The cohort looked at him with a mix of confusion and mounting wariness. Zachary sighed, realizing a joke in the suffocating darkness of the catacombs wouldn't land well. With a shake of his head, his expression shifted to a sudden, grim seriousness.
"Actually, the things plaguing the darkness around us aren't Nightmare Creatures at all." Zachary took a shaky breath, the memory of his first descent into this lightless tomb resurfacing.
The desecrated remains of the Dark City's past inhabitants weren't "alive"—not even in the twisted sense that most Nightmare Creatures were. They bore no corruption, no soul, and no spark of life. They were empty vessels—dry husks of calcium and history. Because of this, they were blind to his [Blasphemer] Attribute.
Their impossible existence was merely a manifestation of the profane power radiating from the depths: the authority of the Lord of the Dead.
As a Tyrant, the Lord of the Dead had the ability to create minions and rule territory. But the skeletons weren't its children; they were the environment itself. The true offspring were the grotesque leeches that swarmed the underground chambers where their master nested—the Corpse Eaters.
Zachary recalled the novel's description of the crusade for the last Shard Memory. He remembered how the Fallen Tyrant had appeared the moment Effie dealt the finishing blow: a massive, nightmare-inducing leech hidden beneath a mountain of stolen bones. The authority over those bones was likely the creature's Devil ability—a power it kept and refined as it advanced in Class to become a Tyrant.
That didn't mean he was safe. Zachary still shuddered at the memory of nearly drowning under an unstoppable tide of clicking bone. He had only survived thanks to the enhanced defense of the Mantle of the Underworld—a defense he currently couldn't utilize with the cohort watching his every move.
"So that means..." Effie started, a flash of understanding crossing her amber eyes.
"Yes. They're just puppets," Zachary said with a grim nod. "...But that only shows how fearsome their master is."
Effie regarded him for a long, silent second before turning to the others. "...A Fallen Tyrant," she repeated, her voice dark. She was likely remembering the final moments of her original cohort, lost to the horrors of this shore.
"What type of Nightmare Creatures?" Caster asked, his face a mask of focus. But before Zachary could answer, the sharp, rhythmic scraping of stone against stone echoed through the tunnel.
They had lingered too long. The remnants of a cursed past were closing in.
"Just... warn me if you see any leeches, okay?" Zachary's voice was heavy with unspoken dread.
He had spent months studying how his cursed Attribute interacted with the Nightmare Creatures. The higher the Class, the further they could detect his blasphemy. The higher the Rank, the more coherent and sapient their reaction became. But Zachary had never encountered a Tyrant. He had spent his time in the Dark City actively avoiding them.
A Tyrant could create offsprings—, and while they were individual entities—being able to grown on their own, they were also extensions of its own being. If a minion felt his presence, would the progenitor become aware of him in turn?
Zachary didn't know, and that "unknown" made his skin crawl. He was treading a perilous path, and every missing piece of information was a step that relied on a luck he knew he didn't possess. With the narrative itself stacked against him, any oversight would eventually come back to haunt him.
He clenched his teeth, sparks beginning to coalesce in the air behind him. 'I gain nothing by worrying this far into the race... I can only prepare and act.'
Finally, and to the stunned eyes of everyone present, Saint took form. Her graceful, indomitable figure stood proudly behind him, clad in her elegant stone armor. The cohort looked at Saint, recognition flooding their eyes. Their expressions shifted dynamically—from absolute shock to genuine surprise, with a distinct undertone of faint jealousy creeping in. Effie and Caster didn't even bother to hide it, the latter breaking the silence first.
"Wait, you killed one of those statues?" The shock in Caster's voice was mixed with a heavy dose of skepticism.
Zachary looked at Saint for a second before saying with a chuckle, "Well, I did kill one of them."
"A stone hit me..." Kai muttered in sudden understanding, his eyes locked onto the graceful Echo. "So that means—"
But before he could finish his thought, a cracking rustle violently cut him off. A skeleton materialized from the pitch-black darkness, lunging directly toward the group. With her vast combat experience, Effie immediately snapped back into focus. Twisting her body, she slammed her heavy round shield into the skeleton, shattering it into a shower of brittle bone fragments.
The cohort didn't need a vocal warning. Months of survival instincts made them raise their weapons in unison, instantly ready for battle.
"We've lost enough time already!" Effie screamed, her voice echoing off the damp stone as she dashed past the still-vibrating bones. "Stay together and don't stop moving!"
