As the battle progressed, blood accumulated on the steps and bodies were trampled on. The voracious waves of zombies kept pressing forward, undeterred by their allies that kept being felled by Danny’s hand.

On his turn, Danny remained stoic, just as if he was a mountainside facing the ocean, battered by the splashing waves time and time again, but still standing nevertheless. Unbroken.

Even so, Danny was slowly but surely forced to retreat.

So focused he was on his personal battle and on his current opponent that he almost failed to notice the barricade in front of him. Danny had already backtracked enough to reach the second floor of the building, its main hallway extending to his left.

‘I have to remind myself to be careful with how fast I retreat. I can’t spend all my leeway too fast or I won’t be able to finish the horde here.’ He thought momentarily between killing one zombie and welcoming the next, before banishing any distracting thoughts and immersing himself back into his trance-like battle state.

There were many things he wished he could pay careful attention to but could not. Many incidental things that could help in deciding the outcome of this battle that he wished he could actively take control of, such as his retreat path and progression.

Alas, he was only human. The dragging fight already took all of his focus, all of his concentration. There was no room for anything else. There was only him, his hammer and his target.

He felt the weight of his weapon and the air resistance as he brandished it. He instinctively acted and reacted on the fly to his enemies’ attacks and wobbly gait, trusting his gut to steer him right. Always adjusting the trajectory of his blows to land them where he needed them to. Always deflecting, parrying, avoiding or enduring the swipes, grabs and bites of the relentless creatures.

No, he could not afford to entertain stray thoughts. He could not afford to be distracted. A single mistake was all it took for him to be swallowed by the sheer pressure of the waves upon waves of undead.

Danny knew he had to be frugal with his retreat. He knew that he could not burn through all his slack too fast or he would be forced jump out of the building soon enough. That or risk getting cornered and swarmed to death.

Even so, there was nothing he could do to slow down his retreat.

On one hand, he could not divert any of his focus from the fight in order to manage it more effectively. On the other, Danny had to admit that he had underestimated how powerful the sheer momentum of a horde this size actually was.

Expectations were different than reality after all.

This was the first time Danny was taking on such a challenge. The first time he was fighting such a huge number of enemies at once. Therefore, unforeseen issues were bound to crop up and mistakes were par for the course.

That was simply unavoidable.

The incredible strength and pushing force that such a large group of unthinking creatures could bring to bear was something he could never have imagined before seeing for himself. It was mind-boggling.

Calling it an unstoppable stampede would not be wrong.

Luckily, his death corridor alleviated the pressure somewhat. If not for his idea of narrowing the path and littering the way with myriad objects, Danny doubted he would be able to handle the horde’s push without straight up running backwards as he fought it. The fact that only one zombie was pushing the one in front of it at any given time greatly diminished the force and speed with which the frontmost enemy reached him.

Though stopping the horde completely in its tracks was impossible for him – and he was glad that he didn’t even try it since they wound probably push and shove until they broke whatever obstacle he left in their way –, Danny succeeded in transforming the raging river that the horde’s advance was into something akin to a rapid stream.

It still threatened to drown him, but at least it was manageable. It equalized the field by taking some of the horde’s advantage away.

Sweat was already pooling on his forehead as he dispatched another foe. However, he didn’t have the time to wipe it off as another one crossed over the corpse of the one Danny had just killed joining the fray and demanding Danny’s undivided attention.

No matter how many enemies he killed and how many bodies he left on the way, the remaining enemies coming from downstairs kept pushing and pushing, uncaring for the slippery floor covered in blood and tricky footing, making it so that the ones at the very front could only fall dead and join Danny’s many defeated foes sprawled on the steps or go forward.

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…Not that any of his approaching opponents wished to do anything other than go forward and try to take a bite out of Danny.

His usual trick of kicking one zombie onto the other to buy himself some time was practically useless in this battle as well.

At best, such strikes bought him a second to reorient himself. At worst, it left him in an even worse position then before, forcing him to retreat a couple steps. Hoping for his foe to fall down or to get tangled with the one coming from behind it was just a pipe dream. The undead were too tightly packed at this point for that to happen. Like a can of sardines, there was no room for one to get in the way of the other.

For some reason, the cramped space and close proximity of each undead to the next reminded him of the bustling subway stations of great metropolises like Tokyo, Seoul, São Paulo and London.

Once again, Danny shook his head to drive away the stray thoughts. He needed to keep his head in the game. In the battle.

