The remnants of ShadowFall City stood only a short trek away from the grimly named Devil's Throat Region.
Under ordinary circumstances, it would require a mere quarter of an hour to traverse the distance on foot.
As Val was sprinting, it took him about five minutes to reach it!
It was an impressive feat that would have left many in awe if they had witnessed it, as not many could do it since they didn't have the ability to see in the dark and weren't fearless like Val.
The ruins of what was once a glorious human settlement stood before him.
Crumbling stone houses, with their moss-covered roofs and shattered wooden shutters, came into view. They lined the deserted, cobblestone streets.
All over the ruins of the city, flickering lanterns hung haphazardly from rusted iron poles, casting an unsettling glow across the streets infested with zombies.
A lone zombie wandered meaninglessly through the same deserted street as the one Val had just entered. Its back was to him, and thus it was wholly oblivious to Val's swift but silent entrance into its territory.
The sight of the hapless creature sent a predatory glint dancing across Val's eyes. As silent as the encroaching darkness, he initiated his approach. He was like an apex predator on the hunt as he closed in on his prey.
Low-level zombies were not known for their intelligence. They were known for relying heavily on their vision and hearing to detect prey.
The zombie, with its gaze elsewhere and Val's footsteps nothing more than whispers against the wind, remained blissfully unaware of its impending doom.
Embodying the essence of the Grim Reaper himself, Val skulked ever closer to the zombie until he loomed ominously behind it. He towered ominously over the zombie, casting a shadow that cloaked the creature in impending doom. Even with his towering figure overshadowing it, the zombie continued its aimless wandering, its decaying mind incapable of perceiving the looming threat despite the obvious signs.
After reaching behind the zombie, Val drew his sword from its sheath, its blade glinting under the flickering lantern light. He raised it high into the air. The blade was poised for the kill.
Whoosh!
After a moment, he brought it down swiftly. The sword plunged down, severing the zombie with a clean, brutal strike. The blade bit into the decayed flesh with an unsettling ease, cleaving the creature from the crown to the pit of its being, rendering it into two grotesque halves.
A splatter of black, putrid blood sprayed into the night, splashing on the pole and the desolate cobblestone street as the two halves of the zombie crumpled to the ground, spilling their grotesque innards into a sickening heap.
[Ding! You've vanquished a level 1 minion of the Corpse Devil. You earn +3 EXP.]
This signified that Val had taken another step towards gaining power. He had 22 EXP in his possession. He only needed 8 more to level up!
Wanting to farm more zombies, Val moved forward, heading deeper into the ruins of the ShadowFall City.
He completely missed the fractures manifesting in the very fabric of existence just behind the rusty pole to which the flickering lamp was attached.
Tearing through the fabric of reality itself, an entity of unearthly origins made its appearance!
This being sported an unnaturally large nose, its face a perfect circle, and its eyes bulged horrifically from their sockets like grotesque orbs. Its skin, rather than the warm hues associated with human flesh, was eerily white, bearing a closer resemblance to a coat of fresh paint. Random, disturbing blotches sporadically peppered its face, causing its horrid face to become so horrifying that it would leave anyone who looked at it unsettled.
It seemed to be dressed in black, cloaked in the void's embrace.
In one of its gnarled appendages, it firmly gripped a broomstick, the symbol of its power.
Its other hand held a wickedly curved shovel.
If Val had seen it, he would recognize it as the manifestation of the hair-raising tale whispered around crackling fires at night to scare the children into sleeping!
As Val proceeded deeper into the ruins, its monstrous eyes followed his withdrawing silhouette, its gaze filled with a bone-chilling malevolence.
"I've finally found a mortal whose fear I can feed off of. It will be so much fun to hunt him down."
Saying so, as abruptly as it had materialized, the Eldritch being dissolved back into the icy grip of the night.
A silence swept over the city once more, erasing all signs of its chilling presence.
Chilled to your bones? Get a friend to read with you. Trust me, it gets a lot less scarier that way!!!
What will happen next?
Look forward to it!
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Standing in an inconspicuous place and covered in the darkness of the night, Val took in the many streets of the city that was infested with crawling hordes of the undead.
An almost endless sea of zombies swarmed these streets, each horde easily numbered in the hundreds!
Strong as he was, taking on a small cluster of zombies was well within his capabilities.
But a horde of this magnitude?
That was beyond his current ability!
He knew that engaging such a massive, rotten wave of the undead was a battle he could not win at his current capability level. He also recognized the inevitable fallout of igniting such a conflict: the ensuing ruckus would be a siren call to every corpse in the city, potentially even drawing the attention of the more formidable Level 2 zombies. It was an engagement he had no chance of surviving. That's why he moved away.
