Chapter 660: Wraiths

Mikey, the Will'o'Wisp, one of the first two undead that Eiro had created just a few months ago, floated up to Partax excitedly. If he had a heart, Eiro would be able to hear it beating louder than drums at a parade.

"I'm a huge fan!" Mikey exclaimed, trying to stretch out his ethereal hand. Currently, Mikey's body was still a far cry from that of a regular person; his whole, roundish and slightly oblong, body was the size of a person's torso, and had just two hands floating nearby. He was made of mostly black smoke that seemed to solidify in certain places, at least allowing him to interact with things. His sister's body was similar, just that she was made of white smoke. Overall, even if they were still clearly recognizable as anything but people, it was still clear that they were once human.

Mikey stretched out his smoke--like hand and tried to grab Partax's, who awkwardly returned the handshake. The halfling then turned toward Eiro and raised a brow, "What is this... thing? An egg's spirit?"

"E-Egg?" Mikey repeated, startled, as Gobo couldn't help himself but scoff quietly, holding back a laugh. Eiro shook his head, "Him and his sister are two undead I created... It was... during a time when I went berserk. I had killed them, and their souls were left behind, lingering, but their bodies were unretrievable. So, I was able to turn them into undead with the little necromancy I was able to use at that point. I left them in Gobo's care not too long ago."

Partax raised a brow, "You created Will'o'wisps, with 'little' necromancy? Surprising, as usual. That should have taken a massive amount of mana."

"...Mana volume was always one of my strong points," Eiro replied, before he looked at Mikey, who still seemed a bit dejected, "You know that much about him?"

The will'o'wisp slightly glared at Eiro, "Of course I do, I'm not some bumbling fool! Anyone who wants to step into the realm of alchemy heard of the great Partax!"

"Oh? Is that so? Tell me more, undead boy," Partax replied with a grin, rubbing his chin curiously. Of course, Mikey immediately started rambling about the details of what he heard about Partax, and how much he had hoped to be able to meet him. Taking that opportunity, Eiro looked at Aria and smiled, "While your brother is doing that, come here for a moment."

The girl hesitated, but slowly floated over toward Eiro. The Demon stretched out his hand, and while Aria flinched slightly and moved back, she soon realized that Eiro wasn't trying to do anything harmful. Rather, it was clearly the opposite. She moved closer, and soon felt the Demon's palm on her forehead, which was startling in and of itself. While she could interact with things, actually feeling touch was a whole other matter. That was something she hadn't felt in so, so long.

But soon, a breath of cold air streamed across her body. She could feel a pressure in her chest, and the wind against her cheeks. She could feel her feet, something she didn't have in a while anyway, touching against the ground, her own weight subtly pressing down against her knees. She opened her eyes confused, as Eiro slowly pulled back his arm.

"I'm a bit better with necromancy these days," Eiro explained, as Aria looked down at her body. She had a body to look down at. Confused, she stared at Eiro, who continued further, "You haven't been resurrected, but you at least have a body that you should be used to now. You're still incorporeal for the most part, though, don't misunderstand... you're still an undead spirit. That's something that I can't change for now unless I find a proper vessel for either of you."

The room had suddenly grown silent, as Aria looked around at the others. It was the first time that the ones she had lived with until now had seen her real appearance, even if she still looked much different than she used to. Mikey as well was taken aback, and had immediately grown silent the moment he realized what had happend to his sister. He quickly turned toward Eiro and was about to ask him to do the same to him, but before any sound could even escape him, the Demon had already pressed his palm onto Mikey's forehead and given him a new body too.

They both now looked like pale, young humans, respectively clad in a white, smoke-like dress in Aria's case, and a black cloak in Mikey's. Of course, these were things they could change at will, turning them into whichever clothes or armor they wanted or needed at a moment's notice, with just a thought.

The first thing the two siblings did as they looked at each other was embrace, something they hadn't been able to do in a long, long time. They had been with each other for as long as they could remember, so only now that they were able to hug for the first time in a while did this moment truly feel real to them.

"You're not Will'o'Wisps anymore. You're Wraiths now. Well, that's what the system classifies you as officially, at least... you're something sligthly more advanced than that. A unique species of wraith, let's just call it that," Eiro explained, "You're stronger and can use some of your abilities from when you were alive again. The rest is the same as when you were Will'o'Wisps, really. Stronger at night, weaker in daylight. Stay away from holy and life magic. That sort of thing. You should have gained some new abilities too, but I can't say for sure what, you'll have to figure that out for yourselves."

The Demon would have told them a little more, but it seemed like neither of the siblings really cared anymore right now. This was a rather emotional moment for them, clearly. Instead, Eiro moved on, finally pulling Gobo to the side, "Now that I got the chance to deal with something I wanted to do for a bit anyway, without further ado... tell me. What the hell happened, and why didn't I hear about this place being attacked?"

Gobo sighed, somewhat nervous, "Well, I can't really say why you didn't hear about the attack... just that, the servants you left behind maybe were able to tell that we could handle it? We didn't have any lethalities on our side, at least. Some... were deeply injured, but they're recovering, for the most part."

Eiro frowned lightly. He had quite a few servants out and about, so due to their sheer volume, most of them were inactive most of the time, unless Eiro specifically commanded them otherwise, or a command Eiro gave them earlier required them to act. For example, if Eiro created a servant and told it to make sure nobody entered a room, if someone came close to the room, it would activate and inform Eiro. In this case, Eiro commanded the servants to inform him once the city seemed in danger, or if Gobo asked them to contact him. So if they were able to handle the situation that well, then it made sense, at least.

"So? What attacked, then?" Eiro asked, though he was already able to guess. From the lingering scent, it seemed to be, "Cavern Ants. And a massive amount of them, too..." Gobo explained. Eiro sighed. Cavern Ants were a species of Ants that were as aggressive as they were numberful. Even the smallest of worker ants were the size of a dog, and the soldiers could grow the size of bears, if not larger. Though, they were fairly easy to kill. The problem was that they were never alone, and always came in massive numbers.

"So what happened? I didn't notice a nest underground while searching the area before I left," Eiro pointed out, as he started tapping the ground with his foot. That was not only because he was worried and a bit impatient, but also just to push out waves of mana deep into the ground to get a feel of the area. And there it was; deep underground, tunnels of a Cavern Ant nest were stretching out below the city, but he knew for a fact that there was nothing there before. Those were also not tunnels created by the molemen, they were definitely the work of the Ants.

Gobo continued, "It was just a week after you left, that I got a report from the molemen that they found tunnels underground. We sent in some scouts, and they encountered the first wave of worker ants. We tried to use one of the methods you taught, to just fill the tunnels with magic, but since we didn't know the exact extent of the tunnels, it seemed like a dangerous tactic to do at a large scale."

Eiro nodded. If they had just blasted the tunnels with explosive fire magic without thought, they would have certainly collapsed, killing most of the ants. But since the tunnels stretched out underneath the whole town, it would have affected the city itself too.

"So then?"

"We sent out multiple scout and vanguard parties together with some adept molemen mages to close up certain passages and create new ones. We then lured the ants toward an area with bedrock too hard for them to burrow through fast, and then got rid of the ants wave-by-wave. Once we got rid of the brunt of them, we ventured into the nest, killed the queen, and then got rid of the rest," Gobo explained. Clearly there were more details that Eiro had to know, but he was able to fill in the gaps pretty well. He could sense the traces of battle in the nest, and he also spotted the changes that had been done to the ant tunnels, as they had seemingly been reclaimed by the monster city, currently being used as a vast underground storage managed by the molemen. That was where practically all of the ant corpses were kept as well.

However, that was still more than just unusual. Cavern Ants didn't just randomly appear in new places, and definitely weren't usually able to create such vast systems within a short period of time, no matter their numbers. It was a bit too far away for Eiro to sense fully, but he could tell that there were some tunnels stretching farther into the distance, from where the Cavern Ants clearly ventured from.

"...Did you send scouts through the western tunnels?" Eiro asked, and Gobo slowly nodded. He walked over to the table and picked up an old, dirty notebook that was apparently used to collect data on the event. As Gobo flipped through the book, he could recognize Boju's handwriting.

But then, Gobo flipped to the next page. And there were multiple symbols marked down, one of which Eiro knew just perfectly well.

The mark of wrath. The same that Eiro carried on his own body for far too long. And then next to it, were the marks of Lust and Gluttony. In context, it seemd like those markings were all placed on the body of the Cavern Ant Queen, and that was transferred to the rest of the colony.

Basically, through the Devil's influence, the Cavern Ants had been turned into a colony of berserker-like monsters, that reproduced at a ridiculous rate and spread outward as fast as they could to feed on whatever they could.