Several hours had come and gone since the events in the cemetery. Cleaning the gravesite proved simple enough, but the image of it continued to plague Scott's mind for some time. In truth, were he not able to utilize the system to make himself sleep he would not have been able to do so.

Blackthorne set aside his newest sprig of vita grass. "Nothing left to prepare..."

Preparations made, he spent a little currency and summoned Sonja back to the dream world. After a brief moment of idle chit-chat the topic turned to a familiar one.

Sonja shrugged. “I believe we discussed this before. The ones on the surface are the weakest. Their strength is sapped further during the.”

“What about poison or disease?” he asked. "I haven't had to deal with either."

“They can cause both, but only if you let them bite and claw you too much.” she said. "We both have fairly high vigor even without items, or a skill, to reinforce our resistances."

“I’ll leave it to you then." Blackthorne twisted his head a bit to stretch before he stood up. "My spells are not particular strong, yet. So I have to rely on enchanted equipment.”

She grinned at him then hefted the chipped iron sword gifted to her. She had not been allowed to keep her practice sword, though the apron was granted in order to preserve her dignity slightly. Blackthorne, thankfully, had a small number of trash-tier weapons available. A good deal of what he had was lost, but a little was left behind in his room. Mostly damaged goods.

They shared a brief conversation with Scraggles, and purchased a bit of food for the trip, then headed off toward the cemetery. It was not long before they arrived, as the onions were particularly uninterested in testing their might that day.

"The stench..." said Sonja, her expression one of pained reluctance.

"Been a while since you dealt with anything like this?" Blackthorne grinned at her in an almost lewd manner.

"I have not fought such in quite some time." Sonja wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"That sword going to be good enough for you?" Blackthorne glanced down at the chipped iron blade she now wielded.

"I would probably do almost as much damage unarmed given my semi-divine nature..." Sonja frowned down at the weapon in her hand.

He chuckled softly, already knowing how she would answer his coming question. "Oh? Should I take it back? You could fight them hand to hand."

"No, no... You've gone through the trouble of arming me... The least I can do is use this..." Her words trailed off briefly before she spat out the word, "sword."

"I see," said Blackthorne. He tried to hide his laughter from her, but it proved impossible. There was no way that she would want to willing touch zombies with her bare hands.

They trotted forward slowly. It did not take long before the wandering zombies noticed their presence. Unlike the grassland, the monsters in the graveyard were far more visible from a distance. However, that meant that travelers were more visible as well. Once they cleared the grass, at least.

Blackthorne slowed his movements and Sonja raced ahead. As soon as a zombie got within striking distance, she lashed out with a quick strike. Her blade had been prepared as best it could be, but it was still a terrible weapon.

However, the moment her blade slammed down atop the monster’s skull, a bright flash of dark energy raced through it. Blackthorne had enchanted her sword so that the first three strikes would produce a weak version of his current Jolt spell.

It took two hits to bring the beast down under Sonja's far greater skill, but there remained no doubt that most of the damage was provided by the enchantment. His skill levels were still low, but he had certain bonuses that helped with the usage of magical abilities now.

The next zombie took a powerful blow to the chest then jerked spastically as the dark lightning crackled through its disease ridden body. Sonja leap to the side then swept the creature’s legs. It fell to the ground, hard, and was left vulnerable to her repeated strikes. She was forced to thwack the monster over twenty times before it died. The physical resistance that zombies possessed, and weapon durability issues, were problematic without the enchantment. Sometimes a strike did absolutely no damage, even with her greater strength and skill.

Blackthorne finished off one of the zombies that he was fighting then looked toward the other monsters. He watched carefully for a moment then called out to Sonja. “Pull back. We need to re-enchant.”

Six more of the monsters staggered toward them at an excruciatingly slow pace. Five of them seemed to be unarmed but one of them held something that looked like a badly rusted sword.

Bandit tactics in full effect, the duo ran off at a high rate of speed, easily distancing themselves from the monsters. While the creatures plodded along in the distance, the zombie hunters regrouped and Blackthorne began to enchantment process. It took roughly one minute for the useable weapons to be enchanted, but the monsters had only covered half the distance to their current position.

“See if you can get that one's weapon, but be careful,” said Blackthorne. That sword was probably garbage but if it was an upgrade it could help the process of finding equipment.

