Dragon's Awakening: The Duke's Son Is Changing The Plot
Chapter 220 - 219 - The uninvited guests.

Chapter 220: Chapter 219 - The uninvited guests.

Back in the cave.

Valeria woke up to the heavenly scent of... sweaty socks, mana burnout, and someone muttering "never again" in a near-death whisper.

Her eyelids fluttered open.

She was lying on the rocky cave floor, her face down and mouth full of moss.

Elegant.

She blinked, dazed, trying to recall what had happened. There had been... tension. A hug attempt. Then an entire anti-sibling aura wall.

Then—

"The patriarch sucker-punched me," she mumbled.

"Oh good," Clara’s voice hummed nearby, "she’s awake. Graye, you owe me five chocolates."

"Dang it," Graye groaned from somewhere to Valeria’s right. "I thought she’d be out till dinner."

Valeria pushed herself up with all the grace of a drunken goat. Her eyes roamed the cave.

Most of the party were scattered like dropped laundry after a teleport spell gone wrong.

Clara leaned against a boulder, sipping something from a flask with glowing runes.

Selena was braiding her hair calmly while shadowy wolf-like shapes circled lazily behind her like loyal hellhounds.

Jessy floated an iron pebble between her fingers with a blank stare that screamed existential crisis.

Lia was mumbling at a vine twisting around her wrist, while Rufus was upside-down on a rock for no reason at all.

Jake stood quietly at the cave’s entrance like a moody gargoyle.

Alex was trying to balance a rock on Nibbles, who held up a tiny sign that read, "I am not a circus."

They were all resting... in a way.

Valeria blinked again. "Where’s Raven?"

Selena didn’t even look up. "Went on a date."

"...A what?"

"With Siris," Clara added nonchalantly.

"A DATE?! Since when did he have a girlfriend?"

"Oh, he has three," Lia muttered, mostly to her plant. "More from this group like him, so the number is more than likely going to increase."

"...Why are you looking at me?" Jessy asked as she noticed Lia glancing at her when she said the latter part. "Just say that you’re going to join."

"W-What?!" Lia’s hand shot up, covering her face as she turned around. "I-I don’t know what you’re talking about!"

Valeria opened her mouth, then shut it. Her brain was rebooting. She wasn’t ready for this much nonsense right after being knocked unconscious by her so-called father.

Her only brother, whom she cared about, seemed to have grown up enough to have his harem, and she didn’t even know about it.

For a while, she said nothing.

Then—

"And the Patriarch?" She asked with caution.

"Back to training," Clara replied. "He sighed a lot before leaving. I think we’ve emotionally aged him by twenty years."

Graye gave her a thumbs-up. "We’re very efficient like that."

Before Valeria could decide whether to scream, cry, or challenge reality to a duel, Jake stirred.

He turned toward the cave entrance.

"...Movement," he said quietly.

Everyone snapped alert.

Even Nibbles flipped his sign to: "Combat Mode Activated. Peanuts Armed."

They filed out of the cave one by one, stretching, yawning, and ready—kind of.

What awaited them was... strange.

Ten figures stood silently outside.

Human. Mostly.

They were dressed in mismatched armor—some wore long coats, some tattered uniforms, and one had no shirt but a whole chandelier strapped to his back like a fashion statement made by a lunatic.

But the truly unsettling part?

They weren’t breathing.

They looked alive. They even had warm flesh tones and normal blinks.

But there was no aura. No breath. No life.

Just a void in the shape of people.

"...Okay, they’re creepier than our usual dinner guests," Alex muttered, his symbiote shifting into shoulder spikes.

"They’re human alright," Clara said, stepping slightly in front of the group, "but... not alive."

"Not talking either," Jessy muttered, floating slightly above the ground now.

"That’s so rude," Graye added. "They show up uninvited, and don’t say hi? What kind of undead are these?"

"I vote we dismember them politely," Selena said with a calm smile.

"I’ll handle the dismemberment," Jake offered, already gripping his scythe.

Valeria stepped forward, squinting. "They look... familiar. Like failed golems made from real people."

"Oh, that’s comforting," Rufus said. "Thanks for the happy mental image, Elder Valeria."

The ten silent figures raised their weapons—daggers, halberds, and jagged swords that hissed with a green, necrotic sheen.

Nibbles raised a fresh sign: "They will die. Again."

None of them were stable enough to fight, but they were stronger, and since they didn’t need to control their strength against dead people, they didn’t care about their powers going out of control.

Clara vibrated her fingers, her lips stretched into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. "So, battle formation?"

"Wait," Jessy said, eyes narrowing. "Are those guys even intelligent?"

