Chương 107: Chapter 106. What happened to Rayne?

Casper didn't even know when it had ended. One moment she had been in the middle of battle, raining flames down over the undead while her [Infernal Chains] smashed through the advancing tide. The chamber had been filled with chaos—fire, steel, and the endless groans of the dead as they pressed forward against the shield line. And then suddenly everything had changed. The chamber had shaken violently as a deep tremor rolled through the dungeon.

The ground beneath their feet rattled, dust fell from the ceiling, and for a moment Casper thought the entire structure might collapse. But it calmed down soon, and she realized it was the core getting destroyed. After that, Captain Edran had jumped into the lines of undead with the orcs being dead, and they had fallen swiftly now that the soldiers knew that the core was broken. Casper herself had finished dozens at once, and the swarm had ended. Just as they had gotten a moment to breathe, Varrick appeared.

He emerged from one of the side rooms of the chamber carrying Rayne over his shoulder while dragging Fredrick's corpse behind him. His explanation had been short and direct—he claimed to have taken care of the dungeon core and insisted that they needed to leave immediately. There had been no time to question him. Now that the core was dead, they needed to report to Commander Evans and leave this godforsaken dungeon. Captain Edran had immediately ordered a retreat.

No one had even gotten the chance to ask how Fredrick had died or why Rayne was unconscious. Instead, they gathered the fallen. Captain Edran had made one thing clear: no one would be left behind now that they were leaving the dungeon. Unfortunately, the losses were heavy. Roughly a quarter of the soldiers were dead. Many of the survivors carried serious injuries—broken bones, deep cuts, and exhaustion from hours of fighting.

Still, they had enough remaining health potions to keep the wounded stable until they reached the surface. That was enough. So the warband began the long march out of the dungeon. They retraced their path through the corridors they had fought through earlier. No undead or traps bothered them. Only the sound of boots scraping against stone echoed through the halls. Casper walked near the center of the formation. Her gaze kept drifting toward Rayne.

At first Varrick had carried him, but Rayne's own party had taken over soon after the retreat began. Bran and Nate bore most of the burden while the others guarded them closely. Rayne's body hung limp between them. He hadn't moved once. Casper felt her chest tighten each time she looked at him. In the entire warband there were only two people she truly cared about—Captain Edran and Rayne.

The former was simply because she needed the support of his house, but she owed a debt to the Fraysers and couldn't let anything happen to Rayne. But no matter how many hours passed by, he remained unconscious. Casper had tried to learn what had happened earlier, but Varrick had offered only a vague explanation. From what little he shared, he himself had no idea what had happened and had only found them like this with the necromancer dead behind them. Casper didn't ask anything further.

There was no point pressing Varrick now. Whatever had happened inside that door would be explained once they were out of the dungeon and back under proper command. Until then, the only thing that mattered was moving forward. So she kept walking. The warband pushed through the large stone corridors in silence, their formation tighter than before. The wounded were supported on both sides while the others guarded the flanks. Eventually they found stairs that led toward the bridge.

They crossed it and reached the walls adorned with mana crystals. A part of Casper wanted to take a few of them, knowing they would just be destroyed, but doing so would simply waste time, especially without proper extraction tools. She was also too tired to care about them for more than a minute. So they simply moved past them toward the ledge that overlooked the chamber where the main battle had been going on before. Casper felt a quiet tension settle inside her chest as they approached it.

She wondered if the main battle had already ended. Perhaps Commander Evans had won and secured the necromancer's head. She truly hoped that was the case. But the closer they moved toward the ledge, the clearer the truth became. The battle was still going on. Even before they reached the overlook, the sounds began to reach them. The clash of steel, screams, and the distant crack of spells colliding against each other. The noises echoed through the cavern like a storm.

The moment the sounds reached them, Captain Edran's expression hardened and he immediately ordered the warband to increase their pace. He even handed out several stamina potions, letting the soldiers take small sips so they could keep moving despite the exhaustion weighing down their bodies. He had no intention of letting them rest, and no one argued. Everyone in the warband understood why.

They pushed forward faster, moving along the ledge until they finally reached the point where the battlefield below came into view. Casper stepped closer to the edge and looked down. The sight made her breath hitch. The battlefield below was a sea of corpses. Hundreds of bodies covered the ground. Undead and human soldiers alike lay scattered across the stone in twisted piles. Broken weapons littered the area, with shattered shields and torn armor. Many corpses had already been burned.

Blackened flesh and scorched bone marked where the army mages had incinerated their fallen to prevent them from rising again as undead. Even from above, the smell of smoke and burnt flesh drifted through the air. Yet despite the destruction, the battle still raged. Soldiers and undead clashed across the field, steel meeting rotten claws as spells flashed through the chaos. And somewhere within that carnage, the master necromancer was still alive.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. He was battling Commander Evans and the captains at the very center of the battlefield. Dark energy swirled around him like a storm, the air itself seeming to warp under the sheer amount of death mana he was unleashing. Compared to the last time Casper had seen him, the man looked worse. Much worse. His flesh was breaking apart. Cracks ran across his pale skin like fractures in old stone.

In several places the flesh had split entirely, revealing something darker beneath it, but the man didn't seem to care. He raised his arms and death mana poured out of him in violent waves. One moment, dozens of black chains burst from the ground and whipped across the battlefield like living serpents, crushing soldiers and tearing apart undead alike.

The next moment, a sphere of condensed death mana formed above his head before exploding outward in a devastating shockwave that blasted bodies away from him in every direction. Another spell followed almost immediately. A rain of jagged bone spears erupted from the air and plunged downward like falling arrows, piercing armor and stone alike wherever they landed. Yet despite the destructive spells, someone still protected their side from all of it. Commander Evans.

