I have to admit that the last week has been very exhausting for me. Well, I wouldn't really call it physically exhausting. The other members of the strikeforce won't let me do anything that might be physically taxing. Not that I am complaining, though. After all, I have not been in particularly good shape these past few days.

  All I have done in the last couple of weeks is pilot the ship. This time, I did not even need to worry about having coordinates. After all, we are presently leaving the bone pits. All I need to do is use my mana sense to move in a direction where death mana is decreasing. Near here, that will inevitably lead to the Bone Valley.

  I have become so familiar with the process that it has become very mechanical for me now. I just need to fly the ship for a day or so in the correct direction. I need to land it and let the rest of the strikeforce defend the ship until my mana reserves are replenished. Then I just need to keep repeating this process.

  The process had become so familiar to me that my anxiety has started to creep back into my thoughts. You would think that I would not have a lot of stuff to be anxious about. After all, I am moving to a safe place right now. There are going to be no more threats to manage. I also don't need to worry about my sword once I reach the Mayfire Castle. Well, somebody will have to tell my head that. Even now, it is going through all the scenarios.

  To be honest, I barely remember the last couple of weeks. (Not that anything particularly noteworthy happened in this period.) The entire time has been a fog of pain and thirst, you see. Right now, my sword is completely out of vital mana, and I am beginning to feel the lack of it.

  I had to use the last of my blood mana to heal myself in that tomb. Even then, I had not managed to heal myself fully, you see. Even now, my legs feel like somebody has stuffed needles in them whenever I put weight on my legs.

  Other than that, there have also been other side effects. With the reservoir of my sword empty, I am finally feeling the impact of the thirst. Right now, I would say that thirst is many times more painful to deal with than my legs.

  It started as a burning sensation in my throat. My throat felt dry enough that I was sure that I had not drunk water in the last couple of months. Then, the thirst became so intense that I could feel pain in my throat. I could smell the blood of every person in the room. Whenever I was in a room with anybody, I had to actively suppress my desire to bite into their throats. (Not that it would have actually helped me. I am not a vampire.)

  Slowly, the thirst grew, taking over my every living thought. Well, I am beginning to get it under control, though. (In a manner of speaking.)

  I have reached an equilibrium with my thirst. Not that it is due to my god like will. The sword has begun to cannibalise my own vital mana to power itself. One side effect of that has been that I managed to bring the thirst under control for now. (Though there are moments when I still feel like taking a bite out of people.)

  The cycle of blood mana between me and my sword that had enhanced my attributes till now has begun to sap me. Every day that I get up, I can feel my vital mana getting weaker. Every day, it feels like I am aging ten years. Every day, my muscles ache like crazy. I swear that I have begun to feel my joints crack as well.

  Well, I have tried to keep the cycle under control. I have stopped the cycle of blood mana as much as I possibly can, but even that is not very useful, it turns out. The sword is now active all the time, though it is sapping me of strength now.

  I have had my physical challenges that have been a pain to deal with. The problem is that the last couple of weeks have been pretty hard emotionally, too. You see, we did not leave the disciples' tomb without losses. The entirety of the Aegis is presently dead. The only exception to this is Anthony.

  Now, I don't particularly care too much about these people. For better or worse, I had no idea about who they were. (I didn't even know their names.) They were strangers to me, and their deaths themselves are not the source of my anxiety.

  The problem is that their deaths mean that the mission has been a complete and utter failure. I have nothing to report from the necromancer's base. We did not even learn about their plans with us, nor about how they managed to get into the castle. In the end, we did not even manage to kill the necromancers ourselves. For all we know, the necromancers could have escaped from the tomb to somewhere else.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  We might have even looked for them if we had any clue of where they could be. With nothing like that, we were forced to come back. The guard corps is certainly not going to be looking at this mission positively. Well, I indeed did this mission under the command of my master, but I am still a guard, you see. While there is going to be no official punishment for this, there are certainly going to be consequences.

  Other than that, it has also been a logistical nightmare for me. I have been taking care of the bodies of these soldiers, you see. After all, you can say that I am the only person who could have preserved these corpses for two weeks straight. I have had to modify the preservation formation once again to keep their bodies.

