We pushed out of the narrow administrative hallway and into the expansive, high-ceilinged reception gallery of the third floor. Chris stumbled slightly behind me, his chest heaving as he tightly carried his bound, snarling daughter, Lukreia. Her solid crimson blood-binds held firm, but her thrashing was relentless, her jaw snapping wildly at empty air.
I adjusted my left-handed grip on the Death Chant shotgun...my favorite "means of communication." Being reduced to a single arm and relying strictly on a heavy firearm was starting to limit my tactical options, especially with a horde surging up the stairwell.
I turned my head back toward the Governor, my crimson eyes narrowing.
"Hey. Since I'm the only one keeping you two breathing, how about you actually contribute a little?"
Chris blinked, looking down at his empty, trembling hands.
"Oh...sorry! But... I don't have a weapon, Eirene! I was in a office when the outbreak started!"
My mind immediately darted to my spatial inventory ring. I had the Death Chant submachine gun...my trusty "Don't Ask"...stored inside. But Death Chant artifacts were unique elemental conduits; they converted the wielder's innate affinity directly into ammunition. In my hands, my Hemomancy turned the weapon into a horrific blood-bullet spewer.
"What's your innate skill affinity?" I asked him quickly.
"Defense reduction,"
Completely useless for a gun. Giving him a weapon that relied on elemental mana output would render the firearm inert or wildly inefficient in his hands.
I discarded other options in milliseconds. Bayonets? Too short. The mutated zombies had elongated bone blades and reaching skeletal talons; getting into knife-range with one arm tied up holding a child meant death for him.
Pick up a guard's sword from the floor? I scanned the immediate corridor...the few guards who had fallen here were stripped to the bone, their weapons broken, notched, or completely dulled against the mutated skeletal armor of their attackers.
That left me with only one viable solution: I had to make him one myself.
"Hold this," I ordered, shoving the heavy frame of the shotgun into Chris's left arm.
He hastily caught it against his chest alongside Lukreia.
With my shotgun temporarily transferred, I brought my left hand to my mouth and bit down hard into my own palm with my sharp vampiric fangs.
RIIIIP.
Pain flared, sharp and grounding, as dark, viscous vampire blood welled up from the deep laceration. I immediately channeled my blood manipulation, draining a precise measure of my own vitality.
The crimson fluid burst from my palm, suspended in the air by my mana, and began to twist and harden with a sickening metallic crystallization.
Within seconds, the blood solidified into a heavy, razor-sharp broadsword with a dark crimson edge, alongside a thick arm-mounted kite shield bristling with hardened blood-spikes. The weapon was solid, perfectly balanced, and infused directly with my vampiric mana...sharp enough to cleave through flesh and brittle bone alike.
I snatched the Death Chant back from Chris with my left hand, racking the slide against my hip with a sharp CLACK.
I thrust the newly forged blood-sword and spiked shield into his hands.
"Take it, you'll need it for these monsters."
"Thanks, Eirene," Chris grunted, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of the crystallized blood-sword.
Despite his administrative title, he held the blade with the instinctive balance of a seasoned fighter.
He adjusted his stance, lodging the spiked blood-shield securely on his forearm while keeping the bound, thrashing Lukreia guarded behind his hip.
Before he could say another word, the heavy wooden floorboards of the gallery began to vibrate violently beneath our boots.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!
The double doors at the far end of the narrow corridor...leading directly into the grand auditorium of the Town Hall...burst completely off their iron hinges.
A screeching, horrific wave of infected poured out into the gallery. There were easily more than thirty of them, a surging wall of frantic, hijacked bodies.
These weren't mild cases. Their trauma-induced mutations were far worse than anything we had put down on the upper floors.
Thick, overlapping skeletal plates had ruptured through their skin, forming jagged rib-cages, spiky chest carapaces, and overgrown bone blades protruding from their wrists and elbows.
"Get behind me!" I snapped, leveling the Death Chant shotgun with my left hand.
The narrow hallway forced the horde into a tight, choked bottleneck...a gunner's paradise. As the first mutated zombie lunged forward, its hollowed-out eyes locked on us, I pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The heavy blast of enchanted shot slammed point-blank into the lead thrall. The brittle bone armor across its chest shattered like cheap glass under the kinetic force.
