“Do you also feel the Qi fluctuating over there?” Kilian asked the pretty elf as she was busy, cutting out half a dozen arrows from the dead body of a fallen orc warrior, and looked into the distance, “There might be something hidden there, and I think we've already killed enough greenskins!”

  “Twenty-one!” Lilja cheered with a sweet smile, raising her knife again to slice through the fallen Qi-Gatherer's flesh yet again, “My goal was twenty dead bodies, and we even managed to beat that!”

  “So we can finally move on now?” The young man asked, now a bit annoyed, because he always had the feeling of talking to a wall whenever an orc stepped into the range of the elf’s pretty eyes.

  "Yes, we can..." She finally replied, putting away her knives, bow, and arrows, and said, "It's time we reached the next level! We should be able to find some stronger pray there!"

  "Wuhu! It is here! The first level of the ruins should be behind this passage!" Lilja guessed as she stood with Kilian in front of a shimmering silver portal that seemed to lead into nothingness, and added cheerfully, "I'm curious to see where it leads to and whether we'll be separated again while passing through it."

  With a sweet giggle, her delicate hand took the human boy's and gently pulled him along with her.

  Both touched the magical portal at the same time, and only a few seconds later, the Qi-Gatherer's fingers closed into an empty fist, already missing the feeling of the delicate fingers in his hand.

  “Looks like I'm on my own again…” Murmured Kilian, now standing alone in an open meadow and examining his new surroundings.

  The portal had disappeared.

  Even if he wanted to go back the way he came, it was now impossible.

  He opened his senses, felt the change in the energy around him, and explored his surroundings.

  "The deeper I head into the ruins, the denser the Qi becomes, but somehow it also seems threatening and gloomy, especially in that direction!!" He thought, as his gaze fell on a wooden palisade erected in the distance, and he wondered, "Are there still some people living here?"

  Carefully, with his index finger raised and ready to cast an enchantment, he crept towards the structure and soon saw a few buildings.

  "It looks like an old, broken-down village. Are there remnants of the dragonlords?" He pondered again, trying to search for any sign of life with his senses, "Nothing...I only sense the icy breath of death!"

  The fine hair on his arms stood up, and with every step forward, the world around him seemed to become colder.

  Outside the wall, hidden in the shadow of a thick trunk, Kilian crouched and listened to the few sounds of the seemingly deserted village.

  "No loud shouts! So there's no market where merchants offer their wares. No sounds of children playing or dogs barking, either, and yet...yet I hear slow footsteps creeping over the ground! What's going on here?" He concentrated with all his might, trying to get a better picture of this seemingly not-quite-abandoned ghost town, "And this oppressive Qi! I've never felt anything like it!"

  He carefully crawled a little way along the wall and discovered a rotten spot in the wooden rampart.

  With slow movements, he used a small knife to drill a hole where two old trunks met.

  After his work was done, he knelt and was about to examine the interior of the village when a stinking, half-decayed arm shot through the small peephole to grab him.

  Splinters of wood pierced the rotten flesh, but instead of blood, only a green, foul-smelling gas escaped the confinement of the decomposing skin, taking Kilian's breath away.

  The fingers, pointing in different directions, grabbed his two-colored robe and pulled him forward with a powerful movement.

  Accompanied by a loud bang, his body was dragged through the rotten wood, and his keen nose recognized what was standing in front of him before his brain did.

  The cold breath of the living dead!

  “Yin-Qi!” He cried out loud, finally understanding, while his index finger already began to write, “These must be the remains of the necromancers!”

  He stared into the empty, dead eyes of a zombie, recognized the torment slumbering within, and wondered how long this body had been condemned to wander here.

  With a pitying look, the young Qi-Gatherer tore himself away, completed the sweep of his finger, and a conflagration engulfed the cursed man.

  No scream escaped the figure.

  No lamentation, no whimpering, just a steady hissing as the brightly shining Fire-Qi purified the poisonous Yin-Qi.

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  The last of the gas escaped, the lifeless body collapsed into a pile of ash, and Kilian felt a deep gratitude in the now freed Qi that swirled around him, as if the lost soul could finally rest.

  “The practices of the necromancers are unforgivable!” Barked the boy, and after a brief ritual to honour the dead, he saw more zombies approaching him out of the corner of his eye.

  Some of them were young women, some were old folks, and even children were not spared from the vile curse of the Yin-Qi.

  They inched closer while dogs and cats, half-decayed, circled him.

  “If we lived in a different era, our farm could have shared the same fate...Father, Mother, Edana, and I would have been nothing more than instruments of destruction!” He sighed, put his finger back into the ink bottle, and started writing again to free those cursed beings from their suffering.

  A quarter of an hour later, Kilian slumped against a half-crumbling stone wall, exhausted, as he watched the last standing zombie slowly burn to ashes, and sighed, drenched in sweat, "Rest in peace! The dragonmen gave their lives to protect Terrapin from these monsters. I will destroy any remnants of the necromancers I discover!"

  Lost in thought, a piece of roasted meat appeared in his hand, and he ate it bite by bite, while his stomach rebelled.

  The air reeked of decay and smoke, but the exhausted warrior needed to replenish his Qi reserves to face the upcoming dangers.

