Chapter Eleven

Elysia sprinted back toward the back door and poked her head out. From this angle, she found the sound wasn’t coming from the alley running behind the hardware store. Instead, it echoed from the massive horde approaching the front.

Without thinking twice, she shot out into the alley and ran down the back alley toward where she started. She should have known better from her previous delve. No more staying in one place. With this many zombies, she was asking to get trapped.

In fact, she thought she was trapped. She was too arrogant in thinking the dungeon would be a cakewalk. There had to be well over a thousand zombies congregating on the hardware store. No way could she fight off that many alone.

Why didn’t she bring at least Ione along? She was sure the hunting obsessed feline would jump at the opportunity.

Actually, maybe not. She doubted the zombies tasted all that good, and to be honest, they didn’t provide much of a challenge in hunting other than power in numbers. Looking back, they were never strong individually, even back when she was level five.

To make it worse, her lightning wasn’t exactly stealthy.

When the sound of zombies faded into the background, she slowed to a stop and circled around to the opposite side of the street. Unlike last time, the zombies didn’t seem to track her. Maybe because none of them hit her yet. Whatever the reason, she would take any advantage she could get.

Too bad she lost her test dummies. Well, maybe not. She could pull what her twin did in any wave based zombie game and pick off most of the zombies, then trap the last few. Like she thought she did before the reinforcements came.

The zombies stuck in the alley likely wouldn’t go anywhere anytime soon, so that left thinning out the reinforcements. Of course, that circled around back to the need to have test dummies.

An insane idea sparked a moment later. Could she do it? If she did, she would have a massive supply of test dummies, but she could risk trapping herself. She didn’t see another way of taking out that many zombies.

Of course, she could always sneak around and headed for the cemetery. It felt like a wasted opportunity, though. Who knew if the skeletons would allow her easy entry to the mausoleum either? She needed to figure out a wide area attack. To do that, she needed test subjects.

Instead of trying to be sneaky, she used the same tactic as before and trotted down the street right past the hardware store, which was swarmed with hundreds if not a thousand zombies. That wasn’t even counting the alley, still quite clogged with zombies, giving her hope her plan might work.

These zombies were quite dumb. Fortunately, they didn’t upgrade their intelligence along with their speed and strength. They were like lemmings off a cliff when they chased after her.

That thought paused when she noticed none of the zombies around the hardware store appeared to have noticed her. She really was invisible to them unless they had a line of sight. If she wanted to, she could probably walk right to the cemetery without a single zombie noticing her, but she knew that would be a bad idea. She didn’t have anywhere to hide in the cemetery from the skeletons. Unlike the zombies, they had an intelligent mind controlling them.

She almost couldn’t believe these zombies terrified her when she first delved the dungeon. They were just so dumb. Of course, they were her first creature she faced right after her resurrection, so it was understandable.

To get the zombies’ attention, she sent a single strand lightning strike toward the back of the horde, downing a couple of them which earned her dings. As one the horde turned in her direction, even the zombies stuck in the alley tried, but they packed themselves too densely to move.

Not taking any chances, Elysia took off in a sprint before the zombies moved. The sound of shambling feet caused her to smile. She had them hooked. Now she just had to reel them in.

Every time the horde gained on her, she accelerated a little more to ensure they were at the optimal speed. Soon they were flying down the road far faster than an Olympic sprinter. Her core fluttered in excitement, feeling free. She wanted to push herself even faster, and she felt she could, but despite her every nerve screaming at her to go all out, her mind slapped it back. She wasn’t racing the zombies.

Her eyes landed on the alley next to the clothing store she visited way back. Like everything else on the street, the store looked like it was abandoned decades, if not a century ago. The few remaining clothing displays appeared faded and tattered open to the elements, as the windows didn’t survive the creation of the dungeon.

She planted her left foot and shot to the right without losing any speed, but a glance behind her caused her to slow down. The zombies stumbled over one another as they tried to turn in her direction, causing half of them to fall behind.

Unable to change course now, Elysia entered the alley and stood at the opposite end, hoping her plan worked. The alley was wider than the one next to the hardware store, but even cut in half, the horde outnumbered the previous one.

The zombies shot forward in a burst of speed, desperate to reach her. Unfortunately for them, the horde was far wider than the alley, forcing them to narrow, causing the zombies to trip over each other. A human or any intelligent being wouldn’t continue past this point, but of course, the brain-dead zombies pushed forward. The zombies piled below the horde, slowing down their advance even further.

Worry flashed, causing Elysia to retreat a few more meters back up against the opposite wall of the back alley as the forward momentum of the horde pushed further into the alley. Fortunately, with each passing second, their momentum slowed like a seizing engine.

