Chương 87: Chapter 86. Grand dungeon

The meeting didn't drag on much longer. Once Commander Evans explained the objectives and dangers, he dismissed Rayne, the other deputies, and the squad leaders. The captains stayed behind, their discussion shifting toward strategies for engaging the master necromancer directly, something they didn't need to hear about. But before they left, Captain Edran stopped them and told them to explain their role in the battle to the soldiers under them, so they could prepare for it.

And Rayne did exactly that, having already planned to do so without being told. When he reached his party, they bombarded him with questions about why he had been called to the command tent, and Rayne explained everything to them about their warband moving deeper toward the core chamber. As he expected, none of them were thrilled. There was safety in numbers.

Even against a master necromancer, a common soldier only needed to follow simple orders—hold formations, deal with waves of undead, maybe clash with an undead lord or two while the captains, mages, and Commander Evans pushed forward to handle the bigger threats. Their role, however, was different. With their new orders, they wouldn't be protected by a solid wall of shields or backed by dozens of mages and spellswords.

They would be responsible for navigating deeper levels of the dungeon, cutting off toward the core, and dealing with whatever had been left behind to guard it. The map Commander Evans had didn't even have proper information on the deeper levels, and they would be on their own to find a way. But there was no backing out. His party seemed to know it, and he did his best to make sure they were mentally prepared to take on such a task.

Fortunately, after going through so much, there was little that could faze his party, and he knew they would pull their weight. The hours that followed were slow and without much talk. All of them simply looked toward the portal, waiting for the scouting party to return. They only returned when the sun had begun to sink toward the horizon. One moment everything was calm; the next, the portal flickered unevenly and figures stumbled out. A hush fell over the camp as the scouts emerged. Two of them were injured.

One had his robes soaked with blood around the abdomen. Another leaned heavily on a companion. The rest looked exhausted but intact, their expressions grim. No undead followed them. The scouts were rushed straight to the command tent, pushing past rows of anxious men who clearly expected horrors to spill out behind them. Rayne watched them go, mind racing, trying to imagine what kind of information they would have brought back and whether they would be moving inside today or tomorrow. He got his answers soon.

Less than an hour later, orders spread through the camp like wildfire. They were moving in. Shouted commands snapped through the air as captains and squad leaders dragged men to their feet and forced them into formation. Soldiers whispered nervously as they moved into files. Commander Evans himself stood near the gateway alongside Selene, his presence anchoring the chaos of hundreds of soldiers lining up. And perhaps because of that, discipline held.

One by one, the captains led their warbands through the dungeon portal. Each time a formation disappeared into the shimmering surface, a single member of the Crown's Hand followed close behind, slipping in without ceremony. The portal flared briefly with mana after every group, then settled again. Captain Edran's warband was deliberately kept back. They were meant to break off later, and being among the first would only draw attention they didn't need. Rayne understood the reasoning well enough.

If the undead saw them breaking off, they might chase after them, and he didn't know if the necromancer could see things through his undead. But if he was really as strong as Commander Evans estimated, then it was definitely possible. Edran barked sharp orders when it was finally their turn.

"One squad at a time. No rushing. No clustering." Axel's squad moved first. The man didn't give a speech or encouragement. He just looked them over once, eyes sharp, then grunted and stepped forward. Hobbs and a few other soldiers followed without hesitation and vanished into the portal one after another. Rayne's squad followed shortly after. As they approached, the heat from the portal washed over them, and it felt as if he were standing too close to a forge.

Mana crackled faintly along its surface, the air humming in a way that made Rayne's skin prickle. Kesh muttered something under his breath, but it was lost amid the shifting boots, clinking armor, and low murmurs of the soldiers. Rayne didn't waste a second. He reached out and placed his hand against the portal. The surface resisted for a fraction of a second, then pulled him in. Mana flooded over him in a disorienting rush.

For a heartbeat, he felt stretched and compressed at the same time, his senses blurring as a spark crawled across his skin. Then his feet hit solid ground. Rayne opened his eyes and froze. The chamber was enormous. White stone pillars rose high into the darkness above, thick enough that several men could stand shoulder to shoulder behind each one. Vines crawled up their surfaces, dead and brittle.

Along the walls, faded murals depicted monstrous figures—twisted beasts, skeletal armies, things that looked more like nightmares than creatures—etched with surprising care. It felt less like a dungeon and more like an ancient castle. He had wondered how almost a thousand soldiers would fit in here, but his worries had been for nothing. His party emerged behind him one by one, each of them slowing as they took in the sight. Rayne gestured immediately, waving them to the side.

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"Move. Don't block the entrance." They obeyed, drifting toward one of the nearest pillars. More soldiers poured in behind them, filling the chamber with noise and movement. Hobbs let out a low whistle, standing next to them.

"Quite the place, right?" Nate snorted.

"Looks like a good place to have a grave." Hobbs chuckled and clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"No one dying here gets one. They just get back up." That wiped the grin off Nate's face.

"Even if the necromancer spares you," Hobbs continued calmly, "there's too much death mana in the air. You stay here long enough, you'll rise as a mindless creature sooner or later." Nate swallowed, visibly imagining himself as a shambling corpse. Rayne didn't comment, but his gaze drifted around the chamber. Hobbs wasn't wrong. The air was thick with death mana. It pressed against Rayne's senses constantly, crawling along his skin.

He wondered briefly if Hobbs had some way of sensing mana despite not being a spellsword. Or maybe the density was simply impossible to ignore. Rayne tightened his grip on his shield and glanced toward the massive archway that led deeper into the dungeon. With this much death mana in the air, he half-expected undead to come pouring through it at any moment. But nothing of that sort happened. No undead came flooding through the archway.

