“Wait here, I feel some presences.”
Zef looked to the left, closed up with Mira and Takuto and prepared both his daggers.
Asbar placed himself between Mira and the emerged thing while Emera immediately closed the map and stood next to him.
Finally, like ripples spreading atop of the silence, a dragging sound covered the surroundings. Slowly yet surely something was approaching them.
Asbar and Emera, preparing weapons, gawked towards it. Zef, guarding the sides against a sudden attack, kept his eyes on the surroundings. Frika, maintaining a composed face, stared towards it while grasping her a cane in hands.
“Ghouls, huh.”
Emerging like silhouettes things revealed their contours as they approached the light. Their wriggling bodies roughly resembled people.
After a short display of disgust, Emera and Asbar quickly got calm and, holding their weapons, went forward.
Zef was on alert a bit behind, and staying behind Takuto the Holy Knight held the huge shield to cover him.
(And the vision is terrible.)
It was a long time since Mira, who has gotten used to Creos so much, saw monsters appearing from the darkness. She strained her eyes yet due to Asbar’s back in the way she couldn’t see well. Standing on tiptoes, she swang herself to sides, yet she couldn’t grasp the whole fight happening a bit further.
“Unh… What’s with that stench…”
“Really, what stinks?”
Mira frowned at the stench that gradually filled the surroundings. Takuto, while staying next to her, felt the same odor and answered while pinching his nose.
“Of course it’s their smell.”
With those words, Zef pointed to the ghouls ahead of them with his eyes.
The stench that Mira felt seemed like a rotting smell. Monsters, persisting on half-rotten meat, obviously didn’t return any life to it and the decaying did not stop. They were always decaying just to crumble down someday and infect the next corpse.
After comprehending Zef’s answer Mira fixed her eyes on a ghoul, which emerged behind the even more disgusted Asber.
“Ough…!”
Unable to focus its dull eyes, the thing gazed at the prey; a rotten tongue was peeking through wide-open mouth lacking lips. Its lips were emaciated, the scalp that started to peel off barely had any remaining hair. Ruptures covered the skin and packs of worms appeared inside gaps of rotting flesh.
The vivid thing that poorly sustained the human form made the very air they inhaled seem rotten. This overdone realism made Mira feel intensely sick.
But, when her averted sight met Takuto, she somewhat overcame nausea.
“I’ll go.”
With that announcement, Frika took a step backward and released the prepared 【Sorcery:Deep Crimson】 skill. Magic power gathered in the cane that she lifted and, after a quick flash, produced a flame vortex that engulfed the ghoul. Covered in the raging deep crimson hellfire skin burned down, the fire burst its legs and the ghoul collapsed. After that the flame covered his back and, scattering the ash, his intestines burst into flames.
The latecomer cremation flame, purifying the possessed with filth pitiful corpse, was brightly raging, burning him to nothing along with the stench.
The blaze that painted the surroundings in bright red slowly faded out and two more ghouls, who stood outside the range, started advancing again. However, now Emera and Asber jumped forward and tore down one of them to pieces and smashed the upper half of another, splattering the flesh and worms around. Even undead monsters couldn’t move after such destruction.
“Looks like it’s done.”
Mere dozens of seconds made Mira reconfirm that it’s not a game anymore.
Due to the realistic depiction, even in the game in her first encounter with ghouls she couldn’t directly look at them. However, after some time it wasn’t a problem anymore.
But in the reality, when the vivid display of rotting was accompanied with the smell, it was impossible to get used to it even if you had resistance.
They broke the formation and, behind the shield of the Holy Knight, Takuto showed his face with the still pinched nose.
The cremated ghoul was fine, but the rotten smell started to waft from the ghouls scattered by Emera and Asber. Mira frowned again at that stench.
“Takuto, have you drunk the medicine?”
“Yes, I did.”
Takuto answered in a nasal voice to Emera’s question.
“Then it shouldn’t be that bad.”
“Well, it’s natural. We’re used to it but for Takuto it’s the first time. The medicine helps but it’s not enough for starters.”
At Emera’s doubt, Zef answered while caressing Takuto’s head. Emera with ‘Well, now you mention that’ recalled her first time and agreed.
“Wait, what’s the medicine thou are talking about?”
Mira found a strange word in their conversation and, covering her mouth with a sleeve in recurring nausea, wondered about it.
“Of course, the anti-smell medicine… Wait, Mira, you don’t have it?”
“Anti-smell? Never heard about it.”
“Simply putting, this medicine reduces really stinking to slightly stinking… or like that?”
“It’s kinda oversimplified, but she’s right.”
No wonder that Mira haven’t known about it. Anti-smell medicine works on the sense of smell, partly numbing its ability. While it’s not complete, at the best it can protect against the too strong stench. There was no smell in the game so nobody thought about this effect then. But now, in the reality, the rise of demand on such medicine was natural.
(The new inventions in this world are amusing. I wonder what else I’ve missed.)
In the first serious adventure she had since come here, Mira was excited by the gradually expanding sense of reality.
However, in reality the stench did not go anywhere. Takuto boldly released his nose taking effort to get used to it. With the medicine, it was somewhat bearable.
This time something flashed in Mira’s mind. It was about the deeper parts.
They were in the Ancient Shrine Nebulapolis. The sacred land of the undead paradise. Even the first ghouls were like that. Even more of them would spring out later, and she recalled the huge zombie — Giant Ghoul — at the third floor. Their existence is unfathomable at this point.
At this moment, Mira abandoned the idea of the normal adventure.
Mira, moving away a bit from the group, stretched her right hand to a side.
【Summon skill:Binding Circle of Arcana】
When Mira invoked the skill, a blue magic circle about her height in size emerged in front of her hand. But Mira didn’t stop here. After securing the magic circle, she turned her hand to the left.
【Summon skill:Binding Circle of Arcana】
The second magic circle appeared. The slowly rotating circle was called Binding Circle of Arcana. This specific summoners’ skill could strengthen the summons around, giving them various blessings. The effect increased with the each circle and improved efficiency of basic abilities, reduced the mana costs and increased supplementary effects.
However, Mira was not going to strengthen the summons. The Binding Circle of Arcana was a pre-requirement for another skill.
“Mira-chan, what are you doing?”
“Well, thou’ll see it soon.”
Briefly responding to Emera’s question, Mira reached into the circles with her hands.
“Well, let’s go.”
【Summon skill:Summoning Circle of Rozario】
As Mira touched the two circles, they simultaneously started to change with sparks. Without understanding what was going on, the five in the group only held their breath.
Larger two-fold magic circles appeared from the gathered light. The circles shining in red overflowed with different, stronger magic power. Grasping that presence, Frika was so charmed she forgot about her thirst.