Chương 47

When I reached the battlements once again, I realized just how wrong Langdon and I had been about the way we had thought we would need to fight this battle. Blitzing Bryce had not been a terrible idea in and of itself, but clearly it had been the wrong solution for this problem. I saw that the defenders were being overwhelmed by the attacks. The zombies were much higher in power than we had anticipated. And even with the help of the cat men and women, we were really struggling to hold them off.

And so what that resulted in was that before the two-hour mark — which was still eighty-four minutes away from us — we would lose too many. And those same bodies could be raised and used by the enemy.

"What did Father Okonkwo say?" Langdon shouted as he summoned a giant ring of fire that burned fifty zombies at once and reduced them to ashes.

"The plan is changing, Langdon. I need you to trust me on this, sadly," I said, rolling my shoulders. I looked around, and I saw that the zombies were all focusing on one side of the wall, creating an inverse cone.

"What do you mean, trust you? Trust you on what? What do you want to do, John?" Langdon did not look reassured.

"We can't change the plan midway through. What are you going to do?" I said, "Trust me. I don't have the time to explain, but I need to go alone."

"Alone? What are you talking about? What?" Then Langdon saw the serious expression on my face and gnashed his teeth.

"All right. What do you need?"

"Where's Bryce?" Langdon looked at the army while holding his glasses.

"On the left wing, most external. She's hiding around that point." I looked at that and sighed in relief.

"All right. Good. Everybody else." I turned to my team.

"Go fight. Help everybody. If we don't stop the killing on our side, we have lost."

"What do you mean? It's—""I guess the Sorvos Empire is really fucking cheap," I said.

"They are probably playing the same trick as with the first boss. They need dead bodies." Now that I knew about it, and now that I had a new Skill, I could see it. I could focus on the individual zombies below us, and I could see the tethers.

"Motherfuckers, huh? Well, guys, go. Langdon. I leave everything in your hands. Don't fucking lose. And go all out. You have to get the casualties under control."

"John, what—" Lucas started, but then he raised his hand.

"All right." He punched my shoulder.

"Don't fuck it up." I started running toward the end of the battlements, where there were almost no zombies and no defenders — when I suddenly felt a presence behind me, and I was lifted and dumped on Regulus's saddle.

"Sir John, I am not abandoning you at this crucial moment. If you're going to go die like a hero, I shall die alongside you. I will never abandon the man who saved me."

"Oh, thank you, Regulus. But I'm not really planning on dying."

"If we must die, we shall, Sir John. If it's in our destiny."

"No, Regulus, I'm not dying. I just figured out a plan. The damn dungeon is, you know, dropping hints about solutions of this and that. And so now we're going to go to Bryce and kill her. Well, sort of."

"Whatever you need from me, Sir John. We shall both sacrifice and—""Regulus, you're jinxing it. Come on. Jump down. She's on the left wing. Full tilt ahead."

"What about the enemies?" Regulus said as he started running on the edge of the battlements, scaring even the defenders. Well — I took the pyrotechnic kit out of the satchel. I still had to give the Duelist Glove to Alice, since I didn't know how it would all play out, and thankfully I'd kept it. I lit the pyrotechnic kit and tossed it as far as I could right when Regulus jumped off the walls. The fall was swift, and once again I felt my entire body lifting.

I held firmly as Regulus cushioned the landing, and the fireworks started playing.

"Sir, it's the fireworks," a general said, and every single undead in the room showed signs of relief. Count Vorthug downed a large cup of human blood and patted his undead mouth with a napkin made of black silk.

"Thankfully, the damn human is an idiot, and he's shooting for Bryce." That had been exactly General Skullthrax's plan. General Skullthrax knew that the defenders might have enough resources to actually kill the woman — and perhaps even her resurrection. Which meant that he had to ensure somehow that whatever happened would result in their win. Not only did they have way more troops than the defenders, despite having lost the Corpse Mounds already, but their own troops were stronger.

Hundreds of thousands had been killed by Bryce as soon as she had gotten the offer and accepted it. She had gone around slaughtering her own kind in the largest havens she could find, pointed at them by System quests meant for villains and by their god, Anubis. More importantly, General Skullthrax had learned through the high priest that Anubis had broken even more rules. Apparently, they now knew what items John had gotten from the tutorial.

The general did not know exactly how the god had managed to gain such information, but being able to anticipate what John was capable of meant they had a very good idea of what the humans would try to do. He had a Duelist Glove. And a Duelist Glove could only mean one thing. They had at least one fighter who believed they could take Bryce down and kill her.

