Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Four - The Dead on Their Feet

My arms burned, but I raised my spade anyway and chopped the zombie, then, when that failed to make it turn into so much dust, I raised the tool again and brought it down once more. The shiver that ran through the haft on contact made my hands tremble, and when the zombie finally fell to the side and started to disappear, I couldn’t find the energy to lift my spade again.

A hand on my shoulder pulled me back, and I followed without resisting.

“Take a breather,” Bastion said.

I looked up, blew a wilting, sweat-drenched ear out of my line of sight, then nodded. “Okay,” I said.

I didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t. I had to help my friends.

My legs were achey, and my arms were beyond sore. It reminded me a bit of some days after gym class, but a whole lot worse.

My mana was basically depleted already, and my stamina was in the single digits. The zombies... didn’t seem to care much.

I stumbled back just a bit more and looked around, trying to take everything in, lest one of the monsters snuck around my friends and came at me.

Buster’s wall had fallen some time ago, so we had backed up, and the huge bun had erected a second that formed with a bit of a curve to it. We were behind that one now. It didn’t do much to stop the leaping zombies, but it was good against all the rest.

I saw one of those leaping zombies scurrying across a roof, and almost called out when a bolt smacked it in the chest and sent it tumbling down to the street below and onto the swarm of similar monsters.

“Hold!” Momma called. “Nearly done!”

That was good news.

I imagined that if the monsters didn’t fade away, there would be a pile of them so tall that it would be reaching way above the walls Buster had made.

My friends looked haggard. Awen was reloading her crossbow, one bolt at a time now. She’d run out of her prepared strips of bolts a while ago, and had resorted to reusing the few bolts that she could pick off the ground and that weren’t busted. I’d seen her switch to using her hammer, and even flinging shards of glass around, but those seemed to tire her out a lot.

Amaryllis was doing a little better. At some point we’d stopped caring about noise, and she started to let loose with barrages of stormy magic. I don’t think she needed to cackle so much while raining down thunder and lightning onto the hordes of enemies before us, but it did keep her in a good mood.

Her puppetry was... still a little rough. She couldn’t use the zombies she turned into puppets and attack with her magic at the same time. So she resorted to holding one or two zombies in place while casting from behind them, then moved in to attack with her puppets. It seemed to be working out, but I suspected she’d been running on mana fumes for a while.

The zombies were easy to dispatch. I saw Bastion deftly flick the heads of a couple of them with almost lazy strokes of his sword. The problem wasn’t that, it was the number of them.

“Front cleared!” Momma shouted.

I saw an orange blur move by me, and suddenly the wall had a new hole as Carrot blew through it and started to plow through the zombies on the other side with wild abandon and the occasional happy whoop.

Peter appeared in the middle of the zombies without so much as a whisper. I never even saw him move. Then a knife flew around him, slashing through the air at odd angles while trailed by a whipping metallic cord. Where the cord passed, zombies were torn apart.

I placed the head of my spade down, and leaned onto it, panting. It was pretty much over, as far as I could tell. The number of monsters coming out of the fog was decreasing, and with the buns there, we didn’t have to fight as hard.

“You seem to have done well enough,” Momma said as she moved over. “Buster, keep an eye on the front, would you?”

“Mmm,” Buster agreed. He turned around and stomped behind me, towards the front where the three buns had been fighting before.

“I think I need a nap,” I said.

Momma chuckled. “This floor is a bit of a challenge. But it’s a good lesson to learn. No matter how strong you are individually, you are always fighting with a limited pool of resources. Eventually, you can be whittled down.”

“That doesn’t seem to apply to Carrot and Peter and you,” I said.

“That’s another lesson,” she said as she pulled my ears up, and started to rub them. I closed my eyes and relaxed.

“Oh?” I asked.

“No matter how many opponents are sent against some people, they can persevere and push through.”

I stood a little taller. “That sounds a bit contrary to what you were saying earlier,” I said.

“Hmm, maybe. But in a battle, you sometimes need to assume contrary things. That you can defeat your opponent, and that your opponent is stronger than you.”

“That doesn’t seem like a fun way to think,” I said.

Momma rubbed my head between my ears. “You might just be a little too peaceful.”

“I don’t think there’s such a thing,” I said.

“And yet you fought today, still. I think you hold your own contrary thoughts.”

I pouted at her, but Momma was wise and older and the pout bounced right off with no effect.

“Look at your stats and gains. I’m sure you’ve gotten a few little rewards from this floor.”

I nodded. “Is the next floor as hard?”

She hummed. “No, not as I recall. This one is uniquely hard. The next challenges are not easier, but they are different. Let me go see with the others, we should be moving on soon.”

