The Great Cemetery is located to the north of Thorn City. If you just look at the scale, it is more like a satellite city than a cemetery.

A towering city wall surrounds the entire cemetery. Every 20 meters on the city wall, there are [Soothing the Undead] and [Life Barrier] spell runes engraved by the Holy Spirit Church and the Rose Palace Mage Hall.

Thanks to the fact that the City of Thorns is rich in source silver, other large cities on the continent, even the Platinum City, the capital of the empire, and the Gossamer City, which is famous for its wealth, cannot afford such squandering.

Because of the ancestor worship customs in the Blackwater Swamp area, people firmly believe that the souls of the deceased need to rely on the remains to exist. Therefore, over the past thousands of years, most of the dead in Thorn City have been sent to this cemetery for burial.

The corpses have accumulated over the years, and now the number of dead buried among them has probably reached an incalculable number.

The accumulation of so many corpses is an extremely dangerous thing in this world where necromancy exists. Therefore, the gates of the cemetery are closed and heavily guarded, and outsiders are prohibited from entering on weekdays.

Only on the annual Resurrection Day on the 4th of the Rain Moon and the Day of the Dead on the 15th of the Brumaire, the tombkeepers here will open their doors and allow residents to enter the cemetery to worship their ancestors.

"The holy tomb you mentioned was built underground in the cemetery?"

Cass asked looking at the towering city walls.

"It should be said that the Great Cemetery was built on top of the Holy Tomb. The Holy Tomb's history is much earlier than that of the Great Cemetery, and it existed as early as the Bronze Age."

Nezemael answered as he untied a bundle of throwing rope from his waist.

"The people of Blackwater at that time believed that the underground tomb was the entrance to the underworld and the place of rebirth of Vera, the god of death. Therefore, the rulers at that time chose to use it as a cemetery in the hope that they could be reborn after death. Also in At that time, the idea of ​​the living serving the dead emerged, and later gradually evolved into the current custom of ancestor worship unique to Blackwater Province."

Nezemar said and threw up the throwing rope with the hook hooked on it. After tugging on the rope a few times to test its firmness, she turned back to Cass and said:

"Okay, I'll climb up first to check the situation. If there's no problem, you can come back up."

After saying that, she climbed up the rope as nimbly as a cat.

Although the other party was wearing light leather armor, she was a woman after all, and Cass was too embarrassed to stand below and stare at her.

So he turned to look at Liz, who had been sitting on his shoulder sulking since before.

"Uh...what's wrong?"

Cass asked.

"nothing."

Seeing Cass turning his head, Liz turned her head away, her nose turned up high and she let out a "hum".

Cass guessed that she was still angry about what just happened, so he considered it and said:

"Isn't her proposal very good? If you can get your life scale powder back early, you don't have to worry about what will happen to me every day. Of course, if you can compensate for this..."

"Do you think I want compensation or something?!"

Liz suddenly turned around and grabbed Cass's ears with both hands.

Cass felt as if his ears had been twisted twice by her.

"Do you really want to be a magic swordsman? Do you really want to go somewhere else to continue fighting? Didn't you say you would retire after completing your revenge? Can't you think more about yourself?"

Twisting Cass's ears with her hands, Liz said with her face flushed.

"But...I don't know what else I can do besides fighting."

In response, Cass replied after being silent for a while.

His words made Liz feel discouraged. She let go of Cass's ears, put her hands back, raised her head and looked at Cass's face and asked with some loss:

"So what I said before about helping me take care of the garden, have you really never considered it?"

Cass was just about to answer when Nezemael's voice came from the city wall.

"It's safe, you can come up now."

…………

While climbing the rope, Cass felt another dull pain coming from the wound on his abdomen. After reaching the city wall, he opened his clothes and checked, and a faint blood stain seeped out of the bandage.

"There's nothing you can do. If you climb on the rope before it's healed, it's normal for the wound to crack."

Looking at the looks that Nezemar and Liz were looking at, Cass said helplessly.

