[You have killed a [Zombie Human] and offered its life to the [Daughter of the Scarlet Heart]]

  [Goal - Hunt the remaining Zombies within the school grounds (20/27)]

  The zombie fell to the ground, and Ashton watched the counter tick up. Just a couple more, and then he would be done and could move on.

  He just hoped that he would be able to get to all of the zombies before more people got infected. The right side of the counter was slowly ticking up as well, and Ashton had no idea what was going to happen if he accidentally missed one. It was a real possibility that he would kill the last zombie in the time between someone being bitten or scratched and them turning.

  The incubation period was extremely short, but it still didn't happen in an instant.

  It was enough time to run a decent distance away, at least, especially here in the school where it was easy to hide in classrooms or run around corners to have your enemy lose sight. That was actually part of the reason why Ashton was struggling to find the zombies, but whenever he did, he made sure to dispatch them as fast as he possibly could.

  Because of the narrow space that he was dealing with in here, it was actually an amazing opportunity for Ashton to try out some new techniques. Now that he had 'Veil Mastery', the things he could do were completely different. His view and understanding of the laws of magic had fundamentally changed.

  And so, though it was a simple change, Ashton had locked the wisp into place right in front of his staff. It was no longer moving around within the entirety of the channelling range, but rather just hovered a couple inches away from the steel-cap.

  The wisp also shrunk down to the smallest size possible so that it could move along with the staff perfectly. Now, did this increase the force of the attacks in any way? Not at all. But it gave Ashton more options.

  He could focus more on his old techniques to build power than before. Especially with the spell imbued into the wisp, Ashton was able to create those shockwaves with his own attacks, rather than through the wisps. Or at least, it felt a little more like that.

  Plus, it was a decent way to essentially infuse his own attacks with elemental forces, since he could fuse the other elementals' magics into the wisp, and when needed, was able to use the force spell together with it.

  This was just a great way for him to expand his repertoire and build his body in a way that wouldn't forget his techniques. No, he had to make sure his body, this body, knew those techniques in the first place.

  While technically, muscle memory wasn't something that was actually saved in your muscles, but rather a process in the brain that automated actions to some degree, Ashton still needed his body to have the right musculature to let him move the way that he wanted to.

  Now, with his stats rising so much, his body was obviously changing rapidly, and the more he trained like in the past, the faster his muscles would become what he needed them to be.

  Ashton rushed into one of the classrooms. He saw two bodies in here. One was standing over the other, and the second was slowly trying to push itself up. These Zombies didn't attack others as a goal to eat them, but rather just to spread the infection further. And the moment that someone had been infected, they didn't seem to fully count as a 'person' anymore, so the zombie's aggression went down. They would still continue to try and attack them, but not nearly as aggressively as before.

  Ashton didn't know why things worked that way, nor did he really care, so he just took down the two zombies immediately. He wiped the notifications away and burnt the bodies.

  Just five more to go, and he would be done. Ashton strategically went through every single classroom, making sure he cleared every single one. There really weren't a lot of ways for the zombies to sneak past him, either, so as long as he was careful, he would clear the room out in time.

  There was one more standing in a hallway, and another one in one of the classrooms. But the last three were nowhere to be seen. Ashton even looked out the windows to make sure they didn't make their way outside while he was in the building, but no. They weren't anywhere in here.

  So, Ashton had to enter a dead-end space. If they were in the school, then they had to be down here. The school's basement.

  It was a dark and narrow space, and extremely uncomfortable. It clearly hadn't been used for anything in a while, but people seemed to have rummaged through here recently to look for anything usable. Not that there was much of that down here.

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  It was pretty dark down here, so Ashton illuminated the way in front of him through the wisp and the salamander's flames. The basement was a weirdly labyrinthian place. Ashton remembered hearing at some point that the school had been built in the space of some older houses. Though, the school-building itself was also pretty old, so for some reason, they seemed to have kept the basements of the older houses, and just connected them however possible.

  Ashton found the first of the remaining three zombies, standing on the ground and gnawing on a rat. He shivered immediately and looked around.

  "Guardian! Is any zombified being part of the quest's count?" Ashton asked, and he didn't have to wait long for an answer.

  [[Guardian of the Innocent] says it is so]

  With a relieved sigh, Ashton nodded. That was good. That meant that there wasn't a swarm of zombified rats somewhere down here. It also meant that Ashton had to be a lot more careful. If one of the remaining two zombies was a rat, then he would have to be a lot more careful.

