Ir’Houwl that their usage of the bush-trees was actually efficient and had instead taken measures so that one tree could cover as much ground as possible instead of spacing out and allowing the heat to disperse.

“I remember some of the architects going on a nature period back then, with moss, mushrooms, vines and whatever… This should please them a fair bit” one of the soldiers nearby said.

“Heh, they were mostly made-up of folks that were only doing it to try and hit on Lord Yuolrt” another replied.

“Only the still sun is in the sky, without any of its decoys, march forward” Ir’Houwl ignored their talk and gave the order to advance, the city wasn’t that far, the oasis had been expanded fairly close to the town’s entrance, which bore no gates and was merely a gap in the small wall.

It didn’t seem to have been shortened or otherwise damaged, so it seemed like there wasn’t much for the people here to worry about, it had surely been erected merely to block the

suffocating winds and their grainy passengers.

Though, the question of where this sandstone had been sourced from was one she would like an answer to, the soil was nothing but sand and more sand of the same sort no matter how deeply her soldiers had dug, they had not found even a trace of anything else.

The very bottom was certainly covered in the skeletons of countless creatures and beings from which the dark red sun sourced its troops from.

Speaking of which, they had not ran into any traces of the puppets since then, and it certainly didn’t seem like they had passed by here, Ir’Houwl did not know what the point of these puppets was however, so maybe they had all headed to a specific location or had sought to do one thing in particular.

The minor lord stepped into the small town’s entrance and stopped with her soldiers behind, one of the life forces inside, of which there were about twenty, was walking around and would soon pass a corner that would allow them to see the undead.

She signalled her troops to stand still for now, considering that all life forces Ir’Houwl could sense were similar, they belonged to one species, so just checking if this one was intelligent enough to be interrogated was important, because if so, she intended on detaining them all and squeezing them dry of all intel they might possess.

With a loud step, a large humanoid, around the same height as Ir’Houwl herself, but with much more bulk, came into sight, messy hair and beard, a very angular chin and face, small, ivory tusks protruding from the lower set of teeth and a skin colour that was a near-perfect match as the shade of the desert’s sand.

Garbed in nothing but a loincloth fashioned out of beast hide, the creature glanced at them, then forward, and then back at them as it realised that they were absolutely not a normal sight, brandishing a large club crudely carved from a bone.

“Dare step on territory?!” even with the blessing of comprehension putting in the work, his words came out in a poorly assembled manner, but they were at least understandable.

“Yes, I dare, what are you?

Where is your boss?”