Chapter 265 The Second Night
After a turbulent day, night fell again, and Dendera Fortress welcomed the second night.
A patrol unit of the fortress was holding torches and patrolling the streets of the fortress city. Although the zombies in the city had mostly been eliminated after the ma.s.sacre during the day, the patrol team was still very vigilant since there were sporadic reports of attacks still coming.
However, since the gremlins had basically been all lost, they had no choice but to have the nagas and mages carry out patrols. The nagas were not too bad, but the mages were secretly complaining because of this. When had these mages ever had to patrol all night like this? But there was nothing they could do about it. The iron golems and stone gargoyles were not up to the task of guarding against zombies appearing. Those puppets who only knew to obey orders were brainless and did not have the capability to make active judgments at all. They could not tell whether the zombies with the appearance of gremlins were friend or foe…
Moreover, if these puppets were to patrol, even if zombies really appeared, the zombies would not attack them, making them useless for patrols.
The mages were accustomed to living comfortably, and they had to stop to rest from sore waists and legs after merely walking a certain distance, causing the patrol process to become intermittent. Although the nagas were disdainful of these fellows, they could only stop and wait. Who asked them to be teammates?
The nagas were a special race living in the swamps of the kingdom of Bracada. They were amphibians, and because they had many pairs of arms and were strong, these nagas could be considered natural sword masters. The kingdom of Bracada recruited them into the kingdom’s army to make up for its shortcomings in melee and water warfare. It also gave them corresponding status, only slightly lower than mages. During the patrol, these mages basically could not be counted on, so the nagas took on the main guard task. Because their lower bodies were snake tails, they were very sensitive to ground vibrations.
While the team was resting, a naga suddenly felt slight movement coming from underground, so she immediately became vigilant and called the other nagas to come forward.
Through this investigation, the nagas discovered that this slight movement seemed to come from the sewers… Due to the special geographical location of Dendera Fortress, there was a large garrison here all year round. So the fortress naturally had the corresponding housing for the troops to live in, and since they had to carry out various activities in their daily lives, facilities such as sewers were essential.
In fact, there was a complete and complex underground sewer network in Dendera Fortress. These underground sewers were spread all over the city. After converging, they led to the river that ran through the entire canyon outside the fortress. These underground sewers were very low, and usually, they were basically maintained and cleaned by gremlins. Not to mention the mages, even the nagas had not gone down personally.
Therefore, when they realized that the movement was coming from the underground sewers, the patrol team was a little conflicted, hesitating over whether they should send someone down to take a look.
The sewers were smelly and dirty. Just opening the cover nearly made the nagas faint, and the mages shunned it even more. The members of the patrol team looked at each other, but none of them were willing to go down.
“Ahem Ahem!” While everyone was in a dilemma, a mage coughed twice and said, “Actually, I don’t think it’s necessary. Didn’t you realize that those people who were infected with the plague and turned into zombies did not have any intelligence and only attacked the living instinctively? How can such fellows be smart enough to hide in the sewers?”
“That’s right. What you said makes a lot of sense!” These words immediately enlightened the other mages. They clapped their hands and praised, “You’re smarter and saw through it!” “You flatter me. Everyone probably thought of it but was just not as precise as I put it!” The mage was extremely proud, but he pretended to be modest and praised the other mages.
The nagas cursed inwardly. Of course, they knew that these mages were just finding excuses not to go down. However… they had to say that this excuse was really reasonable. How could those zombies without intelligence think of hiding in the sewers to avoid searches?
Just as the nagas were thinking this, the movement in the sewers disappeared. After waiting for a while with nothing appearing, the nagas finally heaved a sigh of relief. “Perhaps it was just some rats in the gutter. We were thinking too much…”
Just as they were about to cover the sewer and continue patrolling, the ground suddenly exploded where the mages were resting. A black shadow darted out rapidly. Before anyone could react, the black shadow dashed into the group of mages!
A blood-curdling scream rang out. The mage who was still bragging earlier was bitten on the neck by the black shadow and taken away!
As for the other mages, because a few of them were beside the mage who was being carried away, they were directly pushed down when the black shadow attacked and had b.l.o.o.d.y claw marks on their chests, so deep that bones were visible…
This attack came too fast. After a while, the patrol team came back to their senses and hurriedly chased in the direction of the screams.
“d.a.m.n it, what the h.e.l.l is that thing?!”
