Vel pressed deeper into the bowels of the dungeon, the sound of his own skeletal footsteps echoing hollowly through the caverns. Each clack of bone against stone was a reminder that he was not flesh anymore, not the man he once had been. His stride was steady, unbroken by fatigue—his body incapable of weariness—yet every step felt like a descent into something colder, darker, and more alien.
The System's vibration still thrummed faintly through his bones, a shiver not of nerves but of resonance, the way iron might hum when struck. It guided him forward, a pulse that grew stronger as he went deeper, a promise of something waiting in the dark. He could feel it through the stone beneath his feet—something restless, alive in its hunger, clawing against the silence of the cavern.
The air thickened the deeper he traveled. Moisture clung to the walls, dripping down in steady rivulets that echoed like whispers. The scent was not scent, for he had no lungs to breathe, yet his awareness recoiled all the same. It was the stink of rot, of damp earth saturated with fluids long since putrid. His sockets glowed faintly, a dim fire casting sickly reflections against stalactites that jutted like jagged fangs overhead.
He knew before he saw them that he was not alone.
A scrape. A wet shuffle. A hiss, low and bubbling, like a throat torn but still trying to breathe.
Vel froze. His sword—old, burned, battered—shifted in his grip. He raised it slowly, his movements deliberate. In this place, silence was his only ally. The noise of his bones already betrayed him enough.
From the shadows ahead, something crawled.
It was not like the zombies of the surface horde. Those had walked—lumbering, clumsy, stiff. This thing came on all fours, its hands raw stumps with fingers clawed into talons of bone. Its jaw hung slack, teeth shattered, yet it snapped noisily at the air as though every breath was prey to be devoured. Patches of its skin had sloughed off entirely, revealing sinew that pulsed faintly with necrotic residue. Its eyes—milky, bulging—fixed on Vel, and it screeched.
The sound was high-pitched, piercing, animal.
Vel lifted his sword in response, sockets narrowing in grim acknowledgment.
The screech summoned more.
From crevices, from holes in the walls, from tunnels Vel hadn't even noticed—they emerged. Dozens. Some crawling. Some half-walking, dragging themselves on twisted legs. Some dragging their entrails like wet sacks behind them. Their mouths worked ceaselessly, gnashing and drooling, but there was no coordination, no vestige of humanity left.
These were beasts wearing corpses.
The first hurled itself at Vel with feral speed, far quicker than the shuffling zombies he had fought before. Vel swung. The blade caught it in mid-leap, cleaving its chest open, but the strike carried him too far with his skeletal balance. He staggered, his bones clicking as his frame tried to stabilize. Already another feral zombie was on him.
It clawed at his ribs, shrieking as its fingers scraped bone. Vel slammed the pommel of his sword into its skull, fracturing it, and then rammed the blade through its throat. It gurgled, still trying to gnash at him even as the steel pinned it to the floor.
Another. Then another.
They came in a pack, like wolves, circling him with low snarls and guttural noises, their movements jerky but predatory. Vel turned with them, blade at the ready, sockets flaring in cold light. He could not afford clumsiness here. One mistake in his footing, one misjudged swing, and they would be on him from every side.
The first broke the circle, rushing in a rabid blur. Vel cut it down, his blade shattering its spine. A second came from the opposite side. He ducked under its clawing hand and drove his elbow into its jaw, snapping bone. The third clung to his back like a starving hound, tearing at his spine. Vel reached over his shoulder, grabbed its head, and crushed it against the cavern wall.
He should have felt his muscles straining, burning with fatigue. But there was nothing. No exhaustion. Only the ceaseless rhythm of combat. Only the clarity of endless movement.
And still, they came.
Vel felt something stir within him—a dark pulse in his sternum. The System's words came unbidden, flashing in the recess of his awareness.
Skill available: Zombie Toxin Release.
He had not tested it. He did not know what it would do. But the swarm pressed closer, their claws and teeth scraping his bones, their screeches battering the cavern with sound. If ever there was a time to gamble, it was now.
Vel opened himself.
From the hollow of his ribs, from marrowless bone, a vapor seeped outward. Black-green mist oozed into the air, thick and suffocating. It slithered across the cavern floor like a living thing, curling around his legs, spreading outward with every breathless moment.
The feral zombies paused. Then they wailed.
The mist entered their open mouths, their split throats, their broken nostrils. They convulsed violently, clawing at themselves, tearing their own skin as necrotic corruption overtook their already ruined bodies. Eyes melted. Flesh blackened. Their limbs twitched and spasmed until joints snapped with wet cracks.
Vel stood in the center of the cloud, watching them die.
One feral, stronger than the rest, hurled itself at him despite the toxin, its body already disintegrating mid-lunge. Vel met it with a clean slice that severed its head. The body crumbled before it even hit the floor.
When the mist finally thinned, silence returned.
The floor was littered with corpses—more broken, more wretched than before. Some had dissolved entirely into sludge. Others lay twitching, but no longer rose. The cavern stank of corruption so heavy that even Vel's inhuman senses recoiled.
He looked at his hand, at the faint wisps still curling from between his fingers. That mist had not been flame, nor sword, nor any human technique. It was something else. Something born of death, something a man should not wield.
His sockets narrowed. He did not feel triumph. He felt unease.
Slowly, he lowered his blade, letting the silence wash over him.
His mind, fractured between who he was and what he had become, whispered truths he did not want to face.
These feral zombies… their claws, their rabid hunger, their ruined forms… They were not natural. They had not decayed into this shape by chance.
They were failures.
Experiments.
Failed evolutions discarded into the dark.
And if they were failed, then what was he?
Vel turned away from the twitching remains, his sockets burning with grim fire. His steps carried him deeper into the cavern, but his thoughts were heavier than iron.
The System's vibration thrummed once more in his bones. Stronger now. Louder.
Something waited further ahead.
Something greater than feral beasts.
Something that would answer the question clawing at him:
Had he been forged as a weapon? Or was he merely another failed experiment, walking toward the same fate as these rabid corpses?
He said nothing. The silence of the cavern was answer enough.
And yet, as he descended, one phrase echoed in the hollow of his skull, carved into the marrowless emptiness where his humanity had once been.
"They too were experiments. And I… am walking their path."