Spirit guided Angar across the hardened lava crust toward solid ground. As she led him, she spoke. “The surviving reavers will reach Nalitha’s border villages soon. Some will hit Tormina and Ghelix tomorrow. The next day, they’ll strike Krelon, Juxara, and Zandor. The day after that, they’ll swarm Vazara and the densely populated Kondune.”

  Angar marveled at the reavers’ speed and ability to range. Spirit had listed most kingdoms he knew – all south or east, all under the Kondunean Empire’s subjugation besides Juxara, far to the east.

  “None to the north?” he asked.

  “No,” Spirit replied. “There’s little up there. The equatorial zone of this world is uninhabitable.”

  “The destruction didn’t touch all the northern towns and villages, did it?” he asked, wondering about the land controlled by Mecia he hailed from.

  “It didn’t,” Spirit confirmed, and relief washed over him.

  Nalithan lands lay a full day’s march south. Even with his new speed, with the shape his battered body was in, it’d take long, agonizing spans to reach them. He steeled himself to push harder.

  As if sensing his thoughts, Spirit said, “Only two hours have passed since the eruption began. Give your regeneration a little time to work. But to save your world, you must push yourself beyond your limits. I have a plan. Let’s go.”

  The journey stretched into a brutal, exhausting slog. Hunger gnawed at him relentlessly.

  Spirit promised to warn him of danger as he drove his body to its breaking point, telling him to practice meditating and cycling while moving.

  They spoke little, traveling in near silence. Occasionally, Spirit hummed a tune. As they neared Nalitha’s border, a ringing pierced one of Angar’s ears.

  He hoped it signaled his ear was healing, a sign his hearing was returning. Later, when that ear caught faint sounds and the other began to ring, he knew it to be true.

  On the Mecian side of the border stood a trading village, far outside the devastation caused by the eruptions. When Spirit and Angar arrived, his body seemed both better and worse, partially healed but utterly spent. His lightning-struck arm had improved a little, though it remained ravaged, the finger still very swollen and coated in yellow fungus.

  Reavers had slaughtered everyone in the village. Unlike Mecia’s obliterated people, these corpses hadn’t been destroyed. They’d risen as undead, also called zombies.

  Spirit explained, “Hellspawn generally split into two main kinds. The first focus on corrupting with temptations and dark whispers, the second focus on killing outright.”

  The killers, she added, wielded the weakest corruption but often turned their victims into undead. Reavers fell into this latter group.

  Undead spawned by reavers took hours to rise. Those killed by the undead, however, transformed much faster, nearly instantly. Even a bite from one proved fatal to most, though not to Angar now. At worst, he’d suffer a mild fever, thanks to ascending and his Endurance and Toughness Stats.

  When Spirit first mentioned undead, Angar had pictured malicious spirits able to meddle and interact with the physical world. That wasn’t the truth of it at all. These were animated corpses, savage and relentless.

  Their skin had turned gray with streaks of black everywhere, possibly the veins. How they originally died was often easy to figure out – the claws or bites of reavers or the undead.

  Their eyes were clouded over, giving them a vacant, soulless look, but they could detect movement and sound with eerie accuracy. They all seemed filled with rage and driven singularly by the urge to kill.

  As soon as one noticed Angar, it always sprinted towards him, mouth agape. Since Angar still couldn't hear too well, he had no idea if those open mouths were screaming, moaning, or silent.

  The undead seemed to have no sense of pain or fear, making them extremely, even admirably, persistent.

  He faced a handful of them piecemeal as he approached the village lodged between two porous hills filled with cave systems.

  Once he entered the village proper, he spotted a large group of undead piled together, scrambling over one another to get at something. Thirty or more of them, making the air thick with the stench of decay.

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  Nearly all the zombies noticed Angar at the same time. Their desiccated bodies and jerky limbs filled with unnatural speed as they surged towards him, their vacant, soulless eyes locked onto their prey, mouths opened wide.

  He gripped the maul tightly in his hands and prepared.

  They surged forward as a pack, blindingly fast, intent on swarming and crushing with a ferocity that nearly overwhelmed him. He swung his maul, and it roared through the air, the heavy head crashing into the skull of the leading zombie, sending it reeling back with a sickening crunch.

  Bone fragments and gore flew as he spun, the maul now a blur of motion. A second and then a third zombie fell, their bodies crumpling to the ground.

  But the horde was relentless. More zombies rushed out of the surrounding caves. The ones in front of him clawed and lunged, uncaring about their fallen companions.

  He ducked under a swinging arm, the nails of the undead scraping the air where his head had been. His counterstrike was brutal, and his hammer sunk deeply into a face.

