A Core Ship From The Start

Chapter 205: Chapter 163: A Terrifying Encounter in the Cemetery_1

To be honest, visiting a cemetery late at night isn’t a pleasant experience.

Going after hearing ghost stories makes it even worse.

“Couldn’t we come back during the day?”

Standing behind Duanmu Huai, Greiya looked around nervously and whispered, her companion Old Bent sweating profusely and nodding in agreement.

“Are you kidding, we’re not here for fun but to investigate, what if we scare something away if we wait until daylight?”

Something?!

After hearing Duanmu Huai’s response, Greiya fell silent and didn’t dare to speak further.

“But speaking of which … this cemetery is indeed quite large…”

Standing at the entrance of the cemetery, Duanmu Huai curiously peered inside, the whole cemetery was engulfed in silence under the moonlight. A faint fog drifted about, other than that, there were no sounds at all. It felt as if they had entered the Land of Dead Silence.

Moreover, as Duanmu Huai pointed out, the cemetery was vast, almost as large as a small town.

“There’s no helping it; many lives were lost in the war against the elves…”

Speaking of this topic, Old Bent also seemed rather melancholic.

“At that time, most of the town’s young folks went off to war, but only a few came back… Alas…”

“Such is the nature of war.”

Duanmu Huai took a glance at the cemetery ahead and withdrew his gaze.

“Then, lead us to the graves of the four victims.”

“Yes, sir.”

Under Old Bent’s guidance, the trio arrived at a tomb in the depth of the cemetery. The tomb had already been dug up, and around it, piles of dirt and tools like iron spades were visible. It seemed as though the job had been abandoned halfway through. Looking closely at the surroundings, Duanmu Huai started asking questions.

“Doesn’t anyone manage this place?”

“I’m afraid no one dared to come in recently, so it was left as is.”

“Hmm…”

Upon hearing Old Bent’s response, Duanmu Huai nodded. He turned on a flashlight, illuminating the dark grave. Inside the grave was an ordinary wooden coffin. Duanmu Huai reached out, lifted the coffin’s lid, and saw an empty coffin, along with… a large hole.

“So you’re saying the bodies escaped through this hole?”

Duanmu Huai pointed at the hole at the head of the coffin and asked Old Bent. The hole looked slightly larger than a human head, as if it had been dug out by a beast. It was pitch black inside, and they couldn’t see anything, even with the flashlight.

“Yes…”

“Oh, that’s interesting.”

Duanmu Huai raised his head, giving a chuckle.

“Alright, let’s inspect the other three graves.”

Soon, they had inspected the other three graves, and all of them were just like the first one. Something had dug a hole from underneath, through the top of the coffin, and then ran off with the bodies. At least from what they currently saw, those bodies had indeed disappeared into the hole, their whereabouts unknown.

“Hmm…”

After inspecting the four graves, Duanmu Huai pondered a bit and then looked to the side.

“Have you ever dug up these graves?”

“Of course not.”

Old Bent shook his head vigorously and then looked at Duanmu Huai as if he had thought of something disturbing.

“Are you suggesting that the bodies in these graves might have also…”

“What a waste of effort to dig a long tunnel just to steal four bodies. That’s boring. If it were me, I’d steal more since I’m at it.”

As he spoke, Duanmu Huai walked up to a nearby grave and reached out his hand. Immediately, the soil on the grave rolled away due to the effects of the Gravity Gloves. Old Bent watched in surprise, quickly covering his mouth to stifle any sounds. Greiya, on the other hand, hid behind Duanmu Huai, barely daring to stare at the grave. Despite being a dragonkin and a mage, she had never done something like digging up graves in a cemetery in the middle of the night!

At this moment, Greiya remembered what Ann had said to her before they set out.

“It’s never boring with Sir Knight. It’s super exciting and fun! Try it, and you’ll know!”

Okay… digging up graves in a cemetery in the middle of the night was indeed super exciting, but not at all fun!

Although Greiya was screaming inside, Duanmu Huai didn’t care about her fragile heart. He reached out, lifted the coffin’s lid once again, and found… it was empty.

“How could this be!?”

Upon seeing this, Old Bent couldn’t help but exclaim. As a long-term resident, Old Bent naturally had a good understanding of the town. The owner of this grave had passed away from illness two years ago, and his body, strangely, was nowhere to be found? What’s more, atop his coffin, another hole had been excavated!!

