CHAPTER 2: CORPSE
"Ahhhhh!"
Seeing all these heads drop to the ground, Manther screamed in fear and panic. Sweat rolling down his face as he kept gasping for air.
"W-what's going on here, what'd y'all do!?"
Drake turned his head slightly after hearing this, facing Manther's direction. "We…we are just as confused as you are."
"You think I'm stupid?! I ain't believing a single word y'all demons spout! Y'all killed all these good folks!" The sweat on his face just wouldn't stop as he kept yelling at them in fear.
"Old man, we got to attack first before they come for us first! I'm sure you can easily k…" before he could finish what he was saying, Drake had already launched a massive red fireball in Manther's direction.
Seeing this happen, the old man leaped backwards and landed next to the brawny man who had been sharpening his axe.
The only four who remained alive at the camp seemed to only be the ones who had initially stood out to Drake.
Lifting his arms as a desperate reaction to block the incoming ball of flames, Manther stumbled back, tripping on a rock and crashing to the ground.
However the flames crashed and exploded after hitting a corpse that had been dashing at Manther instead. The corpse was incinerated on impact sending an intense heatwave across the entire campsite.
"Simon!"
When the old man shouted this, the young man who had initially not noticed the three approaching the camp, lifted his head with a serious look on his face and quickly dashed towards the old man.
Seeing this, Drake walked calmly towards Manther who was still on the ground with a look of panic on his face.
Turning his head slightly to look at Beatrice, he said in a calm tone. "Ms. Beatrice, they're on the weaker side. Stay close to each other, you should be able to easily handle a few of them."
Nodding her head with confidence, the grounds surrounding Beatrice and Jacob within a 10 meter radius, froze solid.
After doing this, Beatrice relaxed her tense grip on Jacob's hand and held him gently again. "This should be safe."
After saying this, every corpse that approached them froze over solid within two seconds of stepping on the almost crystal-like ice floor that surrounded the two.
On the other side, the brawny man weaved through the corpses, splitting their bodies in half before they could even react, he could cover 10 to 20 meters in a second at the speed he was going.
Simon and the old man stood behind and watched as the battle went on, the old man taking quick glances at Jacob who also just stood behind, not doing anything as corpses froze in front of him one after the other.
The surprisingly one-sided battle which lasted only about 15 minutes at the most, left the campsite burning down in enormous red flames which produced intense heat that had everyone but Beatrice and Jacob, sweating.
Manther sat and watched the entire battle too, still panicked and scared witless.
Seeing all the headless corpses on the floor, no longer moving. Some scorched, some, hacked apart and the rest frozen solid. The old man walked towards the centre of the camp, Simon following behind.
Drake coming from the other direction also approached and so did the brawny man when he saw this.
"I appreciate the help young ones." When he said this the old man had a warm smile on his face, his tone filled with kindness.
"We were only protecting ourselves."
Still upholding formalities, Drake continued to approach while speaking. "Sir, we should move, before something else is drawn here. We must've been quite loud."
Seeing that discussions were going to be civil, Beatrice relaxed and took a step forward, still holding Jacob's hand. When she took another step though, she realised Jacob had remained in the spot where he stood, not moving an inch.
This alone caused her to pause and quickly turn her head, her body tensing up.
Since she had met him, every time Jacob paused or took even a second too long to respond, it meant he noticed something.
Sure enough, Jacob did not disappoint. He lifted his head with a serious look on his face and tightened his grip on Beatrice's hand.
"Don't move, all of you!". When drake heard this he froze, with a tense look on his face and turned his head slightly to look at Beatrice and Jacob who stood far.
He knew not to ignore Jacob's senses. 'Did he notice something again?'
When Beatrice felt Drake's gaze she looked up at him before turning her head to look back at Jacob.
"What's happening?"
The old man and the rest also stopped when they saw Drake, who seemed so powerful, follow the kid's order.
"These corpses…They still have traces of divinity on them."
Scanning the campsite again, Jacob's gaze stopped at a scorched body on the ground close to drake.
"That one there, it's divinity keeps rising…No, all of these corpses."
When Drake heard this, his eyes grew wider in shock. Dammit!
Turning his head to face the old man he, shouted loud enough for everyone to hear him. "Jump! Get to the highest branches on these trees!"
Without hesitation, everyone did as commanded. All of them except Manther who was too slow to react.
By the time he was ready to leap, a scorched body had already stood up and was running straight at him.
Manther ignored this and still went for the leap. The corpse was still a distance away from him after all.
When he jumped however, the corpse jumped too. It was nowhere close to reaching Manther even with it's leap. Seeing this put a smirk on Manther's face…A smirk that was quickly wiped off his face.
The corpse started glowing in mid-air. A golden glow that shined with immense brilliance, lighting up the entire area of the campsite.
This blinding light had golden dust-like particles to it that had a reddish-orange hue.
Following this, the corpse bloated up, growing enormous lumps all over it's body.
BANG! The corpse burst into an enormous explosion with a large amount of flames rushing heatwaves across the entire vicinity.
