Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Without any movement or sound, Loimos opened up a rift, and from it, Grail, the whale-like disaster beast bursted out, seamlessly diving into the ocean and despite its enormous frame, it barely even caused a little splash as it landed into the yet-conquered waters.

Grail might be capable of flight, but as its appearance suggested, it was far more at ease when submerged.

Loimos led the way as he casually walked off the edge of the tower, landing atop Grail's back.

Maliah and One soon followed, and the disaster beast began to move forward, demonstrating that its oddly silent dive from earlier was the norm for it, in spite of being utterly gigantic of probably weighting far more than a hundred tons, and yet, the water was not being disturbed by the swimming of this gargantuan beast, and it wasn't going slowly either, the assassin's hood was peeled off her head by the winds that were crashing into the three passengers.

The trip was a short one by undead standards, but overall, it took them five hours to get to the thing Loimos had spotted earlier, considering Grail's speed, they were very far away from the closest border of the Empire right now, and what they stopped next to was rather curious.

There was an island here, it seemed quite large, but only had sand, and after a small portion of beach, one would once again find water that was nestled within the island, actually making up for ninety percent of its surface.

The water in here was significantly lighter and brighter in colour compared to that of the ocean just a few steps away, One squinted her eyes at it, her experience with alchemy allowed her to know with just a glance that this thing was impossible packed with salt, she tried to kick some sand into it, and indeed, the content of salt was so high, that the grains did not sink.

And indeed, upon the surface of this water, there were plenty of odd items that were suspended in place, looking at though they were stuck in frozen water instead, most of them were rather typical, there were swords of average manufacture and other common weapons, pieces of armour, what seemed to be the most common however, were corpses.

There were countless skeletal remains just floating and staying still on the surface of the water, but that was probably far from the true amount of corpses this place had occupied throughout its existence as the salt concentration was so high, that anything submerged within it seemed to be quickly be taken apart, right now, they could see with their own eyes as skeletal remains were being grinded down into what was pretty much non existence.

"Looks like a dumping ground to me" Maliah looked up to see a pulsating orb hovering just above the very center of the salty pool, this was the gateway to a realm, and indeed, her thought was quickly confirmed as the orb pulsated strongly before being following by a flash of light.

Then, someone's screams filled the air, and the three undeads watched as what appeared to be a man, presumably human, came falling down straight into the waters below.

Firstly, his legs shattered on impact, not only was he falling from a rather high distance, but the water here felt much more solid than normal, but as he partly sunk, his broken limbs were probably the least of his concerns, in fact, he might not even have noticed as the agony brought by the liquid itself was certainly many times worse, devouring every ounce of flesh it came into contact with.

Eating down to the bone within only a few moments.

This man was not dying however, only his lower half was currently submerged, his internal organs had not yet been reach, and apparently, the horrific amount of pain he was going through was not proving sufficient in knocking him unconscious.

In fact, that man wasn't screaming due to the pain, he was shouting profanities up at the orb, seemingly so angry that all else was sent to the background of his priorities.

"Unless the people of that realm just look like that on the regular, that is definitely an execution that we are watching" commented One, indeed, as to add to the torturous nature of what they were witnessing, the man had come falling down without a single piece of clothing, and most importantly, without his skin.

He had been skinned alive before being dumped into waters with a high concentration of salt, this basically confirmed that the people who had thrown him in there knew exactly what was on the other side, and that this was probably their way of executing people considering the amount of bones around.

Since all three undeads were carrying the blessing of comprehension, they could understand what the man was screaming about, but unfortunately, it was not very coherent, being mostly insults.

"Skinning and then throwing salt at them is a good idea, why didn't I think of that before?" whilst Maliah was taking notes for the next time she could get her hands on an innocent living, Loimos used a little bit of magic to pull the screaming man ashore, casually dropping him, or at least his upper half as everything below the waist was gone or currently floating on its own.

The skinless body came into contact with the grains of sand, but just like before, the pain did not seem to be of much bother to the man, his perpetually wide open eyes stared in shock at the trio.

"Huh? There are people on the other side?" he muttered to himself, taking a good look at the trio.

Some sort of knight garbed in a dark mantle with a high collar.

A blonde woman with oddly protruding fangs.

And an oddly, abnormally mundane-looking woman with a lower jaw made from steel…

For some reason, he did not feel like they were an amicable bunch.

"Buddy, would you mind telling us the situation up there?" One crouched down, pointing up toward the pulsating orb as she spoke.

He understood each and every one of her words, despite the language she used clearly being entirely foreign to him.

"Who are you?" he only replied with a question of his own.

The vampiress shrugged and turned to Loimos.

"Obey" he uttered a single word of death tongue, and the man stiffened.

"Yes… The Saline Lands, the only habitable land of our world, has seen a change in regime recently, power was seized by force, and all dissenters are being executed via purification…"

Unable to resist, the man began to explain the details of the realm.