Given our track records with dungeons, I fully expected to emerge into another den of monsters.

  What I got instead was the now-familiar white room, offering a much-needed respite.

  But just as I thought about bringing Aerion out to treat her, my surroundings resolved into pure darkness.

  I blinked, trying to force my eyes to adjust. Going from bright light to what felt like total darkness was jarring, to say the least, and I still saw afterimages of the skyscraper’s sliding doors.

  After what felt like an endless amount of blinking but couldn’t have been more than a handful of seconds thanks to my enormous Vigor, my eyes adjusted, and I realized there was plenty of light. Amber streetlights revealed asphalt streets, sidewalks, and dozens of two-to-three-story residential buildings that lined it.

  All covered under a dense, low fog that limited visibility to just a few dozen feet. When I looked up, I couldn’t see anything other than the hazy glow of what my brain inferred as the moon.

  Which lent some credibility to Richard’s thesis, though with magic, I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing was a deception. For all I knew, the moonlight was fake and I’d run into walls painted to look like vast Tokyo scenery. The fog did do an excellent job at hiding all the details.

  Before I could make sense of where the hell I was, I spotted them.

  Humanoid figures that I hadn’t noticed before, both because of the fog and on account of how slowly they moved.

  It was then that I realized I’d just traded one nightmare for another.

  Because these weren’t normal people, even though they were dressed in suits, dresses, and shorts. It was the way they moved. At the same time incredibly familiar, and beyond strange.

  These things were strong. My spidey sense tingled like never before. To mistake these for the skeletons from earlier would be a horrible mistake.

  I summoned my Grace suit and began changing into it. The wardrobe change process wasn’t an especially slow one, but it wasn’t instant either. I prayed that they wouldn’t notice.

  They did, of course. Right when I was halfway through the process.

  “Fuck!”

  The zombies all turned to face me as one, and when they did, they didn’t shamble or skulk.

  They fucking ran, charging at me faster than any Olympic sprinter, moving so fast they blurred. They weren’t silent about it, either.

  They didn’t scream, though. That would’ve at least been normal. The sound was like what you’d get if someone with cut vocal cords tried to scream.

  It was so alien, so fundamentally wrong, it sent chills up my spine.

  Maybe it was on account of their number. Pure dread infected my every pore as I was forced to watch dozens and hundreds of zombies emerge from the fog as my Elven Light Armor Suit rippled closed around me.

  I could’ve sworn each second took a year. That was the one downside about the process. I couldn’t actually move the suit until it was securely around me. I could only stand and watch, helpless as they closed the distance.

  A hundred feet. Fifty. Twenty.

  The suit finally equipped, and I folded space, running like my life depended on it.

  I darted through narrow streets, outpacing my pursuers only to run into more. And more. And more.

  Around every corner, down every alley, on every rooftop.

  The fucking zombies were everywhere. Like all of Tokyo had been zombified, its tens of millions all turned into powerful undead.

  And unlike most monsters we’d fought, these things didn’t stop. They didn’t lose my trail, didn’t give up or get tired. They just kept coming. The farther I ran, the more I attracted, until the entire street behind me was a writhing, sprinting mass of undead.

  I was faster than them, but that was useless when they could track me.

  “What the hell is going on…” I hissed.

  I couldn’t keep this up. I’d already drawn at least a thousand of them, and if this really was Tokyo, there could be tens of millions more.

  As I sprinted past endless streets, I had to begrudgingly admit this wasn’t some illusionary dungeon floor.

  The Cataclysm had recreated—or transported us into—the city itself.

  That thought was as exhilarating as it was absolutely terrifying. A whole city of zombies. Not shrunk down like it would be in a game. The real deal.

  An infinite number of zombies, yes, but that also meant plenty of places to hide. Ideas whirred in my brain—Tokyo’s massive train stations were practically cities unto themselves. Could I seek shelter there? Or what about one of its thousands of skyscrapers? Or department stores? Parks?

  All of that was moot right now. Unless I found a way to lose my pursuers, I was dead. And a thousand Siege Bolts might as well have been a thousand drops in a Tokyo-sized ocean.

  I spotted a two-story house and charged straight for it. One of the upscale ones. A downright mansion for a city like Tokyo, where space was always at a premium.

  It was time to see how smart these zombies really were.

  My sheer momentum pulverized the solid wooden door, and it was only when I was halfway up the walnut wood stairs to the second floor that the afterthought of not destroying the door even crossed my mind.

  Not that it would have mattered. If I wasn’t horribly mistaken, those things were easily as strong as the blob controlling the skeletons.

  The way they nearly matched my speed, to say nothing of the way they blew right through parked cars and bent light poles pretty much said as much.

  Racing to a door with a wooden placard showing pink ponies and green bears, I entered the room and slammed the door behind me. Crayon drawings and plushies greeted me, illuminated only by the diffuse moonlight.

  It got me wondering whether I could turn the lights on. The streetlights seemed to work. Would electricity? If that was the case, it’d almost be like returning home…

  The voices downstairs reminded me this was no time for daydreams.

