On the different mountains of the frozen lands.
Her mouth was dry and her body felt incredibly weak.
And worse of all, she felt an immense headache similar to when she broke once her leg from being thrown off a cliff.
At least she currently didn't feel the pain that she felt back then.
Slowly opening her heavy eyelids, she looked up at the sky.
The bright white sky made it difficult for her eyes to adjust, making her vision hazing at best. Though with her being of the 3rd tier, her eyesight became clear just a moment later.
And once they did, she realized that the sky was shaking.
"Huh~?" She mumbled confusedly.
Slowly raising her head despite the headache, she saw around her, only to see that it wasn't the sky shaking, but it was her that was moving.
Looking around, she realized that she was in a moving wagon.
"So it's me that is movi-kya!"
Before she could finish, the wagon that she was on suddenly bumped into some rock, resulting in her hitting her head on the wood.
"Ah~It hurt..." She said while grabbing her head in hopes to ease the headache, a drop of tear building up in her eye.
And while she was touching her head with her hands, a dark mist slowly moved on top of the carriage, making her flinch.
The dark mist then slowly took a physical form of an undead wearing dark plating armor, seating on the side of the wagon.
"Hey you, you're finally awake?" The undead said with cold words.
Shiro could never mistake the owner for such a cold tone in his voice. But once she took a glance at the owner of the voice and saw the dark green cracks on his bones that were hidden behind a mist, the headache spiked once more, making the sight in front of her disappear, easing the pain.
"Rue?" She said confused.
"What happend?"
The undead, who was Danzel shook his head once hearing that.
"You should know already of what happend, Shiro."
"..."
Shiro at those words went silent.
'My condition huh?' She thought.
Letting her head fall to the floor of the wagon, she stared at the white sky while also raising her hand, feeling sad from the inside.
'How much did I age? Months? Years?' She thought as she stared at her fingernails having overgrown once more.
The only indicator to prove that she had aged.
With her race's long lifespan, it was extremely difficult to tell her how much she aged.
'Will Grandpa even recognize me once we meet again?' She thought with closed eyes.
Danzel in turn stared at her in silence, giving her time to gather her thoughts.
It was only a while later before she opened her eyes.
"Rue, where are we now? Did we leave the village?" Shiro asked while trying to stand up with the support of her hands, albeit struggling.
While her hands were shaking, her eyes caught a dark green hand appearing in her vision, making her eyes wide a bit.
The dark green hand in question grabbed her shoulder and helped her to put her back at the side of the wagon.
"...Yes, we left two days ago. Though for you it must be a bit more of a week." Danzel said as he pulled the dagger from the skull claw.
"Do you remember what this is?" Danzel asked.
Shiro nodded in response.
"You mentioned that the dagger places a tracking curse on its enemies...Wait, did something happend to the target?" Shiro asked while connecting the dots of Danzel's question.
Making Danzel somewhat impressed.
"Indeed, the ice troll that I market has died."
Hearing that Shiro frowned.
"Was it a beast? Or was it-"
"It was the latter of what you are thinking." Danzel cut her short.
"If it was really a beast, the connection would have disappeared close to instantly. As the beast would kill the ice troll. But that wasn't the case, the connection weaken only to disappear shortly after." Danzel said as he sheathed the dagger in.
"Unless there is a beast that likes to play with their food...the most likely culprit of his death must be his kin."
"What about the connection now though?" Shiro asked.
"Indeed, the connection has vanished, but I was able to get a vague direction of where he died. Around the territory of the so-called Wild Hunt."
Shiro slowly nodded her head.
'So he is really planning to hunt them all down...' Shiro thought to herself.
Although he already explained to her his plan to her, she still couldn't get over it.
Danzel's plan was simple and cruel at the same time.
Moving her head to the side, Shiro frowned at what she saw.
She saw "her" ominous students made out of shadows reading their magic books and undead.
Undead everywhere to be seen.
And it wasn't just a few dozen as she had remembered before she had collapsed, but instead this time they were hundreds of undead with ethereal flaring eyes and armor made out of bones.