I watched her go, then picked myself up a bit and dragged myself over to my friends. Awen had found a low wall to sit on, and was leaning against the arch of a doorway. Amaryllis was laying spread-eagle on the dying grass next to her, panting and staring into the grey sky with tangled coils of wire around her.

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“Hey,” I said.

“I levelled,” Amaryllis said.

“Oh?” I asked. “Good work.” I tried for enthusiasm, but only managed to land somewhere around moderate happiness.

I slumped against the base of the wall, one of Awen’s legs rocking next to me, and my own legs atop Amaryllis’. She didn’t even complain, that’s how burnt out she was.

Mister Menu had a bunch of things to tell me, and who was I to stop him when he was so excited? “Alright,” I said.

Ding! Congratulations, you have dug the graves of twenty-seven (27) ‘Zombies of Newbining’s Ruin, level 10! And Four (4) ‘Zombie Leapers of Newbining,’ level 11! Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!

That was it? It had felt like a lot more than that at the time.

I hadn’t levelled up, but it felt as if I was pretty close. At this rate, we’d all be a lot stronger on leaving the dungeon. Just how strong were the buns if they came here to practice often?

Mister Menu had more news for me.

Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Mad Millinery skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!

Rank D is a free rank!

“Yes!” I cheered. Not very hard, but it was the thought that counted. It must have come from taking a few small blows while wearing my turtle hat. Mad Millinery wasn’t levelling very quickly, and I had the impression I was going about it wrong with that skill.

New Skill Acquired: Turtling

Rank: E

That was perfectly predictable, but it was nice to see.

I expected Mister Menu to have more for me, but that was it. A glance at my skill sheet showed a few things nearling level-up, but none of them were at the next rank yet. “That’s disappointing,” I said.

Health: 135/140

Mana: 12/150

Stamina: 14/130

I needed an hour or two to rest if I wanted everything to be topped up. More if I wanted to clean myself off at the same time, and judging by how sweaty I was, I definitely needed that.

“Alright, come on up lazy butts,” Carrot said as she bounced over. “No resting on your tails all day. We’re not even halfway through this dungeon.”

I made some weird grumbly noise of protest, but Carrot was right, so I rolled over and got to my feet before helping Amaryllis up to hers. She started picking up her equipment from the ground, though it wasn’t a very energetic picking-up.

“I think we need a bit of time to regain some mana and stamina,” I said.

“Well, it’ll take a minute or two to get to the next gate, and then another couple to slot all the keys in.” Carrot raised a hand which held a bunch of rusty keys. “The zombies drop these.”

“Oh,” I said. Was that this floor’s puzzle? So, there was no getting around all the monsters then. That was harsh.

Awen slumped off the wall with a feeble, almost sad, “awa.” She leaned onto my side for comfort and because standing up seemed beyond her at the moment. “I need to pick up my bolts,” she said.

We gathered up a few things. Bastion, who wasn’t nearly as tired as us, made sure we had all drunk a bit of water, then we set off.

Momma seemed to get that we were on the tired side, because she had Peter get rid of any monsters in our path long before we got to see them.

And so, finally, we reached the wall. There was a door in it with a long, long bar across it held in place by dozens of padlocks. Carrot got to be the one to unlock those and flick them away when she was done. The keys always broke after opening a single lock.

“We will clear out a little spot on the other side,” Momma said. “And we’ll have ourselves a little something to eat. It should help fortify the lot of you littler ones.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Bastion said, because he was polite and not as tired as the rest of us.

“Done!” Carrot called when she undid the last of the locks. Buster moved up and yanked the bar aside, freeing the doorway into the next floor and letting us past.

I was expecting more city, more homes and buildings in poor repair, but instead I was greeted by a forest.

Ancient trees rose up above, most of them growing atop bumpy hills covered in bushes and brambles. I could just barely make out the far wall across the woods, but only just.

The fog from before was back, and far thicker, slithering across the ground and between the hillocks like a writhing, ghostly snake.

“Wights here,” Carrot said.

“What’s a wight?” I asked.

Peter was the one to answer. For all that he was a quiet sort of bun, he seemed to like telling us about the monsters we’d be facing. “Wights are undead, as you may have guessed. They look like men, though they are thin and ragged, with glowing eyes. They have magic, casting shadows that can be felt and their touch will chill your soul. They don’t tend to fight together though.”

“So, like zombies but different,” I said.

“An oversimplification, but essentially correct,” he agreed.

“Let’s settle down here for a little picnic,” Momma said. “Buster, you have the blankets?”

Buster nodded. I wasn’t sure what to do at first as Momma and Buster started placing things on the ground. She had a lot of food in her pack. In fact, it was mostly food. “Ah, I have some things too,” I said as I jumped.

It wouldn’t be kind of me to just sit back and let her do all the work.

And so after a long and difficult battle, we settled down for sandwiches and tea before the next fight.