The wandering dead appeared very, very suddenly.
In an instant, no sooner had I noticed the air getting colder and turned around when the figure of a ghoul with an enormous body appeared in front of me.
The wandering dead.
Its appearance was just as the previous day’s eyewitness reports had described it.
It was just a big blob of fat. Its round, fat body was blocking up the middle of the road. Just the thing’s head was about the height of a human being.
However, the very next moment, everything from the torso down was cut off by Clarice’s sickle.
“Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!”
She had taken aim and made a swift attack the moment the wandering dead had appeared. By the time I saw what she was doing, Clarice had already whirled around, swinging her sickle through the air, and cut the thing to pieces. She did so with frightening familiarity. Which I suppose was just what I should have expected from a three-hundred-year-old veteran fighter.
The wandering dead screamed in its inhuman voice, struggling and crawling along the ground.
The limbs themselves must have had some life in them even after being severed from the rest of the repulsive thing, because the creature’s legs jerked and twitched, pulsing on the ground.
“Aaahhhhhhhhh!”
As Clarice raised her sickle again, intending to start cutting the thing into little pieces from the bottom up, the wandering dead let out a piercing shriek as it violently slammed its arms against the ground, propelling it up into the night sky, where the crescent moon was hanging.
“Wha—?”
Clarice stared in shock in the direction the wandering dead was headed—down the road.
Toward the Crescent Moon Company headquarters.
“C-crap…!”
For one brief moment, as she looked back and forth between the lower half of the ghoul that she had severed and the upper half of it flying through the air, her face showed her frustration.
After it landed, the wandering dead again slammed its arms into the ground and sent itself flying through the air.
If its enormous body happened to land on top of a house, the damage would probably make the previous night’s destruction look like nothing.
I couldn’t tell whether this seldom happened or whether I was seeing a rare miss from Clarice.
The only thing I knew for certain was that if I didn’t lend a hand, the damage would be immense.
“Go, please. I’ll clean things up here.”
With a whack, I used my swords to cut up the wandering dead from the knees down.
“…Sorry! I owe you!”
This was one of the wandering dead that Clarice was really supposed to handle on her own, but you have to do what you have to do. She got on her broom and chased after the upper half of the wandering dead.
“Sure, sure, ride safe.” I waved my hand and took a look at the lower half of the wandering dead, which had been cut to pieces.
“…Hmm?”
I looked over and saw that each piece of the minced-up body had started twitching and pulsing again. Then before long, the severed body parts started to wriggle together and ball up like so much bread dough.
Oh my, what’s going on here?
I watched it with a grimace, and I heard from afar, “The wandering dead never fully disappear unless you make sure to incinerate them after cutting their whole bodies up into little pieces, so be careful! The one ironclad rule about them is to set each piece on fire immediately as you cut it off, or they’ll just keep multiplying, the more you cut them up!”
It was Clarice I heard, shouting at me from atop her broom.
“Dice it up into little bits right away and burn it with all your might!” she added.
……
“That’s the sort of thing I would have liked you to tell me ahead of time!” I shouted back in anger. It was time to throw caution to the wind.
“I’m telling you now, so forgive me! Sorry!”
She waved her hand and flew off on her broom, chasing the top half of the wandering dead.
And as for me, I stayed behind, tidying up after she had made a mess in the streets.
“Ohhh…”
“Ahhh…”
And while I was at it, I also dealt with the other dead. As I used my swords to dispose of all the ghouls that were slowly walking over to surround me, I kept my eyes fixed on what had been the wandering dead.
Though I cut them up one by one into little pieces, the remains of the dead were reforming themselves into human figures.
I see. That makes sense.
That was when it became obvious to me that if I left the pieces alone, they would soon become the dead in human form, like I had encountered before, and start attacking me.
Well, that’s a little annoying.
I guess that means—
“Hyah!”
I waved my wand and sliced up the wandering dead into little pieces with my swords.
Once it was properly minced, I held my wand at the ready. The spell that I cast conjured a vortex of fire. As it sent an eddy of flames swirling through the air, it torched the finely chopped fragments of the wandering dead.
“Well, that probably ought to do it.”
That didn’t take much time at all, now did it?
Surveying my surroundings, I didn’t see any more dead around that were still in their original forms. Each and every one of them was now either fog or in very fine pieces.
“……”
I think I could lend assistance to Clarice, if I chased after her right now.
“…I wonder if she’s doing all right on her own?”
If I went straight in the direction Clarice had headed, I would probably arrive at the Crescent Moon Company’s main office, where we had been before.
…I hope the wandering dead doesn’t make it that far, though.
Maybe it would be better for me to go and help?
Given that she had cut the thing in half in just an instant, as long as nothing drastic happened, I had a feeling she would be able to deal with it handily, without me getting involved.
“……?”
And so on.
Then it happened while I was gazing at the smoldering remains of the dead—of what was left of the wandering dead—and thinking mixed-up thoughts.
“……”
I decided to promptly go chasing after Clarice.
I was feeling an uncomfortable chill, as I had in the moment when the dead had appeared.