"This isn't working," Chen Wan called over the noise, cutting down two more as she spoke. "At this rate, we'll run out of ammunition before we reach the sixth floor. I'm going to use my ability again — clear a path to the third floor."
"Can you? You only just recovered." Qin Ke fired while she answered.
"I'll manage. Yi Yi said it herself — every time I push the threshold, it gets wider. Trust me!" She practically had to shout the last part. The corridor was a wall of sound — the screaming of the horde, the cracks of gunfire, the wet impacts of blade against flesh. If they didn't move now, they would be crushed where they stood.
Chen Wan reached into her ability and seized control of the fifty nearest zombies once more, throwing a perimeter around the group while driving the path forward. This time, Yi Yi pushed to the front alongside the controlled ones, carving through the horde. Qin Ke covered the rear with her rifle.
The first fifteen seconds felt easier than before — Chen Wan's threshold had already widened, and she could feel the difference. She was able to keep one hand on the machete, taking care of strays as they moved. By the thirty-second mark, sweat had appeared at her temples again. But it was manageable. She held it. They were through the second-floor hall and pushing for the staircase.
The horde adapted. The zombies at the back began climbing the ones in front — launching themselves from shoulders, coming in from angles the controlled ring couldn't cover. The fifty under Chen Wan's command were already working at their limit just maintaining the perimeter; they couldn't simultaneously intercept the aerial assault.
Chen Wan kept the control and switched to her firearm with her free hand, firing upward at the ones dropping from above. She could no longer hold the machete — the weight had become too much.
Jiang Yanxin and Qin Ke caught the change in Chen Wan's movement and called Yi Yi back from the vanguard immediately. "Yi Yi — back here, now!"
Yi Yi turned. Her shirt was soaked through with the dark, foul blood of the dead — she was completely saturated. She came back at full speed, machete moving in wide, decisive arcs through the ones dropping from the sides. Yi Yi's strength at this level was absolute. Every zombie whose blade she touched lost its head. The effect was immediate — and the visual was not one any of them would easily forget. Blackened blood sprayed across all four of them.
In the window that was created, the group finally fought their way to the foot of the staircase leading to the third floor.
It had now been nearly two minutes. Chen Wan was drenched in cold sweat, her face a shade of white that had no business being on a living person. Jiang Yanxin had one hand around her arm, guiding her forward.
Chen Wan could feel her own consciousness fraying at the edges — held together only by the pressure of her teeth against each other. Without that, she would have already lost the ability to keep her eyes open.
Jiang Yanxin kept one arm around her and the other hand on her weapon — firing in bursts, pausing to swap magazines, then firing again. She watched Chen Wan deteriorating beside her and shouted over the noise: "Hold on! — We're almost on the third floor. Don't close your eyes. Yang Yang is waiting for us. Chen Wan! — Stay with me!"
She had to shout. The sound of the horde filled every inch of the stairwell, and anything quieter was simply swallowed.
Chen Wan made it to the third-floor landing on willpower and Jiang Yanxin's arm, and the moment her foot touched the top step, her legs gave out. Only Jiang Yanxin's grip kept her from hitting the floor. Three minutes had passed since she had first engaged her ability.
Jiang Yanxin braced against her, firing, watching Chen Wan slip toward unconsciousness, forcing herself to stay calm. And then something happened.
In the extremity of the moment — body pushed to its limit, mind stripped of everything except the single imperative to keep them alive — Jiang Yanxin's attention was caught by something on the wall of the third-floor hall. A framed painting. A reproduction of a figure from ancient Greek mythology. Her gaze settled on it without quite meaning to.
Something moved in her.
She gave a command — silently, instinctively, barely even thinking it — and the figure stepped off the wall.
The zombies nearest to her actually stopped.
The man who stood before them was tall and broad, armor crested with feathers on his helm, leather guards on his forearms, a bronze spear held forward and ready. Beside him came a vulture and a massive black hunting hound.¹ It was Ares — god of war, out of ancient Greek myth and into the stairwell of Qinfen Building.
Jiang Yanxin gave him her orders in the same instant.
Ares went into the horde like a reaper. The spear moved in sweeping arcs, and the zombies fell. The vulture beat its wings at the ones pressing in from the sides, tearing at faces and hands, driving them back. The black hound took them one at a time — a single bite, and down.
Chen Wan, still held against Jiang Yanxin's side, could no longer see what was happening to her. She went limp.
Yi Yi caught the movement immediately. With the path ahead now cleared by Ares, she didn't need to be up front — she went straight to Chen Wan, swung her onto her back, and kept moving. She knew what Jiang Yanxin's ability was, and she knew it was the same category as Chen Wan's — mental-type. The clock had started. Every floor they could gain before it ran out was a floor they needed to take.
Jiang Yanxin and Qin Ke moved with her. Ares had kept the black hound at Jiang Yanxin's side — a guard and rearguard in one.
