The five-square-meter janitor's closet was a claustrophobic death trap. The air was thick with the suffocating stench of stale bleach, old copper blood, and the sour sweat of five people backed into a corner.
Since Chris had been forced to abandon my blood-forged shield back on the stairs, he had ripped a heavy, iron-reinforced wooden closet door off its frame inside the room.
Bracing his legs against the concrete baseboards, he hoisted the makeshift barricade in front of his torso, taking position as our vanguard on the left side of the threshold.
I took my place directly beside him on the right, my left hand locked onto the grip of the Death Chant shotgun, my boot planted against the wall to absorb any sudden impact.
Behind us, Hugh stood guard with his notched arming sword drawn, his scarred, cold frame monitoring the interior angles and protecting our rear. Tucked into the furthest back corner behind Hugh were James and Aisha, their wooden-framed Tommy Guns held at the ready.
Beside them lay Lukreia… her wrists and ankles doubly secured with thick mop handles and heavy industrial rope on top of my crimson blood-binds, ensuring she couldn't squirm free if our focus shifted to the door.
CRACK-BANG!
The wooden doorframe finally surrendered under the overwhelming weight outside, splinters exploding inward as the oak door caved in. Immediately, the doorway choked with a writhing, desperate pile of mutated zombies… their calcified chest plates grinding against each other as they tried to wedge themselves through the narrow gap all at once.
I raised the heavy frame of the Death Chant with my single arm, squeezed the trigger point-blank into the face of the lead thrall, and pulled.
BOOM!
The heavy shot detonated at point-blank range, obliterating the monster's skull into a dark crimson fog and sending its headless corpse collapsing back into the pile.
Neither James nor Aisha fired a single bolt behind us, and I silently approved of their discipline. They weren't being timid; they were being smart with their resources.
Through my Appraisal skill, I had already compared their internal reserves. James possessed a fairly shallow, unrefined mana pool typical of an uneducated street-level enforcer.
Aisha, on the other hand, carried a surprisingly larger mana capacity despite her low magical output.
It made complete sense… the Sisiphon Magic Academy heavily drilled its first-year students in rigorous Mana Expansion Training, a brutal conditioning process where students repeatedly drained their internal mana reservoirs to total exhaustion, forcing the physical body to adapt and expand its total capacity upon recovery.
She might not have known how to shape a high-tier spell, but her engine had plenty of fuel.
Dark, corrupted crimson fluid gushed violently from the blasted neck of the dead thrall, splattering against the front face of Chris's wooden shield and spraying across the doorframe.
"Watch the splatter! That blood is highly lethal! Don't let a single drop touch an open wound, your eyes, or your mouth, or you'll turn into one of these things in seconds!"
I jammed the muzzle of the Death Chant shotgun straight into a writhing mass of mutated meat and calcified bones wedged in the doorway, yanking the trigger without hesitation.
BOOM!
The point-blank blast pulverized the lead thrall's chest into a gory slurry. Before the secondary wave of infected could press forward through the gap, I planted my boot directly into the corpse's mangled midsection and kicked with everything I had.
THUD!
The heavy kick shoved the mass of bodies back into the outer corridor, creating a brief, narrow opening in the doorway.
"Move now! Clear the threshold!" I shouted.
Chris bolted through the opening first, holding his improvised closet-door shield high while cradling the bound, thrashing Lukreia tightly under his opposite arm. Instead of wasting energy trying to swing a blade, he used his broad frame and the heavy wooden barricade like a battering ram, forcefully plowing through the disoriented thralls in the outer hall to clear a landing zone for the rest of us.
I stepped out right behind him, sweeping the Death Chant with my single arm and racking the slide against my hip.
BOOM! CLACK-CLACK! BOOM!
Enchanted slugs tore through two low-tier zombies charging from the left flank, blowing their torsos apart and painting the hall in dark, infectious spray.
Hugh stepped into the corridor directly behind me, acting as the rear vanguard for our two marksmen. True to his reputation as a legendary Citadel serial killer, his combat style was cold, fluid, and horrifyingly efficient. He didn't waste a single drop of stamina on the heavy, bone-armored variants; instead, he singled out the low-rage thralls with minimal biological mutations, stepping inside their guard to slice through throats and sever tendon joints with surgical precision. He had earned his place at the top of the prison hierarchy for a reason.
Beside Hugh, James stepped into line and brought his wooden Death Chant Tommy Gun to bear.
PEW! PEW!
Focused bolts of hyper-compressed wind whistled through the air, punching neat, fatal holes straight through the skulls of two approaching thralls.
"Told you Eirene, he's one hell of a guy." Plasma muttered through my thoughts.
His marksmanship was surprisingly sharp… a clear testament to his past life as a seasoned underworld enforcer before his imprisonment. However, the heavy kinetic feedback of the arcane artifact was taking its toll; after every shot, the strong recoil jerked his arms back, causing his third bolt to strike wild and shatter a stone pillar nearby.
"Stabilize your stance, James! Drive your shoulder into the stock!" I ordered over the deafening noise.
