Chương 17: -17- Pale City

Calder - Still Stone Barrow Calder shuffled forward another step down the hallway. He had just enough room to swing his ugly bastard of a sword. His damn arms felt like they were about to fall off; he had been swinging and hacking for nearly an hour at this point, and he wasn't even very far from the room where he had fought the first undead. Dectus's merciless voice trailed over his shoulder.

"Pick up the pace, more efficient movements, less wild swings. The enemy doesn't give a shit if you're tired, so don't make yourself so fucking tired!" Calder looked up towards the glowing red moss along the ceiling and tried to think up something quippy to shoot back at the talkative ghost. But he was just too damn tired. He hated that so far even though Dectus was harsh, he didn't really have any room to complain; the advice he gave was sound.

Calder could see the tunnel open up farther ahead past another pair of shambling corpsewalkers. Alright, efficient, I can do efficient... probably... Calder stilled his nervous stance and then abruptly stepped into a corpsewalker's wild mace swing. He raised his blade too fast, and the mace smashed against his chest, knocking the wind out of him painfully. Calder wheezed and whipped his right fist around into the creature's skull. Its neck snapped sideways too far, and it staggered against the wall.

Fuck, that one hurt; definitely bruised a rib a bit. Thank you, resistances; that would've broken something if I were still level zero. These things are slower than sin, but they really pack a mean swing. Gods, I cannot wait until I have armor like a reasonable damn person. Rather than be fancy, he just kicked it as hard as he could in the chest. It slammed between the wall and his foot with a crunch and fell limply to the stone floor.

"Hmm, I mean, obviously a terrible block but a good recovery; your whole body is the weapon after all, especially for you." Dectus smirked at his own backhanded compliment. Calder leaned heavily against the wall as the final foe shambled towards him. His heavy blade was leaned tip-down on the stone floor to spare his arms the weight. He shrugged and set it against the wall; if he swung it again right now, he was fairly certain his biceps were going to spasm on him.

Dectus sighed loudly but didn't say anything about it. This corpsewalker was a bit better armored than his brethren; a rust filled chain shirt covered its top half. In one hand it had a short mace; the other hand had a round shield in it. Calder eyed the weapon warily; he was starting to hate blunt weapons. He had been knocked around by them at least four times in the last hour. He crouched and jumped back when the creature lunged forward in a wild overhand strike.

He lunged back in while it was recovering from its overcommitted swing. He snapped a kick straight against the top of its knee, bending the leg backward. He reset and wrapped his fingers around the back of its neck as it fell. Then he rained knees into its face until nothing but bone chunks and mush remained in his grasp. He let the blessedly still corpse fall to the floor and begrudgingly trudged back to his sword, grunting as he picked it up.

Then slowly made his way to the next room, taking his sweet damn time to try and catch his breath. Essence washed into him from his kills. He was getting a steady trickle of it from the constant combat, but these creatures weren't powerful enough to be a real bounty of it. He doubted he had even earned a level's worth. He started ignoring the system notifications from them three kills ago. He peeked into the next room, praying it wasn't just another nest of foes.

There were some shapes ambling on the far end of the room, but at least everything else was blessedly different from the boring tunnels he had passed through so far. A single ancient pillar rose up the center of the room. Faint faded etchings that looked almost like climbing ivy glowed a welcoming honey-colored light, illuminating the room except for in the farthest corners. Set around the pillar were the tattered remains of a campsite ringed in a very out-of-place-looking plant circle.

Literally a perfect circle of what seemed to be long dead roses with large gaps where something had broken through.

"The hell? Did some druid craft up a little camp barrier years ago?" Based on the faint bloodstains and shredded state of the encampment, the flowers didn't help much. Got it, don't stick my tent in the middle of a room even if I think it's safe. Calder swung wide around the campsite, keeping plenty of room between himself and anything that would block his view. The last thing he wanted was something to fling itself from hiding and brain him because he was too fucking tired or too fucking slow to block.

Another pair of corpse walkers were milling back and forth near the exit. He frowned at them; they should have turned to attack him by now, but instead they simply shuffled back and forth like demented sentries around a patch of the wall. Calder squinted through the gloom and picked out what they were guarding. It was a jagged black hunk of metal strewn through with rock sticking from the wall.