CLACK-CLACK.
I racked the slide against my belt and fired again instantly.
BOOM!
The second shot tore through the exposed flesh beneath the shattered armor, shredding its vital organs and blowing its torso apart. Dark, corrupted blood sprayed across the walls as the corpse collapsed, momentarily tripping up the monsters behind it.
"Chris! Don't let anything get past the choke point!"
"I'm on it!" Chris roared.
A heavily armored thrall...its chest completely enclosed in a thick, interlocking cage of bone...bypassed my line of sight and leaped directly at Chris with its arm blade raised.
Instead of backing away, Chris stepped forward, slamming his spiked blood-shield straight into the monster's chest.
CLANG!
The monster's momentum speared its own torso directly onto the shield's blood-spikes. At the exact moment of impact, a harsh, translucent pulse of magical energy flared from Chris's hands, washing over the thrall's body.
A sickening CRACK echoed through the corridor. The monster's seemingly impenetrable skeletal armor instantly spider-webbed with glowing fractures, losing its density and crumbling into useless, powder-like bone dust.
Before the thrall could recover, Chris swung my blood-forged broadsword in a fluid, practiced arc, decapitating the defenseless creature in a single clean sweep.
"It works! Keep them coming!"
Another heavily mutated zombie broke through the choke point and lunged directly at my throat, its skeletal claws reaching.
With no time to rack another shell into the shotgun, I whipped my wrist, extending the bayonet mounted beneath the barrel...the Mist Blade. The blade was enchanted to phase through metallic and leather armors, ignoring physical defenses entirely. I thrust it straight at the thrall's chest, expecting the phantom edge to pass through its chest plate and slice its heart.
CLANG!
The blade bounced hard off the dense, overgrown skeletal plate, sending a jarring vibration up my single arm.
Tch! It works on external armor, not dense, biological bone that's part of the living host's body structure!
Realizing the limitation, I instantly adjusted my angle, jammed the muzzle under the creature's jaw, and yanked the trigger.
BOOM!
The shot blew its skull apart, sending dark blood splashing against the stone wall.
Before the corpse hit the floor, three more trauma-induced zombies charged out of the smoke. The lead one was encrusted with thick bone blades across its arms. I lunged forward and slashed my bayonet across its rotting face. The weapon's secondary enchantment...an Anti-Heal Curse...instantly flared, searing into the flesh to prevent any rapid cellular regeneration. Before it could recover from the sting, I pressed the barrel against its temple and blew its head off.
BOOM!
The remaining two behind it had low psychological trauma...no bone spikes or skeletal carapaces, just raw, mindless aggression.
BOOM! BOOM!
Two quick blasts tore through their torsos, dropping them instantly into the growing pile of bodies.
Being one-armed made reloading an absolute nightmare in the middle of a melee. I slammed the shotgun's receiver against my knee, using the leverage to pull the slide back, flicking a fresh shell into the port with my index finger before snapping it shut.
CLACK-CLACK!
A few paces beside me, Chris was fighting like a man possessed. He held the spiked blood-shield out like a heavy riot shield, using his heavy frame to pin zombies against the wall before shattering their bone armor with his skill.
But I could see the sweat pouring down his pale face, his breathing ragged. Heavy purple light pulsed erratically around his hands...his mana pool was rapidly hitting rock bottom from spamming his defense reduction on every single thrall.
A high-tier mutated zombie leapt over the pile of corpses, its elongated bone blade sweeping down toward Chris's exposed neck while he was recovery-locked.
I stepped in, raising my shotgun's bayonet to catch the descending bone blade.
CLANG!
The impact rattled my shoulder stump, but I held the parry, locking the bone blade against my bayonet's hilt.
"Chris! Stop overusing your skill! Your mana is nearly dry...save it for when you actually get pinned!"
"Got it!" Chris grunted, instantly shifting tactics.
Instead of burning mana to break the thrall's armor, he used his raw physical weight to drive the spiked shield forward, pinning the zombie's chest. With a sharp roar, he thrust my blood-forged broadsword straight through its unarmored throat.
While the creature was still impaled on his blade, I planted my boot firmly into its midsection, kicking it off his sword. As it stumbled backward, I leveled the Death Chant and put a heavy slug right between its eyes.
BOOM!