  The maul connected with the chest of another zombie, caving it in, sending the creature flying backward into two others, knocking them down.

  He swung the hammer as hard as he could with both hands, agitating his injured arm, his goal to send more undead bashing into others, keeping the swarm back, but the sanctified weapon blew its target apart, turning it into a shower of guts in viscera.

  Angar knew he couldn't fend them all off in this way. As he crushed the skull of another with a downward swing, more zombies closed in. He managed to bash one to the side, its jaw detaching from the impact, and pulverized another's kneecap, dropping it to the ground.

  But more came, and the sheer number was overwhelming.

  With a mighty effort, he swung the maul in a wide arc, catching two more zombies in a single blow, their bodies crunching upon impact.

  Angar knew he couldn’t fend them all off in this way, but that had never been the plan. He had wanted to test this System training he had received earlier. He approved.

  But even with his new speed, skill, and great strength that allowed him to swing his weapon around so easily, the undead were too many.

  Too many, and grouped together, swarming. He used Ground Current and appeared in the center of the swarm. For three meters all around him, undead were struck by bolts of lightning, and those bolts sent out new bolts into a wider area, and those bolts did the same.

  He stood amid the carnage, surrounded by the twitching remains of six or seven zombies, the other corpses unmoving, his chest held out proudly.

  An Energy Point well spent, he thought. I love being a Crusader.

  His maul swung and he stomped in heads with his heel until those left twitching no longer did.

  Then he found a long stretch of treated hern-hide, wrapped it around his waist, and secured it with a belt he took from an undead. He also found a pack he put a hide blanket in, a belt pouch with a flint kit and some other necessary items, a belt-knife, and plenty of food to eat on his journey.

  It felt like he was robbing the dead, but he only took little, and only what he needed to help avenge them.

  A similar scene repeated itself in two more villages and a town on the way to the city of Nalitha, all packed with undead.

  Spirit had said there were only forty or so surviving reavers. That so few had caused so much death proved their might and power, and such had to be respected.

  And not every human inhabitant of these villages and town had died. Spirit said a decent number had fled, and the ones that stayed away were alive, gladdening Angar.

  Other than the combat, it was rush and rush and rush with no rest. Still, no matter how quickly they rushed, Angar had no idea how they’d catch up with and kill all the reavers. It seemed like a futile task. Impossible.

  Then, they saw Nalitha. It was very large, most of its dwellings in the cave systems at the base of a mighty and porous mountain range.

  Undead poured out of everywhere to attack Angar, thousands of them. He had been trying to use as little Energy as possible, and save all his Charges, but now facing this mighty army, that was no longer an option.

  Thankfully, the bloodlust of the undead made it unnecessary to chase them down. They all came to him, and vigorously so.

  They chased him to the heart of Nalitha, and Angar stood resolute as the hordes of undead converged upon him. Their decaying hands stretched out, eager to tear into flesh, their mouths open, hungry.

  As the swarm enveloped him, he swung his hammer around, killing those he could, or re-killing them. When the swarm was too much, with a grim determination, he gripped his sanctified maul tightly with both hands.

  Then Angar began to spin, the maul a blur of motion, each rotation dealing devastation, shattering bones and sending corpses flying, more zombies rushing in, crawling over corpses to do so, as if eager to help him kill them more quickly.

  As he spun, lightning crackled from the maul's tip, stretching out, growing in intensity each second, extending its reach further with every passing moment.

  The lightning struck all around in a wide area, and when it struck, it wasn’t once – it forked, jumping from one undead to another, and then another. With his new Power Level, it struck with devastating force, sometimes potent enough to reduce the undead to ash.

  The city of Nalitha was brightly illuminated by the unnatural lightning, the air filled with the scent of storm and decay. The stun effect lightning damage could apply held many undead upright for a moment before they fell down dead again.

  By the time Angar ceased his spin, the ground around him was littered with corpses twitching with the crackle of energy. Seeing Tempest play out in all its wrath and glory was really something to behold.

  He had killed many undead, a very wide area around him cleared of them, but his great slaughter had just begun. He stood in the calm eye of a storm. Thousands more rushed at him, shouldering others out of the way for the chance to reach him first.

  Some instinct told him the resource for his Capstone was at capacity. His hammer thunked meatily into the head of the first zombie to reach him, then an explosion sent all the undead in a wide cone splattering away in small chunks of bloody gore, followed by a loud thunderous boom.

  Spirit had been correct. When his Capstone was ready to do what it did, he knew. And he approved of this too.

  He turned to face his enemies. Soon, there’d be none left in Nalitha.

  I truly love being a Crusader, thought Angar.

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