Vol 3 Chapter 32 – Boyhood: Autumn at Thirteen・Part 10

What separates a fantasy shambling corpse from a panic-horror zombie?

The principle that keeps it moving.

“Oaaagh!?”

With a pathetically shrill cry, I punted the head gnawing at my boot. It shot off and vanished into the trees.

In panic-horror, a zombie usually runs on viruses, parasites, or brain mutations, so blow off the head (or sometimes the heart) and it stops.

Barring a few outliers, you’ve got a time-honored weak point: land a critical on the skull and the fight is over.

Why the head? Because the command center is up there—whether it’s a parasite in the nerves, a virus-warped brainstem, or a mind gone rabid. That hardware drives the body.

Flip that around: if the control center isn’t in the skull, decapitation only knocks out the main camera—maybe the main weapon. The corpse keeps going.

Just like this one.

The clumsy torso levered itself up on one arm and grabbed at me. I switched Wolf-Sender to a reverse grip, steadied the flat with my gauntleted hand, slipped inside its reach, and slammed the pommel into its exposed gut.

Bone creaked and flesh squelched, yet the body only staggered. A living foe would drop, vomiting, but he barely reacted.

Why would he? He’s moving fine without a head, so breathing and pulse don’t matter. Crush the lungs, shove up the diaphragm—there’s no neural center left to feel misery.

For good measure I seized a rock with the <Hand> and clubbed him again. Humanity’s oldest weapon did the trick—the corpse toppled.

That’s the terror of undead here: no control core to break, no physiology to exploit. True, the bite won’t “infect” you, but the grip can tear limbs off—a slim comfort.

Humans flinch at pain, fall to flash-bang spells, and double over when gut-punched. Some even lower their weapons at a scrawny kid like me. However strong they are, they’re still manageable.

Corpses aren’t. Their soul-scent ignores sensory-blinding magic, and they march through pain. High rolls and crit-spam are my bread and butter, but these things are my natural enemy…

No—call it homework that just ambushed me.

“Now then, what to do.”

I pinned the thrashing body with every <Hand> I could muster, but its undead muscle overwhelmed my boosted strength. Press its back, fold its knees—it stayed down, yet my low baseline power was painfully clear.

This is the flaw I never fixed: extreme toughness, especially in oversized non-humans.

My swordplay may be nasty, but a sword has limits. The edge is only so wide; it lacks sky-piercing reach or ocean-cleaving hitboxes.

Magic or not, this world is full of beasts stronger than humans, and plenty—like undead—ignore human logic. Rely solely on sword arts and the ceiling hits hard.

Sure, a stretchy blade or flying slash would help, but this isn’t a boys’ manga—it’s closer to a hard-boiled seinen. No such luck.

It’s not that my sword can’t hurt them. The edge bites; armor and scales part. Land a crit and giant-killing is possible.

But I can’t sever those massive limbs or towering torsos. A curved-blade fighter has limits. I win, but I can’t lop off a tail before it sweeps my party.

Against something with no physical vitals, that weakness glares. While I fretted, a sigil flared behind me.

Gray slurry whirled through the air, splashed over the corpse, and thickened.

“You all right!?”

Mika’s concrete slurry, conjured by construction magic, sets faster than a desert sponge dries. Even the undead couldn’t break it; only a few limbs twitched weakly.

“Mika… thanks. I was in a bind.”

Tension drained from his face now that I was safe. He must have rushed over after my shriek.

“Surprising to see an enemy even you struggle with. You look fearless with that sword.”

Compliments right after that scream? Friend, you’re killing me. I do fear things, and I’ve plenty I can’t beat solo. Ask me to kill Agrippina and I’d barely manage a grope before dying; Lady Reisen—I don’t even know how she can die.

Wow… my acquaintances are all monsters. Maybe that keeps my ego in check.

“A single sword can’t do much—you, a mage, know that. At best it kills humans.”

