Chapter 43 - 100 beasts
The hall was lit by the Abyssal Flame above Hide’s palm, the shadows pulling back as they moved — right, toward the staircase, keeping to the wall, the growls behind them already shifting direction as the Wolfthralls investigated where the bone sounds had come from.
Fifteen meters to the stairs. Ten. The hall was wide enough that their footsteps on the flagstones were loud, louder than he would have preferred, but the Wolfthralls were focused on the far impact points.
Hide was about to reach the stairs when suddenly his leg found something like a ditch, or better said a switch in the ground that pressed in with his feet over it.
The whole citadel shuddered once.
And then the sconces lit up, hidden in every corner of this large hall.
Every sconce on every wall, simultaneously — iron brackets at head height running the entire length of the hall on both sides, filled with some fuel that was not ordinary and had not degraded with the dungeon’s age, igniting in the same black-orange quality as the Abyssal Flame but hotter, steadier.
The hall went from the narrow radius of Hide’s palm-flame to full visibility in a single second.
The hall was long.
Very long.
Longer than the exterior of the citadel had suggested, the space inside did not match the space outside. And along both walls, at regular intervals the entire length of the hall, doors opened in the walls one by one.
The doors were small, made only for a person to walk through... like some kind of secret prison.
"The stairs..." Hide heard Fuu’s voice. Anxious and terrified. "The stairs are lifting off the ground."
Hide turned around, he was in shock, this was something he had not expected to hear in his current situation. But what he saw was final, the stairs were actually moving up, slowly lifting off the ground.
He turned back and counted the doors automatically, the way his mind counted things.
Fifty on the left. Fifty on the right.
There were a total of one hundred doors.
The sconce-light had reached all of them simultaneously. And in the silence that followed the lighting the sound began.
A hundred sounds or rather hungry and beastial growls.
At first like one sound, because they all started at the same moment and were all the same type.
Then the sound of iron hinges that had been still for a long time being pushed from the inside. A hundred doors, moving outward into the hall, each one swinging on its hinges in the same slow deliberate arc.
From each doorway, a shape stepped out.
The same basic geometry as the Wolfthralls — four-legged, built for weight, the skull set forward on a thick vertebrae column. But they were smaller, faster-looking, the proportions of something designed for confined spaces rather than open halls.
The rotted flesh on them was less prominent, the bone more complete. Their sockets caught the sconce-light and glowed faintly.
One of those beasts stepped out from each door.
A total, one hundred of them, stepping into the hall at the same moment, orientating in the same moment, the sound of a hundred sets of bone feet on flagstone beginning to fill the space from every direction.
Hide stood at the bottom of the staircase with the stair beneath his foot and looked at the length of the hall in both directions.
"What... what the hell is happening?" Fuu was more than terrified now.
Hide gritted his teeth and clenched his fist. They were essentially trapped here now.
The worst part, Fuu only had the resistance from the potion for a total of only 10 minutes. That timer had gone down to eight minutes by now, and there a hundred and two beasts surrounding them.
’Fuck... fuck... fuck.’
He looked at Fuu and almost regretted having him here, that guy’s skill was an utter waste here in front of 100 enemies. He would run out of mana in no time and then he would become a burden to Hide.
"Don’t use your skill too much, just try to avoid them as much as you can." Hide instructed him and called his system window.
He used his 6 non-allocated points. Putting three each in Strength and Agility. If he was going to fight them, he would need speed and strength.
Throwing a last look at the moving stairs, he pushed Fuu towards it and as expected of them, the smaller wolves lunged forward to attack, but their target was not Hide... but the person closer to the stairs.
Fuu!
They were here to stop someone from climbing these stairs and going up after all.
’There is one advantage and that it that they are completely mindless.’ He caught the legs of a wolf from behind, but the wolf did not stop. I t kept going and soon, its hind limbs broke and dangled in Hide’s hands.
His hands were covered with scales, with flames running around them continuously.
The beast, now dragging its body without hindlimbs had no care for them at all.
He used the sharp talons of the limbs and pinned the wolf to the ground. Then he placed his hand inside its ribs and found where a beating heart could be found. He had hoped to found the anchor, but he didn’t.
The anchor for these beasts wasn’t the same as that of the humanoid skeletons. Hide removed his hand and saw Fuu running towards him, with many wolves behind him.
Before moving, he sent flames and scales to his leg and crushed the skull of the beast he had pinned to the ground.
[Calamity Beast (Wolfthrall minion) — Eliminated]
Experience points gained: 50
’So there anchor is the head. And these ones are the minions, meaning that the two from earlier are the strongest here.’ Realization flashed in Hide’s eyes and he turned back to the group following Fuu.
But from the corner of his eye, he saw one of the two larger wolves running towards him, its chains rattling louder than any other.