  I waited in the dark, heart pounding, listening for any sign they might be coming up the stairs.

  My optimism died when the sound of feverish stomping came seconds later. I had dared to hope that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t smart enough to follow me upstairs.

  I was so wrong.

  Because, as it turned out, they didn’t just climb the stairs. They crawled up the outer walls, blackened fingernails scraping against the windows.

  “Fuck!”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  I folded space and teleported out the window into the open air, firing a Siege Bolt as I arced through the air.

  The Bolt had the desired effect, pulping a swarm of no less than three dozen zombies before I hit the street, hard, rolled, and kept running—my silvery armor now dyed black with gore and blood.

  They were relentless. This was impossible. Nightmare mode didn’t even begin to cut it. A full-blown zombie invasion in the middle of the night, shrouded by fog, with me in a city I didn’t know how to navigate.

  I struggled to think of how things could get worse. It was like some dungeon master had curated the worst possible situation for me.

  I’d gamed plenty of setups like this—but experiencing it firsthand? Whole different story. This place couldn’t always be like this, could it?

  I froze, if only for a heartbeat. Zombies who were way stronger than they had any right to be. Smarter, too.

  I looked up at the moon.

  Could that be the key?

  I didn’t know. Not yet. But I was damn well going to find out. It might be our only shot at salvation.

  It wasn’t just my life on the line, after all. Aerion and Galia would die with me if I failed. If not in my inventory, eaten by zombies moments later.

  And if the zombie lore held here… Flashes of Aerion turned into an undead creature of rot flashed through my mind, and I doubted I’d ever imagined anything more traumatizing.

  I refused to let that happen. Even if it meant my death.

  I needed to find a defensible spot—somewhere we could hole up and ride out this storm. If it could even be ridden out. If not… well, we’d come up with a plan B. Right now, I needed Aerion and Galia to back me up.

  Summoning them in the middle of the street, with a thousand enemies hot on my tail, would’ve been suicide, even if Aerion was in tip-top shape. Which she wasn’t.

  I teleported onto a three-story roof and scanned the skyline for the tallest building nearby—what little of it I could see through the fog, anyway.

  It took me a moment, but luckily, the bigger buildings appeared to be fully powered and I spotted one without much issue—a high-rise maybe half a mile away. Probably a luxury condo complex of some sort. That would have to do.

  I moved so fast, my brain didn’t even register the passing scenery. Parks, offices, houses, I bashed in all of their roofs, sometimes sinking through on account of the sheer force of impact.

  The worst of it barely even slowed me with my Grace armor, but while I could have leaped up the sides of that building and climbed to the roof, I changed my destination about halfway there.

  I’d spotted something better—a radio tower.

  The high-rise had too many surfaces for the zombies to climb. The roof was huge, which meant I could be fighting off hundreds of enemies.

  The tower, though? Made of wire-frame metal, with a tiny platform a few feet wide at the top, it’d make for a challenging climb. The zombies would have nothing to grab onto aside from thin beams, and more importantly, only a handful could attack us at a time, giving us an incredible defensive advantage. We could pick them off from above with impunity.

  In other words—damn near perfect.

  I folded space and leaped into the air, soaring thirty feet up before grabbing onto the steel lattice of the tower. It didn’t even shudder under my manhandling, which hardly came as a surprise.

  Like everything else in Japan, it was built to standards that most would consider pure insanity. It didn’t even shudder under my weight.

  I climbed fast, teleporting when I could, until I reached a narrow platform near the top. It wasn’t much—just a service perch made of wiry mesh and exposed to strong winds—but it was enough.

  I summoned Aerion directly into my arms, just in case, before setting her down on the metal.

  She blinked, yelping when she saw the precarious drop but didn’t move. She was too much a veteran to truly freak out.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” I said quickly. “We’re safe for now. But first, I need to treat you.”

  Pulling a vial of Galia’s tears, I sprinkled them on Aerion’s wounds. It worked about as well as the Sanctuary water, healing what would have been a mortal wound almost instantly. Her armor had shredded in several places, and was at about half of its original Condition. Given that it was part-fabric, I wasn't sure how easily I'd be able to repair it, but I was hoping my Blessing would give me an edge there.

  As for our dwindling supply of tears, we’d argued endlessly about how to procure them before settling on tickling the bird until she cried—something Galia still held a grudge against.

  “So, I hate to ask anything of you after such an ordeal… but we’ve got a bit of a problem. I’m gonna need your help.”

  She must have caught the urgency in my voice, because she straightened and nodded. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Try to keep your balance on these railings,” I said, setting her down gently. “Soon, we’re gonna have a horde trying to climb this thing. We need to knock them off before they reach us.”

  “Understood.” She glanced out at the city. “How many are we talking about?”

  “A lot.”

  Her head snapped toward me. “Define ‘a lot.’”

  “A shitton. Or a fuckton, either work,” I said, earning myself a glare. “Tens of thousands,” I said with a sigh. “Maybe more.”

  Her expression faltered.

  “We just need to hold them off until dawn,” I said, pointing up at the moon hanging high in the sky. “No idea how long that’ll be, but I think it’s our only shot.”

