Chapter Twenty-Six: Taking a Stand

TWENTY-SIX

It attacked with a single minded purpose, blade swishing back and forth as it staggered toward him. Roan retreated slowly from the zombie, trying to figure out how to kill it. The broken skull continued to heal while a hint of life started to spread across its cheeks. The shattered cheek popped back into place as it continued to get closer.

“Is it healing itself? What happens if it fully regenerates?” Roan didn’t want to see what happened if it got fully healed. Every second that he didn’t find a way to permanently kill it, the zombie was getting faster. It lunged forward and Roan had to bat away the sword with the head of the warhammer. Its free hand snapped forward, clawed fingers aiming for his throat.

Roan leaned back and the zombie’s fingers brushed his chest. It growled in anger and kept rushing forward, hand grasping not at his throat, but toward the pendant on his chest. Roan kicked it in the chest to stagger it back and give him a moment of breathing room as he backed up to give himself space to work.

The pustule on its neck pulsed again and it grew slightly. Roan felt his stomach lurch as he stared at the grotesque tumor-like growth. He stopped his retreat and squared up, his shoulder set as he took aim for the tumor on the side of its neck. The sword came up ineffectually, Roan’s blow too powerful to stop.

“Oh, that’s gross,” Roan said as he stepped back, the stench of it making his stomach churn. The tumor had popped the moment the head of the hammer had hit it. Skin split like overripe melon and chunks of pus and lumps of flesh came pouring out in a wave.

The zombie’s legs folded under it and it collapsed facedown. The cyst continued to pulse, pushing out more and more of the oozing morass of corrupted flesh. It stunk like sewage and rotten flesh mixed together, filling the area around it with noxious fumes.

INFERIOR REANIMATED CORPSE

300 CREDITS

ANOMALIES DESTROYED: 1/4327

HIDDEN QUEST FOUND

FIND THE SOURCE OF THE CORRUPTION ON THIS LEVEL

BONUS: CLEANSE THE CORRUPTION

“That’s a nice bit of change,” Roan said to himself as he took stock of what had just happened. If he was piecing everything together correctly then he thought he had what was going down on the level.

There was a source of life energy and it was being corrupted. Said energy was reanimating the skeletons, but they had known this. Amulets and collections arrays had been set up to try to purify and cleanse the energy. It obviously hadn’t worked and the more skeletons they’d killed the more energy had been released to gather in the arrays. Which woke up the guardians. A delicate ecosystem that the tower climbers had upset by selling the collection arrays. Which had caused the energy to reanimate the dead.

“But why? Is it just a theme for the tower to play with? What if we hadn’t sold the collectors? Then would the hidden quest appeared? Would we just be stuck grinding out the shitty skeletons and selling their junk?”