Chapter 46: Chapter 44: Zombie Area Capture

“Kyaa! W-what is this!?”

With a scream from Futaba-san, I am relinquished from sleep.

“Mnah— W-what happened Futaba-san”

Still half asleep, I make the attempt to get up while rubbing my eyes.

“It’s terrible Kotarou-kun! There’s a monster in this fairy square! Also, first name please!”

“Eehh! Monster!? Where!“

That’s one hell of an emergency alright. Fairy squares are our only safe location. And if it came to be that some monsters could invade this space, we’d have to start setting up watch.

“Look, it’s over there! That black Skeleton!”

“Uaah, you’re right! What is that, a new type of Skeleton!?”

It had the figure of a child, with bones giving off a dark, metallic sheen, a jet-black Skeleton. At one corner of the square, it was single-mindedly swinging around a spear like a Knight focused on training.

“Ah, sorry Mei-chan, that’s one of mine, it’s a Mud Doll”

“Eh, it is?”

My head wasn’t working right just after waking up. Obviously, that over there is the Vile Mud Doll I made last night.

For now, I’ll go ahead and explain.

“Huh, so that’s how it is“

“Yeah, I was thinking it could work as a bit of support for you”

“Thankyou, Kotarou-kun”

The perfect smile she shoots back rivals any bishoujo. Man, dungeon-diets sure are impressive.

“So, what’d you name her?”

“Eh, name?”

“You didn’t?”

“Nope?”

Name, a name huh. Should be useful to have one I guess. If Mei-chan wants to give it orders, calling it by name would make it easier.

“Got it, let’s go with Rem”

It’s a mud doll, Golem, so Rem. Looks like a Skeleton though.[1]

Basic naming done and over with, I will now start calling this nice and loyal mud doll Rem. When I mentally commanded come back, she stopped her training as if hearing me by telepathy, and began heading this way with a rattle of her bones.

Standing in front of us, her back, or rather, spine was straight, standing at attention, holding the spear in a perfect vertical. If I gave her some armor, she’d look just like one of those antique knight displays.

“She has great manners”

“Yup, she sure isn’t like those soul-less Skeletons and Zombies you find all over”

Speaking of which, it’s not like I told her to stand at attention, so this pattern of action must mean that she’s got at least some form of ego. There’s also the possibility that she comes preprogrammed with a certain level of independent activity.

“From now on, your name will be Rem”

“Nice to meet you, Rem-chan”

“Gaga”

Replying with a click of her jaws, Rem nodded no show understanding by rigidly lowering her skull.

And like that, we got ourselves a new and improved Rem as a new team member(?), and began once more our venture into the dungeon.

“— Yup, she fights pretty well”

We’re still in the same old Zombie area, and the genre of monsters appearing show no signs of change. Stone passages and the occasional tunnel. And there were some graveyard forests in varying sizes as well.

The first thing I confirmed was Rem’s solo fighting ability. Whether it’s Skeleton or Zombie, if it’s a 1v1, she can win without much trouble.

Skeletons are dumb and never paying much attention, so if I give her the correct image on how to attack, she’ll go for it without an ounce of hesitation, bashing her spear into its bones. Once the Skeleton falls down, she’ll finish it off by breaking its skull with the butt of the weapon.

Zombies are a bit tougher than Skeletons. There’s ones that flinch when stabbed and ones that don’t. Most of the smaller, Goma Zombies are the flinching type, so with a few more stabs after the first one, it’s dead. As for the ones that don’t flinch, they’d just bite onto her, and she’d wrestle them down in most cases.

That being said, Rem’s body is only a collection of bones. Even if Zombies gnaw into her with their rotten teeth, she’ll only get minor scratches. Rem doesn’t feel pain, and there’s nothing like any damage feedback to me either.

So even when they bite, Rem uses her sub weapon, the Goma’s knife (originally mine) to stab and kill. After enough times with the knife, the Zombie’ll stop moving. Whether it’s after losing a good portion of its meat, or after shedding too much of its decayed blood, I don’t know the exact conditions for how Zombies die, but that’s how Rem’s been killing them. The only tough part would be that, unlike non-dead humans, they’ll keep moving right up until death.

“I think it’s better to keep Rem-chan beside you, she seems more suited for defending”

The great thing about Rem is that she won’t melt in Rotten Bog. Thinking back on Blackhair Bind, my curses may be made to be non-interfering, or maybe they have nullification effects built in.

