As they continued to ride to their next destination, nightfall was slowly encroaching upon them. The sun had set and painted the horizon in a beautiful mix of lilac and red. 

Aren had changed routes several different times and it felt like they were going around in circles. The terrain was mainly empty fields and scattered forests. His sense of direction must be very challenged thus-far. 

Zephise had taken to recording what had occurred within a notebook he had packed with him. Ineiru remained relatively silent the entire way. 

Rel...well... everyone else noticed he was not doing too well. He was getting fatigued and having a hard time sitting upright on his horse. 

"Oi...Rel. Are you alright?" Aren asked. 

"I-...I'm fine. Just feeling a little sleepy."

Oreilia moved her horse in front of Rel and surveyed him closely. "...Are you alright? You don't look so good."

"I-..I'm fine."

"We're pulling over here." She brought her horse to a stop and dismounted. "This should be a good place to rest."

"A-aye!" Ineiru hopped off of her horse and began to perform some type of magical incantation. "Stratshi Irverendum" the ground began to rise and mold. 3 giant mounds formulated around them before taking the shape of a tent.

Aren looked in awe. "A-amazing! You can do that with earth magic?" She could practically build an entire house by herself.

"Mmh." she nodded. She then conjured a small tree from the grass just small enough to come up to her ankles. As the tree formulated, she set it on fire, creating a nice fireplace in the center of everything.

"Correct me if I'm wrong... but plant and earth manipulation are two different elements of magic, no?" Zephise asked, writing it down in his notebook. "And you just utilized fire magic just now as well, right?"

"A-aye..." she nodded.

"Then...y-you can utilize various forms of magic even though you're at such a young age!?"

She seemed to cower from Zephise's raised, excited voice and shyly looked away.

The person to answer that question was not Ineiru, but Oreilia. "That's correct. Ineiru here is a variant."

She began to set up a pot in front of the fire from her bag. Why she would decide to have that as a survival package, no one could tell. 

"You see, she's able to utilize all elements. Furthermore, she is able to learn new magic in just a couple days after she's been exposed to it."

"Ehhhh??? That's amazing!" Zephise's face almost met with hers from how close he was. "How do you do it? What's it like? What kind of element? Woaaah! You're like a legend aren't you?!"

"Eh..." she blushed at all the praise she was being given, but Zephise was acting much too familiar. In a cute display of panic, she ended up throwing the pan at him and backing all the way to the edge of the camp.

"Oi oi... I'll calm down." He began to furiously write in his notebook. "But really... it is absolutely impressive."

"You'd have to be the second variant I've met, I didn't know the abilities could be that vast." He closed his notebook happily, having recorded new information he had never heard about. 

Oreilia put a hand to her chin. "Second? Who's the first?"

Zephise laughed. "Couldn't you tell?" he pointed at Rel. "He's a variant with immense physical strength and endurance." "Ehhh? That bonehead...? There's n..- H-hey..isn't he kind of silent?" Oreilia blinked twice and looked to Rel, who was entirely unconscious by the time they noticed him. 

He was not holding up so well at all. Aren went over to the body and placed a hand over his head. "Oi... he's very cold... I don't think he's doing alright at all."

They looked closely at Rel. His eyes were still open, but they were trembling and looking past everyone. "This isn't good." 

Ineiru walked over to the camp after realizing the concern on everyone's face. She knelt beside Rel and placed a hand on his chest. His heart was still beating, though rather rapidly. "...This is odd-" She picked up Rel and activated some sort of magic. 

This was a typical body modification magic. Her eyes flared up and she could see his aura. Through those glowing purple eyes, she could see everything. Rel's irregular heartbeat, his blood flow, and most of all his rapidly deteriorating aura.

"He-...he was bitten." Her eyes looked extra concerned for him. It made everyone else feel unusual. "Will he be alright?"

"No." She kept her answer brief as she surveyed his neck. She wasn't seeing where the entry point was. "Oreilia, would you take off his shirt?"

"W-why me?!"

"We don't have much time, Oreilia." Her tone was completely different from her usual self. She was entirely focused on the body before her. It seemed it truly was serious. 

Oreilia grumbled and picked Rel's body up, removing his cloak before resting him carefully on her lap. He looked pretty dumbfounded with his eyes wide open and mouth drooling like this. Oreilia held the need to snicker.

"He'll be alright, won't he? If it's just a bite, then it should easily be healed." Oreilia assured.

"I...don't actually know."

