Chapter 101 – The Dead Walk Free
From the towering castle atop the hill, a vast sea of green stretched into view.
The "ocean" swayed with the wind, waves of foliage rolling endlessly as a rushing, rustling roar filled the air—layer upon layer, strangely mesmerizing.
Coupled with the dense white mist drifting through this sea of green, the Wolfswood beyond the castle walls looked almost breathtaking, like some enchanted forest out of legend.
But if one factored in the peculiar sounds constantly echoing in the background, that fairy-tale beauty quickly took on a far less wholesome flavor.
Withdrawing his gaze, Charles turned toward the source of the noise.
On the beast-fur bed that once belonged to Lord Glover, two naked bodies—one male, one female—were entangled, rolling together amid heavy panting and intermittent shrieks.
"Get off—my turn on top!"
A sharp slap rang out. A red mark instantly bloomed on the man's smooth, beardless cheek. He didn't get angry; instead, he chuckled darkly and obligingly shifted positions.
The sounds resumed.
"…The sun's not even down yet, is it?"
Clicking his tongue silently, Charles spared them a final glance before losing interest. His attention shifted to a writing desk tucked into the corner of the chamber.
More precisely—to a strip of parchment lying atop it.
The parchment was dry and wrinkled, but the words scrawled in ink were unmistakably clear:
Hold Deepwood Motte. Hunt the Northmen. Await the arrival of my main force.
"With barely over a thousand troops, and she's expected to hold this place…"
Charles mused quietly.
"The invader's commander seems uncomfortably confident about how this will end."
As that thought loosened the invisible force anchoring him in place—
The Charles who had been standing on the castle's third floor suddenly plunged downward.
Wooden beams, cracked planks, and gray-black debris flashed past in a blur. In the blink of an eye, he arrived in the great hall beneath the keep.
He stepped out of the hall and looked up.
Suspended above the castle hovered a deep, oppressive shade of blue—dark and heavy. Its vague outline resembled a many-tentacled octopus, formed entirely of color rather than flesh. Semi-transparent, its limbs writhed slowly as it drifted in the sky, silent and ominous.
The Eye of Reality responded at once.
This was not the Drowned God itself—
But merely a fragment of its power.
A wisp of deep-blue, smoke-like power continually seeped out from the bodies of the Ironborn inside the castle. Gathering in the sky above, it formed that bizarre and unsettling spectacle.
"So it suppresses my scepter's authority?"
"But did you really think that's all I have?"
Snorting softly to himself, he strolled through the castle, searching and observing as he went. Eventually, he arrived at a stable not far from the main keep.
In the corner of the stable was an underground entrance. Dropping through the opening, which lay flush with the ground, he found himself in a subterranean dungeon.
The dungeon was crude—much like the one he had once encountered in his original world. The difference was that this place had once been packed with prisoners.
Rough-faced farmers with calloused hands. Well-dressed noblewomen in fine clothes. Frightened children with youthful faces. Disheveled women in miserable states.
After the invaders seized the castle, everyone who had lived here had apparently been imprisoned below.
They should have served as hostages, leverage against the northern army. Yet for some unknown reason, the castle's new master had cruelly slaughtered them all, leaving the dungeon doors standing open.
Farmers. Blacksmiths. Women. The elderly.
Everyone he saw was already dead.
Charles had long heard of the Ironborn's brutality, but seeing even noble families—clearly identifiable by their dress—slit and bled dry gave him pause.
Among the nobility, there were rules. Unless driven by deep personal hatred, captured nobles were rarely killed. They were valuable—useful as bargaining chips or for hefty ransoms.
Yet here, the Glover family had been exterminated completely. Women and children alike.
He stood quietly beside the corpse of a noblewoman, gazing at the soul beside her—its expression twisted in pain.
"A blood sacrifice?"
After death, a soul normally lingered near its body for up to twenty-four hours. Judging from the situation, this woman had clearly not been dead that long—already surprising enough.
What was more disturbing was that her soul was not in a normal state. Deep-blue "tentacles" wrapped tightly around it from head to toe.
They constricted her spirit, slowly writhing like the limbs of the sea monster drifting in the sky above.
Tiny blue barbs covered the tentacles, piercing into the soul itself, forcing agony onto a face that should have been vacant and numb.
The Eye of Reality confirmed what he was seeing.
[Lady Glover, bound by the Sea-Mist Domain. Her death occurred recently.]
[She is being continuously consumed. Her soul is steadily weakening.]
…Consumed.
Watching this, and recalling what he had seen along the way and within the castle, Charles formed a hypothesis.
"The one behind this is using death to sustain the fog in the forest?"
And the thicker the fog became, the more advantageous it was for the invaders.
The greater the advantage, the greater the slaughter.
He didn't yet know what the so-called Drowned God intended—but its malice was obvious.
Moreover, in Charles's plans, the northern army was meant to resist the White Walkers, not be slowly bled dry here.
Decision made, he began chanting toward the corpse.
[You activate Corpse Revival. Target: Lady Glover.]
[Under suppression from the Sea-Mist Domain, your Death Authority is nullified. Necromantic mutation is unavailable.]
[Corpse Revival successful. You have taken control of Lady Glover's body.]
A gray wind swept through the dungeon. The soul crawled back into its former body.
The woman's eyes—once frozen in death—twitched suddenly. At Charles's command, she slowly rose to her feet.
She was likely the lady of the castle, in her early thirties. Traces of her former beauty and refinement remained, though her expression was now utterly blank.
At a glance, she looked almost alive—if not for her gray eyes and the congealed blood marking the fatal wound at her throat.
It was Charles's first time using Corpse Revival. The result surprised him; it worked exactly as described. He had expected something closer to the mindless zombies of his memories.
After confirming its success, he cast the spell on the other corpses in the dungeon. Chants from another world echoed as the blue tentacles bound to their souls proved completely ineffective.
Unlike the first body, however, these newly reanimated corpses refused to obey.
The moment they "revived," they surged through the open dungeon doors in a frenzy. They ignored their own kind but showed intense hunger toward corpses that had not yet been reanimated.
As Charles continued casting, their numbers grew. That hunger had no choice but to turn inward, driving their behavior into greater and greater madness.
They slammed into doors. Scratched at walls. Bared their teeth.
Observing them, Charles realized that while the reanimated corpses were extremely aggressive, they possessed no intelligence at all—or rather, they required guidance.
He directed the obedient woman's corpse toward the dungeon's exit.
The sound of movement drew every undead gaze.
Under their dull gray stares, the woman climbed the ladder. Her skirt vanished upward, and a thin shaft of light spilled down as the hatch opened.
The light was faint, but the open exit awakened some primal instinct buried deep within them.
Before long, under Charles's watchful gaze, the first "zombie" emerged from the underground—its face twisted in a savage snarl.