[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 262 – Unwavering Resolve

Sam looked around for some kind of marker. He had no idea where the Goldgate was. Thankfully, nearly everybody there did. Sam only had to follow the tide of bodies, readying themselves for battle.

Zorin tapped Sam on the shoulder and pointed to the second level, where the press of bodies was much thinner. “The Goldgate is through there. It’s the northernmost gate. We can get an advantage over the others by seeking higher ground. Fewer monsters, but even fewer people to contend with.”

“Smart man,” Sam said, clapping Zorin on the back. “Let’s go.”

Coiling the strength in his legs, Sam leapt up to the second level walkway that ringed the quad. Zorin was only a few seconds behind him. He looked astounded at the leap he performed. Not nearly as powerful as Sam’s, but with a great deal more grace than Sam could muster.

“DEX users,” Sam muttered to himself.

Komachi howled with glee and began playing five different instruments at once to buff her two party members.

They burst through the upper level door without any other adventurers around them and were met face-to-face with a familiar and rage-inducing sight: a lamia.

Without saying a word, Sam snarled and unleashed [Bloodbane] in a blinding overhand chop that the lamia only just managed to block with her staff.

Unfortunately, a staff was no match for Sam’s blood-soaked sword. Muscles swelling with effort, Sam drove the blade through the hardened wood of the staff and straight through the lamia.

The monster fell to the floor in two pieces.

“After you,” Sam said, motioning to Zorin. The man stood to the side, mouth agape at the casual brutality Sam had just displayed.

He got the hint, however, and moved ahead of Sam to find a skeletal creature waiting for him. Sam watched tentatively as Zorin moved automatically, his body seemed to understand more what he needed to do than the man.

A curved scimitar was unsheathed and spun through a dizzying display of feints and parries until Zorin unleashed a flash of cobalt light with his right hand. The spell summoned a thick, wriggling tentacle from a puff of blue light that wrapped around the skeleton and crushed its bones to dust.

Zorin seemed just as surprised as Sam.

At the monster’s demise, dark purple smoke streamed through the air into Zorin’s body. The man took a step back, but there was no getting away from it. It seeped into Zorin’s armor, disappearing as if it had never been there.

“You good?” Sam asked.

Zorin shrugged. Sam felt that was the first entirely honest answer he had gotten out of Zorin since they met.

After that, there was no time to worry about the mysterious man. Zorin could clearly handle himself, even if he didn’t know it.

Sam’s initial assessment had told him that Zorin was surprisingly strong. He was proud to have been proven right, even if only to himself.

Putting [Bloodbane] away, Sam used [Power Stance] and withdrew his greatsword. Zorin’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw it. If he thought that was alarming, he was in for an even greater surprise.

With all the ease of a practiced swordsman (no pun intended!) Sam swept the ringing balcony of the quad free of monsters. What didn’t get crushed or split horizontally at the waist from his wide sweeping strikes was finished by the adventurers down below.

Whether they sensed some remnant of the Lumanot on Sam or the undead horde had simply found a new champion to rally against, the King of Sil’mara found himself beset on all sides by monsters.

Rotting corpses in aged Imperial armor thrust rusted and moldering weaponry at him side by side with lamia and other misshapen, lumpy creatures Sam had no name for.

He soon forgot about the competition, using all of his skill just to keep the upper levels clear until he was launched from the second story down to the main fighting below by a self-destructing creature.

As Sam landed on top of a rotting corpse, he saw that Zorin had his hands full on the second level. There would be no help from Zorin.

Most of the adventurers had fallen back to deeper sections where they could stem the tide of The Risen through the natural choke points.

Some stout doors were shut and locked, others were kept open. It was a maze that Sam soon realized he had no way of figuring out.

But he was not alone.

Of all things, a giant armored bear was fighting at the forefront. Snarling, it swiped a huge paw into a lamia and smeared her across the ground. Riding atop the beast was one of those battle alchemists, cackling with a wicked laugh and tossing glass pots into the horde. Fire and lightning erupted from their impacts, engulfing pockets of the undead.

Void mana erupted from Sam’s body. Great billowing gouts burned up the undead creatures from within as surely as any fire would. What was left instead was a withered husk, devoid of life.

They’re just like golems! Sam thought to himself.

While the revelation was useful, there was no way he had enough mana to excise the corrupted life within all the undead in the area.

“I was hoping to get some practice in with this,” Sam said aloud as he got to his feet. The ring of death he had created quickly filled four or five creatures deep.

Unsheathing his second greatsword, Sam dual wielded the pair as he bellowed a challenging shout to those nearest creatures.

Red glowing eyes turned his way. Lamia put him in their sights, and casters began summoning their mana to destroy the singular man in the center of the battlefield.

Sam spun and used [Void: Surge] at the last moment to repel the magical missiles while his armor absorbed the majority of the blows aimed his way. The rest he deflected with his massive greatswords as they spun a circuit and cleaved putrid flesh from brittle bone.

Boots skidding on the slick stone floor, Sam used [Escha: Smother], targeting the Vigor of all enemies in a wide swath around him.

