Chương 94: Chapter 93. Fight down below

It took two full hours before the debris finally stopped falling. For most of that time, the warband remained within the recessed gap between the ledges, pressed under solid stone while the dungeon continued to groan outside. Stones had kept crashing down in waves at first, then gradually lessened, until eventually only small fragments rolled off the cliff with hollow echoes. No one moved to leave early. After nearly being crushed alive, even the boldest soldiers understood the value of waiting.

They had barely rested since entering the dungeon. Between undead ambushes, the gas-filled chamber, the giant lizard, descending the stairs, and now this collapsing ledge, their bodies had been pushed without mercy. So they lay still. Some stretched out flat on the cold stone floor. Others leaned back against the wall, helmets removed, eyes closed. A few drank from canteens or sipped potions in careful measures, conserving what little they had left. Rayne did the same.

He sat with his back against the wall beside his party, sword resting across his thighs. His arms felt heavy now that the adrenaline had faded. His lungs still burned faintly from dust, and there was a dull ache behind his eyes that hadn't been there before. A part of him wanted to train. At least his mana manipulation, so he could finally get the skill. Even subtle exercises could refine control, according to Casper. But when he checked inward at his core, he felt how drained he truly was.

His mana core was sitting at barely a quarter. He had pushed it hard with repeated [Death Strikes], and it would be foolish to drain himself further. So he let it regenerate naturally. For a portion of those two hours, Rayne didn't even realize when his eyes closed. He must have drifted off at some point, because the next thing he knew, someone was nudging his shoulder.

"Rayne," Kesh muttered quietly.

"It's stopped completely." Rayne blinked and straightened at once. For a moment, he was disoriented. Then he looked toward the entrance and saw it. The ledge beyond was silent. There were no more falling stones. No more tremors. The air had settled, dust hanging faintly but no longer stirred by fresh impacts. He frowned slightly. He hadn't meant to fall asleep. But when he thought about it, he had been awake for over a day.

With constant tension and combat, mental exhaustion had crept in quietly, even if his stats kept his body working. He exhaled slowly and stood. The path ahead was littered with debris. Large slabs, broken chunks, and scattered fragments covered the ledge. It would slow them down, but at least it wasn't raining death anymore. Captain Edran didn't waste time seeing their way clear.

As soon as it became apparent that the collapse had ended, he called for two scouts—Bran alongside one other—and gave them orders to scout out the area and report back in under an hour. The two scouts moved out, stepping lightly over loose rubble and hugging the inner wall as they disappeared along the ledge. The warband waited again. When around forty minutes passed, Bran and the other scout finally returned, dust-covered but unharmed, and seeing them, several soldiers visibly relaxed.

"There are more recessed sections like this along the ledge," Bran reported.

"Likely designed as safe points."

"And the collapse?" Edran asked.

"Doesn't look like it will repeat," Bran replied.

"If it was heat-triggered, it was already activated once. I doubt the dungeon will use the same method twice on the same path. And we sensed no other trap."

"And monsters?"

"There were none that we saw, Captain." Captain Edran nodded once, looking at Casper, then at the rest of the soldiers, and shouted, "Form up." Exhausted or not, the soldiers rose one by one, moving to adjust their gear and make sure everything was in its place. Then the warband began moving again along the ruined ledge. But it wasn't as easy as descending the stairs. With debris scattered across the ledge, maintaining proper formation became nearly impossible.

They had to break ranks repeatedly, stepping around shattered slabs and jagged stone that blocked their path. A few stronger soldiers even moved toward the larger boulders, trying to roll them off the narrow walkway to clear the way faster.

"Leave it!" Captain Edran snapped immediately.

"Keep walking. Don't waste strength on rocks." The reprimand came sharp and without room for argument. The men backed off and resumed their pace. As Rayne walked, careful not to slip on loose gravel, he finally glanced over the open side of the ledge. What he saw made him narrow his eyes. Below them wasn't an abyss as he had initially assumed. It was another section of the dungeon. Wide stone corridors ran parallel beneath the ledge, dimly lit by glowstones embedded in the walls. He even caught sight of movement.

There were undead down below. They wandered through the lower passage in loose clusters, rotting figures dragging rusted weapons and moving without coordination. One massive boulder from the earlier collapse had punched through the ceiling of that lower corridor and crushed a handful of them beneath it. Seeing it made him wonder what level they were on. Had they descended close to the final level, or were they moving in circles on the second level or something? The scale of the dungeon made it hard to judge.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. But there was no way to confirm it from here. So he kept walking. Slowly, conversations began blooming again among the warband. Nothing serious. Mostly complaints about the dust coating their mouths and throats. A few joked dryly about preferring undead over collapsing ceilings. They passed several more recessed sections built into the wall, each roughly half an hour apart.

Captain Edran allowed only ten minutes of pause at each one. It wasn't much. But Rayne could see the difference. The short breaks helped them take a breather and replenish themselves before they started moving again. Still, after passing the third such section of the ledge, something bothered Rayne. They had been walking for a long time now. And yet, there hadn't been a single monster on this entire ledge. The silence felt wrong, and he almost wondered if there would be another ambush.

As that thought lingered in his mind, Rayne noticed something ahead. The scouts had paused suddenly. Rayne slowed slightly when he saw that. For a brief moment, he wondered if they had found monsters or any traps up ahead. Another collapsing ceiling would surely be the worst thing to hit them. But then Quinn broke away from the front and jogged back toward the main force. Captain Edran noticed him at once and paused, one brow rising slightly as the scout approached.

