Ting!
Her saber, covered in golden light and sword aura, was blocked by a longsword. Immeasurable strength almost disarmed her. Holding onto her saber for dear life, her charge down the stairs was abruptly stopped.
This rotten corpse was different from the others. Its flesh was barely decayed, retaining features and muscles from when it was alive. It could have looked almost alive, if it wasn't for those crimson, empty eyes.
"Shit...Camden..." she cursed, actually recognizing the undead by its leather armor. This guy was always so proud of his scale armor that was supposed to be able to block a lethal attack and reflect 22% incoming damage, among other effects.
Now the treasured armor hang in tatters on his decayed body. How had the vice-leader of their raid, who had taken the stairs of the sword, ended up in this place...? The answer was obvious. They had experienced the same fate as her group, or worse, seeing his condition.
Ting! Ting!Ting!
To make matters worse, he was different from the rotten meat around him. Somehow, he retained all the skills from his life, fighting her to a standstill, evading the cleansing power of her aura at the same time.
"Ugh! Bastard-" She received a strike to the face with the edge of his broken buckler. Even though he was dead, he was still a whole arm ahead of her. Camden was also too skilled to get tricked into touching her aura directly...
"Boom!" A rain of blessed silver buckshot ripped apart the once handsome face. Even if he had the skills, he didn't have the memories, or else he would have ducked at the side of the 12-gauge boomstick she switched for her saber.
Popularized by Ibelin Godfrey's battles in the Great Tournament, there was a certain rise in system-manufactured firearms among adventurers. In preparation, she had also gotten one as a sidearm, with special ammunition.
"Didn't expect to use it on you, though..." she mumbled, reloading the shell before putting the shotgun back in the inventory. Without a weapon-specific class, firearms were still more cumbersome than ordinary weapons, but they were great for when mana or stamina ran thin.
Saber back in hand, she slaughtered her way down the winding staircase. She ignored side paths and offshoots, only following the narrow staircase further and further down. However-
Ting! Tang!
More cognitively superior undead appeared. She had been breezing through the ordinary hordes, despite their stats improving, but these guys were more difficult. Especially considering they were her men. She recognized most of them as members of the other half of the raid team, like Camden. It confirmed her conclusion that the other team might have faced an even worse situation than them.
She was fencing several undead comrades, cutting her way through familiar bodies, proceeding step by step. It was hard-fought progress, considering she also had to deal with the normal undead and beast undead surrounding her. She was so focused that she even forgot the time...
"Great, perfect timing," she thought to herself, as she noticed the golden aura vanish from her sword and the power leaving her body. Blessing of the Paladin had finally run out. Her death tough against undead was gone.
She threw her last holy grenade and snuck past the former guild members, jumping down the flight of stairs. Now she was all out of parlor tricks. She had used a lot to max out the time of the blessing, but her former comrades had bled her dry on the way down to here.
Suddenly, something grasped her ankle. The moment the buff disappeared, something grabbed her, and she lost her footing, hurtling down into the darkness of the staircase. She saw only darkness, but every step made sure her bones remembered it.
A quick, unregenerate roll down the stairs later, she slammed with her back against a rough stone wall. The impact punched all the air out of her lungs, leaving her gasping for oxygen. Coughing and wheezing, she got on all three, fumbling around in the dark.
She had reached another landing, but her lights ran out. She already heard the growling in the dark, coming closer again. "No, not like this..." she mumbled to herself, searching her inventory. There was only one thing left that could give her some light....
Moments later, a bright signal flare shot into the darkness above her. Her heart fell. The crimson light of the signal flare meant to call for help from the raid party in case they got separated, revealed part of the labyrinthine net of stairs filling an unfathomable space...
This was nothing like what they had heard... She felt like she was trapped in the paintings of a mad designer. Was there even an end to this? A bottom where safety actually existed? She had started doubting it during her descent into this madness, but the last sparks of hope were finally gone.
Her saber, she had held onto even when the hard, stone stairs tenderized her body, only hung limply in her hand. She had reached the end of the line. fatigued, she leaned into the corner of the landing. The cold, rough wall gave her more safety and support in this moment than she would have ever expected.
In the bloody shine of the flare, she watched the dark horde push toward her, form up the stairs, and from below. Their shambling walk, their worn and torn armor, their rotten flesh and those empty, lifeless, red eyes...
They were playing with her. They knew she couldn't run anymore. They were deliberately mocking her with the slow approach. Torturing her by elongating the moment of terror, facing imminent doom.
In the past, she would have gotten angry, but the constant wear of the dungeon had washed away even her own temperament. Using the wall for support, she managed to get back on her feet, pointing the cold saber at the encroaching beasts.
She didn't move because she thought she could make it. She didn't move because she was angry and wanted to take as many with her as possible. She didn't think of making a last stand in the hope someone would come to save her, or to avenge her fallen comrades. Her motivation was stupid.
A stupid, simple thought. She owed it to herself- She owed it to the woman she was before entering this dungeon, that she didn't die without a fight. It was a pure matter of ego that she would go with a weapon in her hand.
Calming her breath, she stared at the myriad of undead foes and began fighting more calmly than she ever had. With certain death waiting for her, fear had left her mind. She used all the skills she knew, and all the mana she had left.
The cold saber was weaker against the undead than the flame one. Her mana was nearly depleted, but it mattered not. Weaving, dodging, cutting. Her body screamed in agony, but it didn't matter. A machine about to be destroyed could also be run into the ground without worry.
In the last minutes of her life, she put on the grandest display of her skills. Like a star blinking a last time before falling dark, and then it went dark. The machine broke. The Fatigue caught up. Wound aggregated across her body until she finally broke down, falling into the same corner that had given her support before.
The undead were simply too much. Their numbers were greater. But there were also those, she could barely even scratch with her saber, among this horde of rotting flesh. It had felt like striking steel bars...
"I guess this is it..." she mumbled, looking at the field of dismembered zombies. She had done quite a job, but it wasn't enough. One of the ghouls she could even scratch snarled at her final moment. It charged at her.
"Nadine!" someone called out to her. Was it her father from the beyond? "Nadine!" The bellow shook the landing, and a massive figure charged into the ghoul, catapulting it off the stairs into the darkness.
Her eyes jumped wide open, looking at a broad back, covered in wounds and broken armor, looking no better than the walking corpses. She instantly recognized those wide shoulders that could carry the world, in her eyes.
"Dad?"