For any normal person, such sight would have been shocking beyond belief, but to Shiro? Who watched Velkir raised much greater armies of the undead? It was only slightly shocking.
Danzel's plan was pretty straightforward and simple.
Well, simple for any mediocre necromancers that are.
His plan was to make an army of undead to spread through the frozen lands to cover the ground and scout the lands of the frozen lands.
It was basically the basic strategy of any necromancer.
Overwhelmed you problems with numbers.
That plan also brought many side benefits for Danzel, few that Shiro wasn't aware of, but she still was able to see that Danzel was using the corpses to practice runesmith.
A form of art that she had no clue how worked.
She remembered a few of Danzel's runes of how to be drawn and she tried once to inject mana just as he did, alas with no success.
"Rue, how many...of them are here?" Shiro asked while looking at Danzel.
"A bit more than 300 Draugrs, I left 200 of them back to the villages that we visited to explore the area."
"...300." Shiro mumbled.
Silently staring at her, Danzel raised his hand and brought out some of the food supplies, and gave them to Shiro.
"Here, you should be hungry, right? Because I can't really tell." Danzel said in his cold voice.
Once the food was out, her stomach decided to make its presence clear.
*Grghhgh~
With slight embarrassment, Shiro reached out and picked up the food given to her.
"Thank you, Rue. Really." She said while biting on the food.
It wasn't the best, but at the same time, it also wasn't a Danzel meat roaster. Which in her book was a plus.
Danzel silently stared at her eating with his ethereal eyes gone out. Making it somewhat awkward for Shiro.
"Ehm...Rue, it's kinda awkward you looking at me eat like that." She said awkwardly.
"Don't mind me..." Danzel answered, his eye still not lit up.
Shiro continue to eat, but having a skull watching her eat in silence made her feel awkward.
"S-So, when are we going to reach the location of the daggers connection Rue?" Shiro asked awkwardly.
"We aren't going there yet, first we are going to meet up with the Draugrs of the mine and then travel back to the village of the fox people with that priestess. Afterward, we will go and see the other side of those frozen lands."
Shiro halfway nodded her head before she froze, suddenly being reminded of something.
'Right! The native people! Oh no!!!' Shiro screamed internally as she tried to rise up from the wagon.
If she were at her peak, she would have immediately jumped off the wagon.
She stared through the hundreds of undead as if she was in a panic before her eyes landed on the only living beings inside the undead army.
They walked among the undead while their bodies shaking and their movements somewhat haggard. Also, many of them had black circle's in their eyes and some others helped each carry each other.
At a glance, one could tell that these people were exhausted beyond reason.
"Rue! Can we take a break for now? Those people are about to collapse." Shiro pointed at the fox people.
With his eyes finally flaring up, Danzel gave the fox people a cold emotionless stare, before shaking his head and raising up from his seating position.
"I see...then I will give them 6 hours. Should be long enough to recover." Danzel said as he turned to dark mist.
Shiro couldn't bother to where Danzel was going now.
Looking around her wagon, she found her staff.
Using it as support, she climbed down the wagon before walking towards the fox people.
The undead already received Danzel's instructions and went to do their given work, if they had any that is.
As Shiro walked closer to the fox people, she couldn't help but sigh internally.
She totally forgot how Danzel would sometimes forget that the living had limited stamina and that their condition never stays the same.
Seeing the exhausted people, she felt like she watched herself on the first few days of traveling with Danzel.
Unrelentless travels without any pauses and food are only provided by him when someone makes him aware that others are hungry.
Unlike her though, those people couldn't just go to Danzel and ask him for food or a pause, considering their position.
'Rue probably only made a break when someone collapsed to the ground through either exhaustion or starvation, leaving them in such a state...'
She found his lack of common sense quite annoying at some point. But considering that he was an undead that had different common sense, she blamed herself while cursing at Danzel internally.
And once Shiro arrived in front of the fox people, letting them know that they can take a break while also arranging food, many saw her as their savior.
While on the other side, they looked at Danzel the completely opposite way.
He was too much!
