Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

The skeleton, Loimos, had no way of carrying much things on his person, there were no bags and articles of clothing that could be used or fashioned to fulfil such a purpose.

So, there was only one thing to do with every single object within his reach.

The same treatment he had given the remains of the old man and the orb was granted to these lifeless constructs, although they had once been part of something that was alive, for the most part.

The few tables ricocheted and bounced along the edges of the deep pit, a few times before being clearly broken to pieces, whatever splinters and parts came out of this went on to join what had been thrown down before them.

What the undead was going to do after didn’t allow for him to even take a single thing in his hands or in between his terrifyingly pointy fangs, he had tried to keep something like a plank stuck in his ribcage but so little success.

His bones weren’t smooth by any means, but the outgrowths of rotten flesh constantly oozed with putrefied blood, meaning that anything that wasn’t tightly jammed in between his ribs would slip out.

This applied to everything he had tried.

As such, once he was down with emptying the rooms of everything that could be moved, meaning everything for the undead didn’t care for passing time or the continued crumbling around him, so he went and even spent the time to move the heavier furniture and disassemble part of the walls.

Nothing could tire him, so he never stopped for even a second.

He began to climb down without hesitation, he had no real idea how to do this but it wasn’t difficult to figure out, the sides of the chasm weren’t flat, much different from the walls of the rooms, which were made from grey, stone bricks.

Everything was rough and uneven, gaps here and there, rocks sticking out, finding places that he could keep stable footing and hold on was a task anyone could have done.

Granted, people of flesh and bones wouldn’t be quite able to use the slimmer spots he was shoving his bones in, neither would they be calm.

It didn’t bother him in the least, but some time ago, the mysterious lights illuminating some of the rooms had disappeared, so everything was pitch black whilst he was doing this.

A living would be tense and most likely shaking, only further heightening their chances of losing their grip and falling to their deaths.

No such problem for Loimos, he quickly made his way further and further down, until he reached what appeared to be a cave, he hadn’t arrived at the bottom, not by a longshot.

His bones grinding against the hard rocks, he put both of his feet down into this cave at once, faced with pure darkness still.

The ceiling was high enough for him to not scrape the top of his skull against it, though the width of the tunnel didn’t allow him to spread his arms in their entirety.

He could hear the sound of footsteps coming from deeper within.

Multiple sets of them moving about, seemingly randomly, though it was too soon to make such an assumption, some were familiar, others weren’t.

He moved forward after only a short instant of listening, his steps slow and as discreet as possible, if there was something to kill, getting the jump on them would allow him to do it so quicker.

Crouching down, walking on all four like a beast on the prowl, he followed the wall to his right, softly touching it once in while to make sure he wasn’t deviating.

His jaw opened bit by bit, ready to close shut at any given time.

By all means, Loimos was still weak, moving simple furniture around had taken him quite some time, him easily breaking the old man was more revealing of the elder’s frailty than of the undead’s strong grip.

Though, he could tell with certainty that his jaw packed much more power compared to the rest of his structure, the ’clack’ sound it emitted when suddenly shut was loud and threatening, it could easily be mistaken for a bear trap.

Not that Loimos knew what a bear trap was, or what a bear was for that matter.

Placing his bony hand against the wall again, he could feel a curvature, moving along, he was greeted with a wide room, much reminiscent of the ones he had seen up above.

A lantern was dangling from the ceiling, fastened to it with a chain.

It glowed with faint, dark blue light, the corners of the room remained shrouded in dark but the rest was decently lit for the skeleton to see who were the owners of the footsteps.

Sealing his jaw without a clack, he walked into the room.

His assumption had been right, the locals were indeed completely aimless, walking in random directions.

Some of them were even walking into walls, bumping into random furniture or tripping on rocks.

It didn’t bother them in the least.

It all changed when Loimos entered the room, they all stopped and turned to stare at him, only for a few seconds before resuming their mindless activities.

They were all undead like him, skeleton and zombies.

Lacking his astute intelligence however.

They seemed ancient, the zombies seemed all dried up, their integrity preserved by the environment.

The skeletons, all lacking any rotten flesh, had turned completely grey, their hollow sockets filled with dust, it seemed like any sort of damage would cause them to fall apart, like a strong breeze would disperse them.

They had existed for too long without reaping life.

Seeing them, Loimos spontaneously understood why they were in this state, as though the information had always been within him, waiting to be unlocked.

’They have not acquired experience from killing or absorbed more death force, they are too weak as a base to maintain their form, so, they have continued to follow their decomposition like a corpse would’

Undeads couldn’t really be destroyed without outside interference, they always produced death force on their own, though, even if what Loimos had just thought was perfectly accurate, the degradation would eventually stop, or they would become an entirely different sort of undead.

There was no need to help them gather more death force, they weren’t in need of sustenance like the living did.

Undeads existed at all stages of decomposition, still, they were all undeads, everyone in this room wouldn’t hesitate to rush down the first thing with a pulse that appeared before them.

It was his and their purpose to do so.

However, just like him, they were too weak to even develop the basic skill and ability set of an undead, rendering them unable to do anything but walk in circles, unable to track and detect life.

To change this, they would just need to find things to kill.