I was swinging my sword like a madman, decapitating undead after undead. Smashing skeletons with the flat of my blade and crushing the rest with my boots. The guardsmen were doing the same but at a faster pace, they were in formation and started hacking away at the growing army of hostile undead. The undead in the city were much different than this. These guys were all born from that stuff in the cauldron and were covered in the thick corrupted ooze. There were some undead in the guardsmen that were fighting as well. I wondered if they had a problem fighting their own kind like this. A quick look at them told me no, they were fighting just as ferociously as the rest of them. Wielding large weapons made for crushing and destroying all of their corrupted brethren while doing their best to avoid being touched by the goo, just in case it could corrupt them too. We were making our way closer to the now tall pillar of dirt still rising from the ground. We had to do something about that cauldron, this cant be all that it does. If they wanted to overrun the city with undead they didnt need tons of sacrifices like this. They probably couldve just made do with summoning a bunch of those big guys and let them rampage around.

Two skeletons popped up in front of me and swung at me with a sword and a large axe in an arc to try and split me in half. I dodged to the side and kicked hard at the ankles of the nearest skeleton, cracking the bone and toppleing the skeleton. The other one recovered from its swing and tried to attack me again this time swinging horizontally. Fighting skeletons is pretty easy as they are very stiff and slow, it also helps that their bones are very brittle. Yet they have immense strength, meaning as long as you are paying attention you wont get hit and can survive pretty easily. The problem is we arent just fighting skeletons, which I was made painfully aware of when a zombie wolf ran into me from the side sinking its teeth deep into the flesh on my arm. Knocking me on my ass and trying its best to rip my arm off and devour it. As pain surged through my arm I punched and clawed at the wolf, trying to dislodge it when I noticed the skeleton had taken another swing at me. I rolled and immediately held the wolf in the axe's path so the wolf's head was severed by the skeleton's axe.

Without most of its body it couldnt put any weight behind its bite and I just used my sword to pry its teeth out of me. Green mana washed through my body, reinvigorating me and healing my bite wounds. I dodged yet another swing from the skeleton and sliced a leg off at the knee. Jumping on its skull and ending its existence with a satisfying crunch I went back to the battle. The guardsmen were holding their own pretty well, but they didnt have infinite stamina. This wouldnt end until we got to the cauldron and did something. I called out to the guards and told them I was going ahead. Then I launched myself up into the air using blue mana and tried to reach the top of the pillar. My first jump wasnt high enough so I used more blue mana and jumped a second time and a third. By the fourth jump I had reached the top, mostly because it had stopped growing. The pillar stopped its vertical climb and sat still, I could see the cauldron now leaking unhindered into the ground which seemed to be greedily drinking it up. I got closer and tried to incinerate it with my hand, spreading the flames all over the cauldron. Just to be safe I added some divinity to the flame to make it stronger, I wanted to be sure I destroyed this stuff.

The now brilliantly blue flame spread all over the metal of the cauldron, even catching the goo on fire. Turning it from a deep green to a diahrea brown wherever the flames touched. I made sure all of it was burning before I cut off the flame and watched it burn. It was quite satisfying to be honest, ruining the ritual that had taken so many lives for the sole purpose of taking more lives. I looked off the side of the platform I was on and could barely make out the sight of battle below. It didnt look like any more of the corrupted undead were appearing so i assumed I stopped it. Just before I jumped down though, there was a loud sound. Kind of like metal crunching and popping coming from the direction of the cauldron. I turned around just in time to see the diahrrea brown goo absorb the melting metal of the cauldron and start growing up. I watched as it formed into some sort of creature with empty eye sockets and a deep black hole where its mouth would be. The rest of it simply looked like a vaguely humanoid like creature with brown goop for flesh, still dripping from random parts of its body like it was unstable.

Something felt off, I could feel all the mana in the area getting sucked into it. Its mouth was opening wider and I could see light forming in front of it. I rolled to the side just as it launched its attack, a thick beam of pure mana shot past my head singing my hair. I ran over to it to try and slice it, but it just shot another yet smaller beam at me. This went on for a little while, as I tried to figure out how to deal with it. It only seemed to have that one attack, that was the only one it used even if I got close to it. But it could fire it quite often and quickly as well. I decided to try and use fire to blind it and run around and try to hit it again. I shot a stream of fire at what I thought was its face and sprinted around it, swinging at it with my sword. As soon as my mana charged sword touched its goo, it sizzled and screetched. I shot some more fire at it, but that didnt seem to be doing much, so I just charged my sword with more mana as I swung it at the creature. Ignoring its screetching and flailing, still dodging its attacks as it shot more beams at me. I still wasnt doing enough damage, so I decided to take a risk.

I stabbed my sword into the creature, as deep as it could go and then started injecting it with pure mana. The sizzling intensified many times over as its entire body boiled and flailed irratically. It screetched and shot beams in every direction as it died, it almost hit me a couple times but I just adjusted myself so the beam would miss and only singe my clothes. I didnt stop until it was just a puddle on the ground, which I burned and injected pure mana into until it was just a gross stain in the dirt. I took a second to rest and make sure I got it all but then I felt the rumbling again and loud cracking. I looked all around till I realized the sound was coming from below me. The pillar was crumbling and the guardsmen were still underneath it.