Jaco looked down at the massive horde, his eyebrows furrowed with concern. The crease of a stress line appeared on his forehead as he looked upon them milling around and continued to check their average Levels.

  From behind him, Lindon also entered the room. As the Scout looked down and sharply inhaled, Jaco made sure to raise an index finger to his lips to remind him to stay quiet. While the only thing separating them from the horde was a pretty wide set of stairs, the undead generally weren’t the most observant of monsters. The chances of them looking up were slim, so as long as the pair didn’t make noise to attract their attention, all would be well.

  But when the Druid looked at the horde again, something just didn’t feel right. His gut just couldn’t shake off a bad feeling, like that there was more to them than what met the eye. That there was something about these Zombies that made them more dangerous than just their Levels or even sheer numbers would make them initially seem. He couldn’t tell exactly what that was, but he trusted that if it was setting off his instincts, then his guard needed to remain raised.

  Jaco then glanced over to the right. Opposite from the stairs was another hallway with a length of around a dozen feet, that then led to another fully closed door. He didn’t know where it went, and wasn’t sure if he was even ready to check. Not when the thousands upon thousands of Zombies below also spilled into their own corridors with unknown destinations.

  With a frown on his face, he remained deep in thought. The fortress up to this point had been nothing but traps and rooms that had specifically been left slightly open. Either carelessly by someone who didn’t care to close them… or intentionally to make someone tempted to check each time. But if it were the latter case, then why? Why bother with something so specific and frankly rather indirect? If there was intent behind it as an action, then to what end would it even be for?

  As Jaco’s focus remained on the Zombies and his own internal question, he barely noted that Lindon was now standing to his right. And that the young man was also staring down at the massive horde, his eyes practically bulging out of their sockets.

  “We- we should probably move before they look at us,” Lindon nervously whispered under his breath. Beside him, Jaco just gave a small nod while his thoughts were still distracted with a myriad of questions and concerns without any immediately apparent answers.

  But at this point, it’s probably better to just get moving. Still no signs of a Demon, or even any Demidemons, but at least this is a sign of something. For now, we could retreat and head back outside. Have Lindon tell the others who are still waiting about this, while maybe I can come back in and keep going on my own. There has to still be more than can be found. And if I’m alone and can move more quickly, then-

  Jaco’s thoughts were interrupted as he caught movement in the corner of his eye. Only seconds before he would have turned to the Scout and said that they can go ahead and head back, he discovered the other man had meant something else about how they should “move.”

  “Hey! Wai-” Jaco tried to quietly hiss as Lindon had hurried down the hall to the right. But it was already too late, as he felt a heavy pit in his stomach from what was about to happen next. Just as the young man turned back to him, he’d already been mid-step. One that was a step too far as a bit of the stone floor sunk under his foot with the light clink of something being activated.

  Oh son of a- damn it! The Druid mentally swore while he rushed for the Scout. Lindon’s entire body had gone rigid as he looked down with an expression of pure horror on his face. Both of them expected that a trap like the others from about had just been sprung. That Lindon had just foolishly risked death, and now Jaco would need to just hope to be fast enough to pull him back in time before he got skewered, burnt to death, or met a worse fate.

  However, neither of them could have truly expected what instead happened next.

  Rather than a trap being set off to harm or kill Lindon, for just a moment, it seemed as if nothing happened. But then an alarm began to blare, one that was like a tornado siren going off. The source of the alarm was unknown, as it seemed to just be coming from every direction. It was loud enough that both men reflexively felt the need to cover their ears, but as loud it was for Lindon, it was many times worse for the Druid and his sensitive hearing.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit! I’m sorry! I- I didn’t mean to!” Lindon exclaimed. Though with how the alarm drowned him out, Jaco hadn’t even heard a single word of what he’d just said.

  Instead Jaco was doubled over, his eyes shut with pain as the siren continued to blare. His internal thoughts were nothing more than an unending string of curses as it felt like his head was about to explode. If there was ever a moment that he regretted the supernatural senses he’d been granted, it was then. A warm liquid began to drip out of his ears and ran through the gloved fingers covering them. Blood.

  As a small mercy, despite feeling like an eternity to Jaco, the alarm only lasted for a few seconds before it began to quiet down. But even as it died out, the Druid could already tell that things would just go from bad to worse. When he looked at the Scout with now reopened eyes, he could see that the other man’s mouth was currently moving. Yet Jaco’s ears were still ringing like Hell as he was still unable to hear a thing even after the siren stopped.

  Yet the Druid was swift to put aside the fact that he had been rendered deaf by the wall-shaking noise. Partially due to the fact that, like any other injury, he trusted that his high Stats wouldn’t take too long to repair the physical damage to his ears. But it was mainly because Jaco knew that compared to his current condition, there was a far more pressing matter on hand that needed to be addressed first.