Without a word, the group followed the huntress with grim, intensely focused expressions. Nephis and Caster flanked Effie's sides, forming the devastating spearhead of their running formation. Their enemies didn't wait for them; a horde of skeletons followed the first, only to be welcomed by swift power and brutal, coordinated efficiency.
"Fuuu..." Zachary followed the moving cohort taking a deep breath. And with it, he immersed himself into the absolute focus of battle.
His spatial awareness and senses expanded outward, mapping the catacombs ahead of them. He monitored the powerhouses clearing the way, keeping track of their movements and physical conditions. A step behind the vanguard, he tracked Kai and Cassie as they covered the flanks with weapons drawn. Finally, his mind registered the rear, where he and Saint kept pace, watching the broken bones left behind already piecing themselves back together to pursue.
'Let's take this slowly,' he thought, his grip tightening firmly on Ender's Solace. A soft, pulsing glow began to coat the dark edge of the jian.
With another steadying breath, his mind sharpened to a razor's edge. Zachary had come to a strict tactical decision: he would only rely on his saturated Core for the battle to come, utilizing brief, isolated reinforcements of Flow Control only when absolutely necessary.
He hadn't decided this just because a sudden, massive leap in power after some months would raise suspicion among a cohort already wary of him. The decision stemmed from a fundamental, technical mechanical limitation. No matter how refined the soul essence flowing through his bloodstream was, as long as he didn't complete the full circuit of Flow Control, the ability remained incomplete.
The process would continue to be highly taxing on his biology. Forcing the essence to flow through his pathways for prolonged periods would eventually cause physical backlash, and the rolling attrition battle of the catacombs promised to be long and arduous.
Zachary shattered an advancing skeleton with a snapping kick, continuing to move behind the cohort with nimble, calculated steps. Saint moved seamlessly beside him, her stone shield raised to intercept any stray strikes. These first few minutes would be the easiest, but as time dragged on, the number of reanimating skeletons tracking them from behind would increase exponentially.
Cleaving a bony arm that reached out from the dark, Zachary glanced to his left. The tip of his jian was a mere breath away from scraping the rough masonry when his arm was fully extended. The dark tunnel was wide enough for them to move comfortably, but the tight width didn't allow for wide, careless brandishing of long weapons.
Nevertheless, Zachary didn't let the environment hinder him. His spatial awareness and meticulous Body Control allowed him to tread the suffocating space with absolute mastery, turning the claustrophobic constraints of the catacombs into a calculated defense.
They continued to move. Zachary cleaved a clawed, skeletal arm, and in the same fluid, unbroken movement, his blade twisted diagonally, severing the thorax of a second skeleton.
It was the Righteous Sword.
After months of grueling sparring sessions with Saint, he had finally extracted the core principles from her Indomitable combat style. This particular style of the Simple Sword relied on purposeful, honest swordplay, seamlessly mixing both defense and attack into a single, economic motion. The proud, firm posture required by the style allowed him to link his strikes and parries without ever breaking his momentum.
{_^_}
Suddenly, Danger Sense flared, sending a sharp warning from his left side. Lowering his center of gravity while leaning his upper body lightly back, Zachary allowed a lunging skeleton to pass just above his shoulder. The reanimated corpse sailed through the empty air, only to crash directly into the immutable stone shield of Saint, shattering upon impact.
As Zachary twisted his body to counter-attack, channeling a precise pulse of soul essence into Ender's Solace, a sharp warning of danger suddenly registered from directly behind him.
Zachary's lips twitched into a surprised smile. Trusting his sixth sense implicitly, he executed the fluid, cloud-like footwork of the Witness Battle Art, shifting dynamically to his left while maintaining the lethal forward momentum of his current thrust. A millisecond later, the dark, heavy edge of Saint's stone sword cleaved through the exact coordinates he had just occupied.
'Misbehaving girl...' Zachary lampooned internally.
Without missing a beat, he pivoted smoothly around the Echo's back, using her massive frame to shield his blind spot while completing his thrust into her uncovered side—pinning and collapsing a hidden skeleton into a harmless pile of bones before it could ambush her.
His surprise had been genuine, but entirely welcome. Despite Saint being an Echo who couldn't demonstrate further growth anymore, she remained a Battle Master to her very core. Zachary was painfully aware that an enemy capable of exploiting his Danger Sense was the worst foe imaginable—but an ally who could do it was a godsend.
