by R K Billiau
“Always, my Quaesitor.”
“Did Cora come through here? Did she reincarnate?”
“Ah yes, she did. She came here, and I judged her. She was offered a chance to change to any of the Primitive classes except for Chief and a chance to start anew somewhere else.”
“So, she took it then? She reincarnated in another tribe?” That poor tribe. At least we didn’t have to deal with her anymore though.
“No, she didn’t. She said, and I quote, ‘They won’t get rid of me that easily’ and kept her Hunter class while opting to stay in your zone.”
“She did? Where is she then? Why isn’t she with Tim?”
“That I cannot say. I can tell you that as she was being sent back, she was… intercepted.”
I thought of the Archon of Death I had met. “Oh, that’s not good.”
It nodded, picking up on the flashes of my visualizations. “Correct, it is not good. I am not sure of the Archon that intercepted her. I do know it is not the Archon of Death. We have been… talking… for a while now.”
That was something at least. I couldn’t imagine her running around with Death powers. “Then yes, I’ll have to leave now. I have to get back to the tribe.”
“Good luck to you Quaesitor, I hope that your tribe stops the horde and you can keep your class.” It turned as if to watch the viewing window.
“I’ll lose my class, too, if the tribe is wiped out?!”
“Yes, I have to play by the rules, which state that if your tribe is destroyed to a person, then all members lose their classes and must start again with a Primitive class.”
“You can’t let me dodge that since I’m, you know, your vassal and everything?”
It smiled and shook its head. “I must abide by the rules, I literally can’t not.”
“Wonderful,” I said.
I embraced the light and selected a spot in the cave to resurrect. My form materialized behind the battle formation of tribesmen.
“I told you so!” Madison said.
Chapter 32
I rolled my eyes at Madison, then gave her a cheesy grin. “Maybe dying is my superpower,” I said.
“Hah! It is! That’s hilarious!” She chuckled at that thought. “Did you get anything good out of that, or did you just launch yourself into the maw of doom for funsies?”
“I learned stuff!” I put my hands on my hips and stuck my tongue out at her in faux anger. “I learned some frightening stuff.” I switched to seriousness. Arnold came over with an ‘I told you so’ look on his face.
“That was fast. I assume by the way that horde is still coming you were unsuccessful?” he said.
“Okay, you were right, but I still think it was worth the try. I learned a lot. I don’t know how powerful Cora’s skill is, but she twisted Tim up so much I think he might be a little crazy.”
“He was never the most ‘normal’ anyway,” Arnold said.
“Maybe that’s a part of it then, but he was acting obsessed with Cora. Oh, the other thing. Cora is not with him. She had a chance to reincarnate, I learned.”
“How though? She had rarely died while she was with us!”
“This is the sick part. Cora must have taken out her core so she would raise as a zombie when killed, and had Tim put her in the death trap. The zombies that are coming? They are zombie-Cora’s. Then when she hit 100 deaths, she was given the chance to reincarnate. She didn’t take it though, she wanted to come back here. The Adjudicator said she was lost in transit on the way back out.”
“Lost in transit? That doesn’t sound like something that’s supposed to happen,” Arnold said.
“Well, the Adjudicator thinks it might involve another Archon… I don’t understand what that means, but it doesn’t bode well.”
“I’m beginning to not like these ‘Archons.’ Just how many of them are there, and much headache are they going to be?”
I shrugged. “The Adjudicator can’t tell me any of that, I’ve asked. What we have to worry about though, is that Tim is not going to stop. He wants to kill everyone, and throw them back in the death trap, even if it means no more zombies. He thinks we are all to blame for Cora missing and his obsession is bordering on Hollywood stalker levels.”
“So our situation doesn’t change very much. Disturbing about all the Cora zombies though.”