The blast sent Manther flying at incredible speeds before he could even realise what was going on.
THUD! Manther crashed with his back into one of the trees, the impact nearly snapping his body in half!
He was knocked unconscious on impact by the blinding pain he experienced in the crash, as he fell to the ground almost 60 metres away from the campsite.
He stayed there, unconscious, barely breathing at all.
In total there were 14 bodies left down on the ground at the burning campsite. 4 of them stood up at the same time.
The first blast was caused by one single body, yet the explosion it caused was monstrous, engulfing the entire campsite in flames.
So when they saw 4 corpses stand at up in unison, they all tensed up, gritting their teeth and all desperately leaping up branch by branch in their on respective trees trying to get to higher altitudes.
All four corpses jumped, reaching only a mere 2 to 8 meters in their leaps. Lumps appeared in unison on all their bodies, golden particles with the same reddish-orange hues, then finally…
They all exploded, at the same time.
This absolutely massive eruption of flames and the equally enormous blast wave opened an enormous crater on the ground and ripped off any tree around the blast from the ground.
All the trees around the campsite were sent flying, leaving only black, burning tree stumps in that area and a huge crater in the middle of it all.
Taking this opportunity, the survivors, pushed to escape in the midst of chaos, leaping from one tree to another, all of them moving at identical speeds.
Drake was the only one to slow down, eventually jumping down and landing on the ground right next to Manther, who was unconscious, picking him up, and continuing to catch up to the group.
The group stopped after opening up a distance of about 1.5 kilometres between them and the camp. It had taken them only 10 minutes to do so.
"This should be good enough to catch our breaths and help this man with treatment…right?". When Drake said this, he looked in the direction of the old man.
"Yes, we ought to be safe here." Saying this, the old man smiled and shook his head before continuing. "Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about Manther, our doctor was part of those headless bodies."
The old man remained calm while saying this, and so did Simon and the axe wielding man next to him.
Seeing how calm they were caused drake to tilt his head to the side a bit. He turned his head to look at Beatrice and spoke calmly.
"Beatrice is a doctor. she will heal him."
Sensing that this caught their gazes, Beatrice gave a slight smile and nodded her head in approval.
Just when she was about to reach out to inspect Manther's body which drake had been holding in his arms the entire time.
She felt the grip on Jacob's hand tighten again.
"10 bodies are on their way, only 100 meters away."
Although his voice sounded calm, Jacob's words sent panic to the hearts of every single person in that group.
Tsk! With an annoyed expression on her face, Beatrice retracted the arm she had extended to touch Manther.
"We don't have the time to fight, if we stay too long here, he might die before I can do anything."
Drake agreed with what Beatrice said. Nodding his head slightly, he spoke calmly.
"We need to move at our top speeds to ensure we open enough distance between us and them."
"Wouldn't we be going too far away from the wall if we did? You know what that means right?"
The old man had stopped smiling when he said this, in fact, he seemed expressionless.
Simon spoke immediately after that. "That's right, we're risking too much going any further."
When Jacob heard what they had said, he looked up at the old man and paused for a second before smiling slightly.
"We should be okay, don't worry, we won't run into anything that will threaten our lives for another 10 kilometres or so."
The old man lifted his eyebrows in curiosity, but before he could say anything, Drake intervened.
"There you have it. Let's move, his divinity is fading."
After saying this, Drake leaped and started moving. Beatrice held Jacob's hand again and followed after Drake immediately.
This caused for the rest of them to follow behind them without contesting or delaying, knowing that if they did it would be an unnecessary risk of their lives.
They moved at even more incredible speeds than before, covering a kilometre in less than 5 minutes. In about 15 minutes, they had covered 6 kilometres and finally came to a halt.
"Please get started on healing Manther, we might run into something else before we can catch our breaths."
The old man nodded at Simon while he spoke to Beatrice.
Seeing this, Simon immediately got up and walked up to an enormous tree, lifted his right hand and held it straight ahead for a second or two.
Wind started pulling and gathering in his hand when he did this and after a second he had a ball of wind pressure slightly bigger than his arm floating on his palm.
The wind ball kept spiralling in every direction, more wind gathering into the spiral and enlarging the wind ball.
After 5 seconds, when the wind ball stopped gathering air into it, he swung his hand towards the tree, sending the spiral straight at the tree.
SHWING! When the wind ball made contact with the tree it chopped the tree clean off from it's trunk.
When the tree crashed to the ground, the brawny axe wielder walked up to the tree, wind gathering at his axe creating what seemed to be a wind blade over the actual blade of the axe.
He stopped right in front of the tree and swung his axe.
SHWING! Again, the same sound was produced as the axe swung, making contact with the tree.
When it made contact, the wind spread out accurately throughout the tree, splitting the tree into countless logs of wood that filled the area.
This entire sequence of actions caught Jacob's attention which caused him to lift his eyebrows in an expression that seemed like curiosity.
'Strange, I guess they've been here for a long time.'