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Chapter 307: Phase Two
🕑 Added 2024-07-17 14:00:08 +0000 UTCPhase two was apparently an entire screaming army assaulting the walls. Well, shrieking, maybe. They sounded like a horror movie. And probably 'shambling towards' as much as assaulting.
Mason couldn't actually see what was going on. He was still busy shooting and slicing apart an increasingly wide variety of undead things coming out of the ground all over the city.
But he heard soldiers shouting from one side of the eastern wall to the other, and all Mason could think was 'why the east side?'
The floating city's fortress was more or less in the center of the city. The temple district seemed to be in the east, which Mason supposed might have been the obvious answer.
And maybe it was a simple matter of keeping their forces together for further commands or just manpower. But still, something about it bothered him.
He didn't see much reason why an undead horde couldn't be sent from multiple directions. Unless they had a limited means or method to breach the wall, and would flood all their forces through that breach...
Could the dragon magic its way through, despite the 'sorceresses' up there to stop him? It seemed entirely possible. But then there was more than one way to get through a wall, and humans had found plenty without magic. Mason decided it was time to get to the wall to take a look.
With no way to get word to the others, he turned and ran for the temple to at least tell Seamus.
"I'm going to the wall!" he shouted when he was close enough. "If the others come let them know! I'll leave Streak with you."
Seamus waved and nodded, and Mason really hoped he'd actually heard him. He took a minute to push Streak towards the pyramid with an unhappy growl. Then he dashed towards the edge of the city and the now constant drone of...noises, coming from outside.
"What's happening?" he called to a soldier near the gate as he paused at the stairs leading to the rampart.
The somewhat...half badger-looking guard turned and frowned, then his eyes widened as he seemed to recognize Mason.
"The um, dead are coming. Sir. All of 'em. But they won't get through the wall."
Mason definitely didn't like that answer. 'They won't get through the wall' was probably the last thing said by every doomed city in the world. Far better for the defenders to assume it would happen, and be ready for the fight to follow.
He nodded and took the stairs a few at a time, then remembered he was kind of a superhero, and leapt from platform to platform, skipping the stairs in between. A few soldiers pulled back in surprise as he flew by, then he was on the top and looking over the edge towards a coming tide of walking corpses.
"Jesus Christ," he said, regretting it as a few close soldiers seemed to hear his tone and shrivel.
He reminded himself he was some kind of walking myth to these people and had to act accordingly. He slowly forced himself to grin, and hoped it looked somewhat natural as he winked at the soldier next to him.
"Nice of them to gather up. Now we don't have to hunt them down."
"Ah. Yes. Sir." The bird-man's face was a little pale but he tried to smile a little. It would have to do.
Mason considered pulling his bow and starting to pad his kill count, but with so many undead he didn't think it was worth the mana. He needed better targets. He needed the dragon, or maybe its more powerful servants. And he needed to help show these soldiers on the wall that at least one of them wasn't afraid.
"Well," he said, leaning over the wall, thinking at least out there it would be considered natural terrain. "I'll see you in a bit."
Then he kicked his legs over the top of the stone, and dropped off without another word.
*
These walking corpses apparently weren't the same as the ones Mason had fought beneath the goblin caves. He'd assumed they were, doing his best to keep away from bites as he swirled his way through the 'ranks', hacking his enemy apart.
But still he was ready for the inevitable—his mind prepared for Apex Predator triggering that awful affinity again. It didn't come.
Mason growled as one of the zombies eventually grabbed his arm and bit just above the Sleeve before he tossed it away. The wound was pathetic, really, like some angry kid had bit him in a wrestling match, a bit of red skin and a dot of blood. No text about some terrible disease.
Mason smiled and got a bit sloppy after that. He stopped worrying about taking damage, cutting and kicking his way towards the outside of the city's gate. From every direction he pushed away claws and grasping hands, sometimes severing them.
Come on, he thought, butchering a path through the enemy army. Show me your tricks. Show me your leaders. Or I'll end your 'army' one useless zombie at a time.
Time lost its meaning. Mason 'killed', or destroyed, an endless litany of horrible sights and sounds. He tried not to think about the sometimes freshly dead and rotting corpses. There were women, sometimes children. How did they all die?
