Amateur grapplers often imagine grappling as applying force from the top down and pressing the opponent hard as if trying to crush them, and often that’s what they actually do. But the correct way to do it is to lower your center of gravity and lift your opponent into the air from below. If this is difficult to understand, try to imagine a large ball and a smaller ball about half its size pushing against each other sideways. The small ball will slip underneath and push the large ball upwards. Once the opponent’s feet are off the ground, they can’t apply force anymore. Become the small ball, stand firm below, and use the power of the ground to push the opponent upwards — that’s one of the correct principles for winning a grapple.
In that sense, the dwarves were blessed to have short and heavyset bodies.
The only problem was their short reach. I wondered if that meant that long-handled weapons would be best suited for them in armed combat.
“My lord, my lord.” Someone called for me.
I turned around to see a businesslike woman with braided, flaxen hair.
“Anna.”
Anna was one of the priests that Bishop Bagley had dispatched to me. She was always helping me out with the running of the city, religious services, and stuff like that. I’d heard recently from Bee that there was something going on between her and Reystov, but I couldn’t read that kind of thing, so I had no idea whether it was true or not.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“A situation that requires a little urgency has been brought to my attention.”
“What’s happened?”
“I’m told there has been an undead sighting in the woods.”
“Undead…”
For a while now, the main troubles around here had revolved around beasts and demons. It had been quite a while since I’d had to deal with anything involving undead.
I had arranged for matters relating to undead near Beast Woods to be brought to me first of all via the temple. I could throw it over to the adventurers, but they wouldn’t necessarily have any method for returning the dead peacefully to the eternal cycle of samsara. Granted, a few warriors with maces could pulverize a zombie or a skeleton to the point of unrecognizability and the problem would be solved for the people under threat, but I felt that was a bit too cruel. Because of my history of being raised by Mary, Blood, and Gus, I couldn’t help but feel for the undead, so I was trying to make sure that as often as possible, matters like this were handled by me personally, or failing that, one of the priests.
“Ah!” I suddenly got an idea. This might be perfect for Al’s first battle. Due to my devotion to the god of the flame, I had a large advantage against the undead. If Al got into danger, it would be much easier to support him than if we were facing a beast.
“Al, about this, I’m going to handle it personally. Will you come with me?”
Al’s face lit up. “Y-Yes, sir! Please allow me to accompany you!”
Traces of summer still lingered in the forest, which smelled strongly of greenery and soil and was full of thick undergrowth and exuberant bushes and vines. Coming through here when the visibility was as bad as this was dangerous, even if the situation had improved slightly compared to the height of summer.
I turned around to face Al, who was walking behind me. “I hear that dwarves can see well in the dark, but make sure not to over-rely on your sense of sight.”
“O-Okay.”
Al was wearing studded leather armor and a helmet, and he had a shiny battle axe in his hands. He looked pretty stylish now that he was standing up straight and was properly equipped, and all the more so because he had a solid build to begin with.
“So let’s go over this,” I said. “Where are we going?”
“Pillar Mound to the west.”
The recent beast hunts had expanded the area available to people. New ruins were being discovered frequently by beast-hunting adventurers and others who ventured deep into the woods to gather wild vegetables and hunt. The place we were heading now to get rid of the undead was just such a place. Its discoverer had called it Pillar Mound, and it was apparently a small hill with lines of old, rotting, wood posts.
“The report of its discovery was made very recently, but a search still hasn’t been carried out. There are several reasons for that. How deep into the woods it’s located—” The wind blew. A gray-white mist began to descend around us. “The fact that this area gets very misty. It’s unclear whether that has something to do with the geography, an ancient magical barrier, or if it’s something playing tricks, maybe a fae or something that’s settled here.” The mist was growing thicker with every step we took. “And lastly, the fact that there was an unholy aura about the area. The hunter who made the discovery said that they saw
‘undead,’ but…”
The experience seemed to have shaken them up quite a bit, and they were only able to give vague information about the sighting — something like a bone-chilling presence and the sense that something was moving in the mist. They might simply have been seeing things. Or it might have been a beast or a golem of some sort that had wandered out of a ruin.
“We don’t know what might turn up,” I said. “It could be nothing. An atmosphere like this can make you see things that aren’t there. But let’s be careful.”
“Yes, sir!”
We walked through the mist in silence for a little while, searching for anything out of place. Suddenly, our field of vision opened up. From behind me, Al stifled a yelp of surprise.
“Oh, wow.” The sight took my breath away. Countless rows of wooden pillars were lined up on a hill shrouded in thick fog. They seemed to have once been covered in red paint, although it was half-peeled off by now.
“C–Creepy.”
“Yes. But magnificent.” I gazed through the gray-white fog at the forest of rotting red pillars with peeling paint. The rows became more indistinct the farther back I looked and appeared to sway in the fog in the distance. They looked like the horribly twisted, slender figures of blood-red giants standing silently in this place as the last vestiges of the activity that had certainly once existed here.
I signaled with a hand gesture, and we moved carefully forward, trodding on the wet soil. Menel and Reystov weren’t here this time. It wasn’t a big enough deal for all of us to go, and we had the Lord of Holly’s prophecy to think about, so I had them standing by in Torch Port. But I slightly regretted that decision. If anything, Menel was the one suited to this kind of search. As a half-elf, he had sharp senses and could also call fairies to his aid, so he was more suited than me to this kind of reconnaissance work. That said, we couldn’t help what we didn’t have. I would just have to deal.
While casting my eyes left and right, I slowly approached the hill. The first thing I did was to check the pillars. As I thought, they were made of wood. They had been sawn with precision, were all either octagonal or hexagonal in shape, and had been buried deep into the ground. I wondered if the red was part of the customs or culture of a now-lost tribe. Perhaps it carried some kind of religious message or prayer.
A warm gust of wind whooshed by, taking me by surprise. Al let out a short scream and turned pale.
I looked in the direction he was pointing.
Behind a pillar, something was there, looking at us.
As I reflexively held Pale Moon at the ready, I looked at where Al was pointing. He was looking at something with a cracked face, brown skin that had started to rot, empty eye sockets, haphazard teeth…