He sighed; it was only as big as his fist, and if he had to fight every single time he wanted to pick a piece off the wall, this was going to be a very long delve. Calder skirted past them with a surprised huff; they didn't pursue, barely even glancing his way as he continued onwards. Alright, I have to find bigger pieces than that; the amount Bromwick said I needed was significant. I'm not about to spend the next three months building a person-sized pile of shitty ore out of fist-sized pieces. I wonder though.

If I manage to get some of the purer ore from deeper, will that mean I need to haul less out? I would assume so. Calder glanced back towards the direction of the stairs that led even farther down into the dungeon. With a deep sigh he turned the hell around and started trekking back to the staircase. Dectus swirled in front of him.

"Ho ho! Finally found your balls, did you? Good. I'm not going to warn you about the dangers of going deeper and all that nonsense. I'm not your nursemaid; you need that armor... and a real sword... He looked distastefully at the slab of metal Calder had tossed over his shoulder.

"It's ugly, but honestly it's working pretty well for me."

"Do I need to make the toddler-with-a-club joke again?" Calder didn't respond; the trip back to the stairs was short. He didn't faff about this time, winding down another three levels before stopping to listen. He wasn't sure how deep this staircase went, but he figured six levels down had to at least be out of the constantly mined area and delving into the regions where only adventuring parties regularly scoured.

This level opened up impressively; the bare stone walls were gone, and now a short tunnel led out into a vast cavern. He stepped onto a small landing and peered over it down a grand staircase covered in rubble and more than a few bloodstains that marred the fine marble. An entire pale city stretched below him, built into this bowl-shaped cave. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Collections of stone ruins were scattered unevenly on the step-like levels of the city, all leading towards a bleak structure rising from the center of the city. It was a castle, but it stood in stark contrast to the grey and white surroundings. Mighty nearly black hewn stone formed the walls and the towers peaking above them. Hovering above it all was a glistening white gem the size of a manor. It acted like some kind of false sun casting pure light from it down onto the city below.

It occasionally sputtered madly, flickering on and off, causing maddening shadows to flicker all around him. Even in its death throes, the ancient artifice was magnificent and unlike anything Calder had seen before. Well shit... this looks more promising? Actually, where the hell would darksteel form in a fucking city? Anything easy to grab would have been picked over through the ages… Gah, I wish this place was better mapped, but I know places like this are all up and down the damn coast.

The folks who survive their delves and actually walk out with treasures aren't in a hurry to tell everyone else where they found the goodies. Calder started stepping down the vast staircase as quietly as he could, angling for the uppermost level. It looked more like a scattered village built in a ring around the edges of the room than anything else he could reference it to. Grass peeked from soil on this level, the dark green looking out of place amidst the tarnished grey and white walkways and houses.

The city was still, almost silent. Occasional drips of water echoed through the room, and no matter how quiet Calder tried to be, each footfall fell like a hammer blow on the stone. Something below shifted, and the scrape of bone on stone made Calder hurry his pace, eager to get off the stairs and at least into the first available cover. Dectus noticed Calder's pace quicken and made him self material enough to listen briefly, his face flickering with something close to concern.

He followed right behind Calder as the big man rushed straight onto the village level and down a narrow marbled path that wound between small houses. Each was seemingly abandoned an eon ago, with grass and climbing vines slowly overtaking their bases. Calder skipped the smaller houses and went to a larger one that might have been a hall or a church at one point. He rushed straight up to it and pulled on a stone door that was both somehow locked and had stood the test of time.

"Fuck…" Calder swept his heavy brow around his immediate surroundings; a few ethereal shapes could be seen drifting around homes nearby. He shrugged, not seeing any obvious places to take cover other than the houses, so he rushed up the steps of the first and straight through a door that had been left open in an age past. The building was small, two rooms, almost utterly devoid of any ornamentation.

The only things left were shelves carved into the walls and a thin blanket of weeds that had crept up the stairs into the front door. Calder crouched below the single window and peeked out to see if he could pick out what he had disturbed. Clambering up the stairs was an unholy amalgamation of flesh and bone. Fingers, faces, even lolling tongues dance along its patchwork flesh. The abomination was a roiling mockery of the life it imitated, twisted into the shape of a ten-legged spider.

A dozen screaming faces made up the cluster of eyes that dominated the front. Its legs were simply sharpened thick hunks of human bones. Its fangs were also shaped from the same bone and dripped a malignant substance that hissed, etching marks into the stone it fell upon. Calder slid down the wall he was leaning against, trying not to make any undignified squealing noises upon seeing that utter horror. I take back everything I dared utter about the monsters here being mild. I'm sorry, and I regret my words.

