Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

'Huh?' the instant Gobo-Dalo agreed to sign a contract from Loimos, he felt as though something important had just been taken from him, like an invisible chain would now be binding him until the day he died, the feeling was hard to describe, but it was definitely there.

The brine goblin knew for certain that there was nothing that he could do now, if he tried to go against the terms of the contract, something terrible would befall him, something horrifying, but still something unclear, something unknown.

And it only served to frighten him more.

"I'll admit, I kind of still want to drink the blood of some of these goblins, they are scrumptious" One licked her teeth, prompting Gobo-Dalo to cry out in fear, scrambling to hug and hide behind Maliah's leg, of all people.

"I- I agreed to the contract, I am not food!" just as he suspected, he needed to be most wary of the blonde woman, she was insane, an insatiable devourer of people!

"Calm down little guy, I am not going to drink your blood,... Not until your contract ends anyways…"

The goblin, already completely white, somehow seemed to turn paler upon hearing this, clutching the assassin's leg tighter like she would actually protect him from One if needed.

"Do not worry, Gobo-Dalo, your death shall not be carried out via blood drainage, there is a needle of solid death force inside of your brain now, which will shatter once you have fulfilled your duties and your life is no longer required" said Loimos, whether it was just informational, or meant to be reassuring somehow, Gobo-Dalo was incapable of guessing through the deadpan tone, he only turned silent and slightly nodded.

"I- I see… I'll do my best to… Fulfill my mission then, ahah…" he let go of The Death Dealer's leg and scrambled down the stairs.

Maliah shook her leg as if to get rid of filth before turning to the skeleton.

"Say, Loimos, how many islands are there in this realm? Since it seems like we are going to visit them one by one, I thought I would ask"

"One-thousand and forty-six"

"So many? I guess we should get moving then…"

And move they did, the realm was indeed vast, but thankfully, most of its surface was covered by the Saline Sea, and also, a lot of those more-than-a-thousand islands were actually small and uninhabited.

Maliah got to slaughter a whole lot of livings, whilst One looked like she was on a culinary trip, ranking the different islands by how nourishing the blood of its people had, and overall, the brine goblins had no competitors, even after all of the islands were visited, the only blood that could surpass that of the goblins came from creatures dwelling deep into the Saline Sea, but unlike the goblins, who seemed to all have very good blood, the quality of the hemoglobin varied between individuals of the water-dwelling species, so the brine goblins remained the best choice overall for a vampire's snack.

None of the species encountered on those other islands were anywhere close to sapient as well, only the first two had housed intelligent populations, everywhere only had animals, beasts and monsters, as well as the occasional salt golems and salt spirits, none of them sapient or pure.

When they finally stepped out of the realm a week later, One felt like she was overflowing with energy.

"I might need to enter a state of dormancy for a while to properly digest all of this… I never actually took a nap in a coffin, it's pretty popular amongst other vampires, but I never got to try for myself"

Undeads do not require rest or sleep, but those, like vampires, who can consume things to increase their power can indeed perform something close to hibernation so as to integrate that additional power if they have consumed a great deal of blood or whatever it is that they require to grow in strength, or also, some just do it because they have nothing better to do, and rather than wandering around aimlessly, just settle down in one spot until they are needed.

That is rather rare in the Empire, since there is always something to do for all undeads, although the populations is through the roof and constantly growing from undeadlings and naturally spawned undeads, the fact that the Empire expands in all directions, on all altitudes and all depths means that there is an enormous amounts of space, especially with the realm added into the mix.

Not to mention the fact that architectures bent by space to make them far larger on the inside than on the outside are very popular with the architects, and the amount of undeads per square meter would be enough to make most livings faint.

To begin with, the undead population was, at minimum, as high as the total number of people who had died upon the lands conquered by the Empire, so every kingdom and piece of land provided countless undeads to begin with.

And yet, even then, no undead did not know what to do with their eternity worth of time, the efforts to keep on expanding were simply that great.

"You are a sun walking vampire though, so shouldn't you stay in the sun?" spoke Maliah.

"Right… A coffin without a lid? Loimos, where do you think is the place with the most sunlight in the entire Empire?" sun walkers were capable of handling the great amount of power light poured into them rather than burning and turning to cinders like the others, with the new exception of those sharing into Queen Liameilos's blood now, though, it did not seem like the queen's own vampire blood processed light like Sunwalker's blood did.

Loimos had not said anything about it, but he could sense that the amount of power One had absorbed from gorging on all that salty blood was indeed enormous, most of it remained unprocessed.

It was rather impressive, most vampires would have had to wait and digest all that accumulated energy a long time ago, but One had just been able to keep going and going without slowing down, seemingly without even realising that it was an incredible feat on her part.

Now, in terms of places with enormous amounts of sunlight, there was naturally the desertic realm Ir'Houwl was currently in charge of, night literally never fell there and with all of the Undevigintis now unrestrained, they could all be simultaneously present to shine their light at once on One if necessary.

But actually, Loimos knew of a place with many more suns than this realm, and so, with a swift opening of a rift, the trio appeared somewhere else…