The World of Tactics

Chapter Twenty-Two X: Dire Homecoming

Chapter Twenty-Two X: Dire Homecoming

"A bone walker versus a flesh walker? Well, to be honest, the only difference is just the fact that the flesh walker would have flesh-like armor, while the bone walkers are bare bones. Depending on what weapon they use when they are still alive and when the dead body is turned into a bone walker or a flesh walker. There is a catch. Once a dead body is turned into a bone or flesh walker, they will retain some small amount of weapon mastery skills. In other words, they could still use weapons, but only toward those that were on the simpler side.

What truly sets the two apart was their appearance, difference in speed, the difference in defense, and stiffness levels. A bone walker was much more flexible and had close to the flexibility of living beings. As for a flesh walker, the stiff joints and angle of attack that a flesh walker could do were comparably simple. Even so, a flesh walker is nothing to joke about, since its defenses are like solid metal.

Likewise, the two can be artificially made by a dark magic user who knows how to use the turning spell.

As for the last topic that we had. The topic is zombies. A zombie can not artificially be created. A zombie was a being that a dark magic user could find in the wild where mass graves are in place. A zombie is a corpse in the long-forgotten past where a special type of dark property will slowly gather into a corpse. That dark property would then gradually form the corpse's poison and turn the corpse into a zombie.

This is the reason why a zombie would have corpse poison. Innately, as a zombie's claws and fangs grow stronger. This would signify that the zombie's corpse poison would also increase in potency and corruption once the corpse poison within the zombie enters a living being's body. Not only that, due to the special property in the corpse poison. As long as a person is inflicted with corpse poison, their vitality will start to decay. When that person dies due to the poison, then that person who still has some active corpse poison will naturally become a zombie.

Of course, there are ways to get rid of corpse poison once inflicted with the corpse poison. The corpse poison will be extremely potent for a short amount of time. After that, it was a matter of time before the body's mana would naturally get rid of the corpse's poison. One other way was an antidote and the last one was the elixir. Those three are the primary ways to cure the corpse poison right away."

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The ninth flesh walker targeted Lawrence just like before. This bout was similar to the past few bouts, but Lawrence dealt two damage instead (Lawrence, EXP+25). Once Lawrence's bout was done. The first zombie movie is five squares and ends up in the eighth flesh walker's previous position. Which was also south adjacent to the fifth zombie. Once the first zombie moves there, he feels confused because that is essentially the same as blocking a passageway for the remaining zombies. He had thought that the undead monster would have been much smarter than that.

Because of the first zombie blockage, the second zombie had to move north one square before moving east with the remaining four movements. The second zombie was stacked neatly north adjacent to the sixth zombie. The same situation occurs due to that single blockage between the first zombie and the second zombie. The third zombie's only option was to neatly stack north adjacent to the second zombie. Due to that, he found it a bit funny to see that the fourth and fifth zombies also did the same and stacked north adjacent to each previous zombie.

It was not until the sixth zombie did the situation changed for the better, because the first and the sixth zombie were the ones to create that blockage. So, the sixth zombie was completely able to move in to attack either Goon or Uzi. As for the prime target, the sixth zombie aimed toward Goon, who has a lower level in comparison to Uzi. He did not even have to worry about Goon at all, because the sixth zombie's attack could not even break either Goon's or Uzi's defense. In the bout exchanged, Goon counter-attacked twice and dealt twelve damage each (Goon, EXP +100, Level Up). He allocated Goon's status points with an impassive expression. Goon's maximum health point plus one, skill stat plus one (maxed), and magic resistance plus one.

He had an impassive expression because of this bout's exchange, Goon versus the sixth zombie. He also noticed something odd, Goon, who much prefers to hazard swings of the bone ax. Somehow, Goon had this tint of the skillful flavor of ax-wielding. He felt that this must have been due to the skill stat. Likewise, Goon no longer felt clumsily wielding the ax and attacked randomly. It was as if Goon was able to properly utilize the ax in a standard manner and had swung the ax in a tricky manner that is hard to guard against. That was the feeling that he was getting off from Goon's two skillful counterattacks. This, he could not help but want the same artful manner of attacks as well.

With that, the enemy's turn had come to an end and became [Player's Turn][8]. Before taking any actions, he first commanded Lawrence to attack the seventh flesh walker. The seventh flesh walker had two fewer health points remaining than the ninth flesh walker. Within a few turns, it would eventually drop down to zero. By then, Lawrence would have leveled up a couple of times. Which would eventually speed up the turns needed to finish dealing with the two remaining flesh walkers. Likewise, he was also sure now that there were no more reinforcements.

Once that was done, he turned his attention toward Dork. Throughout this battle, Dork was not able to get as much action as he wanted Dork to have. Thinking so, he commanded Dork to attack the eighth flesh walker that was adjacent to him. He got a plan and decided that giving Dork a zombie kill would allow Dork to achieve a level. First, he changed the weapon that he was holding to a bronze lance that only had one durability left. A single look and there were plenty of creaks on the blade and chips on the poles. He knew that even if he did some minute maintenance, it would not add any more durability to the bronze lance. So, he decided that this was the right time for the bronze lance to go.

