Chapter 97: Zombie’s in the Stone Age?

"W-W-What’s going on? Who are these people?" Jol had readied his spear and prepared for an attack. He had no idea what was happening, but he would be dammed if he didn’t go down swinging.

"These are...These are our ill, our fallen, our dead. They...They died to that Verminus Plant Plague. S-So how...how are they here?"

Helgan recognized all of them, even the young ones. Friends, family, and lovers. Long had he wished to see them again, but not like this, not as corpses.

It made him upset. No, it angered him. It was disgusting, disrespectful, and most of all, it went against the order of Mother Nature.

"How dare...How dare that plant...HOW DARE YOU DESECRATE THE GRAVES OF OUR FALLEN!"

With fire spirits blazing around his arms, Helgan charged, striking the possessed dead with enough force to send their bodies crashing through the ruins. He wasn’t fighting them out of hatred. He wanted to free them from the plant’s control and give them peace.

He hoped that if he could destroy their bodies, then it would release their trapped spirits.

"Helgan!" Itha shouted.

Vines erupted from the ground behind him, their sharpened tips racing toward his back.

Itha thrust her hands forward, and thick roots burst from the earth, intercepting the vines just before they pierced him.

Dead Typhon tribesmen rose from the earth, wielding weapons and manipulating spirits just as they had in life. Fire exploded through the ruins. Lightning cracked across the sky. Blades of wind tore through crumbling buildings while streams of water and jagged pillars of earth erupted around the group.

Helgan met them head-on, burning through one possessed warrior after another, but every fallen body was quickly replaced.

Mika fought beside him, her bronze sword deflecting flaming strikes while earth spirits shattered the ground beneath the dead. Wen unleashed powerful gusts to keep the horde away, while Jol froze attackers with precise strikes of ice. Itha manipulated roots and vines to protect them, and Zuna desperately maintained her healing aura.

But there were too many.

Some of the dead were warriors. Others were elders, farmers, and even children, their bodies moving against their will. The group couldn’t bring themselves to strike them with the same force.

The dead surged forward. "There are too many!" Wen shouted.

Itha slammed both hands into the earth.

A gigantic plant erupted beneath them, its massive leaves forming a platform as its stem launched upward like a living spear. The group climbed aboard as it shot them high above the ruined village before bending away from the fallen Typhon Tribesmen.

For one moment, they escaped. Then Helgan looked down. A thin black vine had wrapped around his arm. He had been infected.

---

It was only when they were far away from the Typhon Tribe’s village that Itha stopped her plant from moving, her energy nearly exhausted.

She didn’t know how long she had been traveling, only that she needed to get away, as she could feel the Verminus Plant nearby.

When they came to a stop, finding a good place to set up camp, Itha collapsed instantly and passed out.

With a little first aid, Zuna concluded that she would be fine, then turned her attention to Helgan, who began to breathe heavily.

"You idiot! How could you just attack without any plan or means of escape? Now look at you!" Zuna began to stabilize Helgan and took out the tools that Kanan had provided for them.

"S-Sorry. I couldn’t let that plant disrespect our people. Their souls deserve rest, not this torment."

"Well, for starters, we now know how and why those animals were able to attack us despite being dead. It was the Verminus Plant. It seems that if you are infected by it, your body will be taken under its control after you die and aren’t burned." Wen concluded.

After stabilizing Helgan, Zuna injected him with the Angler Poison. However, something interesting happened. Instead of needing to go through the whole process Kanan and Yala had taught her, the plant died instantly when it came in contact with the poison.

In fact, Zuna hadn’t even used the whole dosage, only injecting a tiny bit before noticing the effects.

"Amazing. The plant’s dead already." Zuna’s medical side was starting to show. She instantly went to document what she had just learned, something Kanan suggested.

"What’s going on?" Mika asked. "I thought that this would take longer."

"So did I, but if my hypothesis is correct, then because the plant inside Helgan is in its infancy stage and hasn’t fully bloomed inside him yet, the poison was able to kill the plant before it was even a threat." Zuna was even able to remove the vine that would have sprouted into a parasite.

"You got lucky," Jol grumbled. "Don’t do something like that again."

"H-Heh, yeah." Helgan winced.

After administering the cure to the Angler Poison, Zuna told Helgan to go easy on his arm and instructed everyone to rest.

They were tired, hungry, and mentally unstable.

"Our first course of action will be to report back to the village. So, once we’re all rested up and rejuvenated, we’re making the journey back home." Zuna instructed

"Well, since we have nothing to do right now, there’s something I want to talk about, something I noticed when fighting against our fallen people." Wen took a seat and leaned against a tree.

"What did you notice?" Mika asked

"It was Anuwol. He looked...different from the others. His skin wasn’t grey or rotting, and he didn’t have a flower blooming out of his head like the others."

"So, what does that have to do with anything?" Jol wondered

"It’s just an observation, but what if he’s different from the others? I mean, he didn’t attack on sight either. He didn’t attack us at all, actually."

Helgan leaned up, his body straining from the action. "What are you trying to say, Wen?"

"I’m trying to say that either Anuwol is where the Verminus Plant is controlling the others from, or, and just hear me out, he’s alive."