Still, it was too soon to sigh in relief. A moment later, the zombies behind who didn’t catch fire simply walked over their roasted fellows.

Four, five, six arrows were shot. All of them successfully hit one zombie each, again burning them. But the zombie hordes kept coming and they were getting closer.

This time Maven shot three flaming arrows at once and burned any zombie she could hit. She then immediately threw her bow into an empty shelf and readied her daggers.

One of the burning zombies kept going and attacked at close range, which Maven immediately greeted with her dagger, tearing apart its neck so its head hung on its shoulder. She moved her dagger away immediately, slashing countless of times very fast, beheading several more zombies with her signature move, Legion of Shadows.

Maven then paused for a second to look at her next attacker. A flash of hardly swung sword, recklessly and rather slowly managed to scratch her skin a little. Maven groaned, then retaliated with a slash, instantly beheading the zombie.

This time the zombie horde entered the short-range striking distance. Without any opportunity to compose her move, Maven simply slashed her daggers again and again. Beheading one, two, three zombies until she got completely surrounded.

“This is bad, Declan! They’re too many! Help!” Maven screamed in despair, eventually.

“Mave, crouch!”

Without thinking, she complied to his order. Suddenly her back was pressed by a very heavy weight.

“Oooww!”

Yet instead of growing, the weight instead moved up and down as if intending to release the pressure, protecting Maven beneath it. Without realizing it, Maven knelt and embraced the ‘weight’. The next moment…

A loud explosive sound boomed. Suddenly all the pressure and pain on Maven’s body were simply gone.

Slowly the elf looked up. She found Declan standing up, supported by his trident. He was panting. She could see a white smoke rising from his head and shoulders.

What baffled Maven more, the zombies surrounding her and Declan were now scattering on the floor in pieces.

The cleric groaned weakly. “This is insane. There were so many of them that I have to blow up all my reserve inner energy. Damn… I feel so limp now.”

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Maven immediately supported her partner. She took out a magic potion from her pouch while telling him, “Here, drink it, Dec. You should rest at this corner to recover.”

Declan took the bottle, emptied it in a single gulp and took his trident and lantern again. “It doesn’t look like there’s more for now, let’s hurry!”

“But Dec, you’re still…”

“We need to keep walking! The only ones fallen here are just a tiny fraction of thousands of undeads here, and another horde could be coming here any second now. Looking at the number of zombies recently attacked us, it seems that we’re already close to the rosary, so we have to find it as soon as possible!”

“Yeah, I think there’s no other way.” Maven took back her bow and bore it, then followed the hobbling Declan. “That rosary is our only way out now.”

Declan didn’t answer, he simply kept his pace and looked straight forward. He seemed to be detecting the presence of holy energy around him.

Suddenly his white diamond glimmered again.

“All right, we’re very close. Get ready Mave, there might be some traps or a guardian ahead protecting the holy relic,” Declan warned while kept walking.

Maven tightened her grip on her daggers and followed her partner. This time she found a row of stairs going down. She climbed down the stairs, tailing the white light.

Eventually the two arrived in a rather spacious yet more stuffy chamber then the level above. They ignited the torches on the wall. They could see the neglected, mossy stone walls and floor that were still largely intact.

But the most attractive thing they found was a marble coffin, lying in the middle of the room and aligned to the entrance. It had a golden mark the shape of the holy ankh carved on it. Yet there was no other carving on that thing. Neither a name nor even a letter.

“Good heavens!” Declan exclaimed, “This tomb is too big to be hidden inside a catacomb like this. Perhaps… this is the tomb of Saint Ambrosius himself.”

Maven was surprised. “Saint Ambrosius? Then, the one guarding the rosary all this time has been the creator himself? Ah, then we should be extra careful, Dec. There must be more dangerous surprises ahead, beyond the grasp and experience of any thief... or any scholar.”

“Still we have to be ‘insolent’. We have no choice after going this far.”

“Right. Let’s do this, Dec."

“Help me to open this marble chest, Mave. Vadis the Righteous Way, have mercy for what we’re about to do.”

Together Maven and Declan grabbed on the heavy and thick marble lid of the tomb.

Declan said, “I will push it your way, Mave. Ready? One, two, three, pull!”

Slowly and very carefully, both of them moved the tomb’s lid until it was half opened. Then they stood at the opposite side of the tomb respectively, lifting up the lid. Then they carried and rested it on the nearest wall.

Maven returned to the coffin and saw Declan utterly dumbfounded. She looked into inside of the coffin and her eyes were locked into the thing shining bright inside it. It had the shape of the holy ankh with the shape, size, decoration and even carvings exactly the same as with the replica standing on the altar of the main hall.

The relic lied still in the middle of the skeleton wearing an already rotting cloth. The corpse was unrecognizable, but most likely it belonged to Saint Ambrosius himself.

“Saint Ambrosius' Rosary… Finally, after all these years…” Declan reached his hand towards the reward of his hard work. But when his finger was only an inch from the rosary, suddenly a shockwave from the coffin sent him far away. He crashed on the floor.