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He’d hoped that engaging them in battle would allow him to learn more about them, but months had transpired now, and beyond the minutiae, the only thing he felt like he’d truly come to understand was how annoying these stubborn bastards were.

These Mendocava, as they were called.

Despite having little to no regeneration, they still had a tendency to keep getting back up, anyway. Even headless, their bodies would continue on without them, which was perhaps the biggest difference between them and normal undead. If they had a point of control at all, it was clearly not the brain.

Even now, after all these battles, he still wasn’t entirely sure what made some of them eventually stop rising again. Annihilating them entirely worked quite well, obviously, but aside from that, it was uncertain.

He’d had his men dissecting their corpses day and night since the fighting began, but once they’d stopped moving, they appeared to be nothing more than normal, decayed bodies. No trace of ardor or soul power left.

He wondered if they even had any sentience whatsoever. It seemed so, considering the fact that they were clearly trying to prevent him from going certain places, but maybe that was just an illusion of their puppeteer.

Whoever that was, he was going to take his sweet time when he finally found them. Even disregarding the necessity of an interrogation, a quick death would be far more than they deserved.

The sound of crunching footsteps drew his weathered gaze to the left, and he saw his man there.

“Are you alright, Master?” he asked in Valgan.

Ichiro Itoya was a man of visibly advanced years, though not as much as himself. The flecks of gray in Itoya’s sharp mustache matched well with his piercing silver gaze. He was not a man given to expressing concern trivially, either, so the question he’d asked must’ve been prompted by quite the vile sight.

“I’m fine,” he said in two voices, also in Valgan. “Despite appearances, they’ve yet to lay a finger on me.” And he motioned to the dried viscera all over him. “This is just splashback.”

“Of course, Master.” Itoya had a fair bit of grime and gruel on him, too, mussing his normally pristine longcoat. “But you do look rather weary, sitting there like that. Perhaps they are not trying to win the war of the body but the one of the mind, hmm?”