He attacks with the bronze lance and after it connects with the eighth flesh walker, it completely breaks into pieces. It was unrepairable now that it was in pieces. As for the eighth flesh walker counter-attack, he was somewhat able to block the eighth flesh walker attack, but it made no difference at all when the flesh walker had more points in the skill stat than his. With a single attack, he only dealt a total of eleven damage to the eighth flesh walker, but it was enough for Dork to finish it off during Dork's turn (John Smith, EXP +20x2, Level Up).

After this bout, he was automatically re-equipped with his iron lance. It was exactly like Goon when Goon's first bone ax broke. He already knew that the weapon on the item slot that was nearest the top of the list would be equipped automatically afterward. He was led by example and Goon was exactly that example. While he was re-equipped with the iron lance, he was also allocating three points to his skill stat. Even when his skill stat reaches nine points, he still feels nothing. It was not obvious in an increase in strength that there was a slight feeling of being mightier. He was feeling a little doubtful at this point.

He disregards his doubts for the moment and turns toward Goon and Uzi. He was considering who should be the one to get the experience of killing the sixth zombie. Thinking about it, he decided to give the kill to Uzi because he felt that Goon had already capped most of the important stats and Uzi still had a way to go. On the other hand, it was not like Goon would be missing out on levels as well, since there were still five remaining zombies on the battlefield.

He had Uzi attack the sixth zombie. The first attack had dealt fourteen damage, while the second attack finished off the sixth zombie and sent it to the other hand (Uzi, EXP +100, Level Up). Once he saw that Uzi had leveled up, he quickly allocated one point to Uzi's maximum health point while the other two points to Uzi's skill stat. Up till this point, he felt that Goon and Uzi had properly increased their health points to the average standard. He was quite satisfied seeing that Uzi was growing stronger within sight. He simply ends his turn at this point because there was no need for Goon to take any more action.

[Ally's Turn][8], Lawrence attacked the seventh flesh walker and dealt the same amount of damage while still gaining a great chunk of experience (Lawrence, EXP +25). It will not take long for Lawrence to gain another level again. Still, he preferred it if Lawrence's levels gained many stats. Up till now, Lawrence had only gained a total of five stat gains for three levels. Comparing that to himself, Lawrence was behind him by four stat points for every three levels.

After Lawrence's turn, it was [Neutral's Turn][8]. Dork launches a fireball at the eighth flesh walker. The damage that Dork does to the eighth flesh walker was over ten points of damage, fourteen damage (Dork, EXP +60, Level Up). [HP+1][MAG+1][DEF+1][Fire E -> D!] Somehow, Dork always leveled up towards becoming a mage tank and had a fire magic mastery rank up. He felt that as long as Dork was able to use any fire magic spells through the usage of a magic scroll and as long as it was within Dork's fire magic mastery rank. Dork would be able to completely cast the fire magic spells at a cost of health points. This would completely get rid of Dork's need for learning. Well, Dork's turn had come to an end once Dork leveled up.

[Enemy's Turn]. There were only two flesh walkers remaining and the target of the two flesh walkers was obvious. Lawrence was attacked immediately by the seventh flesh walker and Lawrence's counterattack dealt two damage (Lawrence, EXP +25, Level Up). [STR+1][LCK+1][DEF+1] It was not a coincidence that Lawrence would level up at the first bout. However, it was a coincidence that Lawrence was able to keep gaining the strength stat four times in a row. He had thought that even with the increase in Lawrence, strengthened growth rates. It would not be as exaggerated as this. The same goes for Lawrence's defense as well, because it has been judged that Lawrence was quite lucky to also have an increase in the luck stat and the defense stat.

The ninth flesh walker attacked Lawrence as well and the outcome had a slight change. Lawrence was now able to deal three damage to the ninth flesh walker (Lawrence, EXP +25). The improvement was slight, but it paid off sooner or later. He also had plans for Lawrence to re-equip the earth draco lizard's strength earring after the enemy's turn, since Lawrence already had a base defense of eleven points. It was also better for Lawrence to be able to start dealing real damage to the flesh walkers. Up till now, only one or two damages were not as significant as five or so damage to a monster that had thirty-plus maximum health points.

It was the zombies' turn to move now that the flesh walker finishes their turn. The first zombie that was causing the obstruction neither targeted Goon nor Uzi. He was the prime target since the eighth flesh walker was cleared from obstructing the attack range of the first zombie. The other reason was that his level was also lower than Goon and Uzi. Hence, he was targeted. He did not mind though, because it just meant that it was time for him to gain a good amount of experience. He felt the impact of the claw attack of the first zombie.

He had never expected that it would be this weak, even though there was barely any strength coming from the attack. It might have been due to his high strength stat, average skill stat, and high defense. There was also no strain on his body at all from being able to slightly block the blow of the first zombie's attack. He counterattacked with two thrusts of his iron lance. Each of the thrusts had dealt ten damages each. At the end of the bout, he dealt a total of twenty damage to the first zombie (John Smith, EXP+20x2). He sweated a bit seeing that this first zombie had an abnormal defense stat that sits at sixteen points.