Saint, the Echo of Nether's last daughter, the stone revenant who had adapted to his senses at the peak of their duel, was now using that same terrifying comprehension to fight with him instead of against him. Being hyper-aware of his Danger Sense allowed her to time her strikes down to the exact frame of his dodges. She moved without an ounce of care for his well-being, brandishing her weapons with impossible lethality, knowing full well Zachary wouldn't be there when the steel arrived.
She was making use of his presence to bridge the gap her static existence denied her.
Zachary dropped low, a stone sword whistling just above his hair, and a pained grin split his marred face. He would be lying if he said he wasn't still terrified of Saint's capabilities; the phantom pain blossoming from his old wounds were testament enough that his body wasn't the only thing scarred in that fated fight. Yet, a fierce excitement surged through him. This was the first time he would truly fight alongside such deadly beauty.
"Let's do this," Zachary murmured, tightening his grip on his sword.
The two of them moved like a single, devastating machine. Where Zachary's style was fluid, adaptive, and laced with sudden evasion, Saint was a mountain of unyielding stone. Yet, within the narrow confines of the catacombs, their contrasting styles locked together perfectly. Zachary utilized Saint as an immovable anchor, looping his movements around her defense, while Saint calculated his trajectories with absolute precision, striking through the gaps he left behind.
Zachary and Saint attacked in each other's direction, their blades flashing through the dark and missing each other by a frighteningly narrow margin.
He poured all of his focus into pure offense. Relying on the fluid, elusive footwork of the Witness Battle Art, he danced backward at the last possible millisecond, constantly using Saint's indomitable stone frame as his personal bulwark. He wove seamlessly between the clumsy attack lines of the skeletons, picking apart the weakest links in the unstoppable tide of dead bodies and ruthlessly severing anything that drew too close.
To maintain this level of speed and fluidity, Zachary reinforced his body sparingly. He channeled precise, isolated pulses of soul essence strictly into his joints and legs. Inside his heart, his Core beat rhythmically, the unbearable pressure of the coalescent essence screaming to be unleashed. Yet, he remained firm in his decision, choosing to rely entirely on his cooperation with the stone revenant.
This synergy didn't depend solely on Saint's uncanny ability to read his Danger Sense; its flawless efficiency was equally rooted in Zachary's own mastery.
After all, Zachary knew every single one of Saint's movements. He had faced her and defeated her in brutal combat—both as a rogue Nightmare Creature and as a bound Echo. There wasn't a single skill, posture, or trick in her arsenal that he hadn't already witnessed and broken down. Because of that hard-won familiarity, he could time his counters in perfect, mathematical harmony with her.
Saint brought her heavy blade down in a devastating vertical cleave through the exact coordinates he had occupied a heartbeat prior. Zachary sidestepped, letting the stone edge whistle just a breath away from his chest, only to plunge his jian forward in a lethal thrust directly over her descending shoulder a second later.
As he glided past her back, his mind involuntarily drifted to his fateful battle against her and her stone brother. He remembered the terrifying way the two statues had fought—not as distinct individuals, but as a single, unified entity. They had maximized their strengths, seamlessly covered each other's flaws, and shared a singular purpose like a collective mind.
Now, he was experiencing that exact same terrifying cohesion from the other side.
United in a single, unyielding front of stone and steel, the master and the Echo met the onslaught of bone with absolute, ruthless efficiency.
Despite their powerful synergy and unparalleled might, Zachary still fought with cold calculation. He was painfully aware that nothing good came from getting ahead of himself on the Forgotten Shore, so he consciously anchored his pace to the rest of the cohort.
With Saint anchoring his flank, he transformed the rear guard into an immovable wave-breaker, shattering the core of the unstoppable bone tide. By absorbing the blunt force of the onslaught head-on, they forced the remaining skeletons to spill uselessly down the sides of the tunnel, stripping away their momentum—leaving just enough for Kai and Cassie to systematically pick apart.
With Zachary taking the brunt of the pressure, Cassie could rely smoothly on Quiet Dancer to defend her perimeter, her left hand moving fluidly with a sharp bayonet. From time to time, her own flying Echo zipped from her grip, cleanly shattering any stray skeleton that ventured too close to her blind spot.
As he continued to retreat down the path cleared by the vanguard, Zachary split his awareness. He kept strict tabs on his own pocket of enemies while sensing the shifting state of the cohort ahead. He tracked the rhythm of their heavy breathing, the minute alterations in their stance, and the depth of their strides. If he pushed his concentration further, he knew his heightened senses could likely isolate their individual heartbeats and map the exact vibrations traveling through the stone.
