Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Griar was certain that he had done nothing in particular to bring attention to himself, so despite wanting to listen in on whatever else the countess might speak of –She was someone who had good chances of knowing where Flor had been taken to, after all– Despite this being a good opportunity, he was quick to realise that the chances of being discovered were far too high when in proximity to the small woman.

She had seemingly noticed something was off, and pinpointed the source instantly, and that was whilst she was busy doing something else! What would happen if she felt that something was wrong and decided to investigate? Once, a strange sensation could be chalked off, maybe twice, but Griar was not feeling like gambling.

So, maintaining his invisibility spell, he slowly crept out of the room, trying to catch any words the countess might be saying, but he was not proficient enough in the language to understand much of what she was actually speaking about, not to mention that she had some sort aristocratic accent that made things even harder to comprehend.

Griar stopped in his tracks as he was about to slip out of the open door however…

"Lady Fe has been unusually joyful lately, it seems like the stagnant water is nearing a threshold, if things go as expected, that should mean that we will soon be due to complete our holy mission, we won't have to stay hidden from the rest of the world, and we won't have to endure the incessant, unlawful invasion any longer- We will be able to strike back, turn their beautiful capitals into piles of rubbles… Eheheh… The Empire might forgive them in the end, but before that, I'll let them have a taste of what they have forced upon us, don't you agree?"

Griar felt his blood colden, thankfully, she wasn't speaking to him, but to the maid, who replied with incomprehensible bug noises.

Whilst he did not understand everything the countess said, he felt that he understood enough, it sounded like the allies of the undead had been waiting for an advancement of sort from the stagnant water, seemingly confident that once this 'upgrade' came to pass, they would be able to easily get back toward their enemies, and presumably, the rest of the world as well.

The countess clearly disliked the two who kept sending troops into her territory in particular, which made sense, even if you were a mad cultist that was allying with literal corpses, which should be pretty much supernatural to the people of this realm- Even then, you wouldn't want people to trespass on your property to try and rob you.

Following this, Griar stepped out of the room as quietly as was possible, moving further into the hallway to continue his investigation, he still had not found a single clue to where Flor might be at, or alternatively, to where Fe stayed at, as it seemed likely that Flor would be near the High Priestess.

As the search dragged on and Milo felt his mana being stirred as he maintained a spell for so long, it still felt like he had only explored a small portion of the castle, feeling like the spell was going to come undone soon, he quickly entered a room and after being sure that no one was in there, let the spell dissipate, planning on taking some rest before continuing.

'Good thing I trained, I never would have lasted that long before…' he thought to himself, taking in his surroundings more attentively, this room… It was different from the ones he had seen before, the castle seemed to overflow with guest rooms that were all nearly identical to one another, as well as storage rooms filled to the brim with nothing of interest.

Here however, the room was much larger, the bed was simply humongous, and in general, everything seemed more expensive, there was even a connected bathroom that was larger than the house of some people.

Such opulence could only mean one thing…

'How do I always end up in that sort of situation?' Griar grimaced as his eyes landed on a certain piece of furniture, upon which strange, very realistic paintings were arranged.

One of them depicted a noble couple, the woman carrying a child, even though it was a newborn, Griar instantly recognised the countess, those ocean blue eyes were unmistakable, and as a baby, she looked perfectly normal, nothing indicating that she would remain small even well into adulthood.

The followed images were all similar, one could see Ada growing up, only that this quickly seemed to halt, he wasn't certain how old she was at the time, but at one point, she just stopped growing in height, curiously however, instead of just staying the same as Griar would have imagined, considering that the countess still looked very young, but no, through the images, he saw her age considerably, her parents eventually stopped appearing on the images, having presumably passed away from old age, leaving only a small, old woman that could not possibly look more depressed and miserable.

But then, suddenly, and without explanation, the old woman became young again, and a spark returned to her eyes, whatever it was that happened, it not only rejuvenated her body, but also restored something that was not physical, perhaps it was joy or hope, it was hard to tell.

'Is this the effect the stagnant water had on her?' he wondered, but it seemed obvious that it was the case… And just as he speculated, he opened a drawer from the nightstand, pulling out a book with a blank cover, opening it, he quickly realised that it was some sort of personal diary coupled with a schedule.

The early pages were mostly useless, it looked like the countess had begun writing in it when she was still very young, so what was written amounted to nothing more than the thoughts and great imagination of a child, but flipping through the pages, once he got to what looked like scheduled meetings and the likes, it became obvious that this marked the moment she took over as the countess and ruler of this land.

At first, everything seemed alright, Ada was still full of vigour, bright-eyed and full of hope for the future.

It did not stay that way.

Famine, disease… Apparently, the land they were on had a government, and Ada attempted to contact it to help the suffering people, but received no response whatsoever, completely ignored.

Things were already complicated as is, but as everything was happening, her parents passed away, and from there, even just from the writing style, one could easily tell that the countess had grown forlorn…