Tristan

The Second Challenge, [The Breaking of Graves], has now begun, raising the dead and occasionally forming them into new shapes.

The First Challenge, [The Beasts of Legend], has concluded, and no new monsters will be created, nor will animals be mutated. However, existing monsters will remain until slain.

The Third Challenge, [The Waking of the Unliving], will begin in twenty days.

Time remaining: 19:23:59:59

Everyone else in the throne room with me was of vital importance to the fight, but I could take the time to pay attention to the System itself, reading it in full and taking the time to think about and interpret that information.

So, just like we’d already expected, the Second Challenge was undead. That had been kinda obvious. Just a little.

That being said, though, the Third Challenge’s name could be read as just being a repeat. Or a revival of all slain monsters from the first two challenges.

However, I doubted it. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d figured it out, though that hadn’t been particularly hard since I’d found something similar in one of my favorite book series. Reluctant guide warns good guys about one of his colleagues having experimented with animating the inanimate, hero’s sidekick proclaims that they’ve all killed plenty of undead before … and then ninety percent of the un-named side characters get slaughtered by golems.

So, would that next challenge animate statues, or outright throw elementals at us?

Either way, we had twenty days to break this horde, and hunt down the remnants of the first wave since, thank god, those monsters wouldn’t be replaced. Though I noticed that there hadn’t been anything in the message about how the monsters couldn’t breed. Yeah, we’d have to do a thorough sweep of the mountain later, breeding pairs of giant monster eagles would not be good for anyone.

I looked at the bank of monitors hastily set up against one wall, showing us the feeds from the cameras outside. It had been a slapdash affair, with the corridors having gained a ridiculous number of tripping hazards in the form of cables until the Mandln had worked their magic, moving them a couple of centimeters down, burying them below the floor.

The quality wasn’t great, and neither were the screens the feeds were displayed on, but it was workable. Besides, the central figure in this fight, Karl der Große, was more than able to see what was going on without such technological trifles. I might not know what Skill he had that let him do this, how it worked, or what its limitations were, but it seemed to be good enough.

But even if I hadn’t had the monitors to show me the outside, the look on the emperor’s face would have told me everything I needed to know about the current situation.

We were … well, we might be fucked, but we were definitely surrounded, with every screen being utterly covered in simple undead, ranging from a smattering of people who looked practically still alive, as though they’d been embalmed and put in the ground mere hours ago, to walking skeletons that merely had scraps left of flesh and cloth. Just enough to make them look extra-disgusting, unlike those completely clean and bleached bones seen on video game enemies.

Also, there were multiple other kinds of enemies. Large hulking zombies that looked like the stereotypical zombie shooter bosses, rotten amalgamations that were basically a bunch of regular zombies half-liquefied and glued together, and a couple of giant skeletons that looked like a piece of art that some particularly morbid sculptor might have created, forging a large statue of a human skeleton, except each bone was actually a combination of multiple regular bones.

“Just sucks that we can’t see their Levels through the screens.”

That had been Lukas Reinhart, the military and police liaison. I wasn’t entirely sure just what his actual job or position were, just that he fulfilled the role and that when I’d called Hofmann, he’d confirmed that everything was kosher there.

Suddenly, nameplates began to populate the screen, they were almost exclusively Level 1 skeletons or zombies.

“It was a good idea,” Karl admitted. He was currently looming over the map table, leaning on it while glaring down at the tiny animated figures he saw. Once again, I wasn’t entirely sure how he was making the table mirror the happenings in the real world, but clearly, he could.

Somehow, that little model managed to not look like someone’s diorama or a Warhammer battlefield despite being just like those, functionally. Instead, it … honestly, my imagination failed to provide me with an adequate comparison. However, I could say with certainty that nothing else could ever have conveyed the true scope of what were facing even half as well as that little scale model of the mountain.

A large rock surrounded by a roiling ocean of tiny figures, a black swarm of the living dead speckled with monstrosities that stood out even on a scale of 1:5,000.

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Most of the monsters seemed concentrated on the plateau outside the main entrance, though.

“I can use my portal to drop an incendiary weapon on any single target on the plateau,” I announced. Chances were I wouldn’t be called upon, but I figured it was vital for the commander of the defense operations to have all available information. I should probably have told him that before, but, well, all I could do was make sure not to fuck up like that again.

“Noted,” the emperor replied, his hands clenching the table so tightly his knuckles became white. I just hoped that anger wasn’t directed at me.