  All it took was one look downward to see that the horde had already begun to react to the alarm. In what was a truly unnerving level of synched-up movement, all of them had started to move as a surge toward the stairs.

  Even when moving as a singular mass more than thousands of individual members, it would still take some time for those within the corridor leading out the opposite of the chamber to reach it. Along with just how compressed the undead in the middle had been, which was like a traffic jam that still needed at least a little time to clear up.

  However, for the Zombies who had happened to be nearest to the stairs, they had already begun to climb up. The stairway itself was big enough to comfortably hold dozens of them squeezed together across its width. In terms of height though, it would still take some time before the Zombies would reach the pair of men.

  While the Zombies shambled at a pace that was at least comparable to a pre-System human’s sprinting speed, they still had at least several building stories worth of stairs to climb. Something which at least gave them a bit of breathing room, as Jaco quickly turned back toward the Scout responsible for this. Seeing the utter look of panic that was clearly shutting down Lindon’s thoughts as he’d also been looking at the horde, the Druid firmly grabbed ahold of his shoulders and shook him.

  “Lindon, look at me!” Jaco yelled while still unable to even hear himself. “There’s too many for me to fight all at once! If you stay, they’ll overwhelm and kill you! And who knows what else that siren might have triggered?! So in case there are more hordes or some of this one gets past me, you need to go back and warn the others! After that, do me a favor and head west! There’s a camp of other strong people that way! Just ask for Sam or Noah, and say that I sent you! Then tell them everything that you can!”

  Lindon moved his mouth as if to say something in response, but the Druid shook his head. Besides, it wasn’t like Jaco would currently be able to tell what he wanted to say anyway. Even in a high-stress moment like this, he hadn’t suddenly developed the ability to accurately read lips.

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  “I’ll hold them off, so just go! Before anything else arrives! Even if it gets ruined, just use your bow to trigger the traps on the way back out we came!” Then while he was still holding onto the young man’s shoulders, Jaco half-shoved and half-almost threw him back toward the door they’d come through.

  When Lindon went through the doorway, he turned back to give Jaco just a final look. The conflict and hesitation in his eyes were easy to see. Something which the Druid was quick to try and make him get over and then just hurry up to get out.

  “GO!” Jaco practically roared with all the might that his superhuman lungs could muster. The vein on one of his temples was practically bulging at this point as his pulse raced. Flinching back with more than a bit of fright, Lindon finally hurried and ran straight out.

  With a heavy breath, the Druid moved to use his high Strength to fairly easily slam the stone door closed. He then turned back toward the stairway. It’d been just in time, as the heads of the first wave of Zombies could now be seen as they’d just reached near the top of the stairs. While he didn’t know if these undead even had the motor skills necessary to actually open the door on the own, it also didn’t really make a difference in the end.

  It would be the biggest single group of enemies he’d ever fought on his lonesome. More than the army of Skeletons he’d once cut a line through to escape to the other side. More than even hundreds upon hundreds of Spectres that had targeted him, and then he’d needed to defend Evelyn from.

  And while the Zombies’ Levels were still nothing impressive compared to the strongest enemies he’d fought until now, the bad feeling in his gut about an unknown threat they presented was still there, and only growing stronger by the second. But in any case, Jaco gathered his resolve as he cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders.

  He didn’t intend to let even a single one of them leave this chamber.

  With a wave of his staff, the Druid blasted the first few dozen Zombies away. Several of them were flung all the way off and sent flying back down to the bottom of the chamber. But most of them just slammed into other undead as they quickly formed into a wave of bodies.

  From his other hand, heat that had been building up within his body was then released as an uncontrolled cone of fire. When all he needed to do was aim in a general direction and basically couldn’t miss the wall of targets that ran at him, the idea of precision quickly became unnecessary.

  EXP Earned!

  EXP Earned!

  EXP Earned!

  The Experience notifications just continued to roll in as the smell of burning undead flesh filled the air. Jaco’s nose became scrunched as it filled his nostrils. No matter how often he’d smelled that odor at this point, it was a hard thing to ever actually get used to.

  After positioning himself directly in front of the closed door, Jaco had yet to take a single step away from his spot. He had internally marked it as the place he wanted to defend, and it would take a whole lot more than just that first wave of undead to make him feel any urgent need to move. As more and more Zombies came charging up the stairs, an aura of rot and decay then appeared around them.

  With Zone of Blight now in effect, the now about 75-foot sphere would catch any undead that continued to climb up the stairs and force them to try and get through it first. When Jaco had previously used the Ability while fighting the pair of Minotaurs, it’d been while keeping himself as the central point of the sphere. But way back when he’d first tested it, he had already known that any point within a larger range could be used as a valid placement of the zone.

