Chương 26: Chapter Twenty-Six: Taking a Stand

TWENTY-SIX It attacked with a single minded purpose, blade swishing back and forth as it staggered toward him. Roan retreated slowly from the zombie, trying to figure out how to kill it. The broken skull continued to heal while a hint of life started to spread across its cheeks. The shattered cheek popped back into place as it continued to get closer." Is it healing itself? What happens if it fully regenerates?" Roan didn't want to see what happened if it got fully healed.

Every second that he didn't find a way to permanently kill it, the zombie was getting faster. It lunged forward and Roan had to bat away the sword with the head of the warhammer. Its free hand snapped forward, clawed fingers aiming for his throat. Roan leaned back and the zombie's fingers brushed his chest. It growled in anger and kept rushing forward, hand grasping not at his throat, but toward the pendant on his chest.

Roan kicked it in the chest to stagger it back and give him a moment of breathing room as he backed up to give himself space to work. The pustule on its neck pulsed again and it grew slightly. Roan felt his stomach lurch as he stared at the grotesque tumor-like growth. He stopped his retreat and squared up, his shoulder set as he took aim for the tumor on the side of its neck. The sword came up ineffectually, Roan's blow too powerful to stop.

"Oh, that's gross," Roan said as he stepped back, the stench of it making his stomach churn. The tumor had popped the moment the head of the hammer had hit it. Skin split like overripe melon and chunks of pus and lumps of flesh came pouring out in a wave. The zombie's legs folded under it and it collapsed facedown. The cyst continued to pulse, pushing out more and more of the oozing morass of corrupted flesh. It stunk like sewage and rotten flesh mixed together, filling the area around it with noxious fumes.

I NFERIOR REANIMATED CORPSE 300 CREDITS ANOMALIES DESTROYED: 1/4327 HIDDEN QUEST FOUND FIND THE SOURCE OF THE CORRUPTION ON THIS LEVEL BONUS: CLEANSE THE CORRUPTION"That's a nice bit of change," Roan said to himself as he took stock of what had just happened. If he was piecing everything together correctly then he thought he had what was going down on the level. There was a source of life energy and it was being corrupted. Said energy was reanimating the skeletons, but they had known this.

Amulets and collections arrays had been set up to try to purify and cleanse the energy. It obviously hadn't worked and the more skeletons they'd killed the more energy had been released to gather in the arrays. Which woke up the guardians. A delicate ecosystem that the tower climbers had upset by selling the collection arrays. Which had caused the energy to reanimate the dead." But why? Is it just a theme for the tower to play with? What if we hadn't sold the collectors? Then would the hidden quest appeared?

Would we just be stuck grinding out the shitty skeletons and selling their junk?" There were too many unknowns. Roan had to focus on what he did know and could control. Right now there were another four-thousand or so anomalies wandering around that were worth three-hundred credits each. And now that he knew about their weakness, it shouldn't be a hard grinding spot if they kept coming down the boulevard. Stolen story; please report." If they keep coming. What if I have to hunt them down?"

Roan couldn't help the thoughts as he looked back down the boulevard to see if anyone had followed him.

"Wonder what the results will be of them coming down this way without the amulet?" Roan wondered out loud. In his pockets were dozens of the little necklaces that he'd quietly acquired from the sorting crews." I might have seriously screwed them over. Accidentally." There was no way he had managed to secure all of the amulet of protection necklaces, but he had quite a few of them. He just hoped that whatever the amulets protected them from wasn't fatal.

Shuffling steps brought his attention back toward the darkness where more of the zombies were coming forward. Roan saw that it was not one or two, but dozens of them all staggering forward in a wave. As they passed the alleys they would peel off in ones or twos and wander down them, but the main herd continued toward him with the breeze of corrupted life energy on their backs. Each of the lurching reanimated corpses had growths on them. It was easy to see the head sized lumps.

The closest of the corpses to him wore sect robes in colors he wasn't familiar with. Blood stains in the center of her chest showed her death, but her bloodshot, pale green eyes seemed full of life. She lifted a broken spear up. The haft had been snapped halfway down, but the point of it still looked plenty sharp as she suddenly lunged forward. She covered ten feet in a heartbeat, the blade angled for Roan's neck.

He twisted to the side and struck with the warhammer, hitting her in the hip and tossing her like a ragdoll to the side. She rolled in a mess of robes before rising to her feet in a smooth motion. Something popped in her leg and it shuddered as the wound Roan had inflicted disappeared.

"Where's the tumor?" Roan looked her over but couldn't see it at first before she turned her torso, dropping into a partial crouch. On her shoulder he could see where her robes were straining to contain the growth.

"Difficult, but not impossible. Timing it going to be tight," Roan muttered to himself as he continued to back up, trying to keep distance from the main horde and his current fight. Then the woman's spear tip caught on fire. At least it looked like fire, the flames blue as they floated around the edge of the long spear blade. She moved again in a burst of speed that cut the distance in a blink of an eye. Roan dropped low in a crouch as she slashed the space his neck had been." Too close."

With the violence of her attack she'd twisted her body and was now perpendicular to Roan. The pustule was right there, only inches from his face, but too close to use the long handled warhammer on it. Roan punched her. His fist sank into the mass of flesh and with a wet squelch it popped. Liquid soaked through the fabric of her robes and drenched his hand as the zombie went limp and collapsed to the ground, spear rolling away as the fire flickered and died out.

Roan shook his hand and threw bits of gore off of it as he stepped back and blinked away the alerts." If they can even partially use their bloodlines, this is going to get dangerous quickly." Roan didn't know what that fire would have done if it touched him, but the speed at which the zombie had moved was shocking. If she had had even one other zombie occupying him, Roan didn't think he would have been able to survive that surprise attack.

He backed up a bit more but the horde had cut the space between them down to less than fifteen feet. Unless he turned and ran they'd keep closing the distance and he saw more of the robes or college uniforms in the mass of bodies than he felt confident about. Every few feet another group would peel off to wander the hallways, but it'd be a long time until they were thin enough he would feel confident fighting them without constantly retreating." Keep fighting or run back for reinforcements?"

Roan questioned himself as he kept backing up. He finally had a source of earnings only he could harvest at the moment. Enemies that he could kill easily enough if he was careful. If he danced on the razor's edge without cutting himself. Roan made his decision and set his feet as the next zombie came forward. Taoya. Tyler. Moira. Even Darren. All the bloodline users he'd seen so far had an edge he couldn't match. They were just as well-trained as he was, if not better, and had the advantage of their bloodlines.

And they were the weakest of their bloodlines to enter for the most part. Thousands like them had entered the tower over the decades and none had succeeded. If he was to clear the tower and achieve his goal he needed to surpass them all, to be strong enough he could break this tower on his climb. And he couldn't do that without taking risks." Time to cut their lead down a bit," Roan said to himself as the next zombie loped toward him, axe raised over its head in a double handed grip.