Kai, listening to all of this spoke up. “We should focus now, we have incoming.” Arnold and I turned our heads and looked out the cave entrance to behold Tim with his cadre of zombies surrounding him. Tim stopped and pointed his finger towards the cave entrance and his zombie traveling buddies made their way toward us. The herd of zombies slowly changed course to follow their lead and Tim pointed into it, a black beam of energy zapping from his finger three times, striking three different Cora zombies and they focused on him, standing in place.
Arnold shouted. “Gird your loins! Here they come!”
We almost died right then as the two lead Hunters stopped to look at Arnold wondering what the heck he was talking about. They got their spears up just in time to skewer the leading zombies and slow them down enough for the line behind them to stab them in the brains and turn them from undead to regular dead.
With our formation just at the entrance to the cave it would not take long for the press of zombies to push us deep in, then we would be dead for sure, and they’d surround our new spawn point. We hadn’t planned for there to be this many of them and I feared we were destined for failure.
Kai must have come to the same conclusion as he shouted to the formation. “Take them out and drop them around you! Build a barrier out of the corpses or else they’ll crush us!”
“Throwers, launch those rocks! Aim for the line behind the first, create as much debris and chaos as you can!” Arnold yelled out. The people behind the front line took careful aim with their rocks and loosed a volley into the ranks of undead. Some zombies dropped creating trip hazards and increasing the chaos. “Shaman! Get that crowd control going!”
Sarah raised her hand looking for a target then lowered it, her face pale. “Our Spirit Shock won’t work on them, they don’t have spirits!”
“Damn!” shouted Arnold. “Okay, stay in the back line, keep the ammo flowing for the throwers. Shaman throw also when you see an opportunity.” Sarah nodded, the frown on her face deepening. Worry was spreading through the tribe fast, and I could tell morale was shrinking.
We were holding the line, though. Kai would step up to the front to land powerful kicks, shoving back the zombies trying to get inside if they made it past the line. Our front-line fighters were getting tired quickly and racking up injuries.
“Prepare to swap ranks!” Arnold shouted, and the front line jabbed into the zombies to hold them in place, while the line behind them grabbed onto the spears that we stuck in, to allow the front to roll back and get a break.
“Mana at 50%!” Madison said as she finished using her Self Sacrifice. “I’ll be cutting into my health after that if I can’t rest.”
“Go back and rest up, don’t heal unless critical,” Arnold told her.
We had slain a dozen zombies working with precision and care. By creating trip hazards for the oncoming horde, it slowed them down enough that we couldn’t be pressed in. I was thinking this would work. Right until Tim strolled forward, coming to almost within stone throwing distance and tapped one of his zombies, then pointed to the battlefield. The three that had been protecting him swam into the melee and pulled out fallen bodies.
“Target the ones clearing the battlefield!” I shouted taking aim at one myself and letting fly. It hit right on the forehead gouging the flesh. The zombie ignored it.
I grabbed another rock and made to throw at that same one, but it got lost in the mix and I couldn’t tell which it was. This was a mess. I heard a loud SNAP and things got worse in a hurry. One of the crude spears the front-liners were using had broken, bouncing off a ribcage and leaving the Hunter over extended, his momentum causing an opportunity for sever
al zombies to pounce on him and rip him to shreds.
“Fill the hole!” Arnold shouted, but this had been just the opportunity Tim was waiting for. He pointed to the fallen fighter, a ray of black energy shooting off his hand to the corpse. It rose on its bloody legs and launched itself into our lines before we could get our act together enough to stop it. Our formation broke apart and if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of Steve and Kai, we would have lost at that moment. Those two stepped into the gap and with Steve’s superior spear and levels, and with Kai’s powerful Martial Arts, they stemmed the tide long enough for the rest of our combatants to take down the rogue zombie.
It damaged our line though; it had killed one of our throwers and injured several others. “Get the corpse back! Take it to the back of the cave, put someone on watch over it! Tim can raise them from a long distance!”
The injured tribesmen grabbed the corpse and dragged it back, out of line-of-sight of the cave entrance.
