The monster lunged at Effie faster than it had any right to. However, Lucien wasn't worried. While it may be fast, it was weak.
The rest of the cohort had different ideas, and some of them began moving to counter the monster.
A moment before the undead monster closed the distance between them, Effie screamed:
"Stay together!"
Then, she turned her torso and slammed her shield against the lunging monstrosity. With a thunderous crack, the skeleton was thrown back. Its skull and ribcage shattered, showering the tunnel with sharp bone splinters. Like a broken marionette, it fell to the ground in a shapeless pile.
Sunny stared at the pile of bones with confusion.
"Move." Lucien said from beside him, pushing him forward.
The cohort rushed forward, following Effie into the depths of the catacombs. The pile of bones had already begun reconstructing itself.
Sunny glanced at Lucien, a silent question hanging in the air.
"Yes, they're immortal." Lucien said without taking his eyes off the tunnel. "Don't try to kill them, just move."
In the darkness, they could hear rustling in the distance. Lucien knew exactly what it was.
Thousands of skeletons were approaching the cohort. The horde of undead was coming to rip the seven humans apart.
With a soft glow covering his body, Lucien raised his gauntleted fists. This was only the beginning.
Pretty soon, the undead creatures were upon them. First in ones and pairs, then in small groups, the bloodthirsty skeletons assaulted them in a constant stream. Appearing from the darkness of the catacombs, they lunged at the cohort in a whirlwind of bony claws and teeth, each bearing the same eerie skeletal grin.
Effie and Nephis, who were at the front of the group, faced the brunt of the attacks. The huntress exerted her inhuman strength, bulldozing through the skeletons like an incarnation of ancient fury. Her round shield acted as a wrecking ball, shattering the undead monsters left and right
Nephis fought with the elegant fluidity of water… but also with the crushing force of a devastating flood. She was holding the longsword by the blade, using its crossguard and pommel as an improvised mace. With white flames dancing in her eyes, she moved from one skeleton to another, skillfully deflecting their blows and crushing one skull after another.
If anything got past them, Caster was there to deliver the finishing blow. His sword shone with a ghostly green light, slicing through bones as if without meeting any resistance. The proud Legacy fought with graceful precision, always managing to immobilize the enemy with just one clean strike. The skeletons fell to his sword before even having a chance to retaliate.
Among the three of them, they could handle the skeletons in the front. That left Lucien, Sunny, Cassie, and Kai safe for a few moments. But with each passing minute, their situation worsened.
The catacombs were a real maze. More and more often, the tunnels they were taking began to open into complicated crossroads and connect with other branching paths. When that happened, undead creatures could lunge at the cohort from the side, bypassing the impenetrable barrier of Nephis, Effie, and Caster.
More than that, as the number of skeletons destroyed by them increased and several minutes passed, the abominable monsters began rising back from the ground and dashing in pursuit of the party, soon attacking it from the rear.
Eventually, the cohort was constantly assaulted from all sides.
When Sunny first had to raise his sword to repel a straggler that lunged at him from the side tunnel, he acted with calm precision engraved into him by countless hours of practice. Slashing with the Midnight Shard, he cleanly beheaded the undead creature. Augmented by the shadow, his tachi managed to cut through solid bone without that much effort.
Beside him, Lucien's fists blurred as they hit skeleton after skeleton. It didn't matter what side they attacked from; they would only meet his fist. If Nephis was like a flood, then he was like a roaring storm that tore everything apart. Bone shards flew from his direction as he tore through the sternum of another undead. His body had long turned into a dim purple blur. To him, the world was moving in slow motion. To the world, he was moving at supersonic speeds.
Fighting side by side, the two of them were as much of an impenetrable wall as Nephis and Effie. Behind them, Kai and Stone Saint handled most of the skeletons attacking from the sides, while Quiet Dancer handled the rest.
Things were going well, but it didn't last. At first, they only had to fight one monster at a time. And Lucien was thankful for it, fighting while moving backwards was no easy feat. But he was managing; if there was one silver lining to their situation, it was that the monsters crumbled in one hit.
But then, the skeletons doubled in number. Lucien found himself battling two at the same time. He blocked the first one with his bracer and punched through the skull of the other. As it crumbled, he grabbed the first one and smashed it against the floor.
Just as the two monsters crumbled, three more took their place. Lucien paled, cursing internally as he summoned his sword.
After that, things became hectic.
The purple glow around him had gotten brighter, and his speed increased as a result. He moved like a whirlwind, wielding his sword in one hand, he slashed and cut and punched his way through.
Even still, he was only human. Scratches and cuts soon marred his whole armour; some had even managed to reach his face. And he was only getting more and more exhausted, especially with the stone armour weighing him down.
'Screw it,'
The armour disappeared, leaving him bare for just a second before his second armour materialized. This one was made of wrought iron; he'd gotten it by killing one of the iron spiders. While it was weaker than the stone armour, it was also a lot lighter.
But that didn't matter at the moment. During the instant in which he was unarmoured, one skeleton had managed to scratch his arm.
'Fuck.'
His left bicep was torn open, and blood flowed down his arm. It wasn't life-threatening, but his punches had grown weaker. He grimaced. He wanted to save it for later, but it couldn't be helped.