***

Charlemagne

That would have been very useful to learn beforehand. Or something that would have been nice to have figured out himself, because it really was quite obvious.

Though [Automatic Logistics] told him that young Vogt had made sure to have the tools on hand to use his portal ability to its fullest, so perhaps things weren’t quite that bad. That being said, perhaps an announcement to remind people of the importance of sharing information like that was in order. So while one of his many strands of thought was already writing up that, his others were fully focussed on the current situation, [Manifold Mind] letting him process countless bits of information at once while he triggered every single Skill applicable to the situation.

[Might of the Feather] only had limited utility here, being primarily good before combat started, but it nevertheless worked behind the scenes, burning at full power, the practically sapient energy crawling through the fortress’ communications systems to streamline anything and everything it touched, while figuring out the best way gain help from external sources.

[Christian Legions] was likewise active at full power, ensuring that anyone who wanted to fight for truth, righteousness, and a shot at paradise would do so with unmatched fury, though it was disheartening to see how few gained this boon.

In the meantime, [Expounded Advantages] boosted any aspect of the defense in which they were superior to their foes, shifting the balance of power slightly back into humanity’s favor despite how utterly outmatched they were at the moment.

And, of course, [Informatoin Network] had been sending out his orders since this whole affair had started.

But it still felt like he was fighting a force stronger than anything he’d ever seen before, and it was an unholy beast to boot that may even be unkillable.

***

Dietrich

He’d seen a lot of horrible things in his life. Monsters, monsters’ actions, and monstrous acts committed by humans. He’d even once seen knights trapped in a burning building drinking the blood of their slain comrades to sustain themselves.

Of course, those same knights had been the ones who betrayed and murdered Siegfried and the people trying to kill them had broken just about every law of hospitality in existence, which was why he’d not felt too sorry for either party and stayed out of it until the “victims” had slaughtered his men merely for trying to retrieve bodies for burial.

And yet, even after seeing all that, he could unhesitatingly declare the sight before him as being the most horrifying thing he’d ever seen. Rotten abominations of someone else’s loved ones standing side by side, somehow simultaneously conveying extreme apathy and an utter hatred for anything that still drew breath.

Dietrich’s hand clenched around Mimung’s hilt, but he didn’t draw the sword. It wasn’t time, not yet.

His eyes roamed over their enemies, his various analysis Skills triggering. [Equalizer] let him drag supernatural foes down to his level, or rather, it provided him a roadmap to doing so if it was possible, but it wasn’t, not with this foe.

And just like with the monsters from the First Challenge, [Conqueror of Legends] assured him that there was no conquering this foe, no making it bend the knee, no averting it from its course to crush all of humanity save extreme violence to bring them to an absolute and final end that not even the System could resurrect them from.

Which was where his final analysis ability came in.

[Slayer of Myths].

He’d killed giants, both the regular and “immortal” kind, overcome invisible dwarves, and brought down legendary warriors. If something could die, he’d know how to make that happen, even if he had to drag them down to the underworld with his own two hands. The Skill also thankfully warned him of any nasty surprises that a given foe might have for him.

“They can’t spread their infection by biting,” Dietrich announced. “But they’re still extremely dirty, so be very careful with any wounds they cause. All undead are functionally immortal and can only be killed by destroying their skull, but that skull needs to be attached to the rest of the body for it to function. Even if they’re mostly made of flesh, there has to be a skull in the mix to destroy.”

As he spoke, Mia tapped on a button on the intercom and relayed this information to the throne room. It was weird. He knew that that device was horribly outdated based on what Tristan had taught him, and yet, to him, it was still a miracle.

A miracle which, just like everything else in this mountain, would cease to exist if the enemies outside were to win.

Skeleton (raised human), Level 1

Zombie (raised human), Level 1

Undead Giant (raised Giant), Level 12 Field Boss

Rotforged (raised humans), Level 35 Raid Boss

Fractal Skeleton (raised humans), Level 35 Raid Boss

Bone Spider (raised amalgam), Level 11 Field Boss

Liquefied Horde (raised humans), Level 35 Raid Boss

Everything he saw was enough to trigger even his gag reflex, but the worst offender was the Rotforged, an already immense mass of flesh that was constantly absorbing more rotten meat from the corpses that were being absorbed into the Fractal Skeleton, forming a living wave of putrid human remains that was more than capable of reaching into the fortress through the arrowslits and ripping them apart.

He was about to ask Mia to pass that information along as well, but at that point, the Rotforged was already surging toward them.