But despite the mental resilience he had forged through fire and isolation, his mind would undoubtedly collapse under the weight of that much raw, sensory data.
Wisely, Zachary pulled back his focus, tuning his mind only to what his senses captured naturally.
The cohort's breathing was turning ragged. Muted groans drifted back from the front of the formation as they pressed deeper into the dark. Zachary couldn't see them past the bend, but he was certain the vanguard was taking its fair share of gruesome wounds. They were growing exhausted; the systemic lack of soul shards to replenish their essence was finally beginning to exact its toll.
But just as a grim frown creased his brow, the suffocating darkness of the tunnel was abruptly swallowed by a brilliant, blinding pulse of pure white flames. Nephis had finally unleashed her Aspect.
Yet, Zachary didn't feel a shred of relief at the sight. 'Shit... is she using it sooner than in the original timeline?'
He couldn't be entirely certain. While he had tried to gauge their progress by calculating their footsteps against his mental map of the Dark City above, he could only guess that they were roughly halfway to the southern wall. Not that knowing their exact coordinates changed the reality of their situation. The timeline was warping, and if he wanted the cohort to escape this tomb intact, he would have to improvise.
Now.
Using Saint's massive frame as visual cover, Zachary twisted Ender's Solace in his grip, snapping it securely onto the steel cable at his hip. A second later, white sparks flared in his palm as Antlered Wrath materialized.
The true destructive potential of a heavy warhammer relied entirely on the momentum generated by a wide, sweeping swing. In the cramped, suffocating confines of these catacombs, executing such an arc should have been a mechanical impossibility.
'Not for me, though,' Zachary thought, a fierce grin splitting his lips.
He dove beneath Saint's horizontal slash, utilizing his flawless Body Control to drop his center of gravity completely. From a deep, explosive crouch, he drove the warhammer forward in a tight, compact horizontal arc, clearing an entire row of skeletons in a single explosion of crushed marrow.
"One."
Narrowing his eye, Cinder Eyes flared, painting the dark with a chaotic grid of patternless attack lines converging on his exposed position. He had just fully extended the swing, and the massive, unyielding weight of the warhammer made it physically impossible to recover his guard in time to block.
So, he didn't try to fight the physics. Instead, he surrendered his momentum to the weapon, letting his body flow fluidly with the hammer's trailing weight. He spun out of the danger zone a fraction of a second before the counter-strikes landed, clearing the lane just in time for Saint to step into the void with her shield raised. Planting his heels firmly into the stone, Zachary pivoted cleanly around her back, erupting from her opposite flank with a devastating, ascending casual swing.
"Two."
Gripping the hammer's shaft tightly, Zachary continued to weave through the frantic grid of attack lines, only now he couldn't sever them or counterattack immediately. Instead, he had to rely on Saint's steadfast guard to buy him the split seconds he needed to generate momentum. He winced from the sensory overload, his remaining eye straining under the pressure, yet a sharp grin appeared on his marred face as he swung Antlered Wrath in tight, devastating arcs. He continued to back away, careful not to get separated from the lagging cohort.
It was a frail, volatile balance.
His incredible cooperation with Saint had allowed the rear guard to conserve their strength and fight carefully. But now, with his movements restricted by the heavy weapon and his attacks delayed, that brief respite was slowly crumbling. His main enemy wasn't the dead—it was inertia.
Zachary had to continuously move the warhammer within the cramped tunnel. Each massive swing pushed him forward, but he had to keep moving backward to hold his place beside the cohort. Worse, to maintain the semblance of control he had over the rear, he frequently had to cancel his swings at the last possible moment, violently redirecting the hammer in a completely different direction. So, he adapted. He began using small, explosive bursts of soul essence in isolated muscles to generate enough force to fight the weapon's lethal inertia.
Saint finished a heavy lateral slash, cleaving three skeletons in half with her stone sword. Before she could recover her posture, another skeletal corpse erupted from the debris, lunging at her uncovered flank. Without missing a beat, the Echo twisted her body, absorbing the blow with her heavy shoulder guard and seamlessly redirecting the stumbling bone toward Zachary, who was just finishing a rotating swing.
The meat-grinder ground on. Through careful, precise movements and localized reinforcement, Zachary held the line, swinging the warhammer over and over, slowly building up the kinetic charge he was waiting for.
