The moment that they heard these sounds, the knights and soldiers immediately turned in the direction that it came from.
They all pulled out their weapons and raised their guard.
At the very least, this was a good demonstration of how well trained they were. The moment that they saw the enemy appear, they were prepared to fight.
It was just too bad that the situation was much worse than they thought.
After this first cloud dust appeared, there were even more clouds of dust that appeared all around them. Before long, they were completely surrounded by the dust clouds that had appeared around them.
Seeing this, I couldn't help saying, "It seemed that gathering together worked against us rather in our favour." At the same time, there was a bitter smile that appeared on my face.
As they came closer and closer, we were able to see the true appearance of these dust clouds.
Just like I had suspected, these were the rest of the undead that hadn't been accounted for.
They had separated from the main group when we hadn't been looking or maybe they hadn't even been with the main group in the first place. Regardless of what the reason was, they were now surrounding us.
At first, the knights and soldiers still seemed like they were prepared for a fight. However, as more and more of the undead revealed themselves, the looks of being ready to fight disappeared from their faces.
That was because they could see that they were…completely outnumbered.
Around a thousand undead, that was my rough estimate of how many enemies there were.
If we had brought all of the knights and soldiers from the city, perhaps we would be able to match them.
However, since we had left a group of soldiers in the city to protect it…that meant that we had less troops.
We couldn't just leave the city undefended since the undead wasn't the only threat that this large Bright Water City faced.
The duke couldn't allow that since it was his duty to protect the people of Bright Water City.
But it seemed like that had backfired on them now that they were completely surrounded by these undead.
The knights and soldiers looked at the duke in a panic with eyes that were clearly asking him what they should do. However, the duke could only look back at them with a helpless look since he didn't know what to do either.
If it was any other kind of enemy, perhaps they could gather together and break free of this blockade. However, it was different when they were facing the undead since the undead wouldn't go down as easily.
They were much tougher than normal enemies and even if they were to gather all of their power to break through a single point, it wouldn't work because of how tough the undead were. They wouldn't be able to exterminate the undead that stood in their way fast enough and they would be surrounded instantly.
Since this forced them to gather all of their strongest fighters in a single spot, that would leave their formation weakened.
Unlike now where they evenly divided their troops around them, this would cause the backside of their formation to be weak. Once they were surrounded after being stopped by the undead, the backside of the formation would be slaughtered.
At the very least, they would be able to resist for a bit if they were in formation.
However, the worst part of all of this were the undead formed from monster corpses that they could see.
These made up most of the undead that surrounded them.
The power that undead had depended on the material used to create them.
If human corpses were used to create undead, they would have the power of a human that was enhanced by the dark magic used to create the undead.
But if a monster corpse was used to create undead, then it would have the power that the monster originally had, along with being strengthened by the dark magic used to turn it into an undead.
This created a monster that was even stronger than when it was alive.
Monsters were already powerful enough, they were strong enough that normal soldiers wouldn't be able to fight against them. Knights would only be able to match them barely and would still need help to fight against them.
And that was just for normal monsters…
These undead monsters would without a doubt be stronger than normal monsters.
So what should they do in this situation?
Should they try to push through, using some of their members as bait to escape or should they stay and fight.
Neither of these methods seemed like there was any hope, but at least the former had a higher chance of survival. Or at least it did for those that were considered important.
This was basically exchanging the lives of those weaker soldiers to save the duke, his daughter, and some of the knights. The ones that escaped would return to the city where there was a higher chance of fighting back.
It was a way of preserving their battle strength, but it was one that came at the cost of lives.
While the duke was hesitating on what to do, I had been carefully observing the undead that were coming closer.
I could see that there was a particular formation to these undead, with most of the undead monsters being gathered in one area. They were gathered behind us where it was most likely that we would go to escape.
It seemed that they wanted to trap us and prevent us from escaping.
But if they did that, it left their ranks weaker in front of us.
So there had to be something that made up for that.
As I had guessed, the ranks of undead in front of us parted to reveal…a demon.
This wasn't just any demon, it was the same demon that I had caught a glimpse of back in the cave.