Which is why I struggled with something that isn’t. Creatures that die when decapitated are wonderfully simple.

“I see. Makes my help worthwhile.” Mika puffed out his chest. The concrete had cured perfectly—no cracks, no bubbles. Probably a professional quirk.

…Right, Mika is one answer to the undead.

Corporeal undead boast regeneration and toughness. Even this traveler’s corpse would keep moving unless hacked to pieces. Perfect tank material.

But slap a disabling debuff like this and they’re helpless—same logic as locking a vampire in a stone coffin under holy water.

Can’t kill it? Fine, don’t fight it. Mika is their natural enemy: splash concrete, drop them in a pit, pour fresh mix on top—nasty but effective.

“Still… why an undead out here?”

While I admired his debuff skills, Mika crouched to inspect the limbs sticking out.

“Pig-skin boots, flax clothes. These marks on the boots…”

“Spur scars. Probably tore them off on a root.”

Spurs cue a horse to start. Detachable, buckled on. They ruin stealth, so I always remove mine. This corpse didn’t—wandered the woods until they broke.

So he was rich enough to travel on horseback—mystery on why he’s undead here deep in the forest.

I kicked his head away earlier; we should find it and give proper rites.

Except… how?

Undead soaked in mana or possessed by ghosts defy nature. They won’t stop unless the magic fades, and that won’t happen soon.

If it were a spell construct we could wait for the mana to run out. But if it’s a ghost or ambient mana, it keeps going.

Sadly, two amateurs can’t tell why it’s moving, so we can’t fix it. Knowing both poisonous and edible mushrooms exist doesn’t mean you can ID them.

Clerics can purify unclean beings, or you can borrow help from conceptual beings like fairies or spirits. We can do neither. The advice “always bring one cleric” is spot-on.

We once ran a cleric-less campaign because local gods were off-limits—utter hell: wounds lingered, death hovered, ranger-brewed herbs offered scant recovery.

Now we’re missing a cleric in a new way. We traded glances and nodded.

Time to go home. This place is a hard nope.

If we had a full party we’d yell “Untouched dungeon!” and kick the door in. But we’re just a page and a student—power and prep lacking.

Anywhere spawning undead is nowhere near normal, and not for a casual stroll.

We’ll report the undead and leave the rest to professionals. Charging in coin-less is above our pay grade. Lord Faige may call me eccentric, but he’s reasonable—he’ll assign a different task.

No overdoing it. We can’t roll new character sheets.

Besides, I’d rather avoid a “third life,” and there’s no guarantee I’d get one.

Proof… I eyed the hand twitching outside the concrete. Bring back an undead arm and a specialist can tell plenty. Anyone will see it’s abnormal.

That way we won’t be dismissed as kids fooling around…

“…Hey, Erich, did something just move?”

While I schemed, Mika sounded uneasy. I’d tuned out the world, but now I listened—nothing.

“Probably your imag—”

Grass rustled from the south—the way we came.

Silence. Another sound. Two… three…

“Uh, friend, is that…?”

“Mika, check your boot laces.”

I checked mine and carefully sheathed Wolf-Sender. Running with it out would trip me.

“Right… okay.”

Thankful for his compliance, I drew the fairy knife—it looked a shade duller—and shaped <Invisible Hands>, grabbing stones and branches.

One of those monsters alone isn’t scary.

Which means…

“Eek!?”

The thicket writhed, trunks swayed, and under mottled light crawled the dead. Two, three, four—no two alike, none remotely whole.

They shared one thing:

Driven by the undead’s inherent hunger, they’d locked onto us.

“Run!”

Undead always attack in packs—a trope unchanged since black-and-white film days.

I seized Mika’s hand and sprinted to escape the dead….

【Tips】Even clerics blessed with miracles have limits. Gods of war grant no healing; gods of craft show no martial might; gods of refuge abhor bloodshed.

Yet every deity that governs the world bestows one universal miracle: setting warped laws right—freely, to anyone, in whatever strength is needed.