WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
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◈ The Wizard's Memoir ◈
Chapter 30: Voice
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An adventuring party's basic tactic was to have the tanker buy time at the front while the artillery concentrated their firepower from behind. It worked incredibly well in cramped tunnels and narrow underground passages.
“Fall back! Fall back!”
But when the conditions weren't right and the situation turned against them, it was useless. More specifically, when monsters came from every direction, there was no front or rear, and the tanker couldn't protect everyone.
“Wait! What about Ash?!”
Olivia's party was in trouble. With zombies suddenly appearing all around them in the open forest, they couldn't form a battle line.
“Everyone, gather together!”
They formed a circle around the campfire. Etran wondered if they should put Ash in the middle for protection, but that concern was entirely unnecessary.
The mule was a large mammal that dwarfed a human. Whenever a zombie approached, Ash lifted both hind legs and kicked it away. A single kick sent a zombie flying seven or eight feet before it hit the ground and rolled. Some had their spines shattered and never got up again.
“Wow...”
Had Ash been born a horse, the mule would surely have become a warhorse that ruled the battlefield. Then again, was there any reason a mule couldn't do that?
Not to be outdone by an animal, the humans and halfling fought bravely too.
The warrior swung a mace without mercy, smashing zombie heads as though competing to knock the lids off barrels.
After the first shot, the crossbow wielder gave up on reloading and drew a short sword. Rolf kept the zombies at bay by stabbing precisely into their eye sockets, where the bone was weak, then kicking them away.
“Hiya!”
The halfling seeker was doing surprisingly well. Dahlia hopped in place and swung the oddly curved shotel, slicing clean through zombie necks. The rotting corpses were fragile, of course, but even allowing for that, the weapon's cutting power was impressive.
“Heehee! You're nothing! Don't get cocky!”
They might have been nothing, but there were far too many of them.
Etran finally finished casting and fired Homing Arrow. Six zombies ahead were torn limb from limb, but new ones emerged from the forest to fill the gap.
“Damn it! Just burn them!”
“We're in a forest, you know?”
Even without an elven slogan about loving nature, that was a dangerous idea. They needed to remember why experienced adventurers weren't fond of fire and lightning spells.
Etran repeatedly cast multiple Homing Arrows at once. The spell could sweep away every zombie in sight, but after three casts in a row, Etran staggered with exhaustion.
Even a freak genius didn't have endless mana. Etran had poured out repeated volleys of magic that an ordinary mage couldn't manage even once. Dizziness was inevitable.
Being unable to cast calmly from behind the tanker didn't help. It was fortunate that zombies were so slow. Had these been goblins or kobolds, Etran would have fallen at once.
“This isn't working! I'll clear a path, so get out!”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere's better than here! Get ready!”
Olivia struck a zombie with the round shield and drew a deep breath. Whether it was a trick of the eye or sheer fighting spirit, the warrior's body seemed to swell. But the chance to see what a warrior could do after abandoning the tanker's role would have to wait.
Whirrr! Thud!
A ball of fire flew out of the forest and pierced a zombie's chest. It looked like magic, but it was an arrow. More precisely, a flaming arrow wrapped in oil-soaked cloth.
“Now what?!”
The unexpected interruption just before the charge nearly made Olivia fall over. For a moment, the warrior was in danger, but help soon came flying in. Whirrr! Another arrow made a strange sound as it blew a zombie's head off.
“They seem human.”
Firing a clearly visible flaming arrow first to judge the distance and wind was a human archer's habit. Elves could skip that step thanks to their natural senses, while monsters lacked the skill to imitate it. Sure enough, the third and fourth arrows both pierced zombie heads.
“Hriyaaaaa!”
Heavy footsteps followed from the direction of the arrows. In a moment of dizziness, Etran thought it was a bear.
It wasn't an entirely strange mistake. The newcomer was a warrior wearing a bearskin and carrying a two-handed axe.
“Mommy!”
Dahlia ducked in alarm. The figure didn't look much like an ally, but at least it was human. The two-handed axe swept from left to right, turning two zombies into four pieces. Even against rotten corpses, that strength was hard to believe.
“Adventurers?!”
The newcomer boldly skipped introductions involving names, ages, hometowns, hobbies, and ideal partners, checking their profession first. With the situation so urgent, Olivia combined an answer and a question.
“You too?”
The axe warrior fought with their whole body. That didn't mean they fought with all their might. They literally used every part of their body.
A shoulder sent zombies flying. An elbow crushed them. A knee knocked them down, and a heel stamped them apart. Splitting them with the axe blade was actually less common.
Arrows continued to fly all the while. The accuracy was remarkable. Not one struck below the chest. Each pierced a head, a neck, or a heart, though aiming for the heart didn't seem especially useful.
“Why have you only just arrived?!”
“Wh-what?”
“This way!”
The axe warrior pointed with a jerk of the head. Olivia's party immediately gathered their belongings and moved. Even then, the careful Etran took a moment to stamp out the flaming arrow. Forest fires were frightening things.
“Hurry up!”
@
It was a two-person party: a warrior and an archer.