That was until Cinder Eyes relayed a piece of information that made him frown with a sharp groan.
Quiet Dancer had zipped away from Cassie, intercepting a strike on Kai's unguarded flank. But in turning to save the archer, the flying blade left its blind owner completely exposed to the desperate lunge of a bony revenant that had slipped past the guard.
But before the claws could reach her, Zachary was already there. He stepped between them, grabbing Cassie by the shoulder and covering her small frame with his own body.
A painful hiss escaped his lips as a broken humerus pierced his shoulder like an arrow, punching through the Witness' Testament mantle without difficulty.
He counterattacked immediately. Grabbing the shaft of Antlered Wrath close to the heavy head, he flooded his back and arms with soul essence, brandishing the weapon behind him in a brutal arc. As he did, he deliberately loosened his grip, letting the long shaft glide through his palm until he caught it at the very tip—creating maximum leverage for a monstrous swing.
"Nine."
Twisting his body in the direction of the hammer's roaring momentum, Zachary quickly stood tall. "You should see where you're going, Cass," he joked darkly. Without waiting for the blind girl's response, he lunged back into the fray.
As her rapier flew back into Cassie's hand, Zachary had already dashed past Saint's heavy shield. He tapped into his Core, finally allowing the soul essence to flood through his arteries, filling every corner of his frame with renewed, overwhelming power. Dodging through the frenetic lines that plagued his sight, he planted his feet firmly into the stone. With clenched teeth, he brought the warhammer down with everything he had.
"Cover up!" The last word had barely left his mouth when the hammer finally struck the stone wall.
A sudden, blinding flash of kinetic energy erupted from the meeting of stone and steel, followed by a thunderous boom that echoed painfully through the enclosed tunnel. For a single fraction of a second, everything stopped. The cohort, having heard his warning, miraculously looked back with expressions of pure shock. But just as the skeletons resumed their savage onslaught, the tunnel—which had survived for ages, proudly dismissing the passage of time—finally groaned.
A haunting, deep-set cracking sound erupted from the stone, resonating deep within the bones of everyone present. It was followed by another, and then another. A massive fracture traveled rapidly up the wall and shot across the ceiling, webbed patterns giving birth to a downpour of dust and heavy rubble.
And then, the ceiling collapsed.
The cohort was smart enough not to linger. They surged forward with renewed speed, racing to outrun the falling stone and capitalizing on the sudden roadblock.
Zachary looked back at the fresh wall of collapsed boulders sealing the tunnel behind them. The stone was already trembling slightly; the undying skeletons trapped on the other side wouldn't remain there willingly.
As Antlered Wrath dissolved into white sparks and Ender's Solace took its rightful place in his hand, Pepe Silvia materialized in a flash of light. The Scavenger's towering, carapaced build scraped uncomfortably against the weak walls of the catacombs. Without needing an explicit command, the Echo dashed directly toward the barricade, planting its massive frame to hold the line for as long as needed.
Without offering any reassuring words to his intern, Zachary turned on his heel and dashed toward the front of the formation with Saint at his side. He passed at Nephis's left, brandishing his jian in a deadly, economic arc that cut a line of advancing skeletons clean in half.
"I'll take the lead! Guide me!" Zachary screamed to the huntress without looking back.
A millisecond later, the inexhaustible avalanche of bone met the unbreakable cooperation of stone and steel that had kept the rear safe.
'The cohort is weaker than their counterparts...' Zachary repeated with a dark grin, pushing his senses to the absolute limit.
It was a truth he had long since accepted. This gap in strength wouldn't last forever—as they traveled south, the cohort would eventually catch up to their original timeline counterparts. But until they did, Zachary was entirely ready to take the brunt of whatever hell came their way.
And he was going to do exactly that.
With a steeled heart and a sharper resolve, Zachary lunged forward side by side with Saint.
Taking a step back, Nephis looked at his back with a tired face, a faint, pained frown adorning her features. And yet, her grey eyes blazed stronger with white sparks. She had seen better days, as had the rest of the cohort. The catacombs were proving to be every bit as deadly as Effie had warned.
Looking at Zachary's back as he reached the next line of skeletons, Nephis opened her mouth as if to say something, but she bit her tongue a second later. The window of time Zachary was giving them wouldn't last long—sooner rather than later, another batch of skeletons would rise and begin to follow them.
