Chapter 212 - Process of Extermination (Patreon)

The sound of a gong ringing echoed through the desert as Zeke’s mace slammed against Rumas’s hastily raised shield, but the smaller combatant used the resulting momentum of the rebound to aim a spinning, two-handed attack at the former paladin’s armored though. It landed with titanic force, adding the screeching sound of rent metal to the battle’s unique symphony. It was music to Zeke’s ears.

He kept moving, narrowly avoiding the dark paladin’s furious retort – an overhand sword strike that blistered through the air, leaving smoky tendrils of black energy in its wake. Zeke kicked out at Rumas’s leg with enough force to shatter rocks. However, the former paladin’s power was that of a level twenty-five boss-tier monster, and a mere kick, no matter how powerful, was no match for his sturdy footing.

But that was okay, because Zeke added another mace strike to the mix, buckling the leg and sending the man-turned-undead monster to one knee. Rumas let out a roar of fury that Zeke didn’t hear. Instead, he swung his mace in a sledgehammer blow that would have cracked the former paladin’s collarbone.

It never landed.

Zeke had no idea how much of Abdul Rumas still remained within the monster. He was clearly an undead puppet, little different from the zombies that assailed Zeke from every side, but some of the man’s martial prowess had survived the process that had transformed him into an undead monster. Otherwise, even as powerful as he was, he would’ve stood little chance against Zeke. As it was, though, he found himself continuously surprised when Rumas broke out an advanced maneuver – never more so than when the former paladin blocked Zeke’s overhand strike with an upraised forearm, then followed it up with a shield bash that sent him flying back into the horde of gathered undead.

Zeke gasped as he felt at least a few ribs break and a few important organs displace, but his armor held fast. He had been fighting for long enough that the enchantments had come into play; so long as he continued holding onto [Heart of the Berserker], it would be nigh unbreakable. That, however, didn’t really do much for blunt force trauma; even though the armor maintained its shape, he felt a good deal of the force in his far-less-durable body.

He hit with predictable force, bowling the lesser creatures over and not stopping until his momentum was spent. When he came to a stop, the mindless monsters wasted no time in clawing, scraping, and biting. Their attacks were largely impotent, but it was still an unnerving experience.

The zombies and other undead monsters continued to pile onto him, and the weight pressed down, smothering his body under the sheer mass of hundreds of rotting creatures.

Zeke coughed up blood and groaned. Even the pain resistance that had come with his racial transformation wasn’t enough to block out the agony of having most of his left side crushed. He couldn’t move his arm, a few ribs were broken, and, judging by how hard it was to breathe, he had a punctured lung. And it was getting worse with every zombie.

Panicking, Zeke dismissed his mace and took a page out of the zombies’ book. If they wanted to claw at him, he would do the same. He could only move a few inches one way or the other, but with his stats, that was enough. Ripping and tearing, clawing and scraping, each of his small attacks fed a little more vital energy back to him. At first, it wasn’t enough to do more than assuage his pain, but after a while, Zeke felt his flesh mending and his bones knitting themselves back together.

It was an uncomfortable process, made more so by being at the bottom of a pile of zombies, but Zeke didn’t let up. As he worked – and it was the most tedious sort of labor – he clawed his way to enough room that he could fully swing his arm. When he did, he activated [Life Scythe], sending an arc of red energy slicing through the monsters. When it hit – and it couldn’t miss – it dragged the zombies’ life energy away and adding it to his own.

Zeke gasped at the influx; with how tightly the monsters were packed together, the skill was more effective than he could have expected, and he was flooded with enough vital energy that his body completely healed in the space of a second. Bones snapped back together, muscle fibers fused, and his mind cleared.

With teeth gritted, and both arms healthy, Zeke’s efforts more than doubled. Soon, he had enough room to add his feet to the mix, and before long, he’d clawed his way back to the surface. With a gout of black ichor and rotting flesh, Zeke burst through the mound of zombies only to see a sea of undead.

In the time it had taken him to break free, the horde had surged forward. The worst had come to pass, and giant undead Jotuns were hammering into the wall, widening the gap for more of the army to pour through. In the gap, Ahmed, along with seventeen of the city’s elite, battled Rumas.