"There is no time to wait for you to fully recover. My informant in the Rose Palace told me that the Duke's big move will be in the next few days. We must get Trial Four as soon as possible to have any chance of winning."

Nezemael replied.

Liz sighed silently when she saw it, and shining scales began to appear around the wings again.

"Hey, witch over there, don't do that again."

But before she could slap the scale powder on Cass, Nezemael on the side spoke to stop her.

"Although the vitality of witches is much stronger than that of humans, it's not like you are squandering it."

Nezemael said as his hand lit up with a faint green light.

"You have saved him from the brink of death twice. The consumption is not a small amount even for a witch."

As she spoke, she pressed her hand on the wound on Cass's abdomen.

[Healing Hand], expert-level life-based magic.

Although it only temporarily stopped the bleeding from Cass's open wound, it still made him feel much better at the moment.

After doing all this, Nezemar looked back at Liz and said, "You don't have enough life left. Don't waste it in a place like this."

"Who...who is wasting it on him? I'm afraid that he'll die suddenly due to too deep a wound. Then I won't be able to recover all the scales and powder."

Liz said with a louder voice.

"Shh..."

Cass made a silencing gesture to her.

There is always a force called the Grave Guards stationed near the cemetery to prevent large-scale corpse transformations. If they were discovered, it would be bad to be regarded as a necromancer who sneaked in to steal the corpses.

Liz covered her mouth to show her understanding.

Looking at the temple in the center of the cemetery, Cass asked in a low voice:

"Are you sure that weapon is under that temple?"

Nezemar nodded and replied:

"It's very certain that we learned about the whereabouts of 'Trial Four' ten years ago. We also made representations to Duke Simon at that time, but he refused for various reasons."

Nezemaar adjusted the three-cornered hat on his head as he spoke. The white feathers on the hat swayed slightly in the night wind.

"If his relationship with the imperial royal family hadn't deteriorated sharply later, and several groups of intelligence agents sent by the royal family were assassinated by magic casters suspected of using the power of the moon, we might have really continued to argue with him...

…”

As she spoke, she walked down the stairs of the city wall, with Cass and Liz following behind her.

There are countless tombstones as far as the eye can see in the large cemetery, one next to the other and crowded together.

The dead here are so dense that the living have no place to stay and can only move forward by stepping on tombstones.

"Can't we just take the main road to get there? We have to step on the heads of the dead here..."

With a "click" sound, Cass stepped on another tombstone and cracked it. He couldn't help complaining and asked.

He is a native of Blackwater Province, and he is very concerned about disturbing the peace of the deceased.

"There will be tomb guard patrols on the road at night. If they are discovered, it will be troublesome."

Nezemael, who was walking in front, answered without looking back.

Compared to Kass's tall and burly body and the heavy weapons carried on his back, Nezemar was like a dexterous cat, jumping up and down on many graves with such skillful movements that he felt as if he had returned home.

of.

"Really? I see there isn't even a single light on the road over there. It's impossible for them to patrol without lights, right?"

Cass asked while looking in the direction of the road. Upon hearing this, Nezemael also stopped on a cross-shaped tombstone and turned his head to look over there.

"And not only is there no light on the road, there is also no firelight at the camp stationed at the door. Are the lights turned off at this point?"

Cass pointed to the entrance to the cemetery and said.

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 now, let's first..."

It was at this time that a black shock wave spread rapidly with the temple as its core, and soon spread to every corner of the cemetery.

But except for a gust of wind that was neither strong nor weak, the fluctuation did not have any impact 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, on the other hand, looked at the temple in the center of the cemetery with a serious face and said:

"That is……"

Unfortunately, before she could finish speaking, the ground began to shake violently.

earthquake?

This was the first thought that came to 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 Nezemael stepped on suddenly shattered, and a half-rotted arm grabbed her leg.

At the same time, in the entire cemetery, there were probably tens of millions of hands that were either incomplete, intact, rotten, or bone-white, breaking open the coffins and soil and stretching out from the ground.
Chapter completed!