Channeling essence into the edge of Ender's Solace, Zachary moved his jian in a brutal vertical arc, paving the way ahead. He had to violently clamp his jaw shut to hold back a pained groan. He finally understood why Nephis and the vanguard looked like they had been dragged through a meat grinder.
The volume of skeletons was roughly the same as the one he had been keeping at bay in the rear, yet the toll it extracted was on a completely different level. The difference was simple, but lethal: while fighting in the rear, Zachary had been constantly retreating. His momentum had traveled in the same direction as the skeletons' advance, absorbing and redirecting their energy.
Now, everything had changed. He was throwing himself directly against the current, clashing head-on with unstoppable, unthinking monsters that cared only for dragging another living soul into their bony legion. Zachary had to exert double the force just to maintain their original forward pace.
"Right!" Effie screamed from behind. The huntress had regained some of her color and was already managing the secondary lines.
Registering her instruction, Zachary made a sharp pivot to his left. A whistling stone sword passed mere centimeters above his head as Saint smoothly traded places, sweeping to the right. Ender's Solace shone darkly as the blade whipped through a fluid, circular motion, shattering the skeletons leaping from the intersection.
Danger Sense flared at the base of his skull. Even though the threat level of individual skeletons was low, the constant, erratic buzzing at the edge of his awareness was beginning to induce a splitting migraine. Still, he obeyed the instinct. He jerked his head to the right, letting a stray humerus whistle past his ear. A millisecond later, Zachary coiled his entire body in the direction of the attacker, unleashing the stored structural tension directly into the skeleton's sternum—sending it crashing like a bowling ball into the oncoming mass of revenants.
Dahrio's guard-breaking technique!
Following the natural momentum of the recoil, Zachary propelled himself away from the left pathway, returning to Saint's flank to continue their synchronized onslaught. He had no time to catch his breath. He immediately followed the path his senses carved through the chaotic grid of attack lines, cleaving a bloody way forward.
"Fuuu..." A thin trail of misty condensation escaped his lips as he ducked beneath the heavy rim of Saint's shield and delivered a precise, lunging thrust of his own. His Body was burning.
Balance Control allowed his Body to operate at peak performance, desperately maintaining homeostatic equilibrium no matter how much mechanical stress it received—a feat vastly augmented by the enhanced stamina of Blood Weave. Yet, his biology still existed within the immutable laws of physics: movement generated heat.
No matter how potent his stamina was, or how deeply the presence of soul essence reinforced his veins, the non-stop, high-velocity exertion was taking a different kind of toll. Acidic sweat stung his remaining eye. Thankfully, no matter how blurry his vision became, his other senses provided a crystal-clear map of the environment.
The only thing truly breaking his focus was the constant, escalating throb in his shoulder. It had already healed incorrectly from the gruesome injury he received from the Stone Saints, and now the fresh puncture from defending Cassie made every single swing an exercise in agony.
"Left!" Effie's thundering voice yanked his mind back from the pain.
Once again, stone and man moved in perfect, opposite directions, throwing themselves into the next dark intersection. A wide, twisted grin adorned Zachary's features, a stark contrast to the absolute agony racking his frame.
He continued to fight as a single entity with Saint, at his back Nephis and her divine flames were keeping their pursuers at bay, he had long dismissed Pepe Silvia. But soon enough, a fresh wave of pain joined the deep throbbing in his shoulder and the pounding headache. His remaining eye began to ache fiercely—not from the stinging sweat pooling in the socket, but from the sheer, suffocating saturation of information it was receiving.
The attack lines.
They were too numerous, too chaotic. Every individual skeleton possessed its own erratic trajectory, their phantom strikes clashing against one another and twisting into a blinding web of danger with Zachary at the absolute center. He could have closed his eye to grant his mind a moment of peace, relying on his other senses for a brief second. But that terrifying overload of information was the only thing allowing him to dance through the jaws of death without receiving a fatal injury. He needed the pain to survive.
"Go straight!" Effie's voice screamed from somewhere behind him, raw and desperate. "We're almost there!"
Through the haze of his straining vision, Zachary saw that she was telling the truth. A dozen meters ahead, past the final, dense tide of skeletons, his eye caught the end of the suffocating stone tunnel—and the wide, open chasm that spelled their salvation.
'Yeah, baby! That's what I've been waiting for!' His grin widened into something borderline manic. Zachary flooded his legs with soul essence, propelling his body forward like a cannonball directly into the avalanche of bones.
