Bodies piled around Colm and his phantoms, one after another, until the street became a graveyard of shattered limbs and hollow stares. Colm moved like a storm through a sea of undead. Every motion, every cast, brought another corpse down beneath his feet. The ground lay thick with bodies, a grim carpet stretching in all directions. And still, they kept coming. Wave after wave. No end in sight.

Grunting, he felt Phantom Harbinger's duration end and he quickly summoned it once more. With a resounding thud, he felt Herb arrive and carve out a swathe in front of him.

"Perfect," Colm thought, a grin spreading across his face. Eyeing the massive spectral blade in Herb's hand, it felt like purpose itself. He watched as the harbinger carved a brutal arc through the undead ahead of him, their bodies torn apart by the sheer force of his swing and the resulting shockwaves.

Yet no matter how many they felled, more pressed in to replace them.

Grinning through the blood and water, Colm lunged forward, casting Abyssal Lance and Wavebound Surge with nearly every step. Each cast tore through flesh and bone. Some undead crumpled in an instant, but others, particularly the Berserkers, forced him into harder fights. When multiple clustered together, they slowed his movements, and occasionally an opening would appear behind him. A claw grazed his back.

He hissed in pain, only to feel Lingering Vitality surge through him, knitting the wound closed in seconds.

The anger boiled within him, rising with every swing of his blade. Lira. Just the name stoked the flames higher, a searing reminder of everything he'd lost. "Torn from my life for this... this endless, mind-numbing onslaught."

He clenched his jaw, muscles coiled tight.

"Still... it's better than before," he seethed, the bitter thought scraping against the inside of his skull. "At least now I get to fight back."

"Why is every goddamn thing in this world toying with me?"

First the Pitchcaller, then Lira, and now that Undead Usher. It had tried to outmaneuver him, keep him spinning in circles, wasting time, trying to break him down piece by piece.

His muscles ached. Blood dripped from his side. And yet his anger only grew stronger.

"I'm going to get stronger," he thought again, this time not as a vow but as a certainty.

"I'm going to get stronger," Colm growled before continuing, "And then I'm going to kill her."

His words barely left his mouth before a Berserker crashed into his side, its jagged blade carving a deep gash into his ribs. He roared in pain, staggering back, his vision blurring for a moment.

"Why is there no variety?" he thought, gritting his teeth. "Just Walkers and Berserkers. Again and again. Damnit!"

The monotony grated at him as much as the fight itself. Did that fucking Usher only command these two types? He didn't understand the logic. "Why just them? Is this all it had? Or was it deliberate?"

"And worse, how many of them are there?"

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

His movements became automatic, each strike fluid, each kill less meaningful. The threat faded into routine, a bloody rhythm he could no longer feel. But the exhaustion crept in. Slow, steady, inevitable.

Time blurred. He lost track of the count. Of enemies, of minutes, of steps. Just kill, shift, survive. Over and over, he felt Phantom Harbinger begin to fade, and every time, just as it slipped away, he reactivated it, allowing him and his phantoms to remain locked in the dance of death.

And the sea of undead kept rising. But like the tide, so did he.

* * *

Emma sighed, arms crossed as she and her team stood in silence, waiting for the cooldown on her teleport to finish.

"It's convenient," she muttered, "but I always hate the waiting." "We could be pushing forward already... but I guess it only saves a few minutes," she reasoned internally. "It's easier to coordinate when everyone just stays put, anyway."

Her gaze drifted around the cursed zone, and a shudder crept down her spine. She loathed this place. Everything about it was oppressive. The air felt thick with decay, and undead had a nasty habit of appearing at the worst possible times. Still, despite the dread curling in her gut, the quest stirred something else within her.

"Dad always talked about quests like this... It feels like a real opportunity."

She didn't expect to place high in the rankings, not with the competition in Brimhope. "Some absolute monsters are out here." Her thoughts turned to one in particular: Dorian Varn. Just the memory of him made her flinch.

That man's golden armor gleamed like a second sun, his laugh booming, larger than life. She remembered a guild training session he'd attended, where he knocked out every sparring partner without even breaking a sweat. And then there was the fire. Blinding, radiant, terrifying. She still remembered the heat that rolled off his spellwork, intense enough to make her skin prickle even from a distance.

"My money's on him to get the top rewards," she chuckled.

A voice cut through her thoughts from the right. "Hey, Emma. You good yet?"

She blinked, pulling herself back to the moment. Turning toward the speaker, she gave a sheepish smile. "Almost. Just a few more seconds. Everyone ready?"

The man waved his arms dramatically, eyebrows raised. "Yeah, we've been ready. Just waiting on you," he said with a chortle.

Emma rolled her eyes as the last flicker of cooldown faded. Her ability was ready. She took a breath.

"Alright. Ready."

The voices around her quieted instantly. She turned inward, focusing on the ability as mana rushed through her, draining like water down a sinkhole.

"This should be the last one... then we'll be there."

She grunted, pushing past the pull of the spell, eyes narrowing with concentration.

As the final seconds ticked away, a flash of light engulfed Emma's team, and in an instant, they were gone, reappearing just outside the shattered gates of Clayfell.

Everyone she brought here immediately shifted into combat stances, weapons drawn and ready. Emma did the same, bracing for an assault.

But nothing came.

No sounds of battle. No shuffling undead. Just silence and corpses.

"Where is everything?" she muttered, the question echoed by others around her.

Their plan had been simple: storm through the gates with some of the guild's strongest at the forefront, while more mobile operatives infiltrated on their own paths. It had been built on the assumption of heavy resistance.

But there was none.

Emma stepped forward, eyes narrowing as she scanned beyond the gate, down the ruined streets of Clayfell. Not even two hundred yards in, the ground was painted in carnage. Bodies split in half, limbs scattered like broken dolls, some reduced to little more than bloodied pulp. The devastation was so complete, so precise, that she faltered.

"Holy shit," she whispered.

Her eyes drifted upward.

Atop a grotesque mountain of corpses stood five figures, each one cloaked in an eerie white glow. The one at the center blazed brighter than the others, almost blinding. And then, impossibly, she saw water appear from nothing, forming at its feet in slow, graceful ripples as it moved.

Her breath caught as the figure tilted its head back and released a roar that shook the streets, the sound reverberating through her bones.

She shuddered, heart pounding, and found herself speaking without thinking.

"What... is that?"

* * *

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.