Qin Ke fired as she climbed, clearing the flanks, her eyes moving between the staircase ahead and the impossible figure of a mythological warrior cutting through the zombie horde ahead of them. Jiang Yanxin's forehead had begun to glitter with fine sweat. Thirty seconds had passed since she had materialized Ares.
Ares fought without hesitation or mercy — bronze spear sweeping through the stairwell, the white walls quickly stained dark with zombie blood. A single horizontal sweep sent several heads airborne, clattering away somewhere in the dark below. The Level 2 zombies, who had intelligence enough to feel something, encountered what that intelligence finally registered as genuine fear. The horde parted. A path opened, and the group made it to the fourth floor.
Jiang Yanxin, by the time they arrived, looked barely better than the unconscious Chen Wan on Yi Yi's back. Her whole body was trembling.
Qin Ke caught her. "How are you holding up?"
Jiang Yanxin shook her head — a small, tight movement. She didn't have enough left to take them to the fifth floor.
She used the last of her clarity to give Ares one final instruction: get us to the nearest room to the staircase.
Ares moved fast. He crossed to a room on the left side of the fourth-floor landing and kicked the door in. And at that moment, Jiang Yanxin's consciousness finally gave way. If Qin Ke hadn't been holding her arm, she would have gone straight down.
As Jiang Yanxin fell, the tall armored figure at the door vanished as though he had never been there.
Qin Ke and Yi Yi moved the two unconscious women inside quickly. Yi Yi took the door while Qin Ke shoved the writing desk across the floor toward it, and then Yi Yi helped ram it into place. Together, they wedged the room shut as completely as they could.
Yi Yi was fine — she didn't tire the way humans did. Qin Ke, on the other hand, was still a person, ability or not, and she had reached her limit. She had sunk to the floor and was resting with her back against the wall, reloading her magazines as she sat.
Chen Wan and Jiang Yanxin lay unconscious on the ground. Every desk and chair in the room had been dragged to the door to serve as a barricade, leaving nowhere proper to lie down.
Qin Ke rested for a while, then asked as she pressed rounds into a magazine: "That ancient foreigner from earlier — where did he come from? He was quite something."
Yi Yi, perched on one of the desks stacked against the door, smiled and explained. "That was Ares, the god of war from ancient Greek mythology. You might not have noticed the framed pictures on the third-floor wall. They were paintings of the gods from the Greek pantheon — probably put there as decorations. And Ares was manifested by Yanxin."
"So she can summon ancient war gods?" Even Qin Ke, usually so composed, sat up straighter. An ability like that was genuinely impressive.
"More precisely, she can materialize figures or objects she has seen in books, paintings, card illustrations, and similar sources. Whatever she manifests follows her commands. The cost is mental energy, and the moment she can no longer sustain it, whatever she's manifested disappears." Yi Yi kept her tone light as she explained, though internally she was still processing her own surprise. She hadn't expected Jiang Yanxin's ability to also be mental-type. Among all the ability categories, mental-type was widely considered the rarest and most valuable — and now, within their small group, two of them had it. What struck her even more was the sheer capacity Jiang Yanxin had shown. Her first-ever use of mental energy had sustained for one minute and twenty seconds. That was nearly unheard of. Chen Wan's first time had lasted barely fifteen seconds.
"What if it's a living person?" Qin Ke pressed, curiosity getting the better of her. "Could Yanxin materialize a version of you?"
Yi Yi shook her head. "Living people and zombies are outside the scope of the ability. It only works on figures that have no life — people from images, books, or paintings."
"That's still incredible. When we go out looting from now on, we should look for illustrated books for Yanxin — could come in very handy." Qin Ke thought about it and nodded. Without that so-called ancient foreigner just now, they might still be trapped on the third floor.
The two of them chatted quietly while Jiang Yanxin and Chen Wan lay on the floor, unconscious. Both Qin Ke and Yi Yi knew it was just a matter of time before they came around, and they were relaxed enough about it to keep up a fairly comfortable conversation.
What Yi Yi hadn't expected was that Jiang Yanxin — who had lost consciousness after Chen Wan — would be the first to wake. She pushed herself upright and looked over at Chen Wan beside her, puzzled. "Chen Wan still hasn't woken up?"
Yi Yi came over with a smile. "Not yet. I didn't expect you to be first either. How do you feel?"
"Much better. I'm all right." Jiang Yanxin felt the strength returning to her body, the dizziness gone.
"Your ability is materialization — I imagine you've worked that out for yourself by now. And it seems that when it comes to mental energy, you actually have more than Chen Wan." Yi Yi smiled with an expression that suggested she knew something she wasn't saying.
Jiang Yanxin and Qin Ke both looked at her, unsure what to make of the smile. Yi Yi didn't elaborate. Yanxin would understand eventually.
————
¹ Ares, in Greek mythology, was associated with the vulture and the dog as sacred animals.