Instead, the rest of the soldiers continued pouring into the massive chamber in an orderly flow, the echo of boots and armor slowly replacing the earlier tension. It didn't take long for Commander Evans and the captains to impose order. Shouted commands echoed across the chamber, and formations were drawn up with practiced efficiency. Warbands aligned into a long, continuous body—wide at the front, tapering as it stretched back—until the army resembled the body of a snake.

Captain Edran's warband took position at the tail. Varrick joined them moments later, drifting in without ceremony. For some reason, he stopped beside Rayne, eyes roaming the chamber with idle interest.

"I'm sure the capital nobles will be gossiping about this expedition for weeks," Varrick said lightly.

"Excited?" Rayne grunted.

"As excited as I can be about walking into a dungeon full of undead." Varrick laughed quietly, apparently satisfied with that answer. Commands rippled forward, and the army began to move into the hallway. Scouts advanced ahead of the formation, just far enough to act as feelers. The army followed at a measured pace, shields raised and weapons ready. Glowstones embedded in the walls bathed the hallways in a steady pale light, casting long shadows that clung to the pillars and crawled across the floor.

The ceiling was impossibly high. Rayne couldn't see it—only darkness stretching upward, swallowing the tops of the pillars whole. Despite being near the rear, no one lowered their guard. Shields stayed up. The formation moved slowly, boots striking stone in a steady rhythm. And an hour passed just like that with no undead charging at them. Rayne noticed a few shoulders easing ahead and around him, and a few men even murmured quietly with each other. He didn't relax. Undead were coming.

Whether now or hours later didn't matter. And despite being in the rear, he didn't want to take chances. His caution proved justified an hour later. A growling shriek tore through the stillness, and shouts followed immediately.

"Shields up!"

"Front ranks, brace!" Rayne couldn't see what was happening so far ahead, but the sound carried clearly—the rush of bodies, the clatter of steel, the familiar snarling chaos of undead. A few squads further up the line broke formation and rushed forward to reinforce the front. He guessed that there were at least hundreds of undead at the front, and the mages and spellswords didn't want to waste their energy yet.

"They'll never make it this far," Heins muttered behind him.

"Don't say that," Rayne replied immediately.

"The necromancer knows normal undead are fodder. Keep your guard up. There must be a—" He stopped mid-sentence as something prickled along his senses. A dense mass of death mana moved closer, and his eyes raked the ranks to see if there was anything he'd missed before realising the enemy wasn't in front. But above them.

"Move back!" Rayne shouted. Varrick and Casper must have sensed the death mana moving too as they snapped into motion the very second. A translucent [Force Shield] snapped into existence over their heads just as shapes dropped out of the darkness above. They were spiders. They slammed against the shield, bounced off, and hit the stone hard. Casper's flames followed instantly, washing over them in a burst of heat. The spiders shrieked once before burning into twisted, smoldering husks.

The tail of the army erupted into motion. At first it was just one or two—dark silhouettes peeling free from the shadows above and crashing down onto the shield with a hollow thud. Then more followed. Some fell on their own. Others were shaken loose by stray arrows and spells fired toward the ceiling, bodies tumbling down in uneven arcs. One of them bounced off the shimmering barrier and landed hard right in front of Rayne. And he finally got a look at it. It was an arcspider.

The same spiders he'd fought in the troll cave, but this one was different from those. It was larger, its body swollen and bloated in places, its once-hard black chitin cracked and dulled. Rot clung to its joints, dark flesh visible beneath broken plates. One of its eyes hung loose, leaking a thick black fluid, while the others burned with a faint, sickly glow. It was undead, and he immediately moved to cut it down. The arcspider lunged at him, mandibles snapping as it slammed into his shield.

Rayne twisted his arm and swatted it aside, the impact throwing it off balance. Before it could recover, he stepped forward and brought his boot down hard. Chitin cracked under the stomp. The spider shrieked, its legs buckling, and Rayne drove his sword straight into its cluster of eyes. The blade sank in with wet resistance. The creature twitched violently, legs scraping uselessly against stone. Rayne yanked his sword free and kicked the corpse away, sending it skidding into the wall.

He moved immediately to the next one. Varrick's [Force Shield] continued to hold overhead, deflecting falling bodies and webs, but there were too many spiders. Casper couldn't unleash wide spells with soldiers packed together so tightly. Webbing shot out in thick strands, snagging shields and armor, forcing formations to bunch even closer. Rayne pushed forward with his party, cutting down anything that came within reach.

Blades stabbed at the undead while Bran's arrows kept a few of them away long enough for them not to get overwhelmed. On the side, Hobbs crushed the arcspiders, his axe smashing bodies into the stone floor. Ahead of them, Jason, Axel, Captain Edran, and the other squad leaders were doing the same—shouting orders, cutting down as many as they could, and making sure no spider entered their formation. But not every warband was as efficient.

As Rayne sliced through a thick line of webbing and buried his blade into another arcspider's thorax, he heard screams from further up the line. His eyes flicked up just long enough to see it. More undead spiders were dropping ahead, and they didn't have the advantage of a [Force Shield] hanging above them. The spiders landed directly onto soldiers' backs, mandibles stabbing between armor plates. Blood sprayed as men went down, screams cut short as others rushed in to help, but mostly failed to reach them in time.

Rayne ground his teeth. A part of him wanted to move and help them all. But he didn't. Breaking ranks here would only doom his own warband. So he stayed where he was, stabbing and slashing, blade rising and falling as undead arcspiders burst apart around him. And through it all, one thought rang cold and clear in his mind. This was only the beginning of their expedition.

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