A few days later, with a party of about six we marched out of town.

Evening. Dew was starting to set in, and it was getting rather chilly. Or at least that’s the impression I got from people around me and their odd shivers every now and then. I didn’t feel a thing though.

The air was fresh, the night real young and it was time to go get some undead knights!

“We’re going to go through this as planned,” Xax said. He was in charge of the operation.

A simple plan. We try to reason with them, and if that fails, we kill them. That was that. Those knights were clearly screwing with our town and we couldn’t just sit back and let that happen. Since they were so courageous and killing monsters, no one would be surprised if a monster ended up claiming their lives. Especially since there were awfully dangerous monsters around these parts.

“You sir, should stay in the middle. We’re using you as bait but you’re a very precious kind of bait,” Xax said, trying to choose his words carefully, but the man probably never had any real etiquette training. I didn’t care though.

“Don’t worry about it. I have my own defense squad,” I said. “Summon!”

A group of skeletons popped up and surrounded me like I was their mother or something. Then again technically I was their creator so maybe they did feel that way? Yeah, probably not. Most of them didn’t even have a conscience and were basically moving on instinct. Luna, the skeleton elf, however, was clearly different and was capable of complex thought. But just like the rest of the skeletons, I got the feeling she was still explicitly loyal to me.

Come to think of it, I didn’t see any dark elves in town even after all this time. Maybe I really should move out?

The adventures, all four of them, stared at me with awe, and admiration? Col and Xax already knew about me and what I could do. But the other two, Tia, and Ars had only heard about me. And boy were they captivated.

Anyway, before long we went past the farm lands and the huts. Plenty people lived outside the city walls. Mostly because they couldn’t afford housing within the walls but also because they had to try their best to protect their crops from being devoured by the monsters out here. For which they paid adventurers, particularly half dead, to protect them and stuff. Which was particularly why there would usually be half dead adventurers going about around this time. But there was none. Yeah, because of the holy knights. Their presence had vastly screwed up our economy and working conditions.

Which meant, farmers weren’t around either. Which meant, monsters were and they were devouring the corps and stuff.

Which in turn meant… sigh, we had to more or less skewer some goblins and wolves and stuff.

And skewer them we did….

“But won’t we go against those snakes?” Tia asked, pulling her sword from a dead white wolf.

We were headed to the same grassy lands where I found my pet snake which was graciously sleeping on my neck right now, all coiled up around it. I had a feeling it tried to strangle me every now and then but since those damn cat ears were so cute, I let it be. I was going to butcher the hell out of it if it ever decided to try that on someone else though. Which I had a feeling the thing understood pretty well.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll take care of snakes if we come by any.” However, I hadn’t yet encountered or fought a proper enchanted Cobra myself, so those were just empty words anyway.

Did calm them down a little though, so that was good.

We reached the swamplands and some big snakes were waiting for us. Not poisonous, just big anacondas. The moment they spotted my skeleton army, they scrammed. This kind of happened all the time. Most monsters didn’t have the mental sanctity to even try to attack us skeletons. They weren’t like this when it came to halfdead and large monsters didn’t care but mid to low rank monsters were just far too afraid of me and my summons. I guess it was understandable. Living things were inherently afraid of moving dead things anyway. In fact, I was more or less afraid too. The only reason I wasn’t shaking in my damn boots was because I was already dead. Heh!

So yeah, we easily passed the swamps and reached our final destination, the grasslands. A calm breeze past us by, almost brushing against my armor. If only I had glowing eyes, I would have looked so darn cool right about now. Not that I could look and admire my cool Sa*ron like armor anyway. Sigh.

That being said though, we didn’t come across any corpses or any knights whatsoever. “Maybe they only show up later at night?” I said.

No, that didn’t make sense. The last time I was here, it was around this time as well. I found the massive snake dead.

“I’m not sure, judging by my calculations, they should have been rotating to this spot again,” Col said. “Or maybe they’ve picked up and left?”

“I doubt that,” Vivia said.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

She pointed at the direction we came from. “Because those shadows sure haven’t left.”

I chuckled, staring at the shadows or rather, the horses. I could see them well, and I could hear them now that I was paying attention. The tug, tug sounds of hoofs against earth. The horses flickered in shining silver armor, and the knights above them wore the same stuff. Dazzling. Seven knights. And the one that was leading them, had white armor, distinguishing him from the rest.

Okay so, assuming our talks fell apart. I’d just found my Dullahan Candidate!