It wasn’t quite a worst-case scenario, but it wasn’t good either.

Zeke kicked his way out of the mound of zombies, barely even feeling their grasping hands and thrusting claws. He heard them, though. The constant moans and groans, the screech of monstrous claws against metal, and, more than anything, the constant barrage of one skill after another descending from the walls. In the distance, Zeke heard the evidence of Abby’s fight as thunder rolled over the battlefield.

Thankfully, his helmet blocked at least some of the smell, though even the bits that came through was almost enough to knock a man down. Rotting flesh, even when it was ambulatory, was not a pleasant odor.

Zeke finally broke free, and when he did, he found himself rolling down the zombie pile until he crashed to the blood-soaked sands. Even as he did, the rest of the zombie horde surged around him, threatening a repeat of the smothering attack he’d just broken. Zeke couldn’t allow that, so he sprang to his feet, summoned his mace, and began the laborious process of carving his way through the army, one titanic swing of his mace at a time.

Each swing crushed at least one undead monster, but, almost just as often, he took two or three at the same time. It didn’t matter; there were always more waiting. Thankfully, Zeke was like a machine, hewing his way through the horde with brutal efficiency. The zombies couldn’t harm him through his armor, and powered by his enormous strength, his every swing was deadly. On top of that, he had a constant influx of vital energy, stolen via the [Leech Strike] version of [Life Scythe] to keep him from keeling over in exhaustion.

In short, Zeke was the perfect man for the job, and he did it well. So long as he didn’t stop moving, so long as he kept his momentum, he was unstoppable – at least by the zombies, be they elite, mundane, or monstrous in nature.

The same couldn’t be said for the handful of flesh golems he encountered. However, even though those unholy amalgamations of hundreds of disparate corpses were powerful enough to give Zeke pause, they were too slow to hit him. And they fell before his mace just as their smaller cousins had, albeit much more slowly.

The wraith-like reapers were a different story, though. Never was that more apparent than when Zeke narrowly dodged one of their scything weapons wreathed in green energy. It scraped against his left pauldron along the way, dragging a thin cut as it went. That was enough to tell Zeke that a direct hit wouldn’t end well for him; if a glancing blow could mar his armor, then it wasn’t difficult to imagine that a more solid strike would rend through it completely. Luckily, the reapers weren’t nearly as durable as the flesh golems, and it only took a few swings from his mace to send them permanently to the ground.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of wading through undeath, Zeke caught sight to the walls. Or more importantly, the enormous former paladin who was still being held at bay – if only barely – by Jariq’s elites. However, when he broke through the thicket of zombies, he was crestfallen to find that, of the seventeen who’d initially accompanied Ahmed, there were only a handful left. And they all looked like they were on their last leg.

Zeke sprinted forward, shouldering a few zombies out of the way, and, with a roar that was lost in the cacophony of battle, leapt. Decorated with bits of stubbornly clinging decayed flesh, his mace came down in a horrifying overhand swing that was powered by every single point of his considerable strength.

Rumas, though, was a veteran of thousands of battles, and even transformed as he was, he still had the instincts of a man who’d faced death more times than he could count. At the last second, he hunched his shoulders, and the blow that had been aimed at his helmeted head, found his broad back instead. The armor crumpled, and black ichor spurted, but it didn’t keep the enormous former paladin from whipping around and, with a backhanded blow, catching Zeke with his broad shield.

For the second time that day, Zeke went flying through the air. However, whether it was luck or mere chance, this instance didn’t send him deeper into the horde. Rather, he hit the remnants of the wall, skating along the edge like a skipped rock. It was a humbling experience, being tossed around like a ragdoll, especially after dealing with the other undead so easily. But Zeke was no stranger to such situations, and as soon as he gathered himself, he tossed a quick [Life Scythe] at the horde to heal any injuries he’d sustained. And given that his endurance was steadily dipping to progressively more dangerous levels by the minute, his body was definitely the worse for wear.

But that was what his skills were for.