Sonja smiled at him. Every new sword added was an extra three strikes of magic that could happen. “Sounds good.”

She took off toward the monsters again, and her master took out a sandwich. He ate while she battled the undead. Weapon enchantment took a lot out of him, and he needed to keep his strength up.

The under-dressed slave girl ran in a wide arc and drew away several of the monsters, including the sword-wielding one. Two remaining zombies continued to plod toward Blackthorne.

Sonja danced to the side and easily avoided a downward slash from her zombie foe. She lashed out with her blade and strongly connected with it along the spine. It jerked and spasmed as the magical energy raced through it, but it did not die again until a second strike lashed down.

The rusted sword that it wielded fell to the ground and Sonja snatched it up. She was more than a little disgusted to have to hold the thing, but it was an important part of their limited arsenal. The blade that she currently wielded would soon break.

She lashed out once more and delivered its payload of dark energy to the next walking corpse then she discarded her nearly broken blade in favor of slashing with her new weapon.

Unlike the old sword, it only took seven or eight solid hits with the rusty sword to bring down a zombie. The rust seemed largely cosmetic in comparison to the obvious chips and cracks in the other blade. She could take a zombie it in half that number of strikes if she aimed for the head or neck. Sonja’s warrior skills and great strength helped tremendously when she had a better weapon.

The first of the remaining zombies reached Blackthorne by the time that Sonja finished cleaning up four of their monstrous foes. He easily dodged and worked his way around to the back of his opponent while he chanted his spell.

~ Anger of the disquiet soul, become my weapon and strike down my enemy... ~

“Jolt!” cried Blackthorne.

Crackling energy raced out of his finger tips and lashed into the exposed back of his opponent. The creature screamed in agony then fell forward. It was not dead, but it had been knocked down. Blackthorne kicked it repeatedly in the head. The blows did little damage, but they did not have to as the monster had been nearly destroyed by the improved power of the magical attack.

Sonja raced in just before the last zombie reached him. Her sword arced downward and cleaved through the spine of the monster, leaving a gaping wound open to the world. It did not care about having its spine severed and continued to walk. It barely acknowledged the fact that it had been hit, for that matter.

She kicked the back of its desiccated knees. It was a ridiculous situation, really. Sometimes such a wound would cripple a zombie. At other times they did not seem to care about such things. Where normal effects of biology failed to take effect randomly at times, simple physics did still tend to work. The zombie fell to the ground. Sonja swung her sword in a strong, brutal, motion and the creature’s head was cleaved from it shoulders.

The battle reached its end, so the valiant warriors started to loot the corpses. The long-dead monsters were not as juicy as Blackthorne feared that they would be. This particular batch held an appearance akin to out of date beef jerky, than the squishier variety of zombies.

A few new items were gathered, but there was no way that they would wear equipment fresh off the corpse.

Blackthorne loaded up an empty sack with battered chainmail, cracked leather, and a piece of rusted plate armor. Sonja took up the burden, then at her discretion they left to go clean up their equipment at a small pond approximately two miles away.

The pond was a simple place, too shallow for water monsters to take up residence, but deep enough to clean armor torn from long dead bodies. They used dirt and grass to scrub at their equipment. Sonja showed Blackthorne how to make it as clean as possible using naturally occurring sand in the area.

Synergy would have sped the process along, but they needed to gather more materials not reduce the ones that they currently possessed.

They spent several hours working at the armor pieces and cleaning everything in order to make it as useful as possible. Blackthorne took the salvageable chain links and reworked them until he had made a chain bracelet. Most of the rings were useless, but there were enough to make bracelets at least.

Sonja eyed him carefully then shook her head. “Magic, swordsmanship, making armor... What can’t you do?”

Blackthorne grinned at her. Apparently most of his skills were things that she highly valued. He checked the stats on the item that he had just made.

Crude Iron Chainmail Bracelet

Equipped: --

Weight: 0.65

Armor Type: Light Chain

Armor Class: 2

Quality: Low

Agility Reduction: 0

Durability: 26/26

Hardness: 8

Equipment Requirements

--

--

Bonus Armor Class: +3

Special Options

None

He handed the bracelet to Sonja and she blinked. “You are giving this to me?"