At the rear of the formation stood Aisha. Her small hands trembled violently around the wooden handguard of her Fire-attuned submachine gun. She was pale, her wide green eyes locked onto a low-rage zombie that was staggering toward her through the smoke… a former city clerk whose face was still recognizable despite his hollow, dilated eyes.
"Aisha! Shoot!" James yelled over his shoulder.
Squeezing her eyes half-shut in raw terror, Aisha yanked the trigger.
BANG-FSHHH!
The Tommy Gun's silver linings flared with a bright, incandescent orange light. A fiery, white-hot bullet of concentrated flame erupted from the barrel, streaking through the corridor and impacting the thrall's chest. The thermal shock incinerated its heart instantly, dropping the creature dead onto the stone floor before its body could even catch fire.
Aisha froze, staring at the motionless corpse with her mouth agape, her chest heaving as the smell of scorched air filled her lungs.
It was her very first kill. For an innocent academy student who had spent her life surrounded by classroom lectures and harmless magic theory, witnessing… and causing… such raw, violent death was a profound shock to her system.
"Don't stare at it! Keep moving! Keep your eyes on the hall!"
"O-Okay..." Aisha stammered, her knuckles turning stark white against the dark wooden grip of the submachine gun as she forced her trembling legs to move forward.
Before she could adjust her footing, a heavily mutated zombie with twin bone blades protruding from its forearms lunged from a shadowed doorway, its hollowed eyes locked onto her. Aisha froze in sheer terror, paralyzed as the shrieking nightmare bore down on her.
"Aisha, watch out!" Chris yelled.
He threw his broad frame between them, raising his improvised closet-door shield to catch the creature's downward strike.
CRACK-SPLIT!
The force of the dual bone blades sheared the heavy wooden door clean in two, splinters raining down on the marble floor. Driven back on one knee, Chris held the broken remnants of the wood up to lock the beast's arms in place.
"Shoot it! Now!"
Aisha squeezed the trigger in a panic.
BANG-FSHHH!
A fiery, bright orange bolt erupted from the barrel, burning through the air and tearing a smoking, fist-sized hole straight through the creature's chest. But because this thrall was fueled by intense, trauma-induced rage, the gaping wound barely slowed it down; it continued to snap its jaws inches from Chris's neck.
I stepped in with a smooth, fluid pivot, raising the Death Chant shotgun with my single arm.
BOOM!
The heavy slug detonated point-blank against the monster's skull, shattering its head into a dark spray and dropping the lifeless mass onto the floorboards.
"Chris, stay on Aisha's flank! Don't let anything close the distance on her!"
"On it!" Chris grunted, discarding the shattered wooden pieces and stepping in front of the shaking girl with his sword drawn.
Beside us, Hugh was flowing through the melee like a shadow, landing precise, lethal blows to the unarmored throats and joints of low-rage zombies, while James fired steady, single wind-bolts to pick off thralls attempting to flank our line.
BOOM… CRASH!
Suddenly, a deafening explosion of stone and glass echoed through the corridor. A massive section of the high loft wall shattered inward, spraying heavy masonry and jagged glass across the hallway. Harsh, brilliant sunlight poured through the newly created breach, striking my exposed shoulder.
FSHHH!
My flesh sizzled instantly upon contact with the direct rays. I hissed in pain, yanking my heavy canvas cloak tightly over my head and torso to keep the searing light off my skin.
Hovering in the jagged breach was a massive, horrific evolution of the winged skeletal thrall… a creature warped by pure, unadulterated rage, its translucent wing membranes flapping furiously as it kicked up dust.
Outside, the sky was alive with distant shrieks; the high-frequency noise of our gunfire and crashing walls was drawing even more winged variants toward the Town Hall like moths to a flame.
The flying terror locked its dilated crimson eyes on my cloaked form and dived through the dust, its massive bone blades aimed straight for my chest.
"Eirene!" James shouted.
I didn't dodge. As the beast slammed into me, I reversed my grip on the shotgun and thrust the mounted Mist Blade bayonet straight into its sternum.
STAB!
The creature's descending bone blade stopped a fraction of an inch from my throat, nicking the edge of my high collar. While holding its heavy frame impaled on my bayonet, I pressed the shotgun barrel flat against its abdomen and emptied the chamber.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Enchanted rounds pulverized its insides. The monster gagged violently, a massive wave of dark, corrupted blood erupting from its maw directly toward my face.
I threw myself backward onto the floor to avoid swallowing or absorbing the bile. A few cold droplets splashed across my cheek, but thankfully, none reached my mouth or eyes.
While the winged beast hovered momentarily in place, retching and thrashing from its internal wounds, a bright orange streak sliced through the smoke behind me.
BANG-FSHHH!
Aisha, her eyes wide and determined through her tears, had stepped up, raised her Tommy Gun with both hands, and pulled the trigger.
The orange-hot fire bullet struck the winged monster squarely between its hollow eyes. The thermal explosion tore a gaping hole completely through its skull, incinerating its brain stem instantly. The massive bone-winged nightmare crumpled like a stone, crashing heavily onto the bloody marble floor.
"Good job, Aisha. You saved my life out there."