"Well, that's not ominous at all..." Merlin muttered to himself.
He quickly noticed that the undead horde seemed to have been agitated by the grunting sound, as they were now charging towards the group with stronger resolve.
Merlin's attention was forced away from the rift in the sky as a zombie charged at him while baring its teeth at him. He quickly cut the zombie down, but as it fell he noticed that another zombie seemed to have been thrown towards him.
He stepped out of the way as the zombie that was thrown his way slumped prone on the valley ground, a few steps away from his feet.
It began trying to stand back up, but Merlin quickly stomped its head a few times, dealing enough damage to finish it off.
「Congratulations, you are now level 7.」
"Wonderful," He muttered to himself while turning to see who or what threw the zombie his way.
What he saw was Lyonette, swinging her large battle axe around with reckless abandon.
It appeared as though she was in some kind of battle trance, as she swung her axe at anything that moved in front of her, barely avoiding her teammates that approached too close.
She wasn't even finishing her kills, rather her heavy blows were sending zombies flying all over the place, and her teammates were just finishing them off.
'That's a follower of Ares for you.' He thought to himself, before glancing at what the brother was doing.
Unlike his sister, Leonid was disposing of the zombies gracefully. His war picks were quite good at dealing critical damage, and they paired well with his swings that pierced the zombie's skulls with seemingly perfect accuracy.
The grunts and growls stopped for a brief moment, and then a loud synthetic-sounding roar echoed throughout the valley. Oddly enough, it shared a fair amount of similarities to the sound of metal being scratched against metal, an unpleasant metallic shrieking sound.
「Your body has been temporarily paralysed with fear.」
As soon as that notification appeared, Merlin felt his body tense up, and his attempt to move caused his body to slump to the ground, forcing him to fall on his hands and knees.
He looked around, noticing that the rest of the group seemed to be suffering from similar effects to varying degrees.
But the undead didn't seem to be negatively affected by this sound. Rather, they were taking this opportunity to close the distance and attack while their targets were all paralysed.
They didn't get too far with that task, however, as both Lyonette and Cam seemed to break out of the status effect with a moderate amount of screaming between them. Cam focused on protecting his teammates while Lyonette went straight back into thinning the enemy's frontline.
Merlin didn't have a high enough mental resistance to forcibly break the status effect due to how low his wisdom score currently was. So all he could do is sit there for a few moments before the status effect wore off.
Fortunately, it ran out just in time for him to spring up and deal with a couple of zombies that had gotten too close for comfort. Had the effect lasted a couple more seconds, it was likely that Merlin would have taken a substantial amount of damage.
"Huh? It blinked..." Bibar's panicked voice reached Merlin's ears.
He quickly turned his head to see Bibar with a horrified expression plastered on his face. Bibar's body was shaking violently, it was as if he was suddenly plunged into freezing temperatures.
Only a few moments later, Merlin witnessed something snap in Bibar's mind. The cleric began screaming in terror, catching everyone's attention and startling them. His manic screams echoed throughout the valley, but what came next was more of a shock.
Bibar reached for a dagger sheathed on his belt, and while still screaming at the top of his lungs, unsheathed the dagger and drove it into his stomach, only to rip it out and repeat the action several more times.
'What the hell?' Merlin thought to himself as his mind quickly processed what was going on.
Before he knew it, Merlin found himself sprinting towards Bibar, but due to him being so far away, it was unlikely that he would be able to do anything for him in time.
"Stavros put him to sleep!" Cam roared as he began shattering zombie skulls angrily with his mace.
Stavros, the previously flirtatious cleric, was now running towards Bibar with a face that clearly expressed worry. He pulled out his lute as he closed the distance, and his first action was swinging the lute at Bibar.
The lute collided with Bibar's hand, causing the dagger he was holding to fly out of his grasp, the force of the strike had sent the dagger several metres away from where the two were standing.
Stavros began channelling his mana into the lute as he played a lulling melody, and after a couple of seconds, Bibar started nodding off.
Imbuing magic into your voice or musical instruments was the core feature of a bard. Typically treated as a support class, they were most proficient with enchantment and illusion spells. They imbued their will into the sounds they made, allowing them to influence the world around them.
'I was wondering why he didn't worship the god of music, Apollo. But I guess Aphrodite is also pretty good for a bard, especially the enchantment buffs.' Merlin thought to himself.
Fortunately, it seemed as though Stavros arrived in time, as he quickly began chanting a healing spell to patch up the sleeping cleric.
"Keep your gaze away from the darkness!" Cam shouted as he crushed a zombie under his shield. "We can't afford to lose another person, we've already lost our mage."
"He isn't dead," Thovan shouted, he didn't seem to be a fan of Cam's choice of words.
"Those patches will last until we can get him proper care, but he's not going to be in any state to help us now," Thovan muttered while driving his spear into a line of three zombies, killing all of them. "Lyonette, go cause some damage."
Taking that as her cue, Lyonette charged into the battle once more and began swinging her war axe around. Her attacks were even more vicious than they previously were, so everyone kept their distance and let her do her thing.
Merlin eventually reached Bibar, who was currently still asleep and having his wounds being patched up by Stavros.
Merlin reached into his inventory, pulling out one of the healing potions that he had made a week earlier. He quickly handed the potion to Stavros while briefly explaining that it was a healing potion before turning back towards the fight and sprinting towards it.
He witnessed the group of clerics absolutely destroying the wave of zombies as if nothing had changed, but it still seemed as though there was no end in sight for the zombie wave.
'I get why I got assigned such powerful NPC support now, but aren't they still way too overpowered?' Merlin thought to himself.
Joining the fight, Merlin started cleaving through the undead, but even with his current stats, he was falling behind with kills compared to the rest of the group.
But it was understandable, considering the bonuses against the undead that clerics got. Additionally, they were all using weapons that were better suited for dealing with the undead, while Merlin was still swinging around his daggers.
'I wonder when the wave will end... There's probably a limit, surely.' Merlin thought to himself, 'Where are they even spawning from? Gaia wouldn't throw a mass summoning circle onto a beginner class quest... Would she?'
Merlin continued to kill the undead, and at some point, he received the usual red alert box.
┌───────────────────
[Message from the devs!]
Group one, there is only one hour left for today's session, you will receive another notification when it's time to log out.
If you do not leave by that time you will be forcibly disconnected, please make sure you're in a safe location when you log out.
└───────────────────
"Ugh, this is inefficient," Merlin groaned as he swiped the alert box away, he was clearly getting frustrated at the endless waves of enemies.
'Oh... Right, why am I even hiding my trump card?' He thought to himself, realising that his fighting style as of late has involved the core part of his origin soul, and he suddenly wasn't using it which made him feel weaker all of a sudden. 'It's just the dagger that I should be worried about revealing.'
Another zombie approached Merlin, but instead of swinging his daggers at it, he just pointed at the creature while willing his vines to attack.
Although his damage output for the vines had improved, they were still weaker than just attacking with his weapons, but they would likely rival them at some point.
Three vines extended out of Merlin's arm before flying towards the first zombie they saw. The zombie suddenly found that its body had been pierced in several locations and was unable to move.
The vines began moving in a sawing motion that continued to deal damage to the creature as the thorns ripped into the zombie's rotting flesh. Over a period of a couple of seconds, the vines ravaged the undead creature's corpse and tore it limb from limb.
'If they're going to keep spawning, I can just farm them for experience points for my Rose Wight soul.' Merlin thought to himself as a smirk grew on his face.
Merlin suddenly ran towards a group of zombies, the three vines sprouted out of his shoulders, leaving his hands free to continue attacking.
