The Demon Lord’s Successor - 92

“It’s just a pile of stuck together dead bodies!” Rosetta argues and puts her right hand on the hilt of the claymore on her back. “We can take it!”

“No way!” Gorrazsh and Elza say in unison and you can hardly blame them when you’ve just witnessed how effortlessly it dealt with one of your summoned minions—the strongest in your arsenal.

“We’ll just sneak past it,” you say. “That will be faster than fighting the giant head-on anyway. See? It’s slowly moving away.”

“Fiiine,” Rosetta frowns and turns away from you.

You wait for the creature lumber away from the crossroad, in the opposite direction of your target—the gates to the next level. With your main obstacle out of sight, your party proceeds to move into the district and sneak through the alleys to the gates.

“How many levels are there in this city anyway?” You quietly ask Rosetta.

“Three, before the military district,” Rosetta whispers back.

“It will be bad to still be here when the sun sets,” Elza whispers.

“You assume that it will set,” Epsilon says and points to the horizon. “It hasn’t grown darker or lighter since we got here. Not even a little. If that’s a sunset, then I’m a… Nevermind.”

Something does go your way however. There are surprisingly few ash creatures in this district, and you manage to reach the gates with relatively few detours to avoid them. The gates, like the previous ones, are about forty feet high, so you can’t miss them.

As soon as reach the gates, you sneak into the gateway and hide in its shadows to see what awaits you ahead. The streets up ahead are crawling with dozens of the ash-covered corpses. Some three hundred feet ahead on the straight, paved, twenty feet wide road darkness obstructs your view. Your heart sinks when you see the darkness move and realize that it’s another corpse giant, similar to the one you left behind you.

“Another one,” Gorrazsh says in a voice so pitiful and defeated that you wonder if he’s about to cry. “We should leave.”

“Quiet!” Elza whispers and presses against a wall.

You do the same when you see an ash corpse pass less than ten feet from the gates. It looks like you’re concealed by the shadow of the gateway, and the creature does not seem to be looking for anything. ‘As long as you can keep quiet the creature will pass’. That is what you think just before you hear Epsilon sneeze.

The ash creature instantly turns to you and hisses is a low, rough tone of a beast. The next moment you see a dagger fly and lodge itself in the creature’s forehead. Rosetta is standing next to you with a hand straight in front of her. She threw the dagger. The creature falls motionless, but it’s too late. Half of the ash-creatures that you see turn to the gates and sprint in your direction. To your horror you see the giant corpse creature also turn to the gates.

The giant monstrosity howls like a freight train and runs in the direction of the gate. In your direction. The entire city trembles with each step of the beast. In fact, the shaking of the ground and walls is more often than the steps the monster takes. You worry whether the walls are about to collapse on your heads.

“Back!” Elza shouts, and just when you turn around you see the other corpse giant you sneaked from running in your direction also. You’re about to be pinned and crushed in this gateway.

“I’ll teleport behind it and distract it!” Eisheth yells to the others. “Get ready!”

You and the others look at her. Nothing happens.

“Well?” Epsilon asks.

“My teleport doesn’t work!” Eisheth turns to the others and says. You see worry on her face for the first time. “There must be a spell cast on this city!”

“The sewers!” Elza points to the bars just outside the gates.

“No!” Rosetta says and draws her claymore. “Enough sneaking!”

You don’t have much time to think.