The next handful of days pass in a similar fashion. This includes Jason logging out to cultivate and check on the situation with the corrupting energy. After the fourth night though, Jason gives up on figuring it out. Whatever the reason is, his house is now being avoided by the muck. His only remaining worry is if there is someone out there tracking the energy flows. If there is, then the house now sticks out like a sore thumb.

In game the group has almost thrown up their hands on finding a slug of the right level for Lily to fight. Either the slugs were newborn or the size of a fox and a few years old. Courtney shrugs at this, “The undead, even the non-sapient variety, aren’t going to just let themselves get snacked on. Either the slugs die young or become strong enough to live for the long haul. We just need to find one slug still in the growing stage.”

Jason sighs, “that means we need to find a site with active undead. If your guess on their life cycle is correct, then I have a guess of my own. Part of the reason we only see the young and the old here is with how the undead rise up. They probably come in waves as groups of undead work their way up to the surface. There aren’t any undead in the area so all we are seeing are the starving young and the slugs that survived the last outbreak.”

Courtney nods, “That would explain why we are only seeing two sizes of slugs.”

Rosha shrugs, “So we just need to find an area with only the young slugs and then wander around a bit. That should represent an area between undead attacks. Follow along a place like that and we should pass by a few zones.”

The group agrees that Rosha’s plan at least gives them a direction and so they continue on their way. Though even with a plan it still takes a few days to pass through the current zone. But they do finally come to a place with only young slugs. Once there it only takes them half an hour to reach another region but it was even worse than the last. There are even less young slugs and the older slugs are bigger.

Jason shakes his head at this, “Either it has been longer since the last unearthing or more powerful undead rose up here.”

Courtney agrees with this and adds on, “you were probably right about needing to find some undead. The slugs here are too uniform so unless we find a place full of the exact size of slug we need that is our only hope.”

The group backtracks a little and follows the edge of this new zone. Over the next couple days they find four more areas that have stabilized. On the fifth day there are signs of recent undead activity. Still just bones on the ground but they still have the unhealthy glow the group had come to associate with the recently redead. It isn’t undead energy. The slugs would have eaten it already but felt more like their unnaturalness bleeding into the surroundings now that it wasn’t kept in by whatever animated them.

They continue further into this new area and soon find signs of something, presumably the undead, clawing their way out of the ground. This guess becomes almost a certainty when Rosha inspects the soil. She grabs a handful and shows it to the group while pointing at some marks.

“These little dots should be moving. They are just some simple soil mites, but I can’t find a single living specimen in the holes. For most living creatures, their own innate life force will protect them from brief exposure to an undead’s miasma. Stuff like these mites aren’t so lucky. Honestly? If it wasn’t for some heavy duty magical nonsense from the core forest this entire area would be dead. You can’t just kill off all the microbiome of an area and not have it die as a whole.”

Jason sighs, “still no actual undead though. Plus we haven’t even seen slugs. You would think the area would be crawling with them.”

Rosha shakes her head, “This site isn’t recent enough for that. There are tracks left by both the undead and slugs all over the place, but they aren’t from today. The oldest marks come from the undead. Those are followed by a multitude of slugs. My guess is that the smaller slugs are being supported by a passive leak of miasma when there isn’t any undead to nom on.”

“Whenever a batch of undead pop out the area stops being able to support the slugs and so they all leave. We just need to follow the tracks and we will find more slugs. Though even without that the slugs would likely go after the undead. When they have been living on the equivalent of broth and suddenly a bunch of juicy stakes pop out of the ground how could they not?”

Courtney nods, “that would make sense. Though that is just one assumption piled on another. The only thing we know for certain is the undead dug their way out of the ground here and when they left the slugs followed.”

Off to the side Jason has been observing the holes and decides now would be an excellent time to interrupt. “So this is interesting to woolgather over but it is getting late and I don’t want to sleep next to an open grave. Yes I know it isn’t technically a grave but we should probably get a move on anyway. Unless either of you think this would be a delightful place to spend the night?”

Rosha bites her finger, “I really don’t want to sleep here? But it might be the safest place, so there is that.”

Courtney sighs, “The undead close to the surface are all gone. Even the slugs which are by far the largest monster presence have left. So yeah, in theory this spot would be the safest to stay overnight. On the other hand, I don’t want to sleep here either.”

Jason claps his hands, “So it’s decided! We travel a bit away from here and then sleep.” And so they did.

Akhier

Thank you for reading! Next two chapters are free on my Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/dragonheartednovels ), five chapters beyond that for only a dollar, and many more for five dollars (two chapters release a week at this tier).