Red didn’t know if the imperials were still on his trail, so he decided to use another route back to town just to be safe. It would extend his journey somewhat, but it was worth it in his mind. Not to mention, it would give him time to get familiar with his new “pet.”

Red patted the creature on his shoulder. “Appear.”

The serpent laid still.

Already a day went by, and the creature continued to ignore his commands. It barely moved from its position on Red’s shoulder, and it was still camouflaged by his dark clothing.

“It seems like it’s not very active.” Aurelia said by his side.

Red looked over at her with a frown. “Stop doing that.”

The woman looked at him with surprise while leaning against a tree. “Doing what?”

“Appearing and reappearing out of nowhere.” Red said. “You’re disturbing my focus.”

Aurelia snorted. “What focus? You’re just talking to a snake!”

“Be that as it may, I would rather you stop doing that.”

The youth was used to his crimson sense and sharp senses being able to detect anyone around him. It just so happened that none of that helped him discern when Aurelia would jump out of the core, so Red was taken by surprise by her voice and sudden appearance more than a few times.

It wasn’t a comfortable feeling at all for someone like him.

Aurelia shrugged. “It’s not like I can help it.”

Red sighed and changed topics. “Do you have any ideas on how to make this snake move?”

“It might just be very inert by nature. It does seem like an ambush animal if we are to judge it from its egg trap, after all.”

Red frowned. “That doesn’t make for a very useful pet.”

“Well, you haven’t tried feeding it yet.”

The youth shook his head. “I haven’t sensed or seen traces of any critters around.”

Aurelia looked around. “We should already be far enough from the canyon. They will start appearing at any point.”

Red could only listen to her advice and continue walking, while considering some other matters.

He had yet to feel the lunar gaze on him at full force again, so he couldn’t tell if anything was changed after he opened this new “acupoint”. The being in the Moon went through a constant cycle of hibernation, so the days following a Full Moon were still easy on Red’s psyche, as the pressure was still negligible. Eventually, however, it would reach its zenith in roughly two weeks, and the youth wondered what would happen then.

To his surprise, by the end of the day, he still didn’t see or sense any critters. Even birds were scarcely spotted above his head. Red immediately felt something was off.

“There’s something wrong.” he said.

Aurelia appeared by his side. “I can’t sense any strange energies. It could be that a strong monster from the canyon passed by here and sent the animals running.”

“This far from the canyon?” Red shook his head. “Unlikely.”

Stronger monsters would seek to inhabit areas with stronger concentrations of Spiritual Energy. It was why barring events such as a horde that could cause mass migrations, monsters from more dangerous biomes would rarely move to neighboring areas. Such was the case of the canyon and of their forest, as the former had a stronger concentration of Spiritual Energy than the latter.

Aurelia frowned. “If it’s not the work of a monster, then it can only be the work of a cultivator. In any case, you know as well as I do that this isn’t natural.”

Red didn’t say anything else and continued moving forward into the night. He still didn’t stop to eat or sleep during his trip back, but he did decide to take it slower this time around, to not to wander into an ambush.

His choice was wise, considering these strange circumstances.

As he walked further through the trees, he suddenly felt a tug around his neck. Red looked down and he felt the snake shift in his shoulders, showing movement for the first time in a long while.

The youth immediately froze in his steps and looked down at the disguised creature, noticing its pink forked tongue poking out from a small opening in its tied mouth.

‘Does it sense something?’

Red was very confident in his senses, but there were still a few things he couldn’t compare to a monster. The main one, of course, was his sense of smell. If the snake smelled something wrong, then Red would be wise to pay attention to it.

He looked around with utmost attention, still failing to find anything else. The youth assumed that since Aurelia didn’t suddenly appear, then she must have also not found anything.

‘Can she even sense things the same way living beings do?’

Red put this question aside and focused on his surroundings. He continued sneaking forward while the snake on his shoulders grew increasingly more agitated. At some point, the youth had to hold it with his left hand to stop it from flailing about, while holding his sword on the other hand.

A few dozen meters along and Red finally saw traces of something.

‘Animal tracks.’

They were hooves, and judging by the size, they probably belonged to a monster. A fireleaf deer, judging by the shape.

“Be careful now.” Aurelia’s voice came from behind him.

Red almost swiveled on his feet and swiped out in shock, but he managed to hold himself back. He ignored the woman with a frown and followed the tracks.

A few seconds later, he sensed something with his crimson sense.

It was a fireleaf deer, as he was expecting, but it wasn’t moving, and judging by its fluctuation, there was something very wrong with it. The snake in his grip was even more agitated, and Red needed to put in some effort to hold it back.

