Everyone understood what Silas meant. The thud from before was the sound of the ground collapsing. The basement they had been in just a few minutes ago was no more.
Without any options left, the group could only move forward. Since they were already heading west, they continued traversing in the same direction.
The ground was very uneven because of massive craters, and the deformations made their travel difficult. They had to cross several steep depressions in the ground and climb over large rocks.
Since the group was made up of three elderly and two children, their pace was relatively slow. Silas also had to make sure to help all of them one by one, carefully guiding the little boy through each obstacle before assisting the others.
The smaller meteorites weren't a significant problem; they had only left behind craters that could be passed easily. The real problem was the larger meteorites—some so massive that the group had to go around them because passing through their enormous impact craters was impossible. Such meteorites had caused devastating destruction in the nearby area.
They had been walking for more than an hour without any signs of life. The group was slowing down, and everyone was running low on energy. Silas didn't want to stop, but he couldn't do anything and decided to wait inside some ruins.
It was a standing structure with walls on all sides and a slight crack that gave an opening. Although it had no roof, this still felt safer to Silas. Ever since they had started moving west, Silas had been feeling a sting in his head. It was his manacule perception hinting at danger.
Without any signs of life, this could only mean one thing, and Silas knew exactly what it was. Something or someone had been following them the entire time, close enough to trigger his manacule perception.
Whatever this thing was, it could bend mana fields. It was either a wielder or something even more dangerous. Silas was in no mood to take chances, so he decided stopping was not a bad idea after all.
After resting for a few minutes, the group was on the move again. In that short time, they had already realized they didn't have much left before their makeshift masks would become completely blocked with dust and unusable.
They were now in a race against time. With no definite destination, they could only hope and keep walking forward. It was better than not trying and dying.
Anyone who had survived until then was someone who refused to accept death easily. Be it a wielder like Silas, a twelve-year-old boy, or those elderly people—they all carried a strong will to live and a desire to survive.
The group was moving faster than before, avoiding difficult paths and only traversing through the relatively easier ones. They went around craters, passed through ruins, and avoided any large structures still standing. Anything could collapse at any time.
"We have been walking for over thirty minutes now," the old lady said.
"Just follow. You don't have any other choice, do you?"
"Don't talk, conserve energy," Silas commanded.
The group walked for another painful stretch of twenty minutes before finally stopping again. Breathing was becoming difficult. Their masks were clogged.
"We have to keep moving," Silas said, also using hand signals. He placed his index finger over his covered mouth, signaling the team to stay silent.
Their formation was simple: the elderly walked together at the front, the little boy stayed in the middle, and Silas was at the rear. This way, if there was danger waiting to ambush them, Silas could react quickly.
As the group walked for a few minutes, they finally saw something. It was a moving figure shrouded in the smoke. The old man hurried his steps, waving frantically as he broke formation and rushed toward it.
"No, stop—" Before Silas could say anything, it was too late.
A human figure appeared in front of the old man. It was wounded in multiple places, its left shoulder dislocated, and its head tilted as it staggered forward. The figure had no eyes, only pitch-black holes where they were supposed to be.
Before the old man could react, the figure pounced on him and pinned him to the ground. Silas was far from them, but he cast a tier 1 spell Fireball and shot it at the figure. His aim wasn't perfect, but he still managed to hit the head.
The figure's head blew off, leaving its body headless. As Silas thought he had saved the old man, the body moved again. Though it had no head, its limbs were intact.
It grabbed the old man lying beneath it by the throat, choking him with both hands. Blood spilled as it used its strength to tear his head apart. Then it raised the severed head above its own neck. Suddenly, tissues and muscles started forming, and the head attached itself to the body.
Ok, what the f**k just happend? Silas was half flabbergasted and half disgusted by the sight.
As soon as the other members of the group saw the horror unfolding before their eyes, they ran back toward Silas, screaming in fright. The figure, now carrying the old man's head, glanced toward them.
It is a corpse of a dead person, mana corrupted.
