The Tomb Star Cluster festered with the stench of death, down to its very depths.
At its heart stood a black city, its tall looming walls giving it a formidable aura.
Austin, who had disguised himself as a corpse soldier of this world, started making his way toward the city.
There were no guards posted outside the fortress, but the gates were shut.
The gates were engraved with dark, glowing runes, mysterious and powerful, radiating with deadly threat.
Austin discreetly used his spiritual sense to inspect the gates, finding it impossible to break into.
His only recourse was to hide in a corner near the walls and wait for the gates to open.
He didn't have to wait long before they did.
Corpse soldiers marched out of the opened gates, reeking of the stench of corpses.
Five black-robed men appeared to be leading this army of the dead.
Based on the energy they were emanating, the black-robed men were great masters at the level of the sect ancestor.
Under their command, the hundreds of thousands of corpse soldiers marched onward until they disappeared in the horizon.
After the last soldiers passed through, the city gates swung shut automatically and swiftly behind them.
There was no chance for Austin to slip through.
‘Looks like they're on their way to reinforce their ranks, '
Austin surmised, following the soldiers with his eyes.
The Universal Allied Army was currently locked in battle with the troops of underworld.
The corpse soldiers that just marched out were on their way to the battlefield.
Half a day passed. Four or five more groups of corpse soldiers were deployed from the city.
'But why is no one going back in? Sof them would have returned by now, *
Austin thought irritably, his patience growing thin.
As if on cue, a massive force of about ten thousand corpse soldiers grew visible in the distance, approaching the city.
Each corpse soldier carried a black sack on their back.
Two men in billowing black robes stood out, clearly identifiable as the troops’ leaders.
Their power could match that of the sect ancestor.
Ervin, after all, had earlier selected a large number of masters from the underworld to take with him in a massacre spree across
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtthe universe, in order to obtain more corpses to augment their army.
More than six hundred masters of the level of the sect ancestor had been gathered.
Hence, for every contingent of the army of the underworld, masters of the sect ancestor's level could be spotted at their lead.
The horde eventually arrived at the city gates.
One of the black-robed men at the head of the contingent started murmuring, apparently casting several spells at the entrance.
Soon enough, the gates started opening for them.
'Here comes my chance!"
Austin thought, grinning in his hiding spot, excitement coursing through him.
He activated his bodily movement skill containing the brilliant spatial law power, which enabled him to distort the space in front of
him and place himself at the back of the ranks of corpse soldiers without being noticed.
Using his mind, Austin then transported one of the soldiers at the end of the line to the Slave Tower.
The corpse soldier wasn't even able to put up a fight before it got teleported elsewhere.
Austin quickly took the corpse soldier's sack and his place in line, blending seamlessly among the troops.
The two men in black robes at the front of the line appeared to have sensed something amiss as soon as Austin transported the
soldier.
They whipped around, squinting at the soldiers at the end of the line, looking for the anomaly.
But no matter how long they examined the thousands of corpse soldiers, they couldn't find anything unusual.
This was because Austin had achieved the full potential of the Aura Disguising Skill.
It would have been impossible for the two men in black robes to see through his ruse.
Convinced nothing was wrong after all, the black-robed masters led the troops into the city.
At this, Austin very quietly let out a sigh of relief.
Inside, the city seemed to be boundless, structurally, not all that different from an ordinary city.
Like any metropolis, streets and alleys were densely packed with skyscrapers.
Shrill laughter and chatter could be heard from tto time. Austin could almost pretend he was in a normal city. The stench of
death that hung in the air, however, was a constant reminder of where he actually was.
Another stark reminder: the countless ghosts who filled the air with their wailing.
Corpse soldiers also walked down the street with poker faces, like citizens going about their routines.
Austin discreetly tapped into his spiritual sense to examine his surroundings more closely, discovering that the buildings were
actually filled with corpse soldiers.
Packed like sardines in rooms, the corpse soldiers stood still like expressionless puppets without a puppet master. Austin found that
they emitted no energy.
‘Looks like these corpse soldiers are usually just stored away in the buildings.
They need to be activated like machines, '
Austin speculated.
Austin shuffled along with the corpse soldiers as the two men in black robes led the contingent to a corner of the city.
It seemed they were making their way to a huge altar in the distance.
Countless huge flags with mysterious runes and patterns hung around the altar.
The structure was so massive it covered the entire expanse of a vast plain.
The altar was filled with bodies piled up so high they resembled mountains.
There were stacks of bodies as far as the eye could see, extending to the horizon.
Austin roughly estimated that there were more than a billion corpses in the altar!
The black-robed men walked in, the soldiers following them without question.
Once in the altar, the corpse soldiers then untied their black sacks and emptied them out on the ground.
From the bags tumbled fresh bodies, still bearing marks of a recent death.
Austin had until then just mimicked the movements of the other soldiers around him, but now seeing the contents of the sacks, he
cto a realization.
‘They've been collecting the corpses on the battlefields and keeping them in this altar.
It's a storage space for dead fighters."
The flags around the altar started flapping in the wind, releasing the law of death upon the bodies.
These flags were the ones preserving the bodies, keeping them from rotting.
After all the bags had been emptied, the two men in black waved their hands. The corpse soldiers then marched mechanically back
to the buildings in the city, tucked themselves back into the packed rooms, and then fell deathly still.
All these corpse soldiers were clearly just activated and deactivated as necessary.
Sans activation or need, they were simply stowed away in the buildings like a commodity.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmAustin went along with the motions, followed sdead soldiers as far as into a building, and he finally dropped his act there.
Once inside, he wasted no tscanning all the rooms with his spiritual sense, finding each one full of corpses, standing still like
statues.
His spiritual sense likewise picked up on the movements of the two men in black robes, who were now flying toward a huge palace
in the center of the city.
After making sure the black-robed masters had gone away, Austin snuck back out and turned invisible to be able to explore the city
freely and undetected.
'It's tto find the Evil Shadow King and Master Damon, *
Austin resolved.
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