The youth continued to approach until he could finally spot the deer amidst the trees. The creature seemed to be suffering from a seizure, its body shaking on the ground while the creature expelled white foam from its mouth. A large set of bloody gashes was running along the side of its body, cause by claws as far as Red could tell.

The sight immediately gave him pause. He saw nothing like this before, but the sight of the creature filled him with a strange sensation.

‘It’s infected by something.’

“It’s turning.” Aurelia said from behind him.

“Turning?” Red looked at her in confusion.

She nodded. “Just watch.”

Red frowned and did as she said. He didn’t feel safe getting close to a creature infected by who knew what kind of disease, so he didn’t try to put the creature out of its misery. This being the case, it took almost another two minutes before the creature finally died and Red felt its fluctuation disappear.

“Here it comes.” Aurelia said with a severe expression.

‘Could it be…’

Just as the woman said that, something seemed to change in the deer. Red saw a grey, incorporeal mass emerge from the corpse, surrounding the diseased creature. Suddenly, black misty spots started to grow in this gray aura, spreading through it before finally overtaking the mass. Then, the aura disappeared, drawn back into the corpse of the deer.

A few seconds later, Red felt the monster’s fluctuation reappear. This time, though, it seemed to be completely changed, as if a stagnation, deep and irreversible, spread through its fluctuation.

‘Undead.’

The body of the deer stirred. The snake in his grasp was on the verge of going into a frenzy, but Red managed to hold it tight.

He saw the zombified monster slowly get up, its limbs twisting every which way before it finally found its balance. Its movements were unnatural, and the creature looked lost, its eyes cloudy and completely devoid of any kind of intelligence or emotion.

That was before it spotted Red, a few dozen meters away. Something seemed to compel the zombie deer at that moment, and it started to run in his direction, emitting gargling noises from its foam-filled mouth. It had barely run ten meters before it lost its balance and fell down to the ground.

This didn’t deter it, though, as it got up again and continued its charge.

Red stared at the approaching creature with a frown on his face.

Aurelia looked at him with a curious expression. “Are you not going to kill it?”

The youth sighed. He held the snake tight in his hand so it wouldn’t escape his grip, and walked towards the deer. They approached it other in a matter of a few steps, and the zombie monster tried to bite at Red with its unstable movements.

It was no effort of the youth’s part to side-stepped its lunge and cut the creature’s head off with a single motion. The decapitated deer slumped down to its side, motionless, as its undead life wasn’t enough to keep it going without a head.

Decapitation and destruction of the head wouldn’t always work to kill an undead. Some of them could still live on even with a single finger remaining, but it was all a matter of how strong the undead force inside them was. For a common zombie like this deer, decapitation was more than enough to put an end to its undead existence.

As the creature died, the snake on Red’s shoulder started to calm down. Even then, the youth still kept it in his grip so it wouldn’t fall down and wander off.

“Have you ever seen an undead be born?” Aurelia asked while staring at the deer’s corpse.

Red shook his head while cleaning his sword against a tree.

“It is a corruption of both the body and the soul. The transformation isn’t complete until both of these things have turned, and the source of corruption can come from either of them.” She looked over at Red. “You saw it, didn’t you? The deer’s soul.”

Red hesitated, but still nodded. “I did.”

Aurelia examined his face with interest. “You shouldn’t be able to, so I can only assume it’s because of that thing on your forehead. Either way, my earlier suspicions about that tumor of yours weren’t wrong.”

“There’s a zombie here.” Red said. “Aren’t you worried about it?”

The woman snorted. “Why should I? Corporeal life forms can’t hurt me.”

“Not even the necromancer?”

This made the woman frown. “They wouldn’t be so stupid as to turn a random monster into a zombie.”

Red didn’t say anything and approached the deer’s corpse. He examined the long scratch wound on its side.

He looked over at Aurelia. “These look like they could have been made by a human.”

Aurelia’s frown deepened, but she remained skeptical. “This still doesn’t mean they were involved.”

“What else could have done it?”

“There’s the head, but…” she left the rest unsaid.

The caveat was, of course, that according to her, the head containing the hundreds of ghosts inside of it was being controlled by the necromancer, in which case Red was still right.

Aurelia shook her head. “Something’s wrong. You should hurry back to town.”

Red nodded.

He was about to turn around to run when he heard a guttural howl from far away. The youth froze.

Aurelia looked at him with a grave expression. “It’s a ghoul! Run!”

She didn’t need to tell him twice.