Volume 1: Stranger in a Strange Land Chapter 47: The Great Cemetery
The Great Cemetery is located to the north of Thorn City. If you just look at its size, it is more like a satellite city than a cemetery.
The towering city walls surrounded the entire cemetery, and every twenty meters on the walls there were spell runes of [Calm the Undead] and [Life Barrier] engraved by the Holy Spirit Church and the Rose Palace Mage Hall.
Fortunately, Thorn City is rich in raw silver. Other big cities on the continent, even the Platinum City, the capital of the empire, and the Gauze City, which is famous for its wealth, cannot afford such extravagance.
Because of the ancestor worship custom in the Blackwater Swamp area, people firmly believe that the souls of the dead need to rely on bones to exist. Therefore, over the past few thousand years, most of the dead in Thorn City were sent to this large cemetery for burial.
The corpses have been piling up for years, and the number of dead buried there is probably incalculable.
And so many corpses piled together is an extremely dangerous thing in this world where necromancy exists. Therefore, on weekdays, the gates of the cemetery are closed and heavily guarded, and outsiders are prohibited from entering .
Only on the Feast of the Dead on the 4th day of Rainy Month and the Feast of the Dead on the 15th day of Fog Month, the gravekeepers here will open the gates and allow residents to enter the cemetery to worship their ancestors.
"The holy tomb you mentioned is built under the Great Cemetery?"
Cass asked, looking at the towering city walls.
"It should be said that the Great Cemetery was built above the Holy Tomb. The history of the Holy Tomb is much earlier than that of the Great Cemetery. It existed as early as the Bronze Age."
Nezemar replied as he untied a bundle of throwing rope from his waist.
"The Blackwater people at that time believed that the underground tomb was the entrance to the underworld and the place where the goddess of death, Vera, was reborn. Therefore, the rulers at that time chose it as a cemetery in the hope that they could be reborn after death. It was also at that time that the idea of the living serving the dead emerged, and later gradually evolved into the current Blackwater Province's unique custom of ancestor worship."
As she spoke, Nezemar threw the cast line with the hook attached. After pulling the rope a few times to test its firmness, she turned back to Cass and said:
"Okay, I'll climb up first to see the situation, and you can come up when everything is OK."
After saying that, she climbed up the rope as nimbly as a cat.
Although the other person was wearing light leather armor, she was a lady after all, and Cass was embarrassed to stand below and stare at her.
So he turned to look at Liz, who had been sitting on his shoulder and sulking since earlier.
"Uh...what's wrong?"
Cass asked.
"nothing."
When Cas turned around, Liz turned her head away and snorted with her nose raised.
Cass guessed that she was still angry about what happened just now, so he said carefully:
"Isn't her suggestion good? I can get my life scale powder back sooner, and I don't have to worry about what will happen to me every day. Of course, if I want to compensate her in this regard..."
"Do you think I want to make amends or something?!"
Liz suddenly turned around and grabbed Cas's ears with both hands.
Cass felt as if her ears had been twisted twice.
"Do you really want to be a magic swordsman? Do you really want to go somewhere else and continue fighting? Didn't you say you would retire after you complete your revenge? Can't you think more about yourself?"
Twisting Cas's ears with her hands, Liz said with a red face.
"But... I don't know what else I can do besides fighting."
In response, Cass was silent for a moment before answering.
His words made Liz deflate all of a sudden. She let go of Cas's ears, propped up her hands, looked up at Cas's face, and asked with some disappointment:
"So what I said before, about helping me take care of the garden, have you really never considered it?"
Kas was about to answer when Nezemar's voice came from the city wall.
"It's safe, you can come up."
…………
While climbing the rope, Cass felt a dull pain in his abdominal wound again. After reaching the wall, he lifted up his clothes to check and found a faint trace of blood seeping through the bandage.
"I can't help it. It's normal for the wound to split open when climbing ropes before it has healed properly."
Looking at the gazes from Nezemal and Liz, Cass said helplessly.
"We don't have time to wait for you to fully recover. My informant in the Rose Palace told me that the Duke will make a big move in the next few days. We must quickly get Judgment Four so that we can have a chance of winning."
