After six hours they finally reached the farmlands.
A thick mist hung in the air as Isaac and the others entered.
Everything felt wrong.
The land was too quiet. No sounds of insects. No wind. The soil looked cracked and black. When they touched it, it was cold, unnaturally cold.
Miss Wesson stepped forward and crouched near a patch of dirt. She took out her scanner, a small tool with a round lens and a screen that blinked with light. The device made a low humming sound as it turned on.
She adjusted the settings, then slowly waved it across the ground. A few seconds passed.
Then her eyes widened.
She kept moving the lens, sweeping it across the area. Her hand trembled slightly.
Corpuz noticed. "What is it?"
Miss Wesson didn’t look away from the screen. "There’s sothing buried underneath. A lot of things."
Isaac stepped closer. "What kind of things?"
She turned the screen toward them.
"Figures. Human-shaped. But so are twisted. Deford. So are... not human at all. Monster-like shapes."
She tapped the side of the device and switched to thermal mode. The screen flickered.
"They’re cold. No body heat," she said. "But... they breathe. Sotis."
Isaac narrowed his eyes. "I knew it," he muttered.
He jumped down from his horse. The others followed his lead, dismounting without a word.
"Corpuz," Isaac said, turning toward him. "Get your archers. Form a row behind and to the sides. You stand with them."
Corpuz nodded and moved quickly, motioning to the archers. They began to line up, spreading out into a clean row behind Isaac.
Isaac looked to Miss Wesson. "Where do they start? The bodies. Show the spot where you first picked them up."
Still staring into her device, Wesson turned slightly. She pointed toward the right side of the field, close to the edge of the mist. "Over there," she said. "Right near the border."
Isaac gave a sharp nod. "We’re moving. Archers, follow . The rest of you, stay sharp and move in next."
He led them toward the spot, his boots crunching on the dry soil. Once they were in place, he reached behind his back and grabbed the old hoe strapped there.
As soon as his hand wrapped around the handle, he activated his skill.
The system confird.
[Skill Activated: Tool Savant]
The wooden handle transford instantly into solid black steel. The blade widened and thickened, glowing dark purple as black smoke curled off the edges. The simple farming tool beca heavy and sharp, built for a massive impact.
Faint light ran through Isaac’s arms. The black, tattoo-like veins on his skin glowed faintly and connected directly to the weapon.
Gasps ca from the archers behind him. Eyes widened, unsure of what they were seeing.
But for Nai, Putol, and Ben, it was nothing new.
Once everyone was in position, Isaac gave the command.
"Archers, draw your arrows. Aim for the head. If they rise, treat them like birds in the sky. Shoot them down."
The archers raised their bows and aid. Corpuz readied four arrows at once, each one glowing faintly with his energy. He glanced at Isaac, still unsure what he had in mind.
Isaac stepped forward and ca to a stop. He shifted his stance, gripping the hoe with both hands and raising it over his shoulder. The ground beneath him began to shake, just slightly at first. Corpuz flinched as he felt a wave of energy burst from Isaac.
Then Isaac drove the hoe into the ground with full force.
The impact sent out a sharp crack, like a thunderclap. A jagged line ripped through the soil in front of him. Without warning, the earth buckled, and roughly thirty bodies, a mix of humans and monsters, were thrown into the air.
Isaac’s sharp eyes caught a disturbing detail. While in the air, so of the bodies were breathing, slow, shallow breaths. But before they could move or react, Corpuz gave the signal.
"Fire!"
The archers loosed a wave of arrows. One by one, the airborne bodies were struck in the head and dropped hard to the ground.
Now they saw them clearly. Each one was human, or used to be. So were rotting, skin peeled back to reveal bone. Other unidentified monsters, bodies deford and rotting.
Isaac turned to the rest of the troops, those forty soldiers ard with swords, spears, and daggers.
"Move in. Finish them. Behead them. Smash their skulls. No chances."
The soldiers obeyed without pause. They spread out across the field in groups and closed in on the rotting corpses.
Blades swung. Spears stabbed. Daggers drove into exposed skulls. Wet, sickening sounds filled the air, flesh tearing, bones cracking. So bodies twitched from leftover nerve signals, limbs jerking in place. But the soldiers stayed focused, moving from one corpse to the next with brutal precision.
So bodies twitched slightly, but none resisted.
By the end, the field was silent again.
Isaac watched it all carefully, his grip still firm on the steel hoe.
Driven by curiosity, he whispered, "Swarm devour."
Nothing happened at first.
Then...
[Skill Activation Attempted: Swarm Devour]
[Unable to Activate: Target Invalid]
[System Notice: No essence to absorb. These bodies hold nothing worth reclaiming.]
Isaac’s brow furrowed.
’They’re not worth consuming? Then what were they?’
After clearing the first area, Isaac turned to Wesson. "Next row?"
She checked her scanner and pointed. "There. Twenty ters to the side."
Isaac gave a short nod. "Move out."
They shifted positions in a straight line. Archers held the rear, while the others followed Isaac with weapons drawn.
When they reached the next marked spot, Isaac repeated the process. He raised the hoe, gathered energy, and slamd it into the ground. The impact cracked the earth wide open, and more buried bodies launched into the air, twisting, rotting, inhuman.
"Fire!" Corpuz shouted.
Arrows struck the bodies while they were still mid-air before they hit the ground. Isaac saw it again, faint breathing, tiny movents, just before the heads were pierced.
Then the lee squad moved in. Beheadings. Crushed skulls. Clean, efficient work.
Wesson pointed again. They shifted to the next row. Sa process: strike, reveal, fire, clean up.
Step by step. Row by row. No mistakes.
By the ti they reached the last row, the mist began to thicken, fast. It curled around their boots and quickly rose to their waists. In seconds, the dense fog swallowed everything.
Visibility dropped to zero.
Then a sharp voice cut through the silence—cold, ragged, and full of hate.
"You pests... You trampled my fields. Now you’ll feed them."
A scream broke out.
Then a soldier was thrown into the air like a rag doll, crashing hard into the soil.
More shouts followed, panicked, scattered.
No one could see the enemy. But Isaac could.
Standing in the middle of the mist was a scarecrow.
It stood ten feet tall, its body stitched together from burlap and rotting straw. Rusted farming tools, sickles, hooks, shears, were jamd into its arms and back, sticking out like crooked bones.
Its head was a burlap sack, stretched tight over sothing inside. The fabric bulged and twitched, as if sothing underneath was trying to move.
Near the bottom of the sack, a wide, jagged tear split open, forming a mouth. Nails were hamred around the edges, making it look like broken, jagged teeth.
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