The distance to the exit was shrinking, but this final stretch of the corridor proved to be an absolute bottleneck of concentrated fury. Yet, forcing his muscles past their breaking point as steam literally hissed from his overheating skin, he and Saint finally pierced through the last line of skeletons guarding the mouth of the tunnel.
A second later, the cohort burst out into the vast, echoing cavern, violently hurling the remaining skeletons over the lip of the gorge into the bottomless chasm below.
Ragged, desperate breaths resounded in the damp darkness as the group collapsed into the space, trying to steal even a fraction of a second of respite. But it was Zachary's raw, pained voice that shattered their relief and forced them back into focus.
"What do you need, a formal invitation?! Cross over!" Zachary roared, his arm snapping out to point toward a rotting, precarious rope bridge stretching across the abyss.
Without waiting for their compliance, he and Saint pivoted on their heels and dashed straight back toward the maw of the tunnel, just as Nephis backed out, hotly pursued by the relentless tide of clicking bone.
An inaudible curse escaped his lips the moment they reached the threshold. His jian and Saint's heavy stone sword instantly carved an impregnable line of defense across the bottleneck, bottlenecking the horde within the corridor. His head was pounding like a war drum, his shoulder was screaming in agony, and his single remaining eye practically begged him to just shut out the light. But true to form, Zachary kept moving despite the pain.
When had it happened? When the hell had he just gotten used to this?
He still hated it, of course. It was basic biology—the avoidance of suffering and the pursuit of comfort. It was a truth burned into his flesh and bones since the very first day he had dropped into this merciless world. And yet, Zachary had spent his entire journey running directly away from that comfort.
It was almost funny.
As he and Saint wove through the inexhaustible, grinding attacks of the skeletons, his split awareness tracked the cohort's escape. He sensed Kai taking flight across the chasm with Cassie safely cradled in his arms. He felt Effie landing heavily on the far side of the gorge, with Caster already halfway across the swinging ropes.
A grim smile touched his lips, hot breath escaping past his teeth.
"Cross over, Neph. Drop the bridge the second you hit the other side," Zachary said, his voice dropping into a tight, quiet rasp.
Inside his chest, his heart gave a sudden, thunderous thud. His blood began to roar through his veins, carrying a violent, foreign potency with it.
He was finally releasing his self-imposed restraints.
Nephis snapped her head toward him at the command. Even through her battered, blood-streaked helmet, he could see the pained, deep-set frown clouding her features. A rare, faint trace of genuine worry leaked into her voice. "Are you sure? What about—"
"Don't worry. I'll manage," Zachary interrupted cleanly.
He took a deliberate step forward into the dark. In a ferocious, blinding thrust, his blade was suddenly clad in arrogant, violent lightning.
The deafening, crackling shriek of a thousand birds made Nephis flinch, instinctively reeling away from the sudden, aggressive static bleeding from the steel into the humid cavern air. Across the gorge, everyone whipped around at the sudden, screaming cry of his weapon. The searing light radiating from the jian was every bit as blinding as Nephis's own divine flames, yet the fundamental nature of the two forces couldn't have been more polarized.
The holy fire of Changing Star brought a sense of security; it ignited valor and ancient, unyielding strength in the hearts of those who fought beside it. But this lightning... this blasphemous, thundering storm tearing through the dark was something else entirely. It was...
"Now go," Zachary said calmly, his single crimson eye locked onto the heavy wall of ancient remains surging down the corridor.
Nephis didn't look at the monsters. Instead, she stared at his crackling blade for a long, heavy second. Her cold, aloof mask completely failed to contain her shock at the impossible, rule-breaking sight. But a heartbeat later, her discipline took over, a resolute, hard expression locking down her features.
"I'll see you on the other side." With a sharp nod, she turned and sprinted onto the swaying bridge.
Zachary's grin sharpened into a predator's edge as he felt the soul essence finally lock into a continuous, unbroken circuit throughout his body. The difference between those isolated, desperate bursts and this continuous stream of power was the difference between heaven and earth.
"Maximum effort, I guess," Zachary whispered to the dark.
White streaks parted the absolute darkness of the tunnel, and wherever Ender's Solace crossed, ruin followed. Bone turned to fine dust in the searing path of his sword.
Thunder Song was as deadly as it was costly. His Legacy didn't pull from the Soul that nested in his Body, but from his Soul Core directly. Thankfully, the fully saturated Core gave him one less thing to worry about. It was a steep price, but entirely worth it.
