Bro, I'm not an Undead!



"It wasn't my plan originally," Grim explained with a dark face unseemly for someone who was usually cheerful and cheerfully impulsive like him. "I had almost forgotten about the unusual scimitar the bastard I had been facing was using. It fell into the ocean, so I wanted to go get it."

Grim's eyes fell on the man who was laying in a bed, now stripped of his armor. Unfortunately, his wounds still looked the same, and he was still missing a limb, his flesh open and burnt.

"After that one blow – which really hurt by the way – I wanted to return to the ship, but I got a glimpse of something that got me curious. Well, the Avhanar variant I was riding did. I used Warp to appear closer to the fight between the masked man and the Paladin," he said, his face scrunching up. "One of them had just landed a critical blow. It was him," Grim gestured towards the Paladin Champion.

Replicus, Allora, and Pherdanta who were present here with him were intrigued.

"Is that so?" Replicus said.

"Yes," Grim responded. "Despite how he looks, I think he had an advantage, at least as per what I managed to see. It hadn't been as one-sided as I thought. The masked man... he didn't look too good. And I mean in the worst sense. It was like he was sick or something. How he managed to one while looking like that, I don't understand."

"What do you mean you don't understand? Weren't you watching the fight?" Allora asked.

"Watching? Yes I was, but barely saw anything when they moved. Even from what I did see, I couldn't comprehend how the Paladin Champion was brought to this state. Whatever blessing he uses, it attracted me to get a better view of the battle, but I can't understand what it does exactly. The same goes for that masked man."

Replicus' sockets blazed continuously.

"Did the masked man have any injuries from the battle?" he asked.

"I don't know. His robes were a bit bloodied and a little torn. My initial thought was that he had been dominating first and had then lost his advantage because of whatever made him sick or weaker..."

Replicus looked at the Paladin Champion.

That was odd.

"So the masked man landed the final blow and walked off?" he asked.

Grim looked at Replicus.

"I don't know about 'walked off' but he told the Paladin Champion something before dropping him into the ocean. I couldn't hear what it was. I dreaded getting closer than I already was."

"You would think he'd want a Paladin Champion as an undead to fight by his side," Pherdanta said,' startling Grim and Allora who had forgotten that she was there.

"I thought the same. I wanted to report at the first sign of such a thing," Grim said.

Replicus nodded.

Truthfully, he had been thinking along the same lines. In fact, this was something he dreaded to see from this battle.

When the fleet bearing the Severed Union Factions was closing the bloodspot in the ocean, he had attempted to find any semblance of the Paladin Champion's presence. While he had found small blotches of it spread out wide in spots where the Paladin Champion had used great bursts of output in his abilities, he had not found the source.

For a time, this had confirmed to Replicus that the masked man had likely the Champion to add him to his army, but thankfully, no.

The fact that the masked man was weakened somehow also interested Replicus. It would have sounded good to him if it didn't imply that the masked man had fought and won a battle with a very powerful opponent while handicapped.

Replicus didn't know if this weakness was the masked man's own or if it was caused by the Paladin Champion, but either way, it seemed like the masked man had enough heavy-hitting abilities to overwhelm people at his own level.

A trump card maybe.

If only Grim had seen what exactly happened.

It could have been anything.

It was certain that the masked man was either an Incandescent Stager or something beyond that. This meant the tools in his arsenal possessed an array of options for killing moves like a complex Creed, which could have gone over Grim's head.

Replicus sighed.

Goodness.

Each of the Unlimited took some time to mull things over with concerned faces, much like Replicus.

After a while, Pherdanta broke the silence.

"The masked man left after this, right? How come you didn't come back to the ship afterward? After retrieving him that is," she said, gesturing to the 'him' lying in bed.

Grim sighed.

"I saw more survivors. I also deliberated on which would be the better option between sending having the Paladin Champion aboard with us or sending them elsewhere," he said.

"You could have left the decision to master," Pherdanta said sternly.

Grim frowned at her.

"The other Faction leaders can see through the ship's shield. There's no way they wouldn't notice this guy's presence. Or at least his soul. I thought it would put targets on our backs if we brought him along," he said.

Allora slapped her forehead.

"And then you brought him along anyway?"

"Yeah! I then thought that if the boss could heal him somehow, he'd be an asset or at least a deterrent, which would offset the risk. And well..." Grim defended himself only to deflate.

He knew of the numerous flaws in his logic, but in the end, he had decided that the benefits would likely outweigh the costs.

'If the Paladin Champion isn't friendly to us even after we saved his life, he probably still won't turn hostile until he has caught the masked man. For that, he needs a vessel like ours...'

This had been Grim's central argument.

However, he hadn't imagined that even Replicus couldn't do anything about the man's wounds.

"It's fine," the Penetrator said as he lifted his hands to stop the back and forth. "It's not like his condition is getting worse now. The Supreme potion is working. At least he won't die for the next 24 hours."

The Paladin Champions' wounds were odd. Every injury on his body, fractured bones, torn skin, burnt flesh, gashes...

Everything spotted small green sparks that didn't go away, like the Undeath version of pixie dust.

Even a Supreme potion couldn't heal him.

Skullius had several ideas he would love to try to see if he could save the man's life. There were benefits to having him alive, but he could also work with his corpse.

"Let's leave him here for now," Replicus said. "First, we have a few scores to settle. It's best to deal with them before our supply to Null Life Essence and Mana is cut off from Deign."