There was no way that the undead would disappear, so they had to be somewhere…but where?
With this bad feeling growing inside of me, I couldn't take it anymore and said to the duke nearby, "Can you gather everyone? I have something I need to ask them."
The duke was confused when he heard this, but seeing the serious look on my face, he knew that it wasn't a joke. So he quickly gave a nod in response before turning to the messenger to give the signal.
The messenger was also confused about this order, but since it was an order from the duke, he had no choice but to follow it.
He quickly passed on the message to the various groups, including the knights who had now met up with the rendezvous outside of the valley. It didn't take them long to gather at the gathering spot that they had all agreed on.
When we arrived, we found that the knights and all of the soldiers were already celebrating their victory which made me knit my brows.
Without wasting a single second, I came forward and stopped them before asking, "Did you see any other undead?"
When they saw this, they were naturally unhappy about being interrupted like this.
But seeing that the duke was with me, they still answered my question.
The various leaders of the knight groups reported that this was all the undead that had followed them. They didn't see any other undead as they led them to this valley.
I turned to the sixth group leader and asked, "Are you sure that there aren't any more undead?"
The sixth group leader was confused, but he still shook his head and said, "No, I didn't see anything. The remainder all followed us to the valley."
I deeply knitted my brows when I heard this.
Shaka immediately asked, "What's wrong? Should we go back and check?"
I gave a nod before saying, "The numbers don't add up."
Everyone who heard this revealed a confused look.
The plan that we had used was to attack them in waves to make it seem like we were skirmishing them. That way, we would be able to draw the undead away in groups so that we could avoid suspicion.
The target was of course to draw them all to this valley to be burned with the alcohol which had already happened.
But since there was the danger of being followed by the undead the entire time, the knights hadn't counted the number of undead that had followed them.
However, I had been counting the undead that followed these knights when I had been watching from above.
There had only been around two hundred undead that followed each of these groups and that added up to around one thousand and two hundred undead.
That was far from the two thousand undead that I had seen in the cave.
At the same time, I had noticed that there were far less undead that were made from monster corpses among the undead that followed these knights into the valley.
After a long period of silence, one of the knights finally said, "Could it be that you just made a mistake when counting the undead in the cave. Who knows if there were actually as many as you said there were in that cave."
When I heard this, I immediately knitted my brows.
But I could also hear murmurs of agreement coming from around me.
It was clear that the other knights and soldiers were thinking the same thing as the knight who had spoken.
Even the duke gave a slight nod though he kept a neutral look on his face.
But before I could say anything, I was surprised by Veronica cutting in.
She pointed at the knight and said, "I also saw just as many of the undead in the cave. So are you also going to say that my eyes were mistaken as well?"
When the knight heard this, his mouth opened wide, but he wasn't able to say a thing.
It was one thing to talk about this person who was a baron who had been brought in by the duke.
They didn't know who he was and he didn't have a high status, so it didn't matter if they said anything about him.
But it was different with Veronica because she was the duke's daughter.
After a long silence, the knight finally said, "Young miss, I didn't mean that…I was just saying…"
Veronica suddenly cut him off by raising her hand and saying, "There's no time to talk about this now. Just go and find where the rest of the remaining undead are. Like Baron Zwein said, there's no way that they just disappeared. They must be around here somewhere."
The knights and soldiers didn't move right away.
Instead, they turned to look at the duke, almost as if they were waiting for permission from him.
The duke looked at Veronica for a bit, but after seeing the serious look that she had on her face, he said, "Go and search for them. If these undead do exist, then it won't be good leaving them. We need to find them before they cause any harm."
The knights and soldiers gave a sigh before saddling up to go search.
It was clear by the tone of their voice and the way that they acted that they clearly didn't believe this.
Even the way that the duke had given this order made it seem like he didn't believe this.
This caused both Veronica and I to knit our brows.
But before either of us could say a thing, there was a loud sound that suddenly rang out.
It was the sound of many footsteps approaching us.
When I turned in the direction of this sound to see the dust being raised in the distance, I revealed a bitter smile as I knew immediately what was happening.
"It's already too late." I said in a bitter voice.