Chapter 23 23: The Town Of Dead Bodies
The next morning Yoze and Leah returned to the town without the carriage. It would be too dangerous to take it with them if there really was any danger. So Yoze told the carriage driver to stay with his father to look out for him.
If Yoze returned in a couple of hours then it would be fine however if Yoze didn't return then the carriage driver was supposed to turn around and head back to Jade City to call for help.
Arriving back at Emerald Town's entrance, Yoze frowned as he smelled the familiar scent of rotting flesh coming from the town.
"Do you smell the stench of rotting bodies, Leah?" Yoze turned to ask Leah as he has better Spiritual Sensing talent than he did.
"Yes, I can smell the scent of death here. It is so thick that it has started to become visible." In Leah's point of view, there was as if there was a barrier surrounding the town as it seemed to be covered in a dark tint.
"This isn't looking good, hopefully, we can find some living people to ask what is going on."
Yoze and Leah crossed the entrance and immediately felt that the smell had grown thicker. Yoze couldn't help but wonder how many people had to die or were going to die so that he could smell it when he hadn't even entered the town yet.
When Yoze smelled the scent of death coming from his father he needed a range of a dozen feet to be able to smell it. However, there was still a distance of tens of feet between him and the town's closest building.
Still not deterred by the strange situation, Yoze, and Leah continued walking. As they officially entered the town they saw that there was nobody on the streets, not even a single pet was wandering around.
The streets and buildings were completely silent as if there was a rule banning noise at all.
Yoze then walked up to a building that looked like the town post office. The closer Yoze got to the building the stronger and thicker the stench of rotting bodies became.
When they were mere steps outside the building, Yoze understood what Leah was talking about when he said that the stench was so powerful it became visible.
The entire post office building looked like it was covered in shade in contrast to the buildings right next to it. Yoze raised his hand to knock on the door but stopped halfway as he had a bad feeling and instead tried to find a window he could look through.
Eventually found one at the back of the building peering into a separate locked room inside the building. The room was completely empty except for the standing Black figure facing away from him.
"Yoze, we should leave," Leah spoke as he trembled in fear at the black figure.
However, the moment Leah spoke the black figure turned around and sprinted towards the window at frightening speeds.
Yoze reacted quickly and grabbed Leah before jumping away from the window. Just in time before the black figure crashed into the window shattering it.
"Thud!"
The black figure landed outside the window with the black figure's body bent in unnatural ways that either would have killed a person or disabled them for life.
"Crack crack crack."
The black figure simply stood up at the expense of directly breaking some of his own bones and ignored the ones poking out of his body like daggers.
"What the hell, is that a zombie!" Yoze's eyes popped open as he realized why Leah was so frightened by the black figure.
Initially, Yoze thought that it was due to the lights in the room being off that he had a difficult time looking at the black figure's appearance. Now that the black figure was outside and under the illumination of bright sunlight did he realize that it wasn't because the room was dark.
But that figure reeked of so much death that it not only crossed the border of being visible but was so dense that it was a black fog that covered the person underneath.
Yoze was only able to get the impression that the figure underneath was a man in his middle ages but other than that it was difficult to see if his skin was rotting or if it was still in good condition.
The man covered in a death fog didn't seem to have a care in the world about his injuries and ran after Yoze as if he was chasing after gold or the most wonderful thing on the planet.
When the man got closer to Yoze, the stench radiating from his body was so powerful that Yoze felt nauseous. That convinced him that regardless of whether this man was dead or not, Yoze was going to turn his bones into powder first.
After making his decision, he jumped behind the man to avoid the chance of getting bitten by a potential zombie and kicked the man's legs.
"crack"
Yoze felt astonished that the man's legs which he thought would have crumbled not only the man's legs crumble but they were torn completely off his body. The man who was covered in the fog of death fell to the ground and squirmed around before reorienting himself to crawl after Yoze with persistence.
"This man really is the undead," Yoze said as he saw the lack of blood coming from the man's body.
"Since you are already dead I'll send you off to spare you of your misery," Yoze commented before stomping the zombie man's head in with a pop.
"We need to leave. This place must be filled to the brim with these undead." Leah after recovering from his shock immediately asked Yoze to take him back.
Leah was in disbelief as after meeting Yoze his life had been ruined. First, he was kidnapped by Yoze then he was forced to make medicine for Yoze's father, and now he had been dragged to a town full of undead.