Chapter 121: Breath of the Abyss
“Aaaahhh!” A chorus of shrill, agonized screams tore through the twilight, a sound that clawed its way up from the sewer’s throat to be heard in the workers’ district above. The cries were punctuated by the continuous crack of gunfire as the peelers, huddled together, fired relentlessly into the advancing tide of the dead.
The ruffians, their escape route choked off by the undead, descended into a state of pure, animal panic. Some, in their desperation, tried to charge through the horde, only to be clawed, bitten, and dragged down into a thrashing, screaming death. The horde was not just at the stairs; more of the dead things were now crawling onto the bank near us, their empty, glowing eyes fixed on Jared and me.
“Damn it! Brothers, grab your tools! We fight these bastards to the death! If we don’t kill them, none of us are getting out of here alive!” It was Bartholomew, his voice a desperate roar that cut through the cacophony.
They were trapped in a hopeless, drowning nightmare. But the gang leader’s words still held some sway. A few of his loyal men scrambled back into their hovels and emerged with the tools of their trade: crowbars, sharpened steel pipes, machetes, axes. They were well-equipped for a brawl. The drowners were slow, shambling things, and seemed to possess no intelligence to speak of.
Once armed, the ruffians were able to beat them back, even knocking them to the ground. Bartholomew himself was a force of nature, his great axe cleaving a drowner’s head in two with a single, powerful swing that sent a spray of black ichor across the stones.
Their situation was manageable. But ours was not. The drowners, sniffing the air with rotted noses, all turned towards our alcove. Damn it, was it the scent of the potion that had drawn their attention?
Jared stood before them, a lone guardian. The first drowner lunged, its rotting hands reaching for him. The fate of the first unlucky peeler had already shown us what would happen if it caught him.
Jared swung the short dagger. A flash of silver, and the drowner’s arm was severed at the elbow. The waterlogged hand fell to the ground, its fingers still twitching, grasping at the empty air.
The dismembered drowner, oblivious to its wound, lunged again, its jaw gaping. Jared stabbed it in the forehead, the blade sinking deep into its skull. The drowner’s empty eyes stared at Jared as a few gouts of foul water sprayed from its mouth, and then it collapsed, motionless.
But more were coming. Jared was like a god of war descended. He slashed at another, a diagonal cut that opened its chest from shoulder to hip, its guts spilling out in a torrent of black water.
Another drowner tried to ambush him from the side, wrapping its arms around him. But Jared’s body suddenly began to glow with a faint, holy light, and the drowner shrieked, leaping back. Though the drowner had been soaked in water, the skin that had touched Jared was now charred black, as if it had been seared by a holy fire.
Of course. In the heat of battle, Jared could instinctively use the holy light. He couldn’t control it himself, but the light protected him from harm, and imbued his weapon with a terrible, righteous power. At least against these walking dead, the holy light was devastating. Even the undead that were merely kicked away by Jared would have a scorched footprint seared into their rotting flesh.
The situation seemed… stable. Though the fighting was fierce, the three main battlefronts were holding. The ruffians near the stairs were numerous, and their desperation had given them a savage courage. Though a few were dragged down and killed, the drowners that attacked them were immediately swarmed and beaten to a pulp by the others.
The peelers’ firepower was formidable. They had retreated into a hovel, a few of them laying down a network of fire at the entrance. And with the officer’s powerful weapon, a pile of drowner corpses soon lay outside their makeshift fortress.
And on our side, in the deeper part of the waterway, Jared was a whirlwind of destruction. Our other “good neighbors” had also come out with makeshift weapons, wooden clubs, chairs, to smash at the drowners. For the moment, it seemed we could hold on.
The sheer number of drowners crawling from the waterway made me wonder just how many corpses they had thrown into the river. But if we just kept killing them, surely we could finish them all off, couldn’t we?
As I was optimistically assessing the situation, I saw a familiar figure at the edge of the river. She had just climbed onto the bank, her body naked and rotting in several places. But her familiar face and a head of bone-white hair were still fresh in my memory.
Bloody hell, isn’t that the witch? Weren’t Jared and I the ones who had killed her and thrown her into the river? Wait, thrown into the river…
Her body was a canvas of decay, and from the weeping wounds, a constant stream of black water floated out, swirling around her like a ghostly shroud. Her eyes glowed with a distinct, eerie blue light, a sight that was chillingly unnatural. In my vision, I could also see a vast amount of magic emanating from her body, the color of the polluted, turbid water, nauseating to behold.
Then, another piece of inexplicable knowledge floated into my mind. The Drowned Dead. The corpse of a drowned person with powerful magic, transformed into a drowner after being submerged in water. Though it is also a mindless undead creature, it will instinctively know some magic due to the mana in its body.
Wait, she still knew magic? I saw the undead that had once been a witch, now called a Drowned Dead, raise her arm and point towards the alcove where the peelers were firing most fiercely. The turbid, sewage-like magic gathered in her body.
“Danger! Get out of there!” I shouted, but Parula’s voice was too small, unable to carry over the chaotic din of the battlefield. Even if they had heard me, they probably wouldn’t have immediately believed my words and done as I said.
I saw a stream of magic surge from the Drowned Dead’s hand and spread into the alcove. I was still wondering what she had done when the dense gunfire suddenly fell silent.
“Cough, cough, cough!” Several violent coughs came from the alcove, but they were muffled, as if the person coughing had a mouthful of water. Then, several peelers crawled out of the alcove, their faces contorted in extreme pain. They were constantly spitting out black water with silky tendrils, and it was an endless, horrifying stream.
I suddenly remembered my nightmare from the other day. When I woke up, I had also coughed up black water like this, as if I had just drowned. But it was nowhere near as much as them.
They were spitting up more and more, the foul water not just pouring from their mouths, but from their noses, eyes, and ears. All seven of their orifices began to stream with sewage. Finally, their faces turned a purplish-blue, and they stopped struggling, their bodies convulsing as they lay in the pool of their own vomit, their deaths a gruesome, silent spectacle.
A strange piece of knowledge once again flooded my mind. Breath of the Abyss. A low-level water magic that causes the target’s lungs to constantly fill with magically generated water, causing them to suffocate and die.
If the magic is strong enough, it can instantly create a large amount of water pressure to directly burst the target’s lungs and kill them. Continuous casting can continuously create water, but if no target is selected or the target has no lungs or similar organs, then no water can be created.
Bloody hell, what a bizarre and terrifying magic. I looked at the peelers’ dead bodies and couldn’t help but feel a chill. If Jared hadn’t woken me up in time that day and scared away the drowner outside the door, would I have died from such a painful magic as well?
Just then, the Drowned Dead’s gaze actually turned towards Jared, and she raised a hand.
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