The Sea of Rot was not water. It was a vast, shifting ocean of mud, decay, and the animated corpses of the armies that had failed to conquer the Capital before.
A single, narrow stone bridge spanned the ten-mile stretch of the necrotic wasteland.
Isolde pulled her cloak tight against the smell—a stench of sulfur and old blood that made her eyes water.
"We have to be quiet," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the moaning wind. "The Rot-Walkers are blind, but they hunt by sound. If we alert them, they will swarm the bridge. There are millions of them."
She looked at Cain.
Cain was stomping.
CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.
His heavy combat boots struck the stone bridge with deliberate, rhythmic force. The Ring of Burden on his finger made each step vibrate the structure, sending shockwaves down into the mud below.
"What are you doing?!" Isolde hissed, grabbing his arm. "You'll wake the dead!"
"That's the point," Cain said, his voice unbothered. "This bridge is narrow. If we sneak, it takes three days to cross. If I wake them up, they all come to me. I clear the path in twenty minutes."
"There are millions!"
"Target rich environment," Cain grinned.
Below the bridge, the mud began to boil. Thousands of grey, rotting hands clawed at the stone pillars. The Rot-Walkers began to climb, piling over each other like ants, shrieking as they sensed the fresh life force radiating from the bridge.
In seconds, the path ahead was blocked. A wall of undead flesh, weapons rusted to their hands, surged toward them.
Isolde raised her staff. "I'll cast a fire shield—"
"Save your mana, Princess," Cain said, stepping in front of her. The tails of his new Warlord's Pelt whipped in the wind. "You'll need it to read the map later."
Cain reached into his shadow. He didn't pull out a dagger or a sword this time.
He pulled out a nine-foot-long crimson lance.
[Weapon Class: Anti-Army]
[Name: Kazikli Bey (The Lord's Stake)]
[Effect: Kinetic Propagation. Strikes hit everything in a straight line.]
Cain spun the lance. The sound of the heavy weapon cutting the air was a low hum.
The horde was ten meters away. Five meters.
Cain didn't thrust. He swept.
He swung the lance horizontally with such catastrophic force that the air pressure alone acted like a blade.
SQUELCH.
The first fifty zombies were instantly bisected. Torsos flew into the air, spinning like macabre tops.
Cain stepped forward. He thrust the lance.
BOOM.
The impact created a tunnel of gore through the horde. The sheer kinetic energy of the thrust blew the zombies apart like water balloons.
"Too slow," Cain criticized himself. "Let's speed it up."
He let go of the lance with one hand and snapped his fingers.
[Shadow Manipulation: The Impaler's Garden.]
The shadows cast by the zombie horde suddenly solidified. The darkness on the ground turned into thousands of razor-sharp spikes.
SHUNK. SHUNK. SHUNK.
In an instant, three hundred zombies were skewered from below. The shadow spikes impaled them, lifting them into the air like grotesque decorations.
Cain walked through the forest of impaled corpses, twirling his lance. He moved with a terrifying rhythm—thrust, sweep, impale. Thrust, sweep, impale.
Suddenly, the bridge shook violently.
A Rot-Behemoth—a conglomeration of fused corpses standing thirty feet tall—climbed over the railing behind them. It roared, spewing toxic bile that dissolved the stone.
"Cain! Behind you!" Isolde screamed.
Cain didn't turn around. He drove his lance into the stone bridge, anchoring it.
He vaulted over the lance, using it as a pivot point. He flipped backward, soaring over Isolde's head, directly toward the Behemoth.
Mid-air, Cain's eyes flashed red.
He drew the Dragon-Bone Splitter (the massive cleaver) from his inventory mid-flip.
The Behemoth raised a massive, fleshy fist to crush him.
Cain fell. The Ring of Burden multiplied his weight. He was a human meteor.
"Sit down."
Cain slammed the cleaver into the Behemoth's head.
CRUNCH.
The force of the impact didn't just split the skull; it drove the monster's entire body downward. The Behemoth smashed through the stone bridge, plummeting into the sea of mud below with a wet, thundering splash.
Cain landed on the edge of the broken railing, balancing perfectly. He wiped a speck of black blood from his cheek.
The horde froze. Even the mindless dead seemed to pause in the presence of an apex predator.
Cain looked at the remaining zombies. He pointed his cleaver down the bridge.
"Anyone else want to fly?"
The zombies hesitated... and then, driven by a flicker of primal fear that transcended death, they began to back away.
Isolde lowered her staff. She looked at Cain, standing silhouetted against the moon, surrounded by a forest of impaled monsters.
"You really are a devil," she whispered.
Cain sheathed his weapon, his coat settling around him.
"Devils have more fun, Isolde," he said, turning to continue walking. "And we have better coats. Now come on. I'm hungry."