The moment Zeke felt his body mend itself back together, he took off at a trot, running along the wall until he reached the first zombified Jotun. Leaping, he caved in the creature’s skull without slowing, and continued toward Rumas, whose brief attack on Zeke had left him exposed to the other defenders, resulting in the undead paladin being pushed back a handful of feet.

But it wouldn’t last. Zeke knew that Ahmed and the others, despite having numbers on their side, were no match for such a powerful enemy. No – it would have to be him.

Knowing that, Zeke embraced his most powerful skill. He didn’t want to use it – not unless necessary. It was his trump card. His ace in the hole. And using it would drain all the momentum he’d built over the previous few weeks. But it was increasingly obvious that he couldn’t finish Rumas off without it.

A disappointment, to be sure, but he could always build more momentum.

When Zeke reached the gap in the wall, he subverted his instincts, which told him to continue his fruitless attacks on the undead former paladin, and repositioned himself in front of the haggard defenders.

“We can’t hurt him,” Ahmed panted. “Any ideas?”

“Yeah. One,” Zeke answered, his back to the captain. “Hope this works, because it’s all I’ve got.”

Then, he sprinted forward. Instead of leaping and aiming at Rumas’s head, though, he just swung at the biggest target available to him. Predictably, the paladin blocked him with his shield, but that didn’t matter. The moment Zeke’s mace hit the black steel surface, he used [Unleash Momentum].

A deep, basso reverberation of sound swept through the horde, followed closely by an intense shockwave that tore the closest zombies apart. Zeke embraced his martial path, focusing on maintaining his footing and guiding the force in the right direction. The shield shattered. Rumas’s armor splintered. And his body followed suit. Bits of flesh, shards of bone, and a fine spray of black ichor erupted into the air as Zeke’s attack tore a huge crater in the former paladin’s chest.

For the first time, Rumas staggered and fell. Zeke pounced, raining one blow after another, using a lesser form of [Unleash Momentum] on every fourth attack, on the paladin-turned-monster’s body. Rumas struggled, trying to swipe at Zeke with his sword or the ruined stub of an arm that had survived Zeke’s attack, but his efforts were for naught.

Zeke was vaguely aware that, around him, the defenders were keeping the zombie horde at bay, but he had no attention to spare. He needed to end Rumas, here and now, or he would eventually recover via some unknowable means. He had done it before, after the fight outside Tucker’s tower, and he would do it again, Zeke was certain. The only way to prevent that was not to leave anything left to regenerate.

Minutes – and hundreds of strikes – later, the former paladin finally went still. Zeke kept going for a couple more minutes, just to be sure. And finally, when he allowed himself to stop, he took stock of the damage he had caused. There was nothing solid left of Rumas above the waist. His entire torso, his arms, and his head had all been pummeled to a pulp, and only a pile of formless flesh and shards of black steel remained.

Zeke reached down and, with a thought, looted his adversary. It wasn’t even a conscious decision – just habit. But in retrospect, it was probably a good one, because he received a sword that seemed like quite a find. Zeke obviously preferred his mace, but he suspected he might find use for the weapon.

A scream of pain drug Zeke from his reverie, and he looked around to see that, despite the loss of their most powerful ally, the undead army hadn’t lost a step. That was okay, though. So long as he didn’t do anything monumentally stupid, he could hold the breach himself. But for now, Zeke decided to take care of the biggest threat – the giants that could bring down the walls and create more breaches.

Rolling his shoulders, Zeke took off and set about the process of extermination. It wouldn’t be an easy fight; in fact, Zeke expected it to be a long, hard slog through mountains of rotting flesh, but he comforted himself with one, simple fact: he wasn’t that far from level twenty-four, and these zombies were just high enough of a level to push him over the edge. It would take hundreds, probably even thousands, but that wasn’t anything new. Zeke had fought armies of monsters before, and he had always come out on top.

Such thoughts ceased the moment he engaged the first zombified Jotun, aiming a horizontal strike at the thing’s knee. His mace went through it without pause, crushing bone and flesh alike until the giant fell with a thundering thud. Zeke pounced on it much as he had Rumas, and quickly destroyed its brain.

It was a good start, but Zeke knew he had a long day ahead of him.