Nezemar replied.
Liz, who was standing by, sighed silently as she saw this. Glittering scales began to appear around the wings again.
"Hey, witch over there, don't do that again."
But before she could fan the scale powder onto Cass's body, Nezemal at the side spoke up to stop her.
"Although witches have much more vitality than humans, you can't squander it like this."
Nezemar said as a faint green light appeared on his hand.
"You saved him from the brink of death twice. Even for a witch, the cost is not a small amount."
As she spoke, she placed her hand on the wound on Cas's abdomen.
[Healing Hands], expert-level life magic.
Although it only stopped the bleeding of Cas's torn wound temporarily, it still made him feel much better at the moment.
After doing all this, Nazemare looked back at Liz and said, "You don't have enough vitality left. Don't waste it in a place like this."
"Who... who is wasting it on him? I'm afraid that his wound will be too deep and he will suddenly die. Then I won't be able to recover all my scale powder."
Liz said, her voice rising in volume.
“Shh…”
Cas gestured to her to silence her.
There is a troop called Gravekeepers stationed near the cemetery to prevent large-scale corpse transformation. If they find you, you will be mistaken for a necromancer who sneaked in to steal corpses.
Liz covered her mouth in understanding.
Looking at the temple in the center of the cemetery, Cass asked in a low voice:
"Are you sure that weapon is underneath that temple?"
Nezemar nodded and replied:
"It is certain that we knew the whereabouts of Judgment Four as early as ten years ago. We also proposed negotiations with Duke Simon at that time, but he refused for various reasons."
As he spoke, Nezemar straightened the tricorn hat on his head. The white feathers on the hat swayed slightly in the night breeze.
"If his relationship with the imperial family had not deteriorated drastically, and if several intelligence personnel sent by the imperial family had not been assassinated by magic casters suspected of using the power of the Moon Realm, we might have continued to argue with him..."
She said as she walked down the stairs of the wall, with Cas and Liz following behind her.
There are endless tombstones standing in the large cemetery, one next to the other, crowded together.
The dead here are so densely packed that the living have no place to stand and can only move forward by stepping on the tombstones.
"Can't we just take the main road? Why do we have to step on the heads of the dead here?"
With a "crack" sound, Cass stepped on another tombstone and cracked it. He couldn't help but ask with a complaint.
He is a native of Heishui Province and is very concerned about disturbing the peace of the dead.
"There will be gravekeeper patrols on the main road at night. It will be troublesome if we are discovered."
Nezemar, who was walking in front, answered without turning his head.
Compared to Kas's tall and burly figure, and the heavy weapon on his back, Nezemal jumped up and down on the graves like a nimble cat, with movements as skillful as if he was back home.
"Is there? I see there's not a single light on the road over there. They can't patrol without lights, can they?"
Cass asked, looking in the direction of the road. Hearing this, Nazemal also stopped on a cross-shaped tombstone and turned to look over there.
"Not only is there no light on the main road, there is no fire at the camp outside the gate. Are the lights out at this time?"
Cass said, pointing to the entrance of the cemetery.
At this time they were very close to the temple in the center of the cemetery.
"It's a little strange, but we don't have time to worry about it right now. Let's first..."
It was at this time that a black shock wave spread rapidly from the temple as the core, and soon spread to every corner of the cemetery.
But apart from a gust of wind of neither strong nor weak, the wave did not have any effect on the three of them.
"What was that just now? I felt the magic inside, but why didn't it have any effect on us?"
Liz asked in shock.
Nezemar looked towards the temple in the center of the cemetery with a serious face and said:
"That is..."
Unfortunately, before she could finish her words, the ground began to shake violently.
Earthquake?
This was the first thought that popped into Cass's mind, but the cruel reality told him that the ground shaking at this moment was not as simple as an earthquake.
Much scarier than an earthquake.
The tombstone that Nezemar was standing on suddenly shattered, and a half-rotten arm grabbed her leg.
At the same time, in the entire cemetery, there were probably tens of millions of hands, some broken, some complete, some rotten, and some bone-white, breaking through the coffins and soil and stretching out from the ground.
It stretches endlessly to the end of the sight.