The massive crimson bull stood above him like a blazing banner of power. The construct roared silently as Evans charged forward again and again, forcing the necromancer to divide his attention and taking on most of the spells head-on. Each swing of the commander's weapon shattered waves of death mana apart. Selene moved beside him like a shadow, using the bull as cover.

Her light-aspected spells cut through the battlefield with ruthless precision while the other captains supported them, striking whenever the necromancer left an opening. But despite all that, Casper could see that their side was already on the edge. Commander Evans's armor was drenched in blood. Some of it clearly wasn't his, but far too much of it was. His face looked strained as he pushed forward through the storm of death mana. The captains weren't in better shape either. Several of them were wounded badly.

Captain Verella was the most obvious. Her left arm was gone. The sleeve of her armor hung empty as she continued fighting one-handed, her blade still flashing through the chaos. Casper clenched her jaw as she watched. Earlier, she might have wondered if the master necromancer was at the level of an archmage. But now, seeing the cracks across his flesh, she understood that he actually wasn't human. He was a lich. His apprentice had likely been the same, or at the very least the man had modified his body.

But the master necromancer was actually a true lich, one she had only read about before. She watched all of it for half a minute before raising her hand. Mana surged through her arm and a bright flare shot into the air above the battlefield. A second flare followed moments later. The glowing bursts of mana lit the cavern ceiling for a brief instant before fading. Commander Evans would have already felt the dungeon shaking earlier.

But this was the signal that the dungeon core had been destroyed and they had finished their quest. After doing so, she didn't wait to see how the battle below would change. Captain Edran was already giving orders to move again. The warband turned immediately and began walking, leaving the ledge behind as they hurried toward the exit. As they moved away from the chamber, Casper kept hearing the battle behind them.

And every now and then the ground itself trembled, faint vibrations rolling through the stone beneath their boots as spells collided somewhere far behind them. The fight with the master necromancer was still raging. Casper had no idea how Commander Evans intended to keep the lich from leaving the dungeon while the rest of them escaped. He had looked powerful enough to flatten entire formations of spellswords. But thinking about it wouldn't change anything.

The only thing she knew for certain was that their warband needed to leave the dungeon as quickly as possible. And that was exactly what they did. The warband continued moving through the narrow ledge until the cavern disappeared behind them. Soon the path widened again and they began retracing the route they had taken earlier. They passed through the massive library chamber first.

The corpse of the monstrous creature they had killed earlier still lay there, its enormous body sprawled across the stone floor exactly where it had fallen. No one even glanced at it this time. They simply walked past. From there they continued through the gas-filled chamber. By the time they crossed it, the gas was long gone and the whole place was scorched due to her spell. Even the undead she had killed were nothing more than ashes she stepped over.

From there, they reached the final stretch of tunnels leading toward the exit. Time blurred after that. Hours passed as the warband marched through the silent dungeon. It might have even been half a day, but they never stopped. With no monsters left to slow them down, the soldiers focused only on walking. The remaining stamina potions were used up to keep everyone moving despite their exhaustion. Casper walked beside Rayne's party the entire time. Bran and Nate still carried him between them.

Rayne hadn't woken up once. Every so often Casper would glance over and check his breathing and take a sigh of relief seeing it was steady. But despite that, he remained completely unconscious. Varrick had told them earlier that Rayne had probably consumed a rare-grade potion. Because of that, giving him another one could risk mana poisoning, so they had left him as he was. Even so, the fact that he still hadn't woken up unsettled her more than she liked to admit.

Without realizing it, Casper had started seeing Rayne differently over the past weeks. She had started thinking of him as someone she wanted to know better. Someone she wanted to fight beside. More than once a quiet thought had crept into the back of her mind. Maybe Rayne could even restore the glory of the Frayser name one day. But none of that would matter if he never woke up. There was no point assuming the worst before a healer had examined him. So she kept silent and continued marching with the rest of them.

Fortunately, it seemed Henrexa had blessed them this day and Hathras had no interest in claiming their souls. Eventually the warband reached the final corridor that led to the chamber containing the dungeon portal. The moment the soldiers recognized the location, their pace quickened. A sense of relief spread through the group as they entered the familiar chamber. The swirling portal stood exactly where it had before. Captain Edran immediately began issuing orders. The wounded were sent through first.

One by one the injured soldiers stepped into the portal and disappeared. The rest of the warband waited while keeping their eyes fixed on the doorway behind them. Everyone remained alert in case something unexpected appeared at the last moment. But nothing did. One after another the remaining soldiers stepped through the portal. Eventually Rayne's party moved forward as well, carrying him between them. Casper followed shortly after. The moment her skin touched the portal, the world twisted around her.

Then she was outside. Casper took a deep breath without even realizing she had been holding it. The sun hung high in the sky above them. The open air felt almost unreal after so many hours inside the dungeon. All around her soldiers began cheering as they realized they had actually survived. Some even hugged each other, and she saw more than a few having tears in their eyes. A moment later Captain Edran stepped through the portal as well.

The moment he saw that the warband had gathered safely outside, the tension finally left his shoulders. He immediately ordered them to set up camp near the portal while they waited for the rest of the army to withdraw. The wounded were to be treated immediately and everyone else was told to rest. He made it clear that he was proud of what they had accomplished and promised that rewards would follow once everything was over. The soldiers cheered again at his words.

Soon the warband began spreading out across the field, putting distance between themselves and the portal. Casper moved away as well. But she couldn't stop herself from glancing back toward the swirling crackle of energy. Two thoughts lingered in her mind. Whether Commander Evans, the Crown's Hand, the captains, and the rest of the men would emerge from that portal alive. And when Rayne would finally wake up.

But another thought crept quietly into the back of her mind as she noticed a pair of soldiers dragging Fredrick's body away. What exactly happened with him and Rayne?

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