"I'm not strong enough to fight a horde of zombies. Best to steer clear from these streets for now," Val mused to himself.
Heeding his own advice, he deliberately circumvented the streets swarming with zombies, opting for the path where he spotted a pair of zombies staggering about.
Cautiously, he crept up to the back of these solitary walkers. One swift, brutal arc of his sword was all it took to sever their heads from their bodies, the grisly spectacle of their blood spraying into the air as a mess of flesh slumped to the ground. With swift follow-up strikes, he pierced their decaying skulls again and again, ensuring they were truly dead.
[Ding! You killed 1 Level 0 Zombie and 1 Level 1 Zombie. You get +4 EXP.]
Just then, two grotesque figures staggered out of the shadowy alley to his right.
Gah~ Gah~
They roared as they charged towards him.
Their aggressive charge didn't rattle Val.
These zombies, clearly Level 1, were on par with humans in strength but significantly lacked their intellect. Though they were as fast as an average man, they were no match for Val's agility. He was faster than them.
He smoothly dodged their clawing attacks by dropping low.
Their frantic swipes met nothing but air while Val's sword swept through their legs. The very next moment, their legs detached from their bodies. With no way to support themselves to keep standing, the zombies toppled over. Their subsequent fall to the ground was accompanied by a gruesome squelching sound.
These zombies that were crawling on the ground without legs were completely at his mercy!
Val, wanting to conserve his blood bar, opted for a messy, primitive method to end them. He decided to finish them off without utilizing any special abilities so as to preserve his blood bar.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Using the hilt of his sword, he hammered their skulls, the impact shattering the bone and sending viscera spraying. Their brains, the thing that kept them moving, transformed into a grisly paste under his blows!
[Ding! You've killed 1 Level 0 Zombie and 1 Level 1 Zombie. You get +4 EXP.]
A satisfied grin etched itself on Val's face. He had been teetering on the edge of leveling up. Now, with the brutal end of these two zombies, he had accumulated enough points.
He was ready to level up!
[Ding! Congratulation, Host! You have leveled up. You have reached level 3 from 2. You get +2 Stat Points, and a slight upgrade in your Blood Devil Bloodline.]
He had been using the alleys to get around. This time too after killing the zombies, he entered an alley, which was squeezed between two long-abandoned stone buildings. The walls of the buildings, worn by time and decay, towered high, blotting out the moonlight, turning the alley into a chilling corridor of darkness.
Whoosh!
Val's instincts honed by battle jolted him into action as the air pressure shifted alarmingly. A dark shadow swooped down from above, but he sprang backwards in a blur of motion, narrowly dodging the falling object.
Crash!
The earth quaked as a two-foot-tall zombie landed precisely where he'd stood moments before. From the point of impact, a spiderweb of fractures radiated, spreading all the way up to Val's feet.
He scrutinized the creature in front.
Its grotesque form was an unsettling sight. It had a musclebound frame, and its hands were encased in reptilian-like scales, and veins as dark as pitch snaked over its grey, leathery skin.
Val could tell that this was a Level 2 zombie, a monstrous foe that only those wielding Bloodline powers could tackle!
Then, he saw the zombie crouching. What wasit up to?
The next moment, his eyes widened.
Whoosh!
Lurching forward with frightening speed, the zombie launched a punch at Val.
With icy calm, Val dodged, springing backwards as the scaled fist swiped through the air, smashing into the alley wall and leaving a crater in its wake.
"That could have pulverized me," Val thought, adrenaline sharpening his focus.
Taking down this behemoth without invoking his bloodline power would be an immense challenge. Add to that the risk of drawing a horde of undead to their location due to the sound of their battle, the stakes were perilously high.
"I guess I have no choice but to go all out." Val said under his breath, bracing for battle.
The very next moment, the zombie lunged forward.
In response, Val flicked a finger over his sword, animating the black bloodstains that had dried on its surface. Immediately, crimson tendrils burst forth, snaking around the beast and shackling its convulsing limbs mid-air.
The zombie struggled fiercely against its bindings, but a contemptuous snort from Val saw the tendrils tightening, halting its thrashing.
Seizing the moment, Val lunged forward, his blade glinting ominously as he aimed it at the zombie's distorted face.
Whoosh!
His blade cut through the air, its high-pitched song echoing in the narrow alley. There was a moment of resistance as steel met hardened flesh, then the blade snapped, victim to the corrosive undead blood and the tough hide of its foe.
Simultaneously, the zombie managed to free itself from the tendrils of blood binding it, freeing itself from the restrictive grasp.
Without a weapon, how will Val survive?
Read the nezt chapter to find out!
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