  Ashton immediately cracked the zombie's skull and, just to be safe, destroyed the head of the rat that it was eating as well. No message came up for the animal, so it wasn't actually a zombie, just a regular rat.

  Once he was done, Ashton squatted down and pushed his pant-legs into his shoes, and then burnt the bodies of the zombie and the rat, using the sylph to funnel the smoke through a small window in the corner of the room.

  The moment that was done, Ashton pulled the wisp and salamander into his vessel and hid himself in the shadows. If it was possible that a fucking zombie rat could jump out from between the boxes around here, Ashton didn't want to risk anything.

  He walked through the darkness of the basement, silently, not leaving behind a single trace that he was here at all.

  Ashton held his breath, trying to hear every slight sound. A slight squeak to his right. He rushed down the hallway and looked around. The space was dark, but Ashton could sense the mana in the walls, and the veil bent around the physical world different depending on what it was that it flowed through. It wasn't anything exact, but it helped him fill some of the gaps within the darkness.

  And then, he saw a small shadow rush past. Ashton slammed down on it with his staff before it could escape and-

  [You have killed a [Rat]. For your effort, you are awarded 1 coin]

  -it was just a normal rat. Wasn't even strong enough to count toward the offerings to the Daughter.

  But that was fine. For a moment, he hesitated and thought about grabbing it to cook later, but in the end, decided against it. Not because of hygiene reasons; Ashton had eaten much worse in Lumia. But because he wasn't sure if this rat maybe ingested some infected blood and just hadn't transformed yet. You could never be careful enough.

  For now, he just tried to remember where it was and continued on. He didn't want to draw too much attention toward himself by calling the salamander here in the darkness. But later, he would come back and incinerate this rat's body. There were a few more hiding out down here. Rats, mice, small bugs scuttering around. But surprisingly no monsters at all. The protection of the Guardian really was useful.

  Ashton carefully turned around the corner, and promptly, a chair was thrown his way. A bestial scream came his way, as Ashton held his breath. A hulking figure walked out of the room. Its clothes were torn and its body smelled of rot. The fur on its skin was had fallen out in clumps, or maybe hadn't even fully set in yet.

  "It was a pair of them..?" Ashton whispered in disbelief. This was another human, another Marked. One with animalistic traits; specifically, from the misshapen form of its face, slowly moulding itself into the form of a snout, it looked like he was a Marked with the traits of a rat. Whether it was directly a Ratman or some other rat-like monster wasn't clear, the only thing that was clear was that it had started setting in recently. Maybe they were able to hold back the transformation until they were infected, and then everything ran loose all at once.

  Right, it was also a zombie. Ashton kept standing there silently. That chair just now wasn't thrown because the Marked had noticed him, but rather, out of anger of frustration. Maybe it was trying to find something to eat. Rat monsters tended to be pretty ravenous in that regard, and always looked for the next thing to eat.

  'So you're saying not just one, but two separate Marked snuck into a place protected by the Guardian? Something stinks about that,' Ashton thought to himself, staring at the zombified Marked in front of him. He didn't have the time to really investigate all of this yet, especially since the Guardian had been pretty quiet this whole time, but it just felt like something was wrong here.

  Of course, the Guardian wasn't omnipotent or omniscient. It was possible that they were able to just hide themselves well. But to then immediately turn once they were safely on schoolgrounds? That was messy and Ashton couldn't help but wonder if there was someone or something else involved here.

  Though right now, that wasn't really something he could spend a lot of time figuring out. Zombies didn't lose their senses. Rather, their senses became a lot stronger in most cases, unless the bits they needed to use them were rotting away already.

  And this Rat-Marked's nose was in perfect condition. It sniffed the air and snarled. That was the one thing that Ashton hadn't prepped against. It was more like the opposite. He had cleaned himself plenty whenever he had the chance, but that didn't mean that he was as squeaky clean as he would like to be. And after running around all day, he probably stank of sweat.

  The Marked ran forward at Ashton, and he pushed his staff out toward it. The monsterfied man was hit straight in the snout, that disfigured human face, but didn't even flinch.

  Instead, it just kept pushing, trying to swing its clawed hands at him, as Ashton looked it up and down to figure out the best way to kill it without getting scratched by this beast-turned-zombie.