Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 145: Ch143. [World Quest] (3) - Undead onslaught

Chapter 145: Ch143. [World Quest] (3) - Undead onslaught

The first wave had come fast and brutal, like a knife to the throat. And yet, they had held.

Sarissa stood at the edge of the central plaza, her sword slick with black ichor, shoulders heaving with each breath. Around her, the other guild leaders stood in similar states. Bloodied, grim, but alive.

The ground beneath their feet was a broken tapestry of ash and flame, twitching bodies of slain monsters.

It felt like victory.

It looked like it, too.

"Clear." Someone muttered over the comms.

"Still no movement on the east quadrant."

"Plaza secure. For now."

No one lowered their weapons, though. The silence that followed was not comforting. It was not the relief of battle’s end but the pause before something worse.

The city, normally sleepy due to the safety that night brought with the [Safe Zones], had gone eerily quiet now. Deadly silent, even.

Aside from the notifications of monsters slain, experience points rewarded, and leveling up, even the system seemed like it was holding its breath.

Sarissa’s gaze swept the rooftops.

Ethercore’s medics were kneeling beside the wounded, weaving healing threads and wrapping burns in glowing gauze. Dawnshade’s snipers had gone still, their bows lowered but not yet returned to their inventory. Iron Roar’s fighters paced, restless, watching the streets beyond the smoke.

And then, something shifted.

The wind stilled, like the world had forgotten how to move. And with it came the smell.

Rot.

Something old, damp, and wrong. A scent like wet soil and burned meat, of things that should have stayed buried but did not.

It hit the frontline first, then the rest.

"I’ve got movement!" One of the scouts whispered, voice barely audible over the comms.

Sarissa narrowed her eyes.

From the far end of the northern road, where the first wave had broken through, something began to crawl.

Did not run, did not charge.

She saw fingers first. Long, too long, dragging across the cobblestone as the figure lurched forward. Then another. And another. Hands, then faces, then torsos peeling themselves out from the shadows like puppets with strings pulled taut.

Some were naked. Others wore remnants of gear. One still had a tattered Union Guild armband clinging to its skeletal forearm.

"No..." Vyle whispered beside Sarissa.

The creatures stepped into view fully, and the plaza froze.

Their eyes were hollow. Literally. No light, no glow, just empty sockets weeping black sludge, like the world had gouged them out and left the hole behind. Their flesh was pale, ashen, some of it peeling like paper off charred wood.

Some walked with broken bones that had not healed, one had no jaw, but its head still twitched and turned, sniffing like a predator locked in on prey.

Sarissa stared in horror.

They were not just undead. They were corrupted memories of the people they had lost.

"I know her..." Halden breathed. "That was one of mine, Keren. She died in the last breach..."

The thing that had once been Keren let out a rattling screech, jawless but still screaming.

And then they charged.

It did not happen all at once.

It happened in slow motion.

A flicker of motion. A hand raised, then five, then a hundred. Limbs were reaching from rooftops, crawling from sewers, pulling themselves from the shadows like a dam had burst beneath the surface of the city.

It felt like time had bent around them, making everything slower.

Sarissa could feel it as if the world had clicked into a different rhythm. Every sound was sharper, every breath longer.

She saw a Dawnshade scout frozen mid-draw, an arrow slipping between fingers.

Vyle turning, too slow, eyes wide as a figure burst from the alleyway behind him.

She moved, blood-red flame bursting from her boots as she shot forward with the help of her [Wonderland Inferno], her sword arcing in silver light.

A scream ripped through the air, and then time snapped back.

Chaos exploded.

The second wave hit like a tsunami.

They did not behave like normal undead – like those Miles had told them about.

There was no stagger, no shamble. These things ran. Fast, relentless, and absolutely silent, save for the wet crunch of bone against pavement and the awful sound of their shrieks echoing through empty sockets.

"We need a barrier! Now!" Sarissa shouted, carving a wide arc through three of them, flame bursting from her blade in a sweeping wall.

"We’ve got another breach on the west flank!" Came the report.

"They’re everywhere!"

Iron Roar’s frontliners met the charge with shields locked, but the undead did not flinch. They slammed into the line with a frenzy that sent armored men flying like toys.

Halden’s axe met one mid-lunge, cleaving it in half, only for its top half to keep crawling, fingers digging into his greaves.

He crushed its skull underfoot.

"They don’t stop!" He growled. "They don’t stop!"

Ethercore’s medics fell back, trying to maintain their healing circles under the pressure, but several were dragged down, screaming, their cries cut off as black claws tore through their ribs.

"Wei-Ling!" Sarissa called out.

The strategist had already moved. Her scouts rained fire arrows into choke points, setting up a perimeter, forcing the undead into bottlenecks, but it was not enough. The numbers were wrong. The dead kept coming, and they did not stop like normal mobs, even when dismembered.

"This isn’t random!" Vyle hissed, teeth clenched. "Someone’s controlling them."

Sarissa did not respond.

She could not, although she knew it was true.

Of course, there was someone controlling them. Miles had told her that before he left. It was Shinji.

Shinji all over.

Her blade was a blur now, leaving trails of burning red light as she carved a path through the horde. A small group of Union defenders had rallied behind her, forming a pocket in the center of the plaza.

They fought like they were underwater, everything a blur, movement slow, enemies fast.

A healer screamed as an undead bit into her arm and tore it clean off. She dropped, gurgling, before choking on her own blood and dying on the pavement.

More monsters spilled from the rooftops, dropping into the plaza with sickening cracks.

A former guild captain – his face half-melted, one eye dangling from its socket – slammed into Sarissa’s flank. She gritted her teeth, deflected his claws, and drove her blade into his throat. He twitched, gurgled, then fell.

And she hesitated for just a second.

Because she had known him. She had fought beside him.

He had died six weeks ago outside of the Wildlands, just at the city’s borders.

So why the hell was he here now?

"Fall back to Sector Delta!" She shouted. "Dawnshade, cover retreat! Ethercore, prioritize the wounded, move!"

A coordinated withdrawal began, messy but effective.

They could not win this. Not in the open, not like this. They needed terrain, bottlenecks, fallback plans. The plaza was too wide, too exposed.

Sarissa grunted as another creature lunged, this one child-sized, head twisted backwards. She kicked it midair, sending it flying into a crumbling statue.

But more kept coming.

"Retreat!"

They backed toward the Union headquarters. It was reinforced, fortified. It would hold.

It had to.

And as they moved, Sarissa dared one last glance at the street behind them.

The undead did not chase in a line.

They formed ranks.

Some were slower, some faster. But they moved in perfect sync. Almost military. And in the center of the chaos, standing atop the wreckage of a Safe Zone terminal, was a figure cloaked in purple.

Not undead, not a beast either.

It was human. Tall, unarmored, face hidden behind a blank porcelain mask.

It turned and looked directly at her.

Her breath caught in her throat.

The figure raised one hand, and the undead paused. Just ever so slightly. Like animals waiting for a command.

Sarissa did not blink, did not breathe.

Then, the figure vanished.

A glitch. A teleport, she did not know.

But she knew, with terrifying certainty, that Shinji had just paid them a visit. But before all hell could break loose even deeper, a light shone in the middle of the western border of the Plaza.

And all the undead froze.