“Form up! Get that formation working again!” Arnold shouted, snapping people out of their shock and back into action.
During all this Kai took several powerful hits. I wasn’t in his party so I couldn’t see his health, but he looked pretty beat up. “Cycle me out or I’m going to drop!” he yelled, out of breath. “Prepare to swap ranks! Swap!” Arnold yelled and as before the front ranks dropped back, replaced by the secondary.
It wasn’t as seamless a transition however as Kai didn’t have a spear to stick in and his side was pushed back allowing a zombie to squeeze in before the ranks closed up. It attacked Kai as he was rolling out of the way and the Martial Artist groaned in pain. Kai fell to his back, and I thought he was dead but in a feat of martial prowess he performed a lightning fast leap from the ground to his feet, using his weight and momentum to land a powerful palm strike on the zombie that crushed in its chest cavity. Too bad that wasn’t enough to kill it as it lunged forward onto the tottering and tired Kai, sinking its teeth into his neck and ripping out a chunk of his throat.
I heard Tim’s evil laugh over the chaos, and I knew that we were in serious trouble. I ran to Kai’s corpse to get it out of line-of-sight, grabbing it at the exact same time as it came to life and grabbed me back. Damnit. I yanked hard trying to go into a roll and throw it over me deeper into the cave where we could deal with it. Unfortunately, I had only ever seen that done and never tried it myself and got a face full of zombie for my trouble. It bit down and my Pain debuff flared at the highest level as I saw it pull back, my nose in its mouth.
I screamed and panicked flailing about causing a distraction for my tribe as it reared back in and continued to bite and bludgeon me. You would think that I would be used to being eaten to death, but that’s just not something you ever get used to. Especially when that something eating you was your friend a few seconds prior.
I was about as effective at stopping it as a bag full of wet kittens and it killed me after scoring several critical hits on my soft flesh. The world spun, and I lost hope as I saw my tribe, tired and bloody, resources dwindling. So many of us wearing nothing but underwear not even having had the ability to turn the bison skins into protective covers. It was more than just demoralizing, it was degrading. I knew we would lose. There were just too many of them and we were too weak, unequipped and unprepared.
As the world swirled away, I arrived back at the Adjudicators temple, but not inside. I was in the foyer with the doors to the main room closed. I listened at the doors and could hear the Adjudicator talking to someone, its powerful voice was unmistakable no matter what timber it was. The voice that responded carried no ethereal qualities, so I assumed it was another Viator. I shrugged and thought about my last moments before I arrived here wondering if I could have done anything different.
That’s when I had the best idea of my life. I embraced the light, and the menu popped up with the map asking me where I wanted to resurrect. I picked my location and breathed in deeply arriving on the plains by the massive herd of bison.
I fished into my pouch and pulled out one of the few zombie cores I had collected during all the fights and summoned one. It stood there next to me mindlessly chomping its teeth and reeking of death. I selected the ‘Roam’ function from the list of control options and turned it in the cave’s direction, giving it a little shove. It shambled off, and I tried to repeat the process but got an error.
You may only control a single minion at a time. Raise your Core Manipulation skill to control more.
I closed the message and spun around hoping that a single zombie would be enough. Then, picking up a rock, I targeted the biggest, meanest looking bison I could find. Really, I just picked one as they all looked similar, but it makes me feel better to think it was the most badass, then I threw a rock at it.
Sucker Punch! You have caught your target unawares!
The bison bellowed and turned towards me, the rest of the herd nearby raising their heads to watch. It charged, and I ran as fast as I could, dodging at the last moment. I was surprised this moment of Deja Vu didn’t get me a new skill; Bison Dodge or something. As the beast ran past me, its eyes came to rest on the zombie in front of it and I heard what my heart had been longing to hear. I mean, not really because it was a terrifying the sound the bison made as it let out the loudest, screeching/roar/bellow noise I could imagine and charged the zombie.