The simplistic nature of his enemies and their attack patterns gave the false impression that things were under control. It was easy to forget how wrong things could go from one moment to the next. Though his enemies were dropping like flies, it would make no difference how many he killed if he messed up just before the finish line.

Besides, Danny was employing a different battle tactic this time around. One he was not well-accustomed to. The narrow passage that comprised the battlefield demanded that he adjusted his strategy.

One had to adapt to the realities of their environment when fighting after all.

Instead of taking his time like he usually did, patiently waiting for an optimal chance to end the fight in one blow and with minimal risk, it was better to take advantage of every opportunity as they came and finish his battles as quickly as possible.

He could not afford to take his sweet time with each and every enemy.

If normally Danny fought like a rogue or ranger, or better yet, like a jackal hunting its prey, taking advantage of his greater mobility to hound his enemies to death with impunity, today he was acting more like an armored knight, blocking the path forward with his own body while standing his ground.

Danny was leaning heavily on his reaction speed, strength and endurance to outperform his foes and kill every single one that stood against him, without ever shying away from the thick of the battle and shrugging off the hits that went through his guard.

He was taking his enemies as they came, instead of dodging their charge, confident that he would be able to outlast them.

However, Danny was painfully aware of the many bruises that covered his arms and torso. For all the protection his gear offered, Danny was not immune to the claws and teeth of the undead. More often than not, he was able to get away scot-free with a kill, successfully avoiding any damage his enemies tried to inflict upon him.

Even so, there were just too many of them. Though only a minority of the horde managed to wound him some way or another, that minority was still made out of a significant number of zombies. The adrenaline coursing through his veins made it easy for him to ignore the pain and focus on the combat, but the damage slowly but surely begun to accumulate.

‘I’m definitely going to wake up with some nasty purple spots tomorrow.’ Danny thought while wincing in pain.

His current opponent managed to barely avoid Danny’s hammer blow that was meant to hit its head by tripping up the stairs. The missing blow that only glanced its skull and crushed its collarbone allowed the zombie to come close enough to latch onto Danny’s free arm and bite it with wild abandon.

It hurt a lot having his forearm locked inside the pressing jaws of the creature, but his equipment held on. The zombie’s teeth failed to pierce his gear and reach Danny’s flesh.

In response to the offense, Danny punched the undead in the face with his other hand that still held his hammer, breaking some of its teeth in the process of dislodging the irritating creature and sending their fragments flying through the air.

Following that, and in one swift motion, Danny smacked the zombie’s head with a horizontal backhanded swing of his hammer for good measure, ensuring that the daring zombie would stay down.

‘Fuck. How many more until this is over?’ Danny briefly shook his aching arm to deal with the pain and to check if it was still working properly. All the while, he looked at the scene of carnage before him and waited for his next opponent.

The stairway was unrecognizable from how it looked earlier that day. In one word, the place where Danny had built his kill corridor could only be described as grisly. It looked like something straight out of a horror movie.

If he wasn’t already desensitized to the unpleasant irony smell of blood that now hung in the air and the gory view from his previous encounters and fights with the undead, Danny would probably be gagging at the sight.

He wasn’t sure if him getting used to something like this was a good thing or a bad thing, though.

Blood and viscera covered the ground completely to the point that the natural color of the stair steps could not be seen anywhere anymore. In fact, most of the steps themselves had been covered by some body part or the other belonging to one of the many foes Danny had defeated at some point during the battle.

Meanwhile the remaining zombies kept climbing up towards Danny, waddling on top of the fleshy path comprised of the bits and pieces of the former members of the horde that were left on their way, squishing the motionless bodies and body parts under their foot and unstoppable march.

For all the undead creatures killed that day, a decent chunk was not felled by Danny’s own hands. No, instead they were crushed under the unstoppable waves of growling zombies that relentlessly moved forward.

Once a zombie fell down on their way up - be it because it tripped over some obstacle or slipped on the wet floor -, in most cases, it never got a chance to get back up before being swallowed by the waves of undead that came from behind it. Then, it was repeatedly stepped on, over and over again, until it finally stopped moving.

Though it spared Danny some work - as he would not have to personally kill any zombie that was lost under the foot of the unstoppable march of the horde - the prospect of tripping down and getting swept under their push, being buried under the growing number of bodies that piled up in an attempt to reach his meaty body until he was ultimately crushed by the weight of the mounting creatures was… terrifying.

He didn’t know which was worse: being munched or crushed to death. Both were agonizingly slow and painful ways to die. Either way, what he did know was that he very much was not looking forward to finding out.