"Eh??"

"Please be quiet for a second. I have to stabilize him. There are inscriptions already doing work inside him." 

"Ah..t-there." She noticed the piece of cloth tied around his knuckles. She had subconsciously dismissed it as fighting garb for when he punches things, but she should've already realized something like this much earlier in the day.

She took Rel's hand and unwrapped it. The cut was healing fairly fast. She examined the hand. Not normally seen to the naked eye, she could see the inscriptions clearly. The words began at his knuckles and continued up his arm, and to his heart.

These were formulas she had never seen before. There was only one thing she could realize, and that was the inscription "‡" 

"As I thought..." 

"Hm? Did you find out something?" Aren asked. He was concerned about Rel's health. It looked like it was deteriorating fast.

"There wasn't a single mage present during our earlier attack. That normally would not have been possible, since inscriptions cannot activate without energy and dead bodies lack it significantly."

"They're using an inscription which draws all your energy into it until you're dead. Then the inscriptions for certain instructions are fed that energy..." 

"By the blessings of Vixail, please grant me the authority to comfort your child." She placed her hands over Rel as if in prayer and a blinding white light manifested in her hands. Rel who's eyes had been open and trembling finally stabilized. 

His eyes closed and his breathing became much more normal. His fever didn't go away though. He continued to shiver.

"Y-you did it?" Oreilia asked.

She shook her head. "I only stabilized him."

"Then- he's still in danger?"

"Precisely.. the formulas are still inside him. I only understand a small amount of the inscriptions. They're nothing like the ones I'd seen and learned at the academy."

"He should be able to survive a couple more days, but exerting himself will only make matters worse. His energy is depleted to dangerous levels. I can stall the energy absorption for at least a couple of days. But afterward...things won't fare well for him unless we find a way to get rid of it."

She bit onto her index finger and began to chant something incohesive as she wrote in the air. The blood materialized out of her hand and formed words that floated in the sky. "σδ¥"   The letters floated in the air, completely unperturbed by gravity. 

Zephise was yet again, notably in awe, but he was too concerned about what was going on to write within his notebook. She then closed her hands around the letters and clutched them tightly, until they turned to blood-like fluid. 

With just her nail, she re-opened Rel's wounds and dropped the blood into the open gash on his knuckles. The blood seeped into his hand and disappeared. 

"This should counteract the energy absorption for a few days... I'm not powerful enough to counter this kind of magic for long..f-forgive me."

"No. Y-you did well. This way, he can at least survive!" Aren thanked her from the bottom of his heart and got up. His fists remained clenched. 

"So the mage that initially started this. He didn't infect everyone, he simply created a sequence of inscription codes and cursed one person...The curse then drains them of all their aura. When they die, the inscription then feeds the other inscriptions the absorbed mana in order to execute sequences of events like the one before."

"That is correct."

"Then what is that sequence that it needs to execute?"

"Dead bodies are unintelligent. If I had to guess... it would be, turn the living. They should not have the ability to distinguish between human or animal. There's a good possibility we will be seeing animals under this influence as well. That city is probably not the only one hit."

"In that case...t-then, if we kill the magician behind this, we should be able to put a stop to the inscriptions sequence, r-right?"

"Neh. This curse is cruel. It will continue until there's no mana left to keep it active."

"Then they should logically only be active for a whole day."

"Not precisely. While it can absorb aura that fast, the seals don't take much to cause movement in the body. Furthermore, This is an observation from earlier. They don't move much at all until something triggers them to."

"I-..I'll have to keep watch over him tonight. You guys may all rest up. I was planning on cooking, but that can wait until tomorrow."

They nodded and eventually all retreated to their tents with sullen expressions on their face. The mission had just begun and they had already taken a casualty. Who was the mage behind this? And just how big of a threat will they be? These questions loomed over their heads as they resided in their tents.

They found that none of them could sleep, however. They all lay awake, wondering if their ally will truly be alright. 

Oreilia clenched her teeth as she sat within her dark tent. "Why did you have to do it... I could have survived that kind of hit."

She recalled the instant perfectly. It must have been when the zombies launched their attack. Her vision was too focused on her surroundings. In her confusion, she failed to notice an enemy stepping in reach of her. Had Rel not bashed the monster's teeth in, she'd have been bitten.

The grim realization that the same boy she had been making fun of was suffering because of her ate her apart. If Galtz could have seen her disdainful behavior, what would he think? She sighed...

Truly disdainful.