The cavern stretched deeper than Vel had ever dared descend.
The air grew heavier as he advanced, metallic footfalls echoing like the toll of a funeral bell. The walls, slick with old moisture and crawling vines of black fungus, seemed to lean inward, oppressive, suffocating. Somewhere in this labyrinth of stone, he knew, the Lich that had orchestrated this charnel pit was working. Each step brought him closer to its domain.
Vel's sockets burned faintly, casting a pale glow ahead. The cavern whispered to him in ways his human ears once could not: vibrations carried through the stone floor into his metal frame, subtle and inescapable. His body had become a tuning fork for death itself.
And now, he felt it.
A tremor.
Faint at first, like the far-off roll of thunder. Then stronger, a steady pounding rhythm, dozens… no, hundreds of impacts reverberating through the stone. The ground vibrated under his feet, the way soil trembles before a stampede.
Vel froze. His sockets narrowed.
"…Something comes."
The vibration grew. A pulse, a heartbeat of the grave. The air thickened with the smell—wet rot, sour meat, stagnant blood. Even without flesh, Vel could taste it in the back of his hollow skull, his sockets flaring with revulsion.
Then he heard them.
The shuffle of countless feet. The dragging of limbs. Wet, guttural moans echoing through the darkness.
Zombies.
They emerged from the corridor like a tide of filth. The first stumbled into view, half its face sliding off the skull beneath, an eyeball dangling by a cord of nerve. Then another—limbless, crawling. Another—bloated with gas, skin split and leaking black pus. And then more, and more, until the cavern mouth was filled with a wall of decayed flesh, staggering forward in endless hunger.
Vel raised his blade. His sockets blazed.
"…Good. More fuel."
The first of the horde lunged, arms reaching, teeth snapping. Vel swung. His battered sword cleaved through its skull, blackened brain matter spraying against the wall.
[+2 EP. +1 AP.]
Another leapt, jaw unhinged, fingers clawing for his spine. Vel's fist met its face. The skull exploded like rotted fruit.
[+2 EP. +1 AP.]
The horde howled.
And then it crashed into him.
Vel became a whirlwind. His blade tore through torsos, his fists smashed through jaws, his kicks shattered ribcages. The zombies swarmed him, gnashing teeth against his arms, clawing at his torso, but his metal bones held unyielding. Teeth shattered against him. Nails splintered. Their rotten flesh tore like parchment under his strikes.
But unlike skeletons, they didn't crumble cleanly. They clung, sticky and foul, intestines unraveling across his legs, limbs still twitching after being severed. One zombie, its body cleaved in half, dragged itself along his spine, jaws snapping near his neck until Vel reached back and crushed its skull in his grip.
[+2 EP. +1 AP.][+2 EP. +1 AP.]
The notifications pulsed endlessly at the edges of his mind, a litany of slaughter. But the horde did not stop. For every corpse that fell, three more pushed forward, moaning, groaning, choking the cavern with their numbers.
Vel slashed, stabbed, shattered, tore. His body did not tire. His motions did not falter. His sockets flared brighter with each kill, the pale fire within him rising to an inferno.
Still they came.
A bloated zombie burst against his strike, showering him in bile and maggots that writhed across his metallic ribs. Vel snarled silently, sweeping them off with his blade before driving it into another's skull.
Another lunged, jaw splitting unnaturally wide, a nest of black worms spilling from its throat. Vel grabbed it by the head and crushed it into the cavern wall, bone and worms splattering.
[+2 EP. +1 AP.][+2 EP. +1 AP.]
The floor grew slick with gore. The stench of rot thickened until it became a physical weight pressing down on him. Yet Vel moved faster, stronger, unstoppable. Each strike rang out like a hammer on an anvil, each corpse reduced to fragments beneath his wrath.
Zombies piled upon him, a mountain of flesh and stink, but Vel erupted from it like a blade tearing through cloth. His sword sang as he cut a wide arc, splitting torsos in two. His fists pummeled the swarm, cracking skulls like brittle gourds.
The System's messages blurred together, endless lines of progress.
[+2 EP. +1 AP.][+2 EP. +1 AP.][+2 EP. +1 AP.]
Total EP: 68Total AP: 31
Vel paused amidst the carnage. The cavern was silent again, save for the dripping of fluids from the walls. His sockets flared as he stood surrounded by heaps of broken bodies, their stench rising like a funeral pyre of rot.
His blade dripped gore, but his grip was steady. His frame gleamed faintly under the layers of blood and bile, metal unbroken.
Vel inhaled—though he had no lungs. The act was instinct, a remnant of humanity. He exhaled, the sound hollow and alien.
"…They are endless. And yet…" His sockets narrowed, fire pulsing hotter. "I do not break."
He looked down at his hands. Still clenched, still strong. His body hummed with power, strengthened by the endless flood of Evolution Points and Ability Points.
Each kill brought him closer. Closer to something no man, no skeleton, no zombie could ever become.
Vel stepped forward, leaving behind a carpet of corpses. The deeper corridors of the cavern yawned before him, and somewhere in that abyss, the Lich waited.
His sockets burned brighter, pale fire searing against the darkness.
"I am the storm that consumes the dead," Vel thought. "And I am not done yet."
He advanced, the cavern floor crunching under his iron steps.
And the hunt continued.