  The Zombies who’d been at the front were the best off, at least for a moment. Since that was before another blast of wind magic sent them flying away to reset their progress. Meanwhile, those were farther down before the Zone of Blight’s placement took the full brunt of its effects as they tried to run through it.

  The weakest of the undead didn’t even survive long enough to reach the top; as instead they simply collapsed and fell against the stairs. Something which instantly turned them into obstacles for the next ones in line as they continued to move at full speed and consequently stumbled against their fallen brethren.

  But even the ones that survived their crucible of rot were still in terrible shape. With how much of their dead flesh had fallen off from their bones, their shambling forms had begun to look more like Skeletons. And when it came to these now largely weakened Zombies, Jaco barely had to put any effort into delivering the finishing blow.

  All in all, things were going well for the Druid so far. While the horde of undead were indeed great in number, the stairs acted as the bottleneck for how many could reach him at a time. So if he used the zone to then turn that into a chokepoint that they were forced to cross, then there was no need for him to put in more effort than that. As tempting as it was to assume his bear form with Lesser Shapeshift and jump down into the pit to act as a living blender of all the Zombies at once, this was the smarter strategy.

  This way he could conserve the Mana that his Druid Abilities used, and mostly rely on the Devil’s Essence instead. Like the fortress in the other city, there was a Hellish aura of power here that steadily replenished the Devil’s Essence inside him. The continuously active use of his Ability was using the energy at a higher rate than it was being restored, but Jaco didn’t worry too much about it. For now, he just took the more optimistic view of knowing that relying more on zone should mean getting more Experience and Levels divvied to his Secondary Class.

  At the very least, I’ll have plenty of juice in the tank this way if anything else shows up. While it’d be a lot faster to just turn this horde into a sea of fire, doing that for thousands of them would take up way too much Mana. Honestly? Don’t even think I’d have enough to even pull that off in one go before I ran out, if I really think about it, Jaco thought as he continued to gauge his current resource consumption.

  Even just the occasional use of a wind or fire attack would slowly burn through his Mana. Very slowly due to how massive his Spell Power made his total pool, along with the rate it naturally regenerated. But if given enough time, even just using it this much would steadily drain his supply.

  However, it probably wouldn’t even take that long until he’d know if he was right to be cautious about more enemies. If some Demidemons or a Demon were on their where here, or just another horde, he couldn’t imagine it taking more than a few minutes until he caught signs of their arrival. If Jaco were concerned about anything, it’d be another horde that went straight out of the fortress without passing through him first.

  Yet, at the same time, he had a feeling that probably wouldn’t be the case. From just how the giant fortress had looked from the outside, where they had entered it from, and then keeping track of roughly where inside it they were while exploring, he believed that this was close to the center. Or to be more specific, the middle in terms of its parameter, but near the bottom floor. So hopefully, this would prove to be the only horde in the structure.

  As Zombies dropped near the top of the stairs, their rotting corpses steadily formed into a pile. One that was rather loose, however, as they were steadily turned skeletal enough that the bones became easily kicked around. But as more and more undead fell to the establishing killing point, even the skeletons were steadily forming into a larger obstacle faster than the bones were being turned into crushed dust.

  Yet at the same time, another threat came from the side. While most of the Zombies had chosen the stairs as a default path, not all of them did. Out of the corner of his eye, Jaco noticed a hand rise to grasp the top of the wall. One that was very, very quickly followed by more hands across its length.

  Of course. Figures that asking all of them to neatly fall into my own death trap would be too good to be true. Had the Druid been able, he would have slammed his staff down and manipulated the stone the building was made of in order to deal with these wall climbers.

  However, like before, his danger sense gave him a warning that doing so would not be good. In what way, he had no idea. But if his instincts said so, then he wasn’t quite feeling suicidal enough to try it anyway. Though, Jaco did frown at the fact that this reaction was still occurring, despite the Devil’s Essence within his body. If anything, one might have assumed that it would have helped prevent whatever reaction using his Ability with the stone might trigger.

  Even so, all it really meant was an extra wave of his staff. A fully horizontal arc of air to slash into the Zombies as they climbed up the wall. Just like the undead going up the stairs, however, one wave was just the start of would be many. As soon as the first Zombies up the wall fell, more just as quickly filled in their place.

  More and more Experience notifications just came and went. Thanks to his current set-up, Jaco only really had to manage the Zombies coming up the wall. The idea to cast a second Zone of Blight on it had come to mind, but was quickly dismissed. As such a thing would ultimately just double the drain of his Devil’s Essence, which would lead it to running it faster and sooner unable to maintain the Ability at all.