"Define intelligent," Alex asked. "Like, ’have thoughts’ or ’don’t lick cave walls’ intelligent?"

"Both," she replied.

Suddenly, one of the undead humans turned his head at a sharp angle—crack!—and sprinted forward without warning.

"NOPE," Jake muttered, vanishing into shadows and reappearing midair, cleaving with his scythe.

The battle began.

Selena unleashed a dozen wolves from her shadow in an instant, the beasts howling as they tore into the silent attackers.

Clara struck the ground with a vibrating pulse, sending two of them flying like broken puppets.

Graye leapt like a missile, screaming, "BATTLE-HUG ACCEPTED!"

Her shoulder tackle cratered one of the enemies.

Lia’s plants erupted from the ground like whips, yanking weapons from their hands and tying them into knots mid-air.

Jessy hurled a wave of magnetic force that bent three blades mid-swing, sending the metal spinning like frisbees into the trees.

Rufus unleashed a barrage of red-black energy bolts, looking wildly overexcited. "I AM IRON-SOMETHING!"

Alex and Blargh fused mid-jump, landing like a meteor and sending out a shockwave that blasted two undead apart.

Valeria danced between them with elegance and fury, her blade cutting through bone and armor.

Nibbles leapt onto a head and raised a sign mid-air: "Surprise lobotomy!"

Then slammed a rock on its skull.

The battle was fast.

Violent.

Satisfying.

Surprisingly, the fight ended in under two minutes.

The bodies didn’t bleed. Instead, they twitched and then melted into black, oozing sludge.

Everyone stared at the mess.

Jessy muttered, "Welp. That wasn’t ominous at all."

Clara’s brows furrowed. "These weren’t just undead. They were built undead."

Selena added, "Manufactured soldiers. Likely sent here."

Valeria’s fists clenched. "I know who could be behind it."

"Oh, cool," Graye beamed. "Let’s go say hi to them!"

But then, before anyone else could say anything, the air tensed.

The last corpse melted into a puddle of greasy, black sludge.

Everyone stared at it.

The forest around them, once quiet, now held its breath.

Jessy squinted. "Uh... why is it moving?"

The sludge rippled.

Then... it shivered.

Clara took a half-step back. "Wait—was that—?"

The puddles began sliding toward each other. Merging. Squirming like black worms made of tar and smoke.

Jake muttered, "That’s not how physics works."

Selena’s wolves growled in unison, ears flattened.

Just then, right before their eyes, the sludge reversed.

Bones reassembled.

Armor reformed with wet clanks.

Muscles grew back like someone hit rewind on a meat grinder.

A twisted cracking noise echoed across the clearing as one of the undead’s necks snapped back into place—the wrong way first, then corrected itself like a puppet fixing its posture.

Eyes blinked open.

No breath. No aura.

Just that same wrong, empty presence.

The entire group just... stood still.

Graye blinked. "...Did we lose?"

Rufus’s eye twitched. "No, no, we won. They’re just cheating."

Nibbles flipped a sign with a grim question: "Did they buy a divine life insurance policy?"

Jessy’s voice came out flat. "Guys. That’s necromancy combined with time inversion. That’s—insane."

Alex cocked his head. "Or efficient. I mean, think of the mana cost savings."

Clara raised her hand. "I don’t care if they’re efficient. I want them dead-dead this time."

"They shouldn’t be able to reform like that," Valeria muttered. "This is high-level forbidden magic—possibly stolen. Or worse..."

Crack.

One of the undead finished snapping its shoulder back into place. It turned its head toward the group. It still had an empty gaze, but now—

"Is that shit smiling at us?" Rufus shivered because of the sheer spookiness.

Then it took a single step forward.

That was all it took.

"NOPE," Jake said again.

Everyone surged forward in perfect sync—pure instinct.

Selena’s wolves howled louder than before, diving with glowing fangs bared.

Clara unleashed a wave of sonic pulses that shattered trees.

Graye, already halfway airborne, screamed, "ROUND TWO, BABYYY!"

Valeria activated her full aura without hesitation, slicing forward with radiant fury.

Jessy magnetically yanked two enemy swords into orbit and repurposed them as spinning buzzsaws.

Lia’s plants emerged as thorned spears, blooming with glowing blossoms as they coiled tighter.

Rufus shot forward, arms blazing, yelling, "RE-DISMANTLING IN PROGRESS!"

Alex split into three symbiote-laced versions of himself, all equally pissed.

What was Nibbles doing?

He was tossing peanuts like grenades.

The undead didn’t speak.

But they smiled wider before they lunged.

The air exploded.

So did the ground.

Thus began Round Two—less a battle and more of a very personal message: "Stay dead, or we’ll keep deleting you harder."