"Is this what this place had become after being left out for just a few days?"
A knight spoke with a surprised expression.
His words snapped everyone out of their pensive thoughts.
They kept their emotions in check and decided to inspect the area.
They stepped in carefully while keeping their guard all-time high.
"This is utterly horrible," Morderk muttered while swallowing his saliva.
He looked at the corpse underneath him which seemed to be covered with a slimy substance.
At a closer glance, one could notice a very subtle movement. It looked as if the corpse was slowly eaten by the dark slimy moss.
Wanting to do a test, Morderk pulled out his sword and stabbed the ground with a swallow force.
TANG!
The Knights stepped back while looking at the spot Morderk stabbed.
Alex turned his head and noticed that the black moss was wriggling slowly and steadily.
The gross moss had covered the entire place like a thick dark veil, so any subtle motion made by it was difficult to perceive as everything was covered by it but once you noticed it, you could see it shoving forward.
Alex rubbed his chin as he noticed the black mass slowly invading the edge of the blade.
"Morderk, try to use your aura to dispel it."
Morderk nodded and holding the hilt of his sword, he churned it a bit by channelling its mana.
Swish!
Alex's eyes widened as the small perimeter around the sword covered in mana was instantly free of the dark moss.
Everyone around the spot was taken by surprise.
It proves that this thing was certainly very much alive and able to react to external stimuli.
With aura, one can dispel, but can't destroy it.
"Highness, just what is this?"
"No, in fact just what kind of enemy are we up against this time?" The young knight named Kean asked with a frown.
He noticed Alex piercing gaze and his body stiffened.
The question was quite decisive and it was precisely what everyone wanted to know.
At first, everyone thought that this undead attack was the work of a necromancer who wanted to wreak havoc and challenge the peace but the battle was over and there was no necromancer around.
Thus all of them concluded that it might be an enemy that the higher-ups were quite weary of and didn't want to reveal about the enemy.
Whatever, maybe they were the King's swords and laying down their lives on the King's order was their job and they have no right to ask the question but curiosity got the better of them and Kean made a slip of tongue.
So, Kean thought his slip of the tongue might have been a grave mistake so he immediately tried to apologise.
"Your Highness, please forgive me..."
"It's okay." Alex cut him in the middle.
"It's your right to know what we are up against. As long as it is not something that shouldn't be disclosed, I will faithfully answer your doubt."
"This thing that you are seeing, you can call it malevolence. Even though I don't know exactly what it is, as far as I know, it is a by-product of a sinister ritual."
"This thing can taint a person's mind and draw him to darkness if exposed too much. It corrupts the mind and pollutes the land, water and even air. "
"Once it consumes a corpse fully, the remains of the corpse might become undead."
"It can be in the form of a dark sticky substance similar to miasma or those dark fumes which make one go crazy and you have been seen in the experiment beasts."
"Currently, the miasma has been hardened and coagulated in this form. If it is left like this, it will engulf everything around here and will slowly start to spread everywhere."
All of them swallowed their saliva and wanted to ask about the origin of this thing but Alex answered that even he didn't know about it.
There was more to it but Alex couldn't speak about that thing otherwise these guys might seriously wet their pants if they came to know about the things related to the God Of Darkness.
"The only way to get rid of this place is to cleanse this place by a sacred ritual. Yeah, it will be easy if you can afford to bring someone of the Saintess calibre." Alex spoke with a wide grin.
It was just a suggestion, but everyone who heard this felt he was boasting about his wife being a Saintess.
"Now, the first thing we need to do is bring enough manpower to get rid of the corpse. We cannot leave it for later or they might turn into undead."
"And maybe something more if possible," Alex spoke after a brief pause.
The Knights nodded and got to work.
Two knights galloped quickly to bring the manpower to clean the things while Alex continued the tour while the Knight started cleanup work.
The more they went inside the city, the denser it became.
Initially, the moss was on the floor but now it covered even the walls of the building.
Halfway, in the middle, Alex was even stunned to find people frozen like statues.
They were covered with black moss from head to the top and they had been crystallised.
"Uncle Morderk!" Alex muttered.
Morderk understood Alex's meaning without words and checked the people and returned with an unhappy look.
"Your Highness, they are dead."
Alex huffed his breath while staring at the plaza filled with all types of people.
He closed his eyes and an imaginary scene appeared in his mind.
It might be a normal day when people walk out of their homes happily with a smile on their faces.
But soon the smiles faded, as a thick layer of dark fog rushed out of nowhere.
Most of them might have died due to suffocation due to inhaling the dark fumes.
Alex clenched his fist due to an unpleasant sensation.
A bud of guilt sprouted in his heart and his light shoulders seemed to become heavy with an unseen weight placed over them.