  After choking down a piece, he stood up again and examined the now truly deserted ghost village.

  “Only mortals seem to have lived here…” He pondered as he examined the various buildings, “I can't find a single Qi-stone, weapons, or any other magical equipment. Or have these things already been eroded by the ravages of time? If ordinary people revived by Yin-Qi already possess such extraordinary physical strength, how strong is an undead Qi-Master?"

  “Wait a minute…what is that?” Kilian wondered, after walking across a large, open square on his tour of discovery through the village, “This must have been the market...what is this hole in the ground?”

  He watched as a small stream of gloomy Yin-Qi escaped from the ground, slowly danced in front of his eyes, and blew through the lonely streets, “Is the source of the evil curse buried here?”

  With his index finger extended, he wrote the same word over and over again, slowly moving layer by layer of soil to the side with the help of Earth-Qi and dug an ever-deepening hole.

  The oppressive aura quickly grew stronger, and as Kilian removed the last pile of earth that blocked his view, he looked into the empty eyes of a jet-black skull.

  At first glance, one could see that it was no human head, because two horns grew outward at the temples and a few silver scales still clung to the dark, half-decayed bones of the rest of the skeleton.

  "Are these the remains of a dragonman?" He asked, astonished, into the silence, “But why are they full of Yin-Qi?”

  He was just about to bend down to his discovery to pick it up when a sharp voice interrupted him: "I'd leave that alone if I were you! You worms of the Kong Clan wouldn't be able to do anything with a Yin artifact anyway! You'll only burn your hands and, at the very least, lose your fingers!"

  Surprised, the boy raised his head and looked at a small group consisting of a hunchbacked human with a black hood, an orc in thick armor, and a wolfman dressed in a gray robe.

  "The Lupus Clan...I've heard of your arrogance and poor taste in choosing allies, but why is even a human accompanying you?" Kilian asked with a raised eyebrow, eyeing the newcomers suspiciously.

  "Two Qi-Gatherers of the middle circle, and one unidentified one. I can't tell how strong this human is. It's as if there's a veil covering the energy around him, but he smells of decay!" Kilian pondered, moving quickly to better position himself in case a fight should break out, "His energy feels almost like that of the zombies, only he's definitely still alive!"

  “A young child with the emblem of the Kong Clan?” A hoarse voice sounded from the shadows under the hood and ordered, “You must be Kilian Arian! Your head stands on top of our hit list! Grab him!”

  “Aoooo!” The wolf man howled loudly, spread his dagger-like claws, and the next moment, he shot towards the young warrior.

  "Arian? Is that supposed to be my last name? I think you got the wrong guy!" Kilian murmured, confused, but as if by itself, his ink-soaked pen was already writing the next enchantments in the air.

  The surroundings became increasingly hot, and a flaming inferno hit the attacker.

  The wolfman raised his arms to protect his face, and his dark gray robe began to shimmer slightly blue.

  A thin film of water blocked the flames with a loud hiss, and a second later, the armored orc warrior flew through a small, freshly formed hole in the wall of fire, his club raised high.

  Kilian's finger flashed brightly in the brief pause, and a fraction of a second later, thick, black armor covered his body.

  Holding the staff in both hands, he parried the orc's first attack and then delivered a powerful blow of his own.

  His blood pulsed in sync with the surrounding Qi, his weapon struck his opponent's heavy armor, and with a loud bang, the orc flew into one of the surrounding stone buildings, causing it to collapse.

  Before the dust could settle, the beastman's long claws were already scratching across the shadowsteel armor, sending sparks flying.

  Four long cuts dug deep into the black armor, but just before the attack reached Kilian's skin, the defending Qi-Gatherer disappeared with a brief shining of the enchantment Lluched, followed by a bright flash of light in front of the wolfman's eyes, and another blow from the heavy staff hit the member of the Lupus Clan in the side.

  He, too, flew away, but instead of crashing into a house, he crashed into a wooden palisade.

  Gasping for air, the young warrior jumped back a little so that he wouldn't lose sight of his three enemies and they wouldn't be able to surround him.

  “One second later and my stomach would be ripped open!” He groaned, breathing heavily, and dipped his quill in ink again. “His claws are harder than my shadowsteel armour!”

  “Pathetic losers!” The hoarse voice scolded, taking a step toward Kilian, “As always, I have to do everything myself!”

  His hunched back shrank a little while he grew a little in height, and a half-decayed corpse appeared next to him, as if out of nowhere.

  "Judging by the smell of burnt flesh and decay, you've already fought mere zombies." The dark figure began to prance around proudly, "But those were just the corpses of simple mortals who, over the years, came into contact with a great deal of Yin-Qi and were thus reawakened. You can be proud of yourself! If you weren't at the top of our hit list or somewhat weaker, I would never show you the power of the Enclave's necromancy, because for now it needs to remain a secret! But fortunately, you'll never have the chance to tell anyone about it!"

  “Master, let me help!” The orc warrior’s grunting voice sounded as he slowly got to his feet and removed his dented armor, which was preventing him from breathing steadily.

  “At least one of you is still alive!” The cloaked necromancer replied disparagingly, “Try harder, or I’ll make new dolls out of your dead bodies as toys!”