Chapter 79 (1/2)
Ch. 79: Discovering During Search
“It’s time to have some fun searching through the tents.”
Lapis declared cheerfully with a smile on her face, but on the other hand, Loren was looking around at the campsite with a bored look on his face.
It was still dark since it was still nighttime, but the bandits, trying to run away from the undead that Shayna had summoned, knocked over all the bonfires and caused the fire to spread, so the campsite was quite bright.
The light from the flames exposed the horrifying state of the campsite.
However, surprisingly there weren’t many bodies.
It was due to most of them becoming materials for the undead Shayna had summoned, or had been consumed by those undead, so although all the blood splattered everywhere was still there, it could be said that the aftermath didn’t look too bad considering what had happened.
As for the undead, the undead knights were patrolling around the campsite, while the zombie dogs were running around searching for survivors and making sure that no one that that had seen or will see this horrific scene will live to see the sunrise.
“What are we going to do about this…”
The number of undead grew enough that they could easily surround a village or a town and destroy it.
Loren understood that it was needed to take on hundreds of bandits, but now it was as if an army of undead had replaced them, and in terms of threat, it became greater than before.
“Wasn’t the plan to do some damage and let them scatter out?”
“I’m kind of impressed that we’re a lot more capable than I thought.”
‘Don’t worry Onii-san.’
Shayna’s voice sounded in Loren’s head.
Her voice, which couldn’t be heard by Lapis, was a cheerful one, as she tried to clear his worries as much as she could.
‘The ones that I made will disappear once morning comes.’
Shayna explained that since they were summoned to close the gap in numbers, they weren’t made properly, so they would return to dust after some time had passed.
And so there was no need to worry about a pack of undead monsters attacking a city.
“You’re sure they’re going to disappear, right…”
Loren couldn’t completely believe that the horde of undead that killed all the bandits would disappear when the sun came up, but there was no way he could deal with them all on his own either.
“Well, them disappearing will give us a whole new problem though.”
“Huh? What problem?”
When Lapis responded to his muttering, Loren told her something new that started to worry him.
“Shayna says these undead will disappear when morning comes. If that happens, even if we explain what happened here, no one will believe us.”
“Hmm? What are you talking about?”
With all the blood splattered everywhere, it was obvious that many people were killed, but Loren thought that without the undead, it would be impossible to explain who had done it in what fashion.
He thought so because he thought they should report to the adventurer’s guild that they destroyed a large group of bandits, but upon hearing that, Lapis’ looked at him like she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Don’t we have to report this to the guild or to the nation? This many people died, and a post town was destroyed as well.”
“That’s strange. I wonder what happened?”
As Lapis’ played dumb, Loren was about to ask what she was saying, but closed his mouth as he realized what she was thinking.
As Loren continued to stare at Lapis, wondering if she was actually going to do it that way, but she shook her head with a confused look on her face, and folded her hands in front of her chest.
“This is a disaster. It’s certain that many lives were lost here, but we’re not sure how it happened. As much as we’d like to figure out what happened, we’re in a hurry. Let’s take only the things that the dead don’t need and leave the investigating to others.”
“So that’s how we’re going to play it?”
“Hmm? I have no idea what you’re talking about Loren.”
‘Onii-san, what is Onee-san talking about?’
While continuing to frown at Lapis, Loren explained to Shayna what she meant.
It seemed that Lapis was planning on acting like she had nothing to do with the past event.
She planned on acting like she didn’t know anything about why the post town was attacked, why there was a large-scale campsite near it, and that it had been completely destroyed by undead.
‘Will that work?’
“There aren’t any witnesses or evidence, so…”
The bandits had wiped out all the people in the post town, and most of the bodies were probably burnt down to ashes along with the rest of the town.
And the bandits that did it were killed by undead, and were either used as material for more undead, or sank into their stomachs.
‘That’s true. There aren’t any witnesses!’
“So, if we keep our mouths closed, the truth will be buried forever…or you want to shut my mouth just to be sure?”
“Don’t say scary things like that Loren. We should hurry and search for things we could take and get out of here.”
Lapis was the one who was saying scary things.
But she did have a point, so Loren sighed and walked towards Lapis, who was waving at him to follow her.
The bandits’ campsite wasn’t far off from the town they had attacked.
A post town was a place that adventurers and travelers stopped by to find a place to spend the night, so anyone could be travelling towards there.
What would a traveler do if he saw the burning town?
It wouldn’t be a problem if he went back the way he came, but if it were a somewhat experienced adventurer or if that person decided to gather some information before he headed back, the bandits’ campsite would be found in no time.