There were only two of them, but together with Olivia's party, they managed to wipe out almost all the zombies on one side. It certainly wasn't easy. Just as the axe warrior began gasping for breath and the arrows grew less frequent, they barely escaped the encirclement.
Uuuuuugh...
Graaaaaah...
Etran looked back while struggling to maintain a flickering, fading Light Orb. The cries of the corpses echoed in the distance. A fresh chill ran down the mage's spine.
'We were going to sleep there?'
“I'm Fimmel. That's Wesley over there.”
The axe warrior held out a hand. It was rude, but before returning the gesture, they had to work out where “over there” was.
Someone dropped from above their heads.
“Shit! You scared me!”
Dahlia landed on their backside and scrambled away. Wesley, the archer who had been shooting from overhead, meaning from up in a tree, frowned. His scar-covered face made him look rather fierce.
“Olivia, Dahlia, Rolf, Etran.”
“And Ash!”
Olivia introduced everyone and belatedly clasped Fimmel's wrist. They were too tired for the contest of strength warriors sometimes held during such greetings.
“You came from the Guild, right? The party here to clear the catacomb dungeon?”
“That's the idea... Who are you?”
“We're the first exploration party. We sent for help.”
These were the adventurers who had discovered the catacombs, explored them, and requested support at the entrance to the second floor. Olivia's party had thought they were either dead or taking refuge in another city, but they were still here, continuing the exploration. They didn't even know what had happened in Northern Ridge.
“How long has it been since we sent someone? And you're only showing up now? Have you all forgotten your jobs because you're too busy wiping noble arses?”
“Well, it does have something to do with a noble... But something rather complicated happened.”
When Olivia explained the margrave's assassination, both the axe warrior and the archer were startled. Etran poured mana into the Light Orb, which kept threatening to go out, and said,
“Could we discuss the details somewhere safe?”
It was late, and they were exhausted. They needed rest. The axe warrior casually slipped the sticky axe blade into a loop at their shoulder.
“Our hideout's nearby. Follow me.”
Olivia's party followed the first exploration party with weary steps. They went in the opposite direction from the stripped oak Rolf had found. The hideout was a little under 600 yards, about 550 meters, away.
Etran soothed Ash as the mule snorted.
It was easy to overlook because Ash was an animal, but their companion had just fought in a first battle. Etran felt a reward was in order, took a carrot from a pack near the mule's rump, and fed it to Ash. One didn't seem enough, so Etran offered another.
“You shouldn't suddenly feed an animal so much right after a fight.”
At Rolf's advice, Etran took back the half-eaten carrot and ate it instead. The archer stared in disbelief, but Etran lacked the energy to explain.
The first party's hideout backed onto a large boulder. It was difficult to climb without equipment, so creatures as clumsy as zombies couldn't get over it. A fallen tree with an enormous trunk blocked the opposite side.
There was more room on that side, enough to climb over or crawl underneath, but the tree could serve as a barricade against a crowd. Most importantly, the place wasn't easily visible from outside.
“A good spot.”
The former mercenary Rolf summed it up in three words. It offered both concealment and an easy position to defend. A place like this must have allowed the pair to hold out for nearly ten days in a forest that had become a zombie den.
“Why didn't you come back to the city?”
Olivia asked as they set down their pack. The axe warrior glanced at their quiet companion and answered for both of them.
“We meant to return at first. We needed to resupply and get our equipment in order too.”
“But?”
“The respawns weren't normal.”
Dungeons kept producing monsters until they were cleared. No one knew where the monsters appeared, how, or why. They weren't ordinary creatures that ate, slept, and bred. They were strange beings, hence the name “monsters.”
As an aside, once monsters stopped appearing, it meant the dungeon had been cleared. This made it possible to uncover most dishonest behavior, such as taking the treasure and disappearing.
“Come to think of it, there are far too many of them...”
They weren't even inside the dungeon. They were aboveground, some distance from the entrance, yet an excessive number of zombies had appeared. If that was the normal respawn rate, Fimmel's party clearing the first floor made no sense. They would have had to kill a four-digit number of monsters.
“It wasn't like this at first. While we were exploring the first floor, they only appeared five or six at a time.”
“Right. That's normal.”
Dahlia nodded, satisfied that common sense had been upheld. In other words, the present situation defied it.
“Six days ago, zombies suddenly started coming out in huge numbers.”
Etran's eyebrows rose. Was it a coincidence? That matched the time of the northern margrave's murder.
“It didn't look good, so we settled here to watch what happened. We've also been killing as many as we can of the ones leaving the forest.”
“Well, you've been doing a good deed!”
“They don't move at all during the day. It's simple enough.”
The axe warrior shrugged, bearskin and all. The halfling alone was genuinely curious about where to get such a hide. It looked so much like a real bear that it would probably fetch a high price from a collector of unusual things.
The others, however, remained focused on the situation.
“That was true until recently.”
The archer spoke for the first time. Unlike his fearsome appearance, his voice was slightly high and pleasant to hear. What he had to say was anything but pleasant.
“Now they've started moving during the day too.”
“...The zombies?”
“Only a few of them.”
Olivia's party had been lucky. The archer had dealt with the zombies that woke during the day today. But judging by how things had developed so far, this was only the beginning. Within a few days, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of zombies would be walking beneath the sun.
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