My Job? Weaving Armour For Undead In Apocalypse

While Merek lay sprawled on the rooftop, the world around him seemed to slow. Inside his mind, profound changes were unfolding. The space of his will, once confined and rigid, stretched outward like a rubber band being drawn wider and wider.

With each subtle expansion, his thoughts sharpened, his perception grew clearer, as though the fog that clouded the edges of his awareness was burning away under an inner sun.

For a fleeting moment, Merek was weightless in that rare clarity, as if he could see and grasp the threads of the world itself. But the world wasn’t about to let him linger in that serenity.

A sudden shadow fell over him, blotting out the sun. Merek’s eyes snapped up, his sharpened senses catching the torn, bloodied tissues beneath the feet of a hopper irregular, its legs mangled from the sheer force of its monstrous leaps.

Snarling, its hands outstretched like claws, it plunged down toward him, intent to crush, to devour.

But then, with a sharp clink and rattle, chains shot through the air. They wrapped tight around the creature’s legs mid-descent, jerking it sideways. The irregular hit the rooftop hard, dragged past Merek in a blur of flailing limbs.

With brutal finality, the waiting Vulture undead plunged its massive sword through the zombie’s head.

There was a flash of essence, a shudder through the body, and then the lifeless corpse was flung aside like garbage.

The other Vulture dropped to one knee beside Merek, its armored hands, like skeletal gauntlets forged of darkened steel, opening before him. Resting within its palm was the prize: the core of the slain Type One.

The other core, Merek knew, was lost, buried in the mangled head crushed earlier, likely lost in the endless tide of the horde. But this one... this one was his.

Without hesitation, Merek took the core. He wiped away the gore and raised it to his lips, swallowing it down.