Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

The King's guess turned out to be spot on, from the looks of things, the Sons Of Loimos as a whole have decided to get into action, whatever it was that convinced them that now was the right time to get moving was unknown, but they had clearly collectively made the choice to not only join the vanguard, which was headed by their favourite person, but also to track down the escapees, who had not only fled from Tamaris, but also from the Emerald Realm.

Those foul livings had ran away from Death's blessing not once, but twice- That was a most grave offence, an action as disgusting as it was nonsensical, what sort of lunatics run away from the occasion to experience an eternity existing as a being superior to all else in every aspect?

The Sons Of Loimos could only assume that those filthy living creatures thrived through blasphemy and through a misunderstanding of what dying truly entailed.

Many of them passed through the arena, each displaying impressive combat skills, and great martial instincts, they came in various shapes and sizes, truly, their group was large and enveloped just about every kind of undead that the Empire had to offer, not all of them won their fights however, although they were good, the same was true for their opponents.

After all, this was undead against undead, there was no weakling in the colosseum…

Apart from Traquik and Athala, a third one had a very memorable fight, but it was mostly because of the way he fought, an old, dusty elven skeleton garbed in a wide cloak and hood, which seemed to have once been white in colour, but had been yellowed and tainted by various oils and substances over time.

Gasbert was an undead who focused on less traditional way of power, in fact, some argued that it wasn't even a way of power to begin with, and more of a craftsmanship discipline, but the effectiveness in combat was proven, as from beneath his cloak, Gasbert brought his right arm, but instead of skeletal limb, it turned to be a large and metallic, it was hard to tell whether the steel had been added onto his original limb, or if it replaced it entirely.

But nonetheless, it was a wonder of creation, the original, skeletal body of Gasbert was nothing special, perhaps even on the weaker side in terms of physical capabilities overall, and with no clear talent in energy manipulation or anything else, most like him would have instead turned toward other roles, or perhaps chosen to become sorcerers by transforming their inner energies.

He instead engineered himself into a warrior, the metallic arm was capable of delivering incredible force, and judging from the materials used, it had also been thought to allow the user to simply swat away oncoming spells, but the arm was only the tip of the iceberg, the cloak served the purpose of obscuring the many other enhancements that he had strapped to his skeletal form, copper, silver and golden wire ran in between his bones, linked to multiple other devices, just as on his feet, which allowed for him to burst forward and get the initiative during his duel.

His opponent, a pale ghoul that stood at over three meters in height was no pushover, even with the disadvantage of not knowing what he was up against, the ghoul was innately physically powerful, and was equipped with talon-like claws that could disembowel a living with a casual swipe.

Against undeads, those claws could shatter bones, turning them to dust.

Faced with such a durable opponent, Gasbert did not have an easy time, his enhancements were naturally mostly geared toward fighting the living, so some of the more special abilities at his disposal were utterly useless against his adversary, nonetheless, he had not held back on the resources when crafting his tools, the metallic right arm was able to withstand the ghoul's claws, especially once the shield attachment was deployed.

The fight was lengthy and gruelling, since neither of them had a sure-fire way to render their opponent helpless, the combat went on as the undeads knew no exhaustion whatsoever, the duel only came to a close twenty minutes after its start.

The tall ghoul looked down upon his claws, finding them shattered and worn off from repeated strikes against the metallic arm, his regenerative abilities were not potent enough to restore them whilst fighting, and considered that the arm was still intact…

"I forfeit"

By now, Gasbert's cloak had been mostly torn to shreds, revealing multiple contraptions, many of which had not been used during the fight due to their uselessness against a fellow undead, or because they involved the gathering of energy to cast a spell, which served no purpose in the colosseum.

His answer to King Nitok's question mirrored that of the other Sons Of Loimos, and would be further echoed by the others like him that followed in the arena.

By the time the event concluded, dozens of Sons Of Loimos headed for the headquarters of the vanguard…

"Do you think they will find the escapees?" wondered Faraday.

"Considering their obsession, they will definitely find them eventually, but it will be complicated, Loimos investigated that as well, and basically came up empty-handed, I believe that we will need to progress in our capabilities to detect, and open a way into realms that possess no entry point in the main world" replied King Nitok, it was said that the number of realms spread across the world was enormous, but there were even more that could not simply be entered by finding a rift.

For example, the elemental realms they had been trying to intrude upon had no rift leading inside of them, those were easy to locate, as their existence had already been researched and their strong elemental presences allowed them to be easily located.

Even then, they were unable to break in.

The only realm they managed to enter without a clear rift being present to begin with, was the Emerald Realm, but that had been due to Loimos tracking down someone who had died before being able to enter, and still bore the trace linking them to the realm, there had been a clear connection and anchor at that time.

Without that, tracking down the escapees appeared to be mostly a waste of time.

The old carver was not a fool, he had thought of countermeasures in advance to ensure that the method he created was only usable once.

So, from the looks of it, the Sons Of Loimos were launching themselves into a wild goose chase…