They reached a dozen meters into the alley before finally grinding to a halt. The front of the horde could barely be considered individual zombies. In a last-ditch effort to reach her, they crawled on top of each other, causing a dense layering of prone zombies so high she couldn’t see the likely upright zombies behind.

Just in case the zombies wiggled themselves free, Elysia remained where she was egging them on to crawl just a little further just from her presence. Of course, they followed her wishes and somehow stuck themselves even further.

Satisfied, Elysia jogged down the alley all the way to the end, which popped out a block away from the cemetery. She sent a glance toward the cemetery, finding it just as silent as it was the last time she was in the dungeon.

Of course, she knew that was just a façade. There were thousands of skeletons just waiting for her to enter. She would oblige them, but first she had some more zombies to trap, then experiment on.

A worrying thought formed, freezing her mid step. Was zombie torture considered a crime against humanity? They died or were never humans to begin with, so probably not. She doubted anyone would care if she experimented a bit. It wasn’t like zombies felt pain. At least she didn’t think they did.

She shook her head to clear the absurd thoughts. Why would she feel sorry for zombies? If she didn’t kill them, they would stop at nothing to kill her. So what if she outsmarted them and tried to squeeze them for everything she could?

Upon circling around a store she remembered was a craft store before the merge, she stared down the street to find at least a couple hundred more zombies trying to squeeze into the alley she just left but failing to do so.

She needed to find a narrow alley this time. If she couldn’t she had to kill them somehow. Maybe if she lined up a few lightning bolts, she could thin the horde enough to handle. No, she wanted to save as much lightning as possible for her experimentation.

Hopefully, she leveled up a few times from this many zombies, otherwise she wasn’t sure she would have enough lightning to handle the skeletons and Lich. If she even had enough lightning to handle them in the first place. All the more reason to train. She needed to improve her lightning.

Instead of drawing the attention of the zombies just in case she couldn’t find an alleyway narrow enough, Elysia ran past them. Even though she passed only a couple meters from the horde, they seemed blind to her presence.

Did leveling up somehow make them dumber? She swore they weren’t this oblivious last time, but she was hardly in the best state of mind trying to run for her life. Maybe the dungeon went quantity over quality. There were maybe a bit over a hundred zombies on the first run. Now there was over ten times that, but at a way higher level.

Dungeon mechanics weren’t her strong suit. Maybe Sereia would know. If not, she had no doubt her twin would find out. She was probably living her dream life right now. Elysia couldn’t blame her either. Being a mermaid was really cool. As a little girl, she dreamed of being one after watching a movie. If only she had a cool transformation, like her sister.

Before the jealousy could take hold, Elysia refocused on her endeavor, finding a narrow alley just barely wide enough to allow two people to walk side-by-side if they kept their arms tight to their sides. Just to be safe, she ran to the end of the alley to ensure it connected to the narrow road that ran behind all the stores. Which meant she had easy access to her trapped zombies as well as escape routes.

Already envisioning all the experiments she wanted to try, Elysia returned to the remaining free zombies. At least she hoped they were all that remained. At this point, she ran the entire length of the dungeon from the cemetery to the electrical substation, and this was every zombie she attracted.

Her lightning wasn’t exactly quiet earlier, either. If there were any undead outside of the cemetery, they would have attacked by now.

To test her theory, Elysia released a six strand lightning bolt aiming it at the ground near the horde to ensure maximum survivability. The crack of lightning echoed down the street, probably reaching places the previous lightning didn’t because of how far she was down the road.

As she took off in a run, she kept her hearing aimed toward the other side of the street and the cemetery, but the only zombies she heard were the ones directly behind her.

When she reached the alley, instead of taking a sharp turn like last time, she ran in a wide arc, ensuring the zombies were just behind her but still out of reach. A glance behind her caused a smile as she found the zombies followed her direction perfectly.

Just before the alleyway, she shot forward with a burst of acceleration, causing the zombies to follow suit to their detriment.

Not having the overwhelming numbers of the previous hordes, their momentum stalled less than halfway into the alley. Like the others, she stood out of reach for almost a minute, packing the zombies a little tighter.

Just as she raised her hand to begin her experimentation, dozens of panicked images from two different sources slammed into her mind, causing the lightning bolt to shoot up into the sky like a flare.

Before she knew what happened, a burst of lightning streaked toward her. On instinct, she spun toward the disturbance, watching it shoot down the back alley.

A blink later, a scowl formed as Ione skidded to a stop in front of her. Sereia hopped off the feline’s back and strode toward her twin, eyes glowing in disappointment and quite a bit of anger.

“From now on, I won’t let you leave my sight.” Vowed Sereia.