Most, at least, were old—basically walking skeletons with bits of tattered cloth and sometimes a dull piece of metal or a club. Mason wondered how many dead humans could be found in all the graveyards of the earth going back through history.
Then he wondered how many could be found now. How many just since their synthetic god had arrived and begun its 'game'?
He couldn't kill them all. It would take months. Years. A life time.
A kind of hopeless doom seized Mason's chest again, and he shook his head and growled even before the text scrolled.
[Dracolich mind effect: Blanket Fear: resisted.]
There you are, Mason thought, trying to force his old and new senses to find where the dragon was hiding.
But everything was filled with death. The stink of rot and somehow corrupted arcane energy like the goblin tunnels clogged his mind and nearly overwhelmed him. It was like he was breathing it in, slowly drowning in a growing cloud of filth and corruption.
Red eyes glowed in the endless waves of undead, capturing Mason's attention. He kicked a skeleton in the chest and shattered it as a creature rose up behind, as if hunched and hiding before.
The thing towered above the corpses. Its wings spread above them, bat-like but for the occasional feather. They looked like some crippled eagle's wings, the few feathers bloody, the tight skin half ruined and full of holes. The face was worse...it had big eyes opened too wide, veined like a man in endless agony, a man that should have been screaming.
Except instead of a mouth the creature had a rotting hole of flesh with...something poking out from inside. It looked like a beaked creature was living in the hollowed corpse of a giant zombie. It was an ape, Mason realized, except a kind of Frankenstein creation with a dozen body parts stitched together.
Mason shivered and activated Hunter's Mark as he cut down anything between him and the monstrosity. He felt a kind of terrible aversion, a wrongness to the creature that sucked away his thoughts except to think: it shouldn't exist.
It seemed to recognize his distaste. And maybe shared it. As he came forward it fell back, allowing another horde of the zombies to get between it and Mason. He started cutting them down.
Rotting flesh and coagulated blood covered everything. Mason felt disgusting and...sticky, with God knew only what now covering him, sometimes flecked with bone chips and dust. He had enough stinging, aching pieces to know he was taking wounds, too. But they were all superficial and healing quickly. That creature was going to die.
Mason was decapitating another zombie when the ground erupted.
Dirt and pieces of zombie blew apart, temporarily shrouding everything while Mason fell back and shielded his face with a Sleeve. He couldn't quite understand what was happening until he saw the ape-zombie creature in the back with some kind of purple magic growing in its hand.
Mason's bow was summoned before he gave it much thought. He flicked a Power Shot with practiced ease, feeling a rightness, a hit, like he'd just thrown a ball perfectly. The arrow struck the creature's wrist and severed it, and Mason winced because he wished he'd put it into the thing's eye instead.
As sometimes happened with other ruined 'channel' spells, Mason grinned when he saw the purple orb crackle out of control. It exploded on the ground, blasting the big zombie a few steps and a bunch of smaller zombies into oblivion. Mason didn't waste his moment.
He charged into the gap, slashing his way to the caster and cutting low with a Crippling Strike that actually worked. The creature tried to run, but instead limped and screeched in rage before spinning back and raking a claw in Mason's direction.
He fell back, but the thing projected like Phuong—the same purple magic raking the air a foot away from its actual hand.
The magic raked across Mason's chest. He growled in pain then launched himself forward, deciding with this creature offence was the best defence.
Everywhere it went it found Mason's Claws hacking bits and pieces of it. It soon seemed to come to the same conclusion as Mason, turning fully to shriek with that creepy little beak as another wave of purple magic grew all around it.
Mason stuffed his sword into the 'hole', and the screeching stopped.
[You have slain a Winged Glabrezau.]
[Planar Entity slain. Slightly increased planar slayer aura.]
All around him, zombies and skeletons simply collapsed. Hundreds, maybe thousands, all dropped like dolls with their strings cut.
So that was the answer.
All that mattered was the undead leadership. Or maybe demonic leadership. Destroy them, and the endless army would fall apart.
Kill enough, Mason expected, and the dragon would be forced to come out and try to deal with the defenders itself. He turned and ran for the wall, confident he could climb up without much difficulty, unlike these undead.
It was time to go get the others and end 'phase 2'.