Still turning, Sam slapped both of his blades together and used [Heavy Blade]. Twice.

Each blade extended with Metal mana as he separated the blades and swept them in cleaving arcs wherever Sam spotted a monster.

Komachi screamed, either in excitement or worry as Sam darted about like the Grim Reaper himself, scything down monsters by the handful.

“Get down!” Sam bellowed to a group of adventurers beset on all sides.

The men and women of the troupe didn’t bother to look around or ask questions. They were battle-hardened enough to drop to the ground moments before Sam’s glowing blades cut a swath of destruction all around them.

The Risen touched by [Escha: Smother] were weakened to the point that a well-placed pommel thrust caused a skeleton’s spine to burst into powder from the blow.

Caught up in the thrill of battle, finally able to vent his frustrations, Sam found he was actually having fun. The burden of guilt and lost opportunity that weighed heavily on his shoulders lightened with every monster slain.

Komachi’s silver fire caught any undead that so much as quivered after being hit by Sam’s blades.

The Goldgate became a charnel house reeking of death. Rotting corpses piled up to a man’s knees made moving difficult and yet still more came through the gates.

Sam found himself quite alone. Zorin was nowhere to be seen, and many of the adventurers seemed to have fled his swords as much as the monsters flowing into the city.

A ceramic pot hurtled through the air, crackling with purple energy. It shattered against the ground, unleashing a swirling well of mana that pulled exclusively at the monsters. Those that were caught tumbled out of formation into a vulnerable, tangled ball of weapons and limbs.

He looked over to see the alchemist still fighting the horde of monsters. “Mind tossing one of those my way?” Sam called to her.

The Risen were beginning to catch on to Sam’s methods of wholesale slaughter. They gave him a wide berth and attacked him from range. He had tools to deal with that, but it made killing scores of them much more difficult than it should have been.

The hooded alchemist flashed him a grin and hefted another pot. It surged with waves of violet energy, suggesting this potion was going to be stronger than the last one.

Sam readied [Heavy Blade] on both weapons again, this time lining them with [Void Infusion]. A single nick with the blade would expel the mana from the undead creature’s body and kill it without having to go through the ugly process of hacking its body apart.

The potion rolled to a stop before Sam’s feet. A pulse of energy blasted out, ripping out chunks of stone and lifting them into the air before slamming back down.

A rolling wall of angry monsters hurtled towards Sam.

Komachi howled. “Human blender!”

Sam couldn’t have agreed more with Komachi’s assessment.

Even with his blades coated in Void mana, they cut through more monsters than not. Every one of them fell to the ground or flew through the air already dead. It was almost too easy. With so many monsters literally pulled toward him, all he had to do was sweep his swords in a grand arc to cull dozens at a time.

Before long, the sounds of gnashing teeth and rattling wheezing ceased. A calm descended on the battleground. Absolutely drenched in gore, Sam looked around at the few adventurers still fighting alongside him.

With a flare of his Tin aura infused with Void mana, Sam evaporated the gore on his armor, leaving himself and Komachi pristine among a field of death.

One by one, the bodies began to vanish into streamers of light and smoke. Some drifted toward a few defenders, but the bulk of it swirled heavenward and angled to the south.

Sam could sense a growing power there and with every streamer of energy from the fallen monsters, he felt that power grow.

It was a Lumanot.

Following the streamers, Sam walked like a man in a trance through each of the quads. Even the fortified ones with vaulted ceilings had bodies of monsters turning to mana.

The trail of mana was a convoluted mess. It passed from one chamber to the next in an ever-tightening spiral that Sam soon understood to be the purpose behind these strange tunnels and barred doors.

The Lumanot was feeding off the defeated monsters’ mana.

Lem Ashil and a host of blue-clad Imperials stood covered in gore and blood beside a massive golden gate.

Even with Sam’s poor mana sense, he could tell that the enchantment on the door was nearly spent. He could break through it rather easily with his bloodline and retrieve the Lumanot.

And yet he found himself hesitant.

“What do we do?” Komachi whispered.

In truth, it didn’t matter if he waited a week or a year to get the Lumanot. Provided nothing stole it, he had all the time in the world until events forced his hand.

It wasn’t that Sam didn’t wish to get back to his friends and his home…but didn’t he deserve a moment of rest? When was it ever going to be his time to enjoy himself instead of rushing from one disaster to the next?

He felt a familiar piercing gaze upon his back. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the alchemist from earlier watching him a little too intently atop that armored bear of hers.

Zorin was slung across the beast’s back.

Sam lifted a brow at her, glanced at the body of Zorin, then nodded his thanks to the alchemist.

With one last look at the gate and the knowledge that the Lumanot was cloistered within, Sam turned away. As he approached the alchemist, his heart stuttered in his chest.

He knew that eventually there would be a chance…but he didn’t think he would meet her so soon.

“Zarishna,” Sam said without meaning to voice his thoughts aloud.

The battle alchemist looked him up and down. “You have me at a disadvantage. You appear to know my name, but I do not know yours.”

Sam grinned and extended his hand. “Samuel Hunter.”