So they would try their best to distract the troops with the pyrotechnic kit, one of the quirks of the dungeon, an item that, despite its low rank, was perhaps among the most powerful. Even though, while trying to stop so many monsters at once, it would last just seconds. Its duration was influenced by however many targets were around it, and by its rank. But still, it was nonetheless one of the most powerful items that you could find through the tutorial dungeon.

It was an item that only existed in the tutorial dungeon and not outside. Still, that meant they had to watch out for it. But now, the fact that John had just used the item to distract the entire army could only mean one thing. They were about to start the duel.

"Foolish humans!" General Skullthrax slammed his fist on the table.

"Finally, finally they fall into one of my traps." Everybody looked awkwardly away from the general, who froze when he realized he had just admitted that all his other plans had failed miserably.

"Anyway," General Skullthrax said, looking at the giant mirror, finally able to relax. He knew who the biggest threat to Bryce was. It must be the woman. They must be bringing that woman shooting guns to face Bryce. She would be able to quickly dispatch Bryce, given how powerful those weapons were, despite their mana cost. But once she killed Bryce, she would seal the fate of humanity. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

The first thing that the undead had lost, in fact, had been Amon. Amon was a boss type that had been installed by their god. Well — General Skullthrax scratched his skeletal face — their new god, Anubis, had supported their faction in exchange for them veering the production of undead toward his kind, not the previous death god that they had followed.

And General Skullthrax had believed that that had been the best choice, that they would have easily, slowly converted their whole empire and then conquered the rest of the universe. Before, the Sorvos Empire had struggled and had been losing ground in the past few centuries, not able to reap corpses like before because of the waning power of their god.

And that's when they had gotten the chance to switch pantheon, and a new god had presented themselves — which was also the reason why they had started a civil war that consumed them. But now they had been convinced that, with the insane power that Anubis wielded, they would easily be able to take over the universe. And it would all start by minting hordes of new high-quality undead, through Anubis's guidance, from these humans in the tutorial.

And they would have started that by dumping a level thirty boss in the first floor of the tutorial. General Skullthrax, to this day, still didn't understand how that was possible. He had always thought that the first floor of the tutorial really had a hard cap on level twenty-five, and that no creature could reach above that level before descending to the second floor — and really, only starting to reach that in good numbers by the third floor.

But his god had once again surprised him when he had found a workaround to place a boss in the first floor of the tutorial that would evolve to a level thirty monster and raze everything to the ground. Of course, that plan had been foiled by Diver John, which was also the reason why the entire Sorvos Empire wanted him dead — and also why they had chosen Bryce. Bryce didn't have the best reaction to John after the interview, and it was clear to someone as experienced as General Skullthrax that she craved power.

That's why she had accepted their offer. Now, the moment John brought the woman with guns to face Bryce and kill her, General Skullthrax would finally have his revenge. He had begged Anubis, who had been of a different mind: wait longer for the demise of the humans, launch a wide-scale attack, and rely on the sponsorships that would appear en masse on the second floor to corrupt more humans and turn them against John.

But it had been General Skullthrax's idea to trick John and have him die by the same mechanism that he had foiled on the second night, when he had saved the Large Haven and stopped Amon from being born from its sarcophagus. Anubis had seen the merit in such a plan, and even the god held a large grievance against John, and therefore, General Skullthrax's plan had been approved and funded beyond what Skullthrax could have imagined.

Initially, Skullthrax's plan had been to use Bryce's reincarnation as a vessel, to promote her to a very high-level undead. That way, John would have had no chance of defeating her. But Anubis had actually one-upped him. His plan had been way more devious. Twenty-Four Hours Prior"I have created tethers that will let Bryce absorb the army's power and all the kills that our army will reap before she dies." Anubis sat on a large throne, and his dog face barely moved as he spoke.

However, two sapphire-blue eyes were pointed at General Skullthrax, who was kneeling in a kowtow in front of his god. They were in the catacomb where their god routinely appeared to the high priest to dispatch orders. The room was cut from black stone. Every wall was carved with hieroglyphics from floor to ceiling, packed so tight that no bare rock showed between them. Two braziers burned natron and myrrh on either side of the throne, and their smoke stayed low instead of rising.

The floor was old bone, ground flat by centuries of kneeling. Skullthrax could feel it against his forehead. Along the walls stood the god's servants — dog-headed, silent, built from the best bodies the Empire had ever put in the ground. Nothing in the room moved except the high priest's gold staffs, tapping together in a slow rhythm, and the pans of the scale in Anubis's hand. They swung, very slightly, though there was no wind down here and nothing on them.