Despite being incomplete, the destructive properties of Thunder Song were unquestionable. The lightning flowed pridefully through the sword, bleeding into rogue serpents that climbed up his arm and onto whatever was closest to their path, and each of them was destructive in its own way. There was no pattern to it, no finesse, no elegance. It was sheer, unadulterated destruction channeled through the cold edge of Ender's Solace.
Zachary didn't need anything else. After all, he had only needed two strokes of this blade to end the defiant lives of the Stone Saints.
And yet, no matter how much power he mustered, nothing seemed to matter in the face of an undying enemy. The dust quickly gathered into bones, the bones immediately rearranged back into skeletons, and the skeletons once again joined each other in a profane mockery of the natural order—barely kept at bay by the frantic cooperation of stone and thunder.
He knew he was going to collapse at this rate. Saint was already crumbling into rubble and ruby dust. She had been intentionally intercepting every single attack that might have wounded Zachary, and his own body was screaming from the violent backlash of Flow Control. But what worried him most was his eye—a lone, bloody tear tracing down his cheek, betraying the severe overexertion of the orb.
'What to do?' Zachary thought as he continued to move, each of his strikes flowing into the next, linked into a deadly yet ergonomic web of lightning that kept him breathing.
The problem remained: the attack lines were singular for each individual skeleton, completely saturating his already exhausted eye. But there was something else—something Zachary was only noticing now as his sight began to fail and the rest of his senses stepped in to fill the gap.
The humid air rushing over his skin. The deafening cracking noises reaching his ears. The sharp smell of ozone invading his nose. Each of his enhanced senses was compensating for his fading vision, and each was beginning to detect the attack lines in their own way.
It didn't seem like much at first; after all, they were detecting the same danger. And yet, it changed everything. It was a complete paradigm shift.
The skeletons, despite being individual entities, moved as a single legion. They were commanded by a higher entity, sharing a single objective within a collective mind. And as such, their attacks were no longer singular, but plural. He was no longer reacting to each individual skeleton. Instead, his senses took the entire avalanche of bone as a single, massive entity.
It was all he needed.
Suddenly, the chaos made sense. There was order now. There was a path, and his sword followed it flawlessly. If before Zachary and Saint could barely keep the horde at bay, now they took a definitive step forward.
And just at that moment, the bridge fell. That was their cue.
"Let's go!" Zachary screamed.
Saint sent her heavy shield flying directly into the front line of skeletons, only to spin and dash toward the chasm a split second later. Zachary didn't remain behind. Following right on the heels of the battered Echo, he watched her reach the ledge and leap into the abyss.
Zachary focused his remaining essence into his legs, propelling himself forward a second later. He jumped into the air, planting his foot firmly on her stone shoulder and using the momentum to impulse himself far above her.
A sharp, steel whistle cut through the cavern air from his hip. The left cable of Rising Attachment shot upward, anchoring deep into the dark stone dome above them, while the right cable flowed downward, snaking directly into Saint's stone hand. The steel cable instantly became taut with unbearable tension under the heavy weight of the statue. Dust rained down from above as the ceiling groaned under the sudden stress.
But thankfully, everything held. With Zachary acting as a human pendulum, he swung Saint across the vast emptiness of the chasm, allowing her to thrust her heavy sword deep into the opposite stone wall and hang herself securely there.
A moment later, Zachary crossed the threshold, landing heavily on the far side before the incredulous eyes of the cohort. He looked at them with a pained expression, deep fatigue and sudden relief accompanying his agony.
Unfortunately, he wasn't done yet. Walking tiredly to the edge of the chasm, he spoke to no one in particular through ragged breaths.
"The rope... Help me pull her up." He looked down to see Saint hanging precariously from the sheer wall.
'I can't unsummon her yet...' Zachary thought grimly as Caster and Effie rushed forward, dropping the golden rope to help pull the Echo to safety. 'She's injured, and she's still needed for what's to come.'
As the thought crossed his mind, he looked away from the chasm, turning his gaze toward the descending tunnel ahead. It was the dark path that would finally take them away from the ruined city and deep into the Labyrinth—straight toward the Fallen Tyrant that nested in a mountain of profaned bones, the very same being that commanded the relentless tide of skeletons that had almost ended them.
"The bad part is over..." Zachary muttered, a familiar, pained smile eternally adorning his marred face. "Now comes the worst."