Vol 3 Chapter 31 – Boyhood: Autumn at Thirteen・Part 9

Even when you call someplace “the woods,” there are all sorts. You arrive and find a view nothing like the image in your head. A map tells you the lay of the land, but anything that grows above the soil is another story.

I’d braced myself when I heard bears showed up here, yet the forest Lady Faige sent us to went way beyond that level of resolve.

“Isn’t this… more a sea of trees than a forest?”

“Funny you should say that, my friend. I can’t see it as anything else either.”

Agreeing with my dumbstruck companion, I craned my neck at trees so tall it hurt. Packed tight, they seemed determined to keep people out, and I felt a pang of despair.

This was not the sort of place you wander into for a “bit of an adventure.” It was the late-game quest kind—where you finally challenge the mighty witch living here or beg her for a panacea that cures every disease.

The primeval mix of spruce, fir, oak, and other trees was nothing like the carefully managed preserves near the imperial capital or our manor. If those orderly groves were prestigious prep schools, this was the back-alley delinquent school that even local punks fear.

Trees grew where they pleased, roots writhed across the earth, and years of fallen leaves formed a thick carpet. This place wasn’t meant for harvesting; the air itself warned outsiders away.

Our “little outing” had turned into a full-on outdoor dungeon crawl. Without forest know-how, we’d have run back to hire a ranger or scout. Every TRPG player knows tackling a dungeon without recon is suicide.

Lightly armed and carrying only a few days of food and water, we started walking, still reeling from the forest’s scale.

Most travelers would stumble here, but Mika and I were different.

Mika, an auditing student aiming to be a construction mage, communes with earth, stone, and wood. He can’t politely ask nature to help like a priest, yet shaping the soil is his specialty.

“Considering how much this drains me, this is about all I can manage.”

Tracing a sigil, he cast his spell. The ground gathered, compressed, and became a path. Filling tangled roots and natural slopes, a straight track threaded between the trunks toward the forest’s heart.

“No, no—this is impressive.”

The packed-earth path was perfectly level; only shoulder-width, yet easy to walk. Because it ran arrow-straight, it prevented the usual “veer off-course every time you dodge a tree” problem. With the way back this clear, breadcrumbs and graph paper were unnecessary.

“You think so? If I rough up the geology and hurt the forest, someone will scold me….”

I nudged his shoulder; after a beat he nudged back, and we continued side by side.

Dim even at midday, the lichens clinging to trunks lent the place a spooky air, yet the forest itself was peaceful. No boars, bears, or bandits burst out—maybe the dice were rolling hot today.

Bandits wouldn’t bother with a hideout this deep anyway. Even if they wanted to ambush travelers while dodging patrols, woods closer to the highway abound.

Free of random encounters, we explored at a leisurely pace and gathered extras. Untouched woods like these harbor herbs worth decent coin; thriving against such competition means excellent quality.

“Look, Erich—acorns! Tons of ’em.”

Churning the soil, Mika gathered the rolling acorns and grinned. He wasn’t just fooling around; where he’s from, acorns are respectable food.

“We collect loads during autumn and preserve them. Grind them, leach them in water, and they’re not half bad.”

Packing them away, he said he’d cook them when we got back. Up north they’re common fare, but in the capital they’re poverty food—and mostly pig feed. Yesterday’s mutton must have triggered homesickness.

“Once you leach out the tannin, you can bulk up bread or cookies, or roast them for tea. Boil them down into something like aspic, too—pretty tasty. Hardly anyone down south eats them, though.”

After those detours we kept on until herbs and nuts weighed on our packs. Then the pouch at my waist quivered.

It held Ursula’s rose.

“What’s wrong?” Mika asked.

I asked him to wait, took out the rose, and felt Ursula’s presence. The petals trembled but didn’t open; she didn’t appear.

Tonight was the full moon.

Fairies grow stronger as the shadow moon waxes and the true moon wanes; when the true moon is full, their power fades. Ursula could appear human-sized when the shadow moon was round—if it’s hidden, she may struggle to manifest at all.

So right now, I was without her blessing.

…Good thing I never dumped skill points into fairy perks. If the shadow moon went new and someone targeted me with meta tactics, my power would be halved.

Joking aside, she heard my voice but hadn’t the strength to answer, so she trembled instead—warning me.

What about, though? She always skips the vital part—so very event-like. Surely a boss fight isn’t about to spawn; yesterday’s heart-to-heart with Mika already felt climactic to me.