"Lord," General Skullthrax said, "I… How could… How did we manage—""The System bends to the powerful. It is all a matter of scales and balance, Skullthrax. You should have learned by now. I have taught you personally. There's always a way, if you pay the right price. And Bryce shall pay the price." General Skullthrax smiled.

He loved the fact that the woman — who believed she was only getting a bunch of perks from them, and immortality as a human — would be turned into an undead right before being crowned by the System. Which meant she would lose all those perks once she joined their ranks. And then all the other traitors who had joined the army would be killed and turned into undead. Immortality didn't mean invulnerability. They would be able to live forever. But that only made them higher-quality bodies for the undead to use.

And Anubis was eager to turn them into his own kind of undead. This time, given the seriousness of the situation, Skullthrax had been called personally so that he could hear the plan. Skullthrax looked ecstatic at the fact that John was about to bring the woman — and die by the same trap he had stopped, the one that had obstructed the Sorvos Empire's plans in the first place.

"Your Lordship." Skullthrax mechanically turned his head to Xivitz.

"Your Lordship, your rotten Lordship," Xivitz said, clattering his fingers and nails together nervously. And then, with his hands glued to his chest, putting his chin down, he gently pointed at the mirror.

"The girl is not there, Your Lordship. Is that part of the plan?" Skullthrax looked, and saw John about to reach Bryce with his giant lion, and said, "That is not a problem. If anything, she might be able to deal some good damage before she gets killed. John still has the upper hand in close combat, but the real problem for him will be when he actually kills Bryce. Whether it's him or the girl changes nothing. It just means that their own plans must have been even more idiotic.

These filthy humans — we will consume their carcasses and feast on their—""Your Lordship. But what if, uh, the— the Diver John has a plan?" Xivitz was already recoiling, afraid of being shouted at. General Skullthrax passed a hand over his whole face and said, "Xivitz, they have no plan, and this is going exactly as we planned it. So calm down. Things are fine."

"All right, Your rotten Lordship," Xivitz said, almost looking like he was about to cry.

"I, I hope that it's really how you say." General Skullthrax wasn't a superstitious man, but he was about to tell the high priest to sacrifice Xivitz to Anubis and damn all the consequences with his family. He would gladly fight another small civil war over not having this idiot in his stable anymore.

"Look, Xivitz," General Skullthrax said, sighing.

"See? John is taking out the glove." Xivitz saw that John had approached Bryce and jumped off his lion. The woman was already nocking the first arrow when John threw the glove on the ground. A large energy field departed from the glove in a thirty-yard radius, giving them a large space. The lion just watched from outside, and the zombies were all still half petrified, looking at the fireworks.

"See? This is done. Worst thing that can happen, John doesn't manage to kill her — at which point, we'll just have one of ours stab her in the neck, and the ritual will take place all the same," Skullthrax said, and all the generals clapped and smashed the table, thumping rhythmically. General Skullthrax took a cup made of human bone — a very special set his mother had gifted him, one he only took out on special occasions such as this one — and raised his cup for a toast.

"See? He's about to mark her with his stupid Skill and kill her. Look, he already dodged the bone arrow, even point-blank." Skullthrax laughed as he saw John easily dodge the attacks from Bryce.

"Whatever perception Skill he has, it probably gives him some premonition, which against a ranged slow-fire fighter like Bryce — it's kryptonite." Most of the generals looked confused.

"It's an Earth thing," General Skullthrax said.

"I have been studying their lore. It means it's her weakest point."

"Oh," the generals oh'ed all together and nodded.

"Her kryptonite," they repeated.

"Look, he's about to throw the lance and kill Bryce. Maybe he thinks that if he blows her into a thousand pieces, she's just going to not come back. I wish that was how it worked."

"But Your Majes— Your Lordship, th- there is no sign like before. There, there are no sparks," Xivitz said weakly. And that's when General Skullthrax saw the same. John's glaive cut Bryce's arm — the cut just around her forearm. And he recalled the glaive immediately, and then cut her other forearm. Bryce growled and charged at him, trying to bite him. But John quickly subdued her, tore her clothes, and pressed her face into the ground.

"Unholy shit. Is he going to— on live television?" General Skullthrax was surprised.

"Maybe we should offer John a position among our kind. I didn't know he was this devious." But then John only stopped at the upper back of Bryce. And that's when General Skullthrax felt all the blood he had just ingested come up from his invisible rotten stomach, giving him heartburn. Because John did not proceed to kill her. Instead, he took out a pen and a brush meant to be used to enchant things.