No, could it be…

Thinking of this, Old Bent cast his eyes around the cemetery, swallowing nervously.

Could all of the cemetery have been hollowed out?

No, that’d be an exaggeration!!

Earlier, Duanmu Huai had said that the cemetery was nearly as large as the town, which wasn’t an exaggeration considering the increasing number of deceased. Even though the dead didn’t need as much space as the living, each grave was not exactly small. The cemetery probably contained several hundreds of bodies, and could it be that… all of them had been taken away? Impossible, there were people who had been dead for centuries and likely had nothing but bones remaining.

However, Duanmu Huai didn’t care what Old Bent thought. He excavated the neighboring graves one by one, and, shockingly, found that the bodies inside, regardless of how long they had been dead, were all largely gone!

“Interesting, why on earth would someone want so many bones?”

Looking at the dates on the tombstones before him, and at the empty graves, Duanmu Huai was speechless. Whoever did this didn’t let go of even ten-year-old skeletons. Was the perpetrator planning to let his dog chew on the bones or make bone broth?

Although the system hinted earlier that this mission would not be simple, Duanmu Huai didn’t expect it to be so bizarre.

“Well, let’s check out this last grave.”

At this point, Duanmu Huai had dug all the way to the edge of the row, the part nearest to the cemetery boundary. He had now examined all the graves in this row, finding each and every one of them empty. The next one would likely be the same… huh?

But just as Duanmu Huai was about to open the coffin as usual, he felt something was off.

Could there be a chance of encountering something this time?

With this in mind, Duanmu Huai grabbed the coffin lid and lifted it off.

“Ah!”

Upon seeing the content of the coffin, Greiya screamed, while Old Bent collapsed onto the ground in shock.

No wonder they were so frightened. Unlike the others, this coffin was not empty. There was actually a person inside!

The corpse belonged to a man who appeared to be in his forties or fifties. He wore a yellow robe, his eyes wide, and his face contorted in extreme pain.

“It’s… it’s the priest!”

Recognizing the man in the coffin, Old Bent couldn’t help but scream.

“The priest? You mean the one who tended to the cemetery and then went missing?”

“Yes, yes, why would he be here?”

Looking at the corpse, Old Bent mumbled to himself. When the priest disappeared, many suspected that he might be behind the strange occurrences. But who could have foreseen that he would be dead and buried in a grave?

However, the truly unexpected were just beginning.

Suddenly, the priest’s corpse twitched. Seeing this, Greiya screamed, clutching Duanmu Huai’s hand tightly in fright.

“Sir Knight, he moved!”

“I saw, can you stop being so nervous?”

Duanmu Huai rolled his eyes at Greiya. In this world, the existence of demons and monsters was normal. You are a mage yourself, can you pull yourself together? Although Manaria didn’t seem to have necromancers, you shouldn’t be so unfamiliar with the undead… right?

However, Duanmu Huai soon discovered that the corpse in front of him seemed different. The man’s mouth was slowly widening, like he wanted to say something.

Wait, can the dead speak?

As Duanmu Huai gazed intently, the priest’s mouth opened wider and wider, and then — a chubby, furry rat crawled out. It lifted its head, staring at everyone, and squeaked.

Simultaneously, the priest’s whole body began to convulse. Then, like a gushing fountain, dozens of rats climbed out from the priest’s mouth and other openings in his body. In a blink of an eye, the grave was nearly filled with rats.

“Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!” n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

The sight of hundreds of scurrying rats filled them with dread. Not only that, they now noticed that all the other graves they had previously excavated were also gushing out rats in torrents. Even the unopened graves nearby were stirring ominously as though something was moving beneath.

Suddenly, without warning, a sinkhole appeared, followed by countless rats bursting out. They spread out like black floodwater in every direction.

At this sight, Greiya’s already taut nerves finally snapped.

“Nooooo!!”

Along with an earth-shattering scream, a scorching flame suddenly erupted and surged into the grave before them. In the blink of an eye, the rats inside, along with the priest’s corpse, were incinerated. Furthermore, the flame emitted from Greiya’s right hand, transformed into a dragon’s claw, directly reached into the underground tunnel below. Then, the cemetery ground shook. Afterwards, a massive sinkhole appeared, swallowing the three of them whole in an instant!