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A strange sort of tension accompanied the silence that followed. One that was almost suffocating to bear. Fortunately, it did not dwell for long.
An indication of another, reverberating footsteps fast approaching our vicinity, propelled our idleness into action. Motions almost simultaneous, Jin and I stood up hastily, facing the corridor furthest to the right as the continuous echo of a sprint continued streaking from its depths.
"Here comes my hero," I said, feeling the bleakness slowly ooze away from within.
Bursting forth in a spurt of speed, a person emerged, his hands tightly clasping his trembling knees, heavily winded, with locks of black windswept hair jutting out in strands. Perspiration trickled down his brown frantic eyes, wildly hunting the view, searching for something.
Tayuma stopped, sighting what he sought for, and raised an accusatory finger towards my direction, heaving heavily, "You… you goddamn piece of - you gotta - you got a lot of explaining to do."
"Got some questions, I suppose," I said, relief curving my lips upwards.
"Oh, you bet your ass I do!"
Then hoarse growling surfaced harshly, a stampede of many, following shortly after his appearance. What color remained on Tayuma's face was all but reduced to a sudden pale white.
Swiftly, he chanced a glance backward, and when he returned to us, an even more sickly expression was on full display.
"We'll settle it later, though," He said, moving away from the open corridor at once, "Now we run."
Jin drew up by my side, emotions distorted between absolute distress and seething fury, "Argh - you brought some with you, why?!"
Tayuma jittered and shook in place, yearning to flee once more from the dreadful shrieks, "Yeah. like I wanted to! I said I was coming, never said I was gonna be alone - JUST RUN!"
"Don't have to tell me twice," I said, spurring quickly after Tayuma who vanished through another empty corridor.
Jin groaned in frustration but immediately followed suit and together we ventured once more into another cramped series of twists and turns.
Stumbling blindly in wander was a thing of the past with Tayuma in the lead, he guided us through the narrow halls with proficient awareness of his surroundings. He knew where he was going, or at least, I think he did, otherwise, I might have just kicked his ass.
He muttered left, we went left, he said turn right, we went right. He says to go up the stairs… you get the idea. This went on for a while with the growlings trailing closely behind us at every turn.
In the frenetic echoes of our footsteps, a suggestion exhausted of breath rang out from behind me, "We should... turn right at the next junction, there's a room close by where we could hide out in."
"Took the words right out of my mouth," said Tayuma through deep gulps of air, "Except that's where my guys' are holding out, and I just got notified that they were ambushed by a swarm of NPCs outta nowhere. Don't wanna bring any more heat onto them, we're gonna have to take a stand here."
"What?" said Jin and I in unison.
"Just draw your weapons," He said, coming to a halt where paths intertwine, "You guys have weapons, right?"
"I got a stick!" I yelled, brandishing my sword widely before his eyes, "Want me to play fetch? I'm useless!"
Jin stopped short beside me, gasping for breath, "it's not… it's not even a weapon. He can't even use it... the game doesn't classify it as a weapon. He might as well be holding a loaf of bread for all the good it'll do because, in the eyes of the system, they're practically the same thing."
My jaw fell to the floor, "Oh, now you tell me! Now! Awfully chatty a while ago, couldn't have bothered to mention it then?!"
"Stop being a smartass for once and you'll find I was trying to tell you that!" He fired back.
An assembly of ear-piercing shrieks stemming from where we had traversed tunneled down the pathway like an alarming blare of a runaway train.
"Alright, enough!" shouted Tayuma, drowning our argument with his voice, "Sora just take out your secret weapon already, for God's sake!"
The cries of danger were getting closer, and I knew time was running short.
"Long story short - I would if I could but I can't right now," I replied in a hurry, "You just gotta believe me on that."
I tried to funnel as much honesty as I could into those words, hoping that it'll reach him, that he'll understand them. Suspicion came rousing inthe look he gave, but the sense of urgency had them lingering for only a second and he merely nodded his head.
'Right, fine, you can't fight," He said, delving deep into his menu and summoning a blade in his grasp, "Take my job, then. Set the trap."
I watched him continue to scroll through his menu, my gaze rapidly shifting from him to the darkness beyond, "Set the trap, you got a plan, awesome… hurry up and tell me what to do, and you better pray I learn fast."
"You might have realized that NPCs can't be killed through normal means… so we gotta be roundabout on how we go about it, so -"
"Environmental hazards, I know," I interjected, urging him to the point, "Get on with it now or you'll be explaining your plan in the afterlife instead."
His menu evaporated close, in his other hand, glimmered the soft blue hue of materialization. He extended his arm towards me, revealing three corked bottles of glass, filled nearly to the brim with some sort of crystal-clear fluid.
"It's all I have left. Take it, it's oil. Flammable. Very flammable," He warned, placing them in my outstretched hand, "You go on ahead to the right and as you do, just unload everything to the ground until there isn't any more of the stuff. Me and uh…" He turned to Jin, "What's your name?"
"It's Jin," said the man, stare fixated to the foreboding distance, tightly squeezing the handle of his ax, which trembled slightly in his grip.
"Jin and I will act as bait," Tayuma stated, turning back to me, "We'll stand our ground here, holding them off till you're done with the job at which point you yell for us and we'll come running. There are probably about twenty or so NPCs altogether so you better cake that hallway with as much of it as you can."
The glass bottles clattered and clinked as they settled in my palm. I secured them with a closed fist, feeling the jitter of pure adrenaline surge through me as it clicked.
"We set them on fire."
"Precisely," Tayuma nodded.
"Alright, nice plan," I turned to Jin, "Lend me your torch. Gonna need something to ignite it with afterward."
Jin was silent. Reluctance in the thinning of his lips, displaying the most doubtful of stares but complied with my request and handed it to me without question.
"We do it right now, right here, and we wouldn't have to risk ourselves so much," he said.
Tayuma shook his head, and fronted the corridor with a readied stance, "Hear those screams? Too near, too late. Besides, they're too spread out. Wanna engulf as many as we can. We do it now, we might still have some stragglers left unaffected. We hold them here and we'll have them huddled together close enough to ensure