Anyway, as for Rem, who I can technically place smack dab in the middle of the bog, she is best suited to be my bodyguard.

Rem is holding my old spear and knife, which leaves me unarmed— would be a bad idea so I equipped that sheath-less knife I kept in my bag. I hung it at my waist with a cloth around it. That and, though it may be considered the most basic level of armament in the whole dungeon, but it’s better than nothing so why not, I’m carrying one of those wooden clubs used by Skeletons.

It would seem like my weapons went down a rank, but thinking of our individual roles, this kind of gear distribution is actually more optimal.

“I really thought she’d help you out at front you know… Sorry, I couldn’t make her strong enough to go into the frontlines.”

“Ahaha, don’t worry. I just thought if I accidentally hit Rem-chan, she could break”

Could break, more like, will definitely break. Just as Mei-chan has been destroying all those mob Skeletons, Rem would be in shambles no doubt.

“We’ll have to practice so they can handle the vanguard as a team some day”

The next time we get allies, we’ll have to at least keep up on that front.

And with Rem now acting as my shield, we make our way through the dungeon. With Mei-chan wielding so much raw power, our progress is steady as can be. There are the Goars that often appear in the graveyard forests which she can make easy work of. Our first encounter with these monsters was in their largest numbers we’ve seen to date, so the two or three coming out now are easy game.

And though they’re pretty small, we can get cores from these Goars. I don’t know how many we’ll need for escaping, but gradually pilling up on them should help somewhat. Collecting materials now, and not when you need them, at which point the task becomes a chore, is gaming 101.

With the prime objective of core collection, we also collect the Goars’ scales and skins to occasionally repair Rem. Making Rem sleep, I use Vile Mud Doll again. This is when Rem’s black chaos, the bog, appears, swallowing up the new materials along with Rem, and spitting out a shiny new version of her.

It’s a pretty simple procedure, so I’m glad I can use her without concern. Even if it gets a bit rough, and her arm and leg bones get broken, I’m confident I can use Goars and Skeletons and heal her up right away. It’s just, if she gets completely destroyed, I’d have to rebuild her from scratch so.

And it’s about time I stop feeling guilty about that lookout incident. Though I can’t say with confidence I can hold off on doing that again in the future…

And as if receiving divine punishment for these vulgar thoughts, we ended up in quite a bind.

This happened as we were walking along a normal passage. Suddenly, a large horde of Zombies came from the front and back as if initiating a pincer attack.

“Mei-chan, take the ones out front! I’ll make the bog behind us, me and Rem will hold them off here”

“Yeah, I’ll kill them quick, and come over right away!”

It was a pretty harsh defensive battle. There were much more Zombies than I thought.

“— Kuh, they filled up the bog dammit”

Less than a minute after I manifested my Rotten Bog, it was chock full of Zombie corpses. The Zombies that would try and advance even after falling in were stabbed at and forced back by Rem and her trusty spear. With my weakass Skeleton’s club, I also pushed Zombies from the pool’s edge.

I was attacking with the tentacles at the same time, so something really dumb like letting my club slip, it falling into the bog, and proceeding to melt into nothing, also happened.

Though by the time I lost the club, I’d already sunk a number of Zombies in the blood colored pool… but there was still a lot more to go.

I didn’t have any space to step back and make another Rotten Bog. Mei-chan had been executing the Zombies out front at a rapid pace, but with her path made strewn in corpses, a new bog wouldn’t do shit.

“Kuh, enough already…”

There was around 10 more Zombies left. Not a number Rem could take on. And me going head to head with just one of them would lead to a swift game over. If it bit my neck, It’d be completely hopeless. At worst, I’d become one of their own like in those zombie flicks.

I couldn’t expand the Rotten Bog. But I didn’t have any other way of beating them. I had to make a new Rotten Bog any way I ca—

“No, I still have there!!”

I raised both my arms to call out Black Bloodline. On the back of both my hands, the same eye-like crest appeared.

I swung both hands to the side, and cursed blood sprayed out, sticking to the walls around me. That’s right, walls. If the floor’s no good, I could just use the walls.

“Putrefy, in the depths of vile red — Rotten Bog!!”

The blood-drops stuck on the walls transformed into pools of blood in the blink of an eye. It worked. Even vertical walls could be made into deadly pools of acid.