“Let’s keep moving but stay alert. I’ve got… a bad feeling.”

“A hunch, huh? All right, my friend.”

Without hesitation, Mika swung his short staff and carved a wide hole.

“Travel light, right? Let’s stash our packs here.”

He lined the pit with stones so beasts couldn’t dig in—a tweak of the paving spell. Handy fellow; no wonder caravans love their mages.

With minimal water we set off again. Since bunching up invites ambushes, I—who know a bit of stealth—took the lead. True, that left the soft mage behind, but Mika’s familiar shares its vision, so his rear should be safer than mine.

A lukewarm breeze suddenly blew, and the stench it carried stabbed my nose.

I knew that smell. Disgusting—something I’d rather never inhale—yet familiar enough to breed reluctant resignation.

The sickly sweetness of rot mixed with urine and feces—the stink of death.

Death is close in this world. People die easily, and public executions are routine.

Not so much in our manor, but in midsize cities they execute people several times a year, then mount the corpses on gates as casually as Christmas ornaments. On highways, bandit underlings hang as warnings—you build gore tolerance whether you like it or not.

For the worst criminals they pickle severed heads in wax and take them on a nationwide tour. Long before you butcher livestock, you’re forced to harden to gore.

This was the exact smell from those events.

I raised a clenched fist—the signal to halt—killed my presence, and scouted ahead. The odor drifted from off Mika’s new path.

I moved without disturbing even a leaf, shoving away the urge to dump points into Stealth, and searched for the source.

I found it quickly: a grimy figure standing heedlessly among the trees. Filthy clothes, hair a mess, skin earth-colored, and—an irrefutable fact—the right arm was missing.

An undead.

I’d read about them, but never this type.

In a world where souls and an afterlife are real, several beings are called undead. You can’t have ghosts and wraiths without walking corpses—someone clearly allocated resources to the horror set.

Whether that’s praiseworthy, my scowl said enough.

First type: races without lifespans, like long-lived humans or vampiric demons. They can be killed, so people seldom call them undead; it’s just an epithet for their regeneration, and some texts record them grumbling the name oversells them.

Second: those robbed of death—or who threw it away. Theology says the gods sometimes strip living rights as punishment: sleep, freedom from hunger, certain emotions, and one of the heaviest—death.

Those robbed of death, or who cast it aside and returned like Lady Reisen, are undead… but this thing wasn’t that dignified.

This was the third kind: a corpse seized or pressed into service.

Magic warps the world’s laws; cram that warp into a dead body, and it moves. I once found a self-study necromancy tree and thought, Strong. Then I realized it screamed persecution flag and skipped it.

“Strong,” to me, includes not wrecking the role-play side. No matter the numbers, a PC stuck outside city gates once the campaign turns urban is useless.

So the figure before me was likely a technique I rejected, or a body saturated with mana or a ghost. Compared with rational Lady Reisen, its behavior was crude—

Suddenly the dead man’s head whipped around, staring at me. The left eye had fallen and shriveled, dangling by the nerve stalk; the right socket was packed with mud. Teeth clacked like castanets, fixing eyeless attention on me.

A chill of concentrated death froze my limbs, and the breath I’d drawn escaped with a pathetic “hyu.” How did he know I was—

Oh, right: undead sense the “scent” of souls, like fairies.

He pivoted faster than any walking corpse should, lunging with his remaining hand, teeth rattling—horror-movie perfect.

I did not meet the charge head-on. Stepping half a pace, I had already drawn Wolf-Sender and lopped off the head in one stroke. A dead sprinter’s speed surprises the unwary, but once you’re braced it’s nothing special. Lacking will, they’re predictable.

And hyper-aggressive dead things beating the living? Common in my past-life entertainment. I spent a season brawling sprinting infected in a four-player shooter.

The body crashed forward; the severed head bounced off a trunk and rolled to my feet. A clean strike, if I say so myself—certainly lethal.

Had I been a “woo-hoo”-shouting jock, I’d have eaten bonus damage, skipped the dice roll, and died in the narration.

Even so, this was bad. Undead don’t appear for normal reasons. Either a mage is up to no good deeper in, or mana has pooled enough to animate corpses—both serious.

Huh? Something brushed my leg. I looked down and locked eyes with—

The head I’d just severed, teeth clacking in hunger.

Behind me, with the crack of a branch, something else rose….

“Ofaaah!?”

With an embarrassingly shrill scream, one thought flashed through my mind.

Right—bladed weapons don’t hurt this kind, and critical hits don’t even exist on them….