-Vol 6: Dusk Of An Era-

-Outbreak(2)-

[Ding! Your sword had undergone through a mystical process of Soul Enchant. All its attribute has been enhanced by 130%.]

[Undead Fairy Tar’el is now residing inside your sword. Your sword undergoes evolution and becomes a Living Sword.]

[Due to the undead nature of the soul that was enchanted, the sword’s durability increased infinitely. The sword will never break by brute force alone.]

[The sword is transformed into a named sword, you can now name your sword. Please choose a name befitting of it.]

“Oi! What the hell is this?” after the bunch of notification vanished from his retina, Kenshin stared at the sword that was floating in the air, disregarding gravity.

“I have let myself into your sword. Now I am literally your sword, take good care of me from now on, okay?” the fairy’s feminine voice had become a little mellower for some reason.

“It's not okay!! What the hell is this Soul Enchant? And how the hell did you even let yourself into a sword?” he had a lot of questions regarding what happened in the past few seconds. Everything was going on normally, and then this fairy pulled a stunt like that!

“Before I even become an undead, I was a member of a race called fairies. We have this innate ability to transform our bodies and soul into an inanimate object and enhance it by many degrees…” her tone became darker towards the end, but she soon bounced back to her usual “anyway, I have merged my soul into the sword you hold while my body transferred back to the cave you retrieved me from. Take care of me, okay?”

“You, please tell me such things beforehand if you are gonna do something like this in the future. It's bad for both my mental and psychological health. Sigh! Anyway, welcome aboard.” Kenshin shook his head and reluctantly accepted his situation. Then he strapped the sword back into his waist and walked for the coast. According to the boatman, he would only come back to fetch them after 4 days, that means he had 3+ days to roam around the island.

{So, where are you going?} the fairy asked, even though the sword was strapped to his waist, her voice was heard as if she was standing just beside his ear.

‘wait a minute!’ when Kenshin turned his head, he found transparent apparition of Tar’el sitting on his shoulders like its nobody’s business. “Sigh! You can do that too, I guess.” Kenshin sighed while complaining about cliché tropes before continuing on his way.

“We are supposed to return to my home, but, the boat will appear after 4 days so, we have more than three days to explore this island. So, got any idea if there are any more like you here?”

{There won’t be anyone near this, maybe on the other side of the island, but not this side. Our cages were kept far from each other so that we couldn’t influence each other.}

“I see, well, let's go and meet this other tenant then. I have nothing better to do for this few days anyway, might as well pass the time by meeting another one of you.”

{Well, meeting extra-terrestrial being’s seals to pass the time, I think you are the first one ever. Hmm!!}

“What is it?” Kenshin asked when Tar’el suddenly stopped midsentence.

{I am sensing a very familiar clump of emotions here, familiar energy… human, be careful. Something seems off here.}

“Something seems off, you say! What is wrong?” even though he asked the question, Kenshin still increased his guard while utilizing his senses, which was enhanced by his [Dragon Sense] to sense everything around himself. Hearing, smell, vision, and even sensory perception, everything employed to the max as he started to become vigilant of his surroundings. He even opened his map to get a read of everything. Enlarging it, he found a huge clump of red dots heading his way… no more like heading towards a bunch of green dots on his left.

It was a new change of his system after its upgrade, the enemies were now marked as red while probable allies or at least them who will not have any negative intention towards him, period, were marked green. As for the rest, there was no change.

“Hmm! Satoru and Hack aren’t among them… are they even alive?” thinking of this, he enlarged his map even further to inspect, “Found them! Acha!!! It looks like they are in trouble!”

He found them both together in one place with a few others. They seem to be inside a certain barrier, while a huge mass of red dots circled around them from all directions. No matter how he sees it, this was a precarious situation for them.

{Human, be careful. I am sensing a huge mass of negative will heading this way!} warned Tar’el, who was now standing atop Kenshin’s head while clutching her head as she concentrated on searching for that familiar source of energy she felt before.

“Yeah, I know. I can see it already.” Muttered Kenshin, as he inspected the huge dot that was coming his way like a speeding train. It appeared out of nowhere right in the middle of a huge cluster of red dots. Instead of following others, it made headway towards him.

“I won’t give it a chance to attack me on its own accord. Summon Minions!” he called out the name of the skill, summoning 4 zombies who had a very bland appearance while looking like a xerox copy of himself. All four of them were barehanded and only wore what he was wearing for clothes, sans the armor, of course.

“We greet master!” the four of them kneeled before him as soon as they were summoned.

{Wow! Intelligent zombies? That’s new!}

Ignoring Tar’el’s mumbling, Kenshin pointed to the zombies from left to the right and called, “You will be called K1, you K2, K3 K4… got it? Now those will be your names for the time being.” After naming them, he activated his skill [Give] and gave every one of them a skill each.

K1 got the Fire Manipulation.

K2 got Exploding Domain.

K3 and K4 got Opposites and Plasma Blast each. Then he used Burrow to hide beneath the ground. After entering deep into the underground, he opened his system map and clicked on the K3, the one gifted with Opposites skill. Soon a screen opened, showing everything from the eyes of K3.

This ability was always there, but he never explored it. In fact, he didn’t know such ability existed. If not for accidentally clicking on it, he would have never discovered such a useful function. Of course, this function also had a limit, it can only show vision if his summons was still within the range of his maps. The current range of his map was 200 km.

Closing his eye to not make Tar’el suspicious, he started to mentally command the zombies. Especially K3 from whose eyes he saw the battlefield. He had him stationed at a higher altitude while arranging the other three in such a way that they would surround the target as soon as it appears.

In less than 5 minutes, their target appeared. It was a humanoid creature whose body was laced in black tar and a pair of eyes without lids. It had a long tongue that extended all the way to the middle of the chest. A deep aura of red energy, reminiscent of blood coming off its body.

{This feeling! It feels quite similar to that bug… don’t tell me!} Tar’el muttered as she also closed her eye and tried to sense the negative aura on a deeper level.

Ignoring her, who was blatantly spouting lines of a cliché side character that liked to throw away plot baits in games and mangas, Kenshin concentrated on the battle at hand. The enemy, while not strong as he had thought, not weak either. More importantly, he didn’t know anything about the enemy he was facing. It’s better for him if his zombies had to deal with it for now.

Roar!!!

The creature roared loudly, reminding him fo the feeling as well as roar he heard before he fought with the boss and the guardian back while in the dungeon. He shivered involuntarily once again, as a sense of coldness traveled across his spine.

‘It was a good thing that I left my zombies to deal with it, what the hell is this thing, to make me shiver with just the roar alone!!’ Kenshin gulped a mouthful of air as he ordered his zombies to commence battle.