At this point, I’d gotten uncomfortably close to the Zombie horde that was running full speed.

“Sink into hell!”

Blackhair Bind leapt out from inside the bog like great serpents that just discovered prey. Moving nimbly, they snatched up the Zombies running ahead.

“BuaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaa!!”

I wondered if their pain receptors are still working? Forcefully slammed into the poison bog on the walls, the Zombies raised harsh screams.

The maximum number of braided blackhair tentacles I could release was four. With that many, I could catch multiple Zombies at once.

“Tch! still not enough, but—!”

Zombies would keep moving if they weren’t well melted, but the ones slammed into the walls were pretty much all cooked. I could release them from the tentacles, and they wouldn’t be coming after me anymore. They’d been highly damaged, and couldn’t attack so I no longer needed to bind them, is what I mean.

I released the 4 bodies, and captured another 4. With that, it’s 8 Zombies out of the way.

But I started off with 10. No, there was actually 12.

Two of those had their feet stuck in the acid mud and we’re melting down. But the other two were stepping over their dead compatriots, and using the sacrifice of those last four, had avoided Blackhair Bind. They had really closed in on me.

“Gagaaa!!”

Right there, came in Rem, full verve. Her technique much sharper than I’d ever seen, Rem pierced through one of the Zombie’s chests. But these past few Zombies we’re all the large type. Those can’t be so simply killed.

Its chest pierced through, the Zombie just kept coming, lodging the blade further into itself, closing in on Rem. That being the case, she couldn’t take it out and attack anymore.

“You can do it! Push it away!”

Rem obeyed and, letting go of her spear, she grabbed the encroaching Zombie around its waist. In terms of pure power, the Zombie would win, but maybe because it was weakened from that stab, the undead actually staggered. Even the small Rem, using every ounce of power in her body, was able to somehow, some way, push the Zombie into the bog running along the wall.

The Zombie shrieked piercingly, and also—

“AaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”

The last Zombie, was already here.

Twelve in all. Eight defeated by tentacles. Two died stuck. One held off by Rem. One more, the last remaining one, I lacked a single way of stopping it.

My spear is with Rem, the club, I lost a moment ago, I didn’t have one good weapon. My sub, the knife, that I was holding was so short, it wouldn’t serve as a smidgen of defense against this raging Zombie. Also, I really doubted if I could score a miraculous critical hit on its vitals with my shaky-as-fuck hands.

Dead, I’m sooo fucking dead—

“Don’t touch my Kotarou-kuunnNAAAAAAa!!”

Man that’s a scary roar, is what I thought when the Zombie’s head burst.

An instant later, my slightly long bangs danced from the tremendous air pressure.

Ignoring the crumbling Zombie that was releasing decayed blood and brain entrails, I turned my head.

And there I saw Mei-chan’s left hand swung to the back for just an instant. A pose like she’d just thrown something behind her without even looking. Incidentally, her right hand was using her axe as a shield against a Zombie. And before I noticed, her left hand had made it back to the axe-handle, whence forth she continued making mince-meat of the remaining Zombies.

Looking at the state of the Zombie’s head and considering Mei-chan’s hand movements, I guessed that she threw a stone behind her, achieving an splendid head shot at that.

“Mei-chan, you’re… just epic…”

I couldn’t imagine calling her something so over-familiar as Mei-chan anymore. With that much god-level skill, I’d much rather go with Mei-chan-san.[2]

Thanks to her, the Zombies on our tail end were all gone. I also finished off the half dead ones with my tentacles.

“Haa… Haah… M-man, that was close…”

So we had that episode of danger in the Zombie area as well. Which just goes to show, you can’t let down your guard anywhere in this dungeon.

Since something like this happened, Mei-chan started badgering me to carry Hirano-kun’s sword on me as a last means of defense… So for now, probably until we get something good again, I’ll be borrowing the sword.

So we switched up our gear, took care of the occasional Skeletons, Zombies, and Goars, and finally arrived at a clearing completely different from the other ones around here.

Hmmm, doesn’t look like a boss room… but please, please just stay like that!

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[1] Rem will hereby be pronouned female… if I’m not forced to make it male due to raws… In retrospect from this chapter, I feel a bit sorry. Also, in jap, L and R are kinda interchangeable.

[2] -san = mad respect bruh