I watched the herd and saw that the entirety of it had stopped eating and popped their heads up to watch in this direction. They didn’t move though, and I needed to fix that. My zombies health dropped to nothing, and I ran past the bison, another zombie core in my hand. I spent the Spirit points needed to summon a zombie and once again the screechroarbellow shook me as the bison charged the zombie again. This time I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough and the bison hit me, spinning me around.
That hurt. As I was spinning, though I couldn’t help but smile, then flinch as the herd answered the bison’s screechroarbellow behind me. The whole ground rumbled and right before they trampled me to death, I witnessed the marvel of a massive herd, a hundred or more strong, of huge, hairy bison charging down the valley.
I appeared in the foyer again and was a little sad because I knew the Adjudicator would have loved to talk about this, but I didn’t have time to waste. I wondered if his tattoo recorded video or if it was a live feed only. I picked a spawn spot ahead of the stampeding herd of bison by a decent ways and respawned. The ground was still trembling, and the herd was still running, if anything, they were going faster. I summoned another zombie and sent it towards the cave. I could see it in the distance, the horde of zombies pressing against the cave entrance.
I tried to run and dodge but was once again caught under the hooves of angry bison. At least I lasted long enough to get my Active Dodge skill up a point. I picked a spot a little further down the path and spawned again, reaching into my pocket and finding no more zombie cores. I didn’t want to lose the momentum of the herd so I did what I had to do: I unequipped the cores in my charm slots. The herd zeroed in on me with a slightly less scary screechroarbellow- maybe it was just a screechbellow- and continued their charge towards me.
I was running out of XP for this trick, but I knew that If I had to sacrifice every level to stop Tim, I would. Hey, then Kai and I could at least be on an even footing again. This time when I was trampled to death I spawned in front of the herd again, hoping I was close enough that with this death the bison would see the huge horde of zombies and charge at it.
I appeared between the cave and Tim, the ground rumbled, and I got the satisfaction of seeing Tim’s confused face as he looked at me. “Where did you come from? You can teleport?”
“Well… kinda,” I said.
“It won’t do you any good, look, I’ve almost broken in. Soon you will all die.”
I looked at the thundering herd behind him and widened my eyes. They got here fast. I raised my hand and pointed.
“Hah you think I’m as stupid as you are? I’m not going to fall for…” T
he screechroarbellow took on a whole new level of loudness and ferocity as the stampeding herd was practically on top of us. Tim spun around just in time to utter a choice word before they crashed into him. “What the f-” and he was transformed into paste as the stampede collided with the horde of zombies, myself included.
Congratulations! You have learned the Conductor skill!
Conductor - Use this skill to get enemies to follow you. 5% chance that they will alert others of their kind in the vicinity to follow. Use the skill again on another target once you have the enemies following you to redirect their aggro. Range 25, Spirit - 20.
Your skill Audeo has raised Conductor to level 10!
Well that was interesting. Who knew stupid ideas and immortality could combine to make such an interesting skill?
I spawned again but this time on the hill above the entrance to the cave. I wanted a good vantage point for watching the action. The herd of bison ran over the horde of undead as if they were little more than speed bumps, grinding each of the corpses into the dirt. The mix of dust and guts created a unique scent I could smell all the way from where I was. They circled through leaving no undead left alive. Dead. Undead, whatever. It hardly took any time at all for the powerful beasts to turn the much-feared army of zombies into little more than broken bits of bone and flesh strewn about the dirt.
As I watched the maelstrom of hooves turning the earth into a dirt zombie chowder, I couldn’t help but think about the last week or so since I came into this world. I had been so against it, had wanted no part, and felt completely forsaken by my own society. I couldn’t deny it, though; this place was far beyond what I had hoped. It was better than my ‘real’ life. Sure, there was hardship, but that’s everywhere. On Earth I was a poor, forgotten, nobody and here I had power to control my life and move it in the direction I saw best, with people I could form real relationships with. It felt strange to be sitting on a hill above a zombie massacre feeling thankful, but there I was.