"What is it?" Edran asked. Quinn didn't look alarmed. Just tense as he reported, "There are shouts and noises coming from ahead, Captain." Edran's eyes narrowed.

"Monsters?" Quinn shook his head.

"No. It sounds like a battle. We don't know exactly what's going on yet, but Bran and the others are moving ahead to investigate." Captain Edran immediately glanced at Casper, who looked confused, her gaze drifting toward the open side of the ledge. Then the captain gave Quinn a nod before commanding, "Let's keep moving!" As they marched again, the warband picked up pace, and Rayne perked up his ears to hear any sounds. Ten minutes passed before Rayne began to hear it himself. It was faint at first.

A distant clang of metal striking metal. Then he heard something louder—like an explosion, muffled by distance and stone—before human shouts started to emerge from up ahead. Rayne's eyes never left the front, and he wondered if they had somehow caught up to the main force. But the sounds weren't coming from ahead along the ledge. They were coming from below.

Another ten minutes passed, and the noises grew clearer—the clash of swords, the roar of men, and the guttural screeches of undead that Rayne was acutely familiar with now. After nearly half an hour, there was no doubt left. The battle wasn't on their level. It was beneath them. One by one, soldiers began drifting toward the open edge of the ledge, careful not to slip on the gravel. Rayne did the same with his party and moved forward and looked down from the edge. And all of them froze at once.

Below them, a war unfolded in a vast stone chamber held up by massive pillars. Thousands of undead filled the chamber floor—common undead, lords, bloated corpses, towering abominations stitched from mismatched limbs. They surged in waves, clashing against tightly packed ranks of soldiers. Shield walls interlocked with each other as spears thrust forward in rhythm. Behind them, mages unleashed bursts of flame and arcs of lightning that tore through clusters of undead.

Explosions rippled across the battlefield, lighting up the cavern in violent flashes. From the height of the ledge, Rayne could clearly see the scale of it. The undead were at least thrice the size of their army. They flooded the chamber in endless waves, pouring in from broken corridors and archways carved into the cavern walls. Shield walls below held firm for now, but they were surrounded on almost every side.

The main line faced forward, but undead pressed from the flanks as well, forcing smaller squads to peel off and plug gaps before they widened. And it wasn't only from the ground. Undead arcspiders crawled across the pillars and walls, their rotten limbs clinging to stone before they leapt down into the middle of formations. Rayne saw one land directly behind a line of spearmen, fangs sinking into the back of a soldier's neck before a blade cut it in half.

Another dropped into the rear where mages were casting, forcing them to break concentration as guards scrambled to intercept. Even as mages took care of half of them before they descended, there were just too many of them, and using stronger spells might just get the ceiling to drop down on them. The battlefield was chaos in its purest form. And the centre of the chamber grabbed his attention the most.

Spellswords moved in pairs and trios, weaving through undead lords and twisted chimeras that towered above normal corpses. Elementals charged in metal-plated armor, only to be shattered apart by coordinated strikes. Each powerful undead that rose was met by equally powerful soldiers cutting it down. At the forefront of that chaos stood the Crown's Hand. Rayne spotted Selene almost immediately. Her blade was caught in blazing light, arcs of mana trailing behind each swing.

She moved through the undead like a dancer through still air, stepping, twisting, and cutting. Every strike found flesh and blood. Every movement flowed into the next without pause. Undead fell around her in heaps. Varrick smiled faintly at the sight, but Rayne only gave the man a glance before looking back at the battlefield. Honestly, Rayne wasn't surprised by the display of the Crown's Hand. He had expected them to lead. What he hadn't expected was Commander Evans. The man wasn't in the rear issuing commands.

He was at the front. A massive greatsword rested in his hands, and around his body flickered the projection of a crimson bull—its form made of mana, translucent but solid in presence. Each time he swung his blade, the bull lunged forward with him, smashing into the undead with devastating force. When the sword descended, the bull's horns tore through flesh and bone. Dozens of undead lords and elementals were thrown aside in seconds, bodies crushed and shattered as if trampled by something far larger than a man.

Rayne didn't know what spell that was. But he really wanted to know. Behind Evans, the other captains supported the slaughter. He even spotted Captain Clark on slightly elevated ground, crossbow in hand and firing projectiles made of pure mana. Each shot from him pierced through multiple undead in a straight line, exploding in bursts of contained force. But despite all of that power, the undead kept coming. More and more poured into the chamber.

Rayne felt a faint unease as he watched the flow and wondered if the wave was just endless. Beside him, Kesh muttered quietly, "I hated separating from the main army… but I would have died if I was down there." Varrick snorted, hearing him.

"Have more confidence. They'll win. Even if it takes some deaths, it's acceptable. Fewer men are dying than I expected either way." Rayne almost frowned at those words and didn't like how easily the man dismissed the lives of soldiers. But he said nothing and kept watching. It wasn't time to have arguments. The more he watched, the more he realised Varrick's words weren't wrong, even if the tone was. Even with casualties, the army was moving forward and killing efficiently.

Still, the more undead fell, the more something felt wrong to him. Rayne scanned the battlefield again and realised one thing. Despite this chamber clearly being the main ground for battle that the necromancer had chosen, he himself was absent from it. Where was he? As he thought that, his senses prickled suddenly, and he felt a wave of oppressive death mana wash over the chamber like a tide. At once, the undead shrieked as the mana touched them, and they immediately became more aggressive.

A few soldiers staggered back, and Rayne wondered what was going on. It was then that he saw a figure move forward from one of the archways.

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