Holding his sword with both hands, Lucien willed the storm into his sword. The roar of thunder filled the tunnel, and a deep purple glow came from the back of the cohort.
With lightning covering his blade, Lucien twisted his whole body and swung. A crescent wave of pure lightning left his sword and cut through the horde of the undead, destroying a dozen of them in one go. Lucien grinned. He had stalled for long enough; now it was time to let loose.
If before he was a storm, now he was a walking calamity. His blade cut through the air at overwhelming speeds, leaving behind a trail of lightning. Any skeleton that entered his range would instantly get obliterated. Every once in a while, he would stop and shoot a bolt of lightning at the horde, killing dozens of them in one go.
At the same time, a brilliant wave of pure white light washed over the tunnel. Nephis had finally summoned her flames. Faced with the blinding radiance of the incandescent blade, the skeletons almost seemed to melt.
A moment later, Sunny switched places with Saint. As they passed each other, he sent the shadow from his own body onto that of the taciturn stone knight.
Almost immediately, the Shadow Saint's eyes blazed with menacing carmine fire. Her skin shone with dark radiance, and wisps of ghostly grey fog appeared from beneath her stonelike armor like dancing flames. The impenetrable darkness of the catacombs suddenly seemed to become even deeper, embracing her like a vast black mantle.
With Nephis releasing her flames in the front, Sunny using his trump card, and Lucien finally releasing his storm, the cohort got a chance to catch their breath for a few short moments.
After Saint joined Lucien in the back, he got a chance to relax and look back at the rest of the party. He did not like what he saw.
Changing Star's armor was battered and torn, with blood seeping down her right side. Effie's shield looked like it was on the verge of coming apart, while her white chiton was painted red. Caster managed to preserve some semblance of a collected look; however, there was a deep gash under one of his eyes, his face bloodied and grim.
Kai was not doing much better. He was pale and visibly exhausted, his auburn hair disheveled and soaked with sweat. Sunny was covered in cuts and bruises, leaving him drenched in his own blood. A deep-seated tiredness was etched into his eyes.
Lucien glanced down at himself. Apart from the cut on his arm and the gash on his forehead, he wasn't in any danger. Thankfully, he was used to blood loss.
Only Cassie, whose tier-six armor made her less likely to be attacked by an enemy, looked more or less fine. However, her flying rapier had several visible nicks on its slender blade, and looked tired and dispirited overall… as much as a flying weapon could look like anything.
Skillfully using his sword to cut down a skeleton that had suddenly lunged at him from a side passage, Sunny strained his lungs and shouted:
"Hey! Effie! How far are we from the exit from this damned place?! When is this going to end?!"
Swatting away an undead monster of her own, the huntress briefly glanced back and grinned.
"What do you mean, "end"?!"
Turning back to concentrate on the horde of enemies in front of them, Effie yelled:
"What end?! This was just a warm-up!"
A few moments later, the short respite they had gotten was over.
With a sound that reminded him of rushing water, a terrifying wave of undead monsters crashed into their formation, threatening to break it apart. Effie braced for the impact and withstood the furious onslaught, somehow managing to split the wave in two.
From one side, Changing Star dove into the torrent of skeletal wraiths, her incandescent sword cutting through them like a ray of pure sunlight piercing the darkness. From the other, Caster's enchanted blade was doing the same. The scion of the Han Li clan moved with astonishing speed, turning into a blurry whirlwind of ghostly green steel.
Lucien readied his sword, purple lightning once again wrapping around it. Behind him, Sunny spoke in a hoarse voice:
"Prepare yourself."
In the next moment, the wave of monsters was upon them. As that happened, Lucien once again descended into the rhythm of battle. His sword zipped through the air, and the roar of thunder once again filled the tunnel.
The first skeleton lay dead, and then four more attacked him. Bones shattered as soon as they came in contact with the purple blade. Lucien's mind blanked; only one thought remained.
Kill.
With Saint by his side, he dove into the horde of monsters. His sword slashed, his fist struck, his legs kicked. The noise around him was drowned out. His gaze was focused only upon the army of skeletons. His entire body now only served that one singular purpose: to kill.
Minutes slipped by like grains of sand, turning into hours. Yet there was no end in sight.
Wounds slowly started accumulating over his body; his iron armour was hanging on by a thread. With his soul essence nearly halved, his muscles burning in exhaustion, and his lungs begging for air, Lucien fought violently. None of it mattered; the only thing that did was to kill.
At some point, Nephis joined them in the back, and a brilliant white glow washed over half the tunnel. Some of Lucien's wounds began closing, but they were reopened before they could finish healing.
Together, the three of them held back the horde, if only barely. With three divine aspects working together, death no longer seemed like a certainty.
After several more minutes of furious fighting, the tunnel they were moving through suddenly opened into a large cavern. A few meters in front of them, the floor of the catacombs was broken, collapsing into a vast, seemingly bottomless chasm.
The chasm was no less than forty meters across and stretched far into the distance to both left and right, like a dark border separating the world of the living from the world of the dead. A rickety rope bridge was drawn across it, connecting to a similar-looking tunnel at the other end of the abyssal chasm.
Sunny turned to Effie and scowled, really hoping to be surprised by her answer.
"So, what now?"
The huntress looked at him in confusion.
"What else? We cross the bridge!"