  It did not stop the body from rotting naturally, but it at least stopped the assault of death mana on their flesh. If I had left them just like that, then they would have been skeletons by now. Still, it doesn't prevent the stink of the corpses from wafting out. Every time I walk next to the room, I feel like puking my guts out. I can't help but wonder what diseases are breeding inside those corpses even now. I will have to thoroughly clean that room once this mission is over, it looks like.

  Well, it had been about a day since we had made our way out of the bone pits. Now, normally, we should have been rushing to the mayfire castle as quickly as possible.

  The problem right now is that the corpses of the Aegis have begun to rot a bit too much. I cannot hold them on the ship anymore. That means that we need to conduct the funeral of the soldiers as quickly as possible. Now, for that, we will be needing a lot of wood. That is why I had to park near a bunch of trees in the Bone Valley.

  Now, I am regretting it a bit, actually. I am trying to cut a tree myself right now. Even now, my axe is striking the wood of the tree, barely leaving any dents on it. Well, the wood in front of me is actually pretty good for making a funeral pyre. There is literally no moisture in the tree, even as my axe bites into the tree. It will catch fire quite easily. (Even if we didn't, we have the mayfires, I guess.)

  Well, there is a reason for the unusual durability of the trees here. (At least that is my guess.) While death mana is usually supposed to kill living things, it is still a type of mana. It can enhance the nature of any material that it is absorbed into. Something like this tree is full of death mana. The death mana is strengthening the wood of the tree even while it is killing it.

  Even I am surprised at the death mana inside the thing. I guess that a necromancer could use these trees to create magical artifacts. The death mana in the wood would be more than capable of enhancing their spells.

  Well, we won't be getting any benefit from this wood. The death mana will just be a poison for us. Any spell that we cast through such an artifact will end up weakening the spell that we cast through it. All of these are the reasons that I am presently struggling to find the motivation to raise my axe and cut the tree.

  I can feel a dull ache form in my hands even as my axe collides with the tree. The wood here must have soaked for a very long time in death mana. Well, I certainly cannot ask anybody else to help with this. Almost everybody in the strikeforce is pretty busy trying to cut their own trees as well. Even Lauren, who is the strongest of us, has managed to cut only halfway through her tree.

  After all, we will be needing quite a bit of wood right now. We have four pyres to light. Getting that much wood is going to take us a while. Right now, I can't help but wonder if we are unnecessarily wasting our time. Even retrieving their corpses took all our effort. You see, we had to attack the undead head-on with their full force. The undead had settled around the corpses of these four, you see.

  The only thing that could have moved them away from the corpses was another threat. Let's just say that this was not an easy task. Any person who was acting as bait would have had to face tens of undead skeletons on their own.

  Well, in this case, it was John who acted as bait. While there seems to be no physical injury to him, I have not seen the man much in the last couple of weeks. He is remaining in his room for unexplained amounts of time. He is certainly not doing that because he is physically fit.

  All of that would still have been fine, you see. The main cause of my irritation is Anthony, you see. Even now, I feel very uncomfortable looking at the man. Well, the reason for that is certainly not because the man is emotionally distraught. If anything, the man is the exact opposite of distraught. The man couldn't have given two shits about the death of his soldiers.

  Well, the man does look sad, I guess. If we were to just look at his body language and his expressions, he does look like he has lost the members of his team. The moment that you look into his eyes, you know that the man doesn't give any shit about them.

  Even now, the man is trying to chat up the Mayfires. (Who are presently trying to burn through one of the trees here.) They are not having much success because of the chatter from Anthony.

  Well, I guess that I should not get involved in the politics of that group. After all, every group has its own dynamic, but I still can't help but feel pity for the soldiers. The only reason that they died was that they were following orders.

  After all, shouldn't the man at least take some responsibility for the event? After all, wasn't it due to his command that the Aegis had snuck into the outer circle in the first place? If they had remained on the ship, they would have certainly survived the entire thing.

  Well, I guess that I shouldn't waste my time on idiots like Anthony. After all, I am not going to get anything by standing up for a bunch of dead men. Still, looking at the man makes my blood boil, you know.

  I guess I should focus on the task at hand. Recording my frustrations only acts as a distraction, I tell you.