“I don’t know. It’s too fast! I didn’t see it clearly!”
“There! It jumped onto the roof!”
Although the patrol team did not manage to catch up to the black shadow, they could see the shadow jumping from afar, so a mage with quick reflexes immediately waved his staff and fired a magic missile at the black shadow.
The blazing white magic missile flew out, and under the flickering white light, everyone finally saw the appearance of the black shadow.
It was a plague-infected gremlin, but its current appearance was vastly different from that of a normal gremlin. It was on all four limbs and leaning forward on top of a bell tower. And the mage that was carried away just now was being stepped on under its feet. Its lips had been completely torn to the sides of its cheeks, revealing sharp teeth, and on its face was a pair of ash-gray eyes. Under the illumination of the magic missile, the eyes looked very strange. The most ridiculous thing was that there was a pair of transparent insect-like wings on its back!
While leaning on the bell tower, its wings were still trembling, making a low buzzing sound, seemingly sending out a threat in warning…
Although it was just a brief glance, the strange and savage appearance of this gremlin still made everyone gasp, and the terrifying ash-gray eyes made everyone’s hair stand on end.
This monster could no longer be called a gremlin, but they could not find a suitable name for it.
Just as the light of the magic missile was about to fade away, everyone saw the monster bite down on the mage that it was stepping on and jerk back!
The screams of the mage came to an abrupt stop. A huge gap appeared on his neck, causing him to die instantly.
After biting off a piece of flesh, the monster on the bell tower raised its neck and swallowed. Then after the darkness recovered, it turned into a black shadow and disappeared…
After some effort, the patrol finally got the dead mage’s body down. After examining the corpse, everyone looked nervous and solemn.
This monster had astonis.h.i.+ng bite force and movement ability that could jump and fly for a short time, and most importantly, it seemed to have a certain level of intelligence. It knew how to attack the weakest position of the patrol team and strike once before leaving immediately, and use its speed to prevent the pursuers from attacking it…
“Is… is this still those swaying zombies that only know how to move forward?!” a mage said with a trembling voice. “Why? Why are there such monsters?!”
No one could answer him. Everyone looked at the mage’s corpse in silence. When they found that the already cold corpse was trembling again and showing signs of awakening, they finally sighed. “Burn him. We must report this matter!”
Before leaving, a naga suddenly noticed something s.h.i.+ny on the ground and could not help but pick it up and look at it, only to find that it was a small piece of shattered transparent crystal.
“Strange. What is this? Did the monster drop it just now?” the naga muttered to herself. After looking for a long time, she could not find anything, so she could only toss this thing aside…
When the patrol team returned to the city hall to report this matter, they found that the hall was in a mess.
Not only them, but many patrol teams were attacked by monsters during their patrol tonight!
Moreover, the monsters that attacked them were not the same. At least from the description of the witness, almost every monster looked different. But these monsters had one thing in common—they were all agile, powerful, and had certain hunting instincts. Compared to the zombies before, these monsters were like real… beasts!
The worst part was that even though they suffered attacks frequently, no patrol team caught such monsters. These monsters seemed to have disappeared and hidden after catching enough prey!
And the most likely place they were hiding was the underground sewers that covered the entire fortress!
After hearing this news, Astral, Solmyr, and the others were all angry… They sighed. It was an expression of being angry but being unable to vent it.
Because they knew that it would be exceptionally difficult to eliminate these monsters…
At the same time, Roy, who was tens of kilometers away, was slightly surprised after seeing these mutated creatures in the fortress.
According to his calculations, apart from infectivity, the reverted T-Virus should have retained its high mutation property. As long as there were enough infected samples and given some time for mutations, it was absolutely possible for monsters such as ‘hunters’ to appear. But what Roy did not expect was that these mutants were completely different from what Roy had imagined. One of the mutations that Roy observed through the Demon Eye had even inherited Roy’s frost power and could spit out strong cold air to freeze prey. Under the attacks of these stronger mutants, heavy casualties occurred in the fortress once again. Moreover, not only did the mages and nagas have casualties, but even some green dragons and t.i.tans were attacked by mutants. Although these high-level beings did not suffer much damage, they were still shocked by the sudden attack and were unable to make the mutated monsters stay behind… This situation made Roy scratch his head. If the T-Virus continues to mutate, maybe high-level creatures will become infected? Moreover… Will I be able to control this spreading infection by then?