Dectus looked out the window and then back at Calder, who was trying to not hyperventilate while he hid against the wall. Dectus didn't even try and hide his amusement, nearly doubling over in silent laughter at Calder's panic. That… really struck a nerve for Calder. He shook his head wrathfully at the ghost and inched back up far enough to point his Spotter at the horror so he at least knew if his first instinct to hide until the horrid spider monster had passed was correct or not.

[Caro Arachni Tier 1](lvl36) Why is that asshole laughing? That thing is triple my fucking level! Calder went to hide again, but the horrid thing had several of its screaming faces looking straight at him.

"Shiiiittt…" Calder grumbled quietly, stepping back from the window and farther into the open space of the room while he hefted his blade in front of himself. The Caro just quivered in place, all its face-eyes slowly shifting one by one to look in his direction. Dectus gathered himself from his odd laughing fit and raised his sword, looking like he was actually willing to fucking help this time. He tilted his head in Calder's direction but kept his eyes locked onto the not-so-distant foe.

"This is just like when I was young and dumb and my party skipped over the whole newbie zone in a dungeon to go for the real challenges!" He sounded disconcertingly excited.

"Yeah, and how did that go?" Calder asked in a tense voice. The abomination was slowly rotating its whole body to face the building they were hiding in.

"Oh well, two of my party died, but the fights were amazing." Dectus said with a fond smile. Calder frowned, but before he could manage to deride him for his callous attitude, the abomination moved. Its ten legs skittered in a nonsensical pattern, some only inching, others reaching strides at a time. It was insane and blisteringly fast. It crashed into the front of the building in a frenzy. The stonework buckled inwards slightly, and the roof dropped dangerous hunks of rubble around Calder's feet.

Before he could lunge for the window and try to get a stab at its exposed belly, the thing shifted back abruptly enough to level its eyes with the window and thrust the razor-sharp legs through. Calder slapped a stabbing limb aside with his blade and managed to hack into the next that flew past his own leg. Dectus followed up his blocks by materializing mid stab at the window.

His sword tip punched into the faces serving as eyes and savaged half of them when he tore the blade out sideways, following it up with a quick slash before turning immaterial again. The monster practically flew backwards in a quick leap. Stopping out of range and appraising the situation with a shivering head. Calder thought it was going to charge again. It didn't; unfortunately, it seemed this monster wasn't of the stupid variety.

It skittered up and over a nearby building, disappearing from sight in a shower of dust. Calder could hear its awful feet digging into stone as it raced up the nearby cave wall. He didn't wait to find out what it was planning; he ran from the half-fallen building and straight back towards the larger building. It had a pair of low-set windows with no glass; simple cross-shaped stone bars sat across them, preventing access. He cursed, knowing this was going to hurt, a lot.

He put on as much speed as he could, dropping his shoulder down and covering his face with his arm the best he could. At the last moment before he hit the window, he turned his charge into a tackle, flinging himself straight into the arm-sized stone bars. The impact was horrific; the dull, sickly thud echoed through the cavern like a dropped corpse.

Calder burst through the window in a shower of gravel and curses, roughly sliding across the floor and coming to a stop after crashing through what might have once been a thin pulpit. He staggered to his feet and shuffled over to where his sword had slid. Dear sweet heavens, I can't believe that worked... Also… I am buying so, so many healing potions the moment I can. Calder shook his arm; it was burning with deep throbbing pain.

He was certain he had bruised the bone; without his resistance, that would have shattered his shoulder, big bastard or not. He looked out the now considerably larger window he had just entered through just in time to see the spider execute its plan. Turns out leaving the smaller crumbling building was the right call. Sailing from far above, the thing flung itself straight onto the top of the house. The impact kicked up dust that swirled through the small village like a hellish fog.

Then the entire building crumbled in on itself. The Caro stabbed madly into the rubble the entire time, trying to find Calder's remains. Calder's foot kicked a piece of rubble that loudly clattered across the floor. The Undead abruptly stopped its mad stabbing, and its remaining faces shifted one by one to look in his direction.

"Oh, goddammit." he muttered quietly. The horror skipped over the slow turn of last time and simply stampeded sideways down the rubble of Calder's last refuge and straight across the small road towards him. The dying artificial light overhead chose that exact moment to flicker and then cut off abruptly, casting everything into sheer and utter darkness.