  She bit her lip, then nodded. “Understood.”

  “I’m bringing Galia out too,” I said, summoning the phoenix into my arms. She squawked, ruffling her feathers. “Galia, I need you to fly around us, but stay close, alright?”

  She didn’t understand the words, but it seemed she recognized my intent. The bird took off, circling above us, her fiery wings lighting up the fog that surrounded us.

  “From what I’ve seen, these zombies have no ranged attacks,” I said. “Focus on pushing them off, but if they get too close, I’m hoping Galia will swoop in and burn them.”

  At this point, I’d take every advantage I could get. My Soulwoven swords hovered around us like orbiting satellites, giving us another layer of defense.

  “Here they come,” Aerion said only a moment later.

  The first of the undead began emerging through the mist, clawing their way up the hundred-foot-tall tower.

  “Showtime.”

  I extended my arm and directed the blades downward. They disappeared into the fog, carving into rotting flesh, slicing into arms, legs, and tendons as the bodies plummeted.

  With their individual strength, we didn’t have a hope in hell of killing all of them. Or even most of them. Thanks to our position, though, we didn’t need to.

  The smallest slit caused their muscles to fail.

  Gravity did the rest.

  My strategy worked surprisingly well at first. The tower’s narrow frame meant only a few dozen could climb at once, and between us, Aerion, and Galia, we could handle that. I’d changed into my Vigor armor, multiplying my efficacy.

  But zombie logic being what it was, even with severed limbs, they didn’t stop unless gravity forced them. Their torsos kept crawling upward, hauling themselves by whatever the hell drove their zombie brains.

  “I’ll take the rear!” Aerion shouted, slashing at the ones clinging to the railings. Her [Shock] spell crackled through the steel, paralyzing several at once. They seized and fell away.

  “Conserve your essence,” I warned. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

  She nodded grimly.

  They were weak individually, but there were so many.

  And so began the longest night of our lives. If nothing else, this was one hell of a leveling exercise. Maybe even the best we’d ever had. Aerion actively spent points every time she leveled, boosting her ceiling and making her stronger as the night wore on.

  We hacked and slashed without pause, cutting down monsters as fast as they came, and thanks to those stat increases and levelups, the task got easier as the night dragged on.

  They were relentless, but so were we, and every System message rejuvenated our morale. We quickly optimized our tactics, discovering the best methods to kill them. Pierce the eyes to destroy their brains, decapitate them if we could, and sever arm and legs muscles when possible. Those seemed to be the most effective.

  Decapitations got easier, and my shield bashes imploded skulls.

  Still, despite our Vigor, fatigue started setting in, especially for Aerion. She took a slash to her arm that cut through a gap in her armor, and my heart froze. I half expected her to start turning.

  I was never a religious person, but in that moment, I genuinely prayed. I didn’t know what god I prayed to, but thankfully, she didn’t. Valkyrie that she was, she just gritted her teeth and kept on fighting, downing Galia’s tears—precious commodity that they were—when she could.

  The inevitable, however, came at last.

  A lapse in focus let half a dozen zombies swarm me at once, and I had to rely on Aerion to blast them off before they dragged me down.

  The surge that followed nearly overwhelmed us. It was Galia who saved the day.

  After realizing how effective her flames were, she swooped lower, intercepting climbers and setting them ablaze. She wasn’t quite strong enough yet to knock them off, but the fire handled that. With her as our vanguard and us guarding the top, we fought on and on until the eastern sky began to glow with pre-dawn light.

  She’d more than earned all the [Rare] shards she could gorge herself on.

  My elation was short-lived, though.

  Aerion’s face contorted in anguish as the monsters kept coming. “I thought you said this would end at dawn!” she yelled, voice frayed.

  I genuinely didn’t have an answer. If it didn’t end, we’d have to find somewhere to barricade ourselves—maybe a bunker, or a base where those tanks and Humvees had come from. Somewhere the zombies couldn’t get through.

  But then the sun crested the horizon.

  And the horde froze, halting on whatever tower rung they happened to be on.

  For the first time all night, there was silence. Blissful, eerie, silence.

  Like they were all limbs of a single entity, they all turned toward the sunrise, as if mesmerized. Then, one by one, they started climbing back down the tower—retreating and dispersing into the streets below.

  Just moments later, we were alone. Truly alone.

  I let out a long breath and sank to the metal grating.

  “How did you know?” Aerion asked softly.

  I laughed weakly. “Y’know? Sometimes, being a gamer pays off.”

  Relief washed over me, a strange, cathartic joy flooding my veins as I looked out over the glowing horizon.

  That was when I noticed the small black dots blotting out the sun.

  Birds, signaling dawn. If there was ever a better omen, I—!?

  Then I heard it.

  That unmistakable whup-whup-whup of blades. Rotor blades, driven by a turbine engine.

  “Those… aren’t birds, are they?” Aerion said, eyes widening in shock.

  I frowned. “Nope. They’re attack helicopters.”

  Gunships, if I wasn’t mistaken.

  And they were headed straight for us.