“You’re my tank aren’t you? I can only make one with what we have right now, so I would rather protect you.” It was true, after all. She was the one who would be doing the majority of the physical combat until they could acquire more equipment.

Sonja took the bracelet then looked at it. A complicated expression crossed her face for a moment. “I do not know what a tank might be, but thank you...”

“Sure. We'll get better gear before we head out into the world, but right now every little bit helps,” said Blackthorne.

The Valkyrie looked up at him then smiled a bright and sincere smile. She clutched the bracelet in her hand. “Twice already.... I have not had any real armor in a long time. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome." He looked to the rest of the loot then shook his head. "Sadly, I think most of the rest of this stuff is useless for anything but synergy fodder.”

“That makes sense. Most of the stuff will be garbage on the surface.” said Sonja. "Few people come here, but the only items of worth ever mentioned are slightly better offerings from within the tomb."

Blackthorne nodded to her then frowned at the piece of metal plate. “If I had a forge and some idea how to use it I might be able to do something with the plate metal, but the leather is ruined and the cloth is falling apart.”

“Keep the metal. Even rusted junk can be scoured and melted down to make equipment,” said Sonja.

“Right, I'll keep it all for synergy if nothing else." He looked to her. "Let’s head back and kill some more things. How is the durability on your sword?”

“Not good, but it might hold till we find another,” she replied.

"No need to take the risk." Blackthorne gestured toward her and asked for her swords. He used synergy to combine the blades then enchanted the resulting shortsword before he passed it back to her.

She eyed her new weapon once more then smiled. The stats on her sword were slightly better than either of the other blades, and enchantments truly did make her happy.

It was mid-afternoon before they returned. They were only slightly better off than before, but it was a work in progress.

“Let’s push in a bit,” said Blackthorne.

Sonja nodded then raced ahead of him. He walked along behind her and watched the area for incoming zombies.

A meandering zombie noticed her movement then moaned loudly. It staggered toward her with its arms outstretched and its mouth hanging open. When they met, her shiny new blade slashed downward and slammed through its face then continued down to snap its clavicle. Dark energy raced through the beast and it spasmed wildly before it fell to the side, dead once more.

Sonja unleashed a feral grin. Now she knew the truth. If she had even a reasonable approximation of a sword, she could dispatch them with a single blow when she fought the zombies on the surface during the day. That was good. She quickly took down two more of the monsters that staggered around.

After returning to her master to enchant her weapon once more she sought out a zombie with a weapon, any weapon. The combination of her overwhelming strength and the constant usage of enchantments, had already caused the durability of her new blade to drop enough that it could break soon.

She eventually sighted something that she had hoped for all along. Sonja raced toward a zombie that wielded a sword and a shield. Neither piece of equipment looked particularly promising, but it was something.

Sonja ran in and slashed downward with her sword. The zombie made a feeble attempt to block with its shield. That meant that it had at least a little of its ancient instincts remaining. However, the moment that sword struck shield the enchantment was unleashed.

The zombie spasmed wildly, then fell to the ground in a smoking heap. It was not dead; the shield dispersed some of the energy, and negated the physical force of the blow. Still, enough damage had been done that it could not even attempt to fight back when another strike neatly crashed through the side of its skull and exploded out of the other side.

She quickly snatched up the sword and shield then turned to check the area. Blackthorne currently fought against three of the zombies, one of which was wielding a sword. She saw perhaps five more zombies staggering toward him and another dozen in the burial ground altogether. They could finish the current lot of them easily. Even as she thought that, Blackthorne destroyed a zombie with a spell then hopped around a weak strike from the sword wielding beast.

She opted to watch him for a moment to see what he would do. She smiled gently when he easily defeated the next zombie with another cast of his spell then took up its sword and started to beat the remaining zombie mercilessly. His swordsmanship skills were lacking, but she did admire his spirit.

Sonja lifted her wrist then looked to the bracelet that dangled there. A slight pink tinge crossed the bridge of her nose. “You already bought me... and yet...”

Her expression became complicated once again, but a moment later she opted to turn her attention back to the monsters that were coming for her. Armed with sword and shield, she ran toward her opponents. Her hair streamed backward in the wind, and a smile rose up on her face. She was a slave, by choice, but in that moment she was free.