Silas made an assumption based on what he could see. Before he could do anything, the corpse had leapt towards the group again.
Silas had his eyes focused on the moving corpse the entire time. As soon as the corpse jumped towards him, he cast another fireball. He didn't dare use it at long distance because he couldn't trust his aim.
The corpse had gotten dangerously close to the group, but it was met with a destructive force mid leap. The fireball connected straight with its body, throwing it backwards several meters.
Before the corpse had any chance of getting back up, Silas ran towards the struggling corpse. He aimed and shot two fireballs in succession, completely mutilating its body.
The corpse did not move again. After checking that the corpse was actually dead and cross-checking it with his manacule perception, which showed manacules slowly dissipating, he was sure that he had disposed of the enemy.
But it wasn't long until another disaster struck the group. The two elderly, the old lady and the old man, were in a very bad state. Their lung capacity had worsened due to their age, and they were having problems breathing.
Both of them lay on the ground and were hyperventilating. The suffocating air around them had been the biggest enemy the entire time. Silas could take on a moving corpse, for he was considered strong even without actual combat experience, but what could he do when the air itself could kill?
The little boy was crouching beside the two elderly. Silas rushed back to help them, although he had no way of saving them, as there weren't any healing-related spells in the spell index that could heal another person.
As he reached the three, his manacule perception stung in his head. The intensity was very high. This meant a considerable amount of danger. Silas quickly looked around, scouting his surroundings.
It was then that another figure came into view, then another and another. More and more figures kept appearing from the direction the group had come from. Dead corpses, mana-corrupted bodies walking like an army of undead creatures from hell.
I wonder how people of this world would react to this sight if it happened in front of them. As Silas thought, he was brought back to his senses by the little boy's scream. The boy had frozen in place and couldn't move at all.
As soon as he grasped the situation, he had no choice but to act on his immediate instinct. He grabbed the boy and ran in the opposite direction. He didn't feel bad about leaving the two elderly, perhaps because self-preservation was his priority, or because he could not feel emotions.
The walking dead bodies that emerged from behind gathered around the two elderly, who had already suffocated and lost consciousness. Their bodies were ripped apart by the creatures, and their heads were used as replacements for the headless ones.
Silas kept running ahead without stopping. At some point, he had dropped the little boy, but when he came back to his senses, he instructed him to run without stopping.
The pair ran as fast as they could. But soon, they met something they had expected but hoped they wouldn't meet. More walking corpses were marching toward them from the front.
The pair changed their direction but were soon met with more corpses on that side too. It wasn't long before they were completely cornered, surrounded by walking corpses, mana-corrupted monsters that had only one intention—to kill.
The corpses were in great number. Silas used Advanced Fireball. A bigger ball of fire than before appeared, blasting through the corpses and engulfing several in its path.
The only problem with this spell is that it takes way too much mana. It is a tier 3 spell and consumes mana equal to the average amount used by a tier 5 spell, Silas thought.
The number of corpses wasn't decreasing at all; it felt as if there were an infinite number of them. Silas had a finite mana reserve.
I can't hold on much longer. If I keep using Advanced Fireball, I'll run out of mana, but tier 1 Fireball is not enough to hold these back.There is another option. Burning Rings of Death, he thought.
The reason Silas was considering the spell that caused the rings of fire to appear in the sky was because he had no other options.
Even though the spell index had 99 spells, many of them weren't offensive, and most of them were relatively useless. There were 16 tier seven spells in the index; however, 8 of them were of no use at all.
For example, there was a spell that cleared one's mind for better thought processes. Not only was this a septa-spell, which meant it used a lot of mana to cast, it was deemed completely useless because similar effects had already been achieved using the manacule neuromicron, a device invented during the technological revolution back in his world.
Since there were so many spells of no use to Silas in his current situation, he could only consider two: the Burning Rings of Death and another destructive spell.
Burning Rings of Death only causes destruction when it finds a life force. These are dead, and they don't have any life force, Silas thought for a while. He turned his head to look at the boy standing beside him.