Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

"Are you girls hearing this?" "Just some tapping, happens in the woods" "Sounds more like clapping to me…" "And it's like there is a voice going alongside it-" Four young women discussed as they stood in a small clearing within the woods, having fashioned targets and dummies to train upon, it was often that all gathered here to make sure their hard-acquired skills did not get rusty, having conserved the apparel given to them by their master, distinctively of Tochian origins, in fact, despite not originating from this nation in the least, they were the closest people to being living remnants of Tochi, this ancient country having been swallowed by the undead empire. And having once been crusty and smelly adventurers who ventured in far from fantastic places to make a living, keeping the gifts and teachings they had been given close was incredibly important, even now that their homeland was under the rule of death and that their master was most certainly dead. Each of their attire was sensibly similar, lower garments that were wide, providing much ease to move around and also obstructing the movements of their legs to the opponent's eyes, and a top with rather wide short sleeves which revealed most of their arms, not quite as graceful as the so-called kimono their master had worn with class but nice nonetheless. Lady Syklon had taught them battle arts, how to wield new weapons that she had deemed more suitable for them, far from the uneducated rubes they once were as measly little adventurers in a town that did not require such a profession, they were now learned rubes with class and charm, even if they still wore it on their faces that they were peasants at heart. Few people even knew they existed apart from those who had been around Lady Syklon at one point as their master had been very pleased with them, or at least, she was very happy when talking about their progress with people, when it came to praising them directly things were rather cut and dry. In fact, the person that was most prone to instantly recognising them was Loimos as he would still remember them from when they had crossed paths in the dilapidated dungeon and on the edge of that cliff. The four didn't even know that the random undead they had seen once was actually Life's Scourge in person… After being taken in by Syklon, they had thrived, finally having access to full meals, they stopped appearing so scrawny and finished developing, putting on some fat and muscle where it mattered. Eppie, still the de facto leader of this little quartet, had been made to ditch her wand and fire magic entirely, she had never really been capable in spell casting anyways, Syklon had instead put her to learning magical arts instead, which was just a fancy way of saying battle arts that produced what looked like spells. The brown haired girl was certainly more competent in finding ways to create such arts than she had been in figuring out how to circulate mana and form a fireball, that way, she could even pull off other elements than fire. But since their pint-sized master believed that one should always be capable of splitting the enemy's skull with brute force, as such, Eppie had also been taught how to wield a bo staff, which she would often use like a spell casting staff. "Just ignore it" she said, fairly certain that this wasn't an entirely foreign sound. "We can't even go and take a little peek? Just for a second? It will be quick!" "She sounds creepy saying it, but I agree with Cassi, it won't be long…" spoke Lynn as she scanned the surroundings. "Are you two trying to sully our reputation or something? Be like Tahnee and keep on training" pointing to the young woman in question, Tahnee was still the most imposing of the four, which wasn't difficult since none of the other three went beyond the average dimensions of a Tamarisian woman. Tahnee no longer carried a shield and had instead been given a yari, which was a spear, this one sporting a cross-shaped section with blade pointing upwards, it's blade allowed for stabbing as well as slicing as it resembled a dagger's blade, only Eppie had really gotten deep into magical arts, the others had stayed rather simple and focused on their weapons alone. As per usual, the tall girl was just silently practising. "Tahnee is always practising, maybe we should set her mind on something else for once-" "Leave your corruption away from her, whatever you want to do is not only gross and immoral, but likely to get all of us in trouble" speaking with much calm as though used to it, Eppie set her two friends to stop discussing and actually do something productive. Cassi, with her orange hair tied into a ponytail and freckles, sighed as she picked up the weapon Lady Syklon had granted her, the young woman used to wield a mace as her primary armaments, and this thing was not so different, only that it required two hands to be used properly. Made from heavy wood, the end meant to bash people's brain in was lined with sharp, spiky protuberances of iron, it was called a kanabo apparently and felt very satisfying to use, although not in possession of the sort of bodily build that really allowed such a fierce weapon to exert full blunt force trauma, Cassi wielded it with ease and precision alongside a fair amount of battle arts. Lynn, on the other hand, had had to ditch her beloved crossbow which would rarely shoot straight and instead opt for a longbow, which their master called a yumi, its design of asymmetrical but most of all, a crossbow and bow were entirely different weapons- Despite the former's name, loading, aiming and shooting with a crossbow was something that could be learned in relatively little time. And although using a bow was not quite as difficult as some made it out to be, reaching the same level of adeptness with each of those weapons required different amounts of time and density of training, especially with a bow as tall as this one. But Syklon's expertise never failed, and Lynn was indeed very comfortable using a yumi, mixing in battle arts allowed for quite a range of different tricks and abilities. Slicking her blonde hair back before taking aim, she certainly felt pleased every time the string was released and the arrows landed exactly where she had aimed, it still felt ingrained in her bones that the shot would be off to one side. "By the way…" stopping mid-swing, Eppie leaned the staff against her shoulder. "...We got invited by the other girls to come and take a bath with them, I don't really want to end up naked with people I don't know but what do you think?" "Whoa, so they actually know we exist?" "How heartwarming…" "..." "You want to go Tahnee?" Eppie cranked her neck back to look up at her silent friend "I take it that you two will go as well? I guess I'll come too then… But you better not embarrass us!" "It's fine! We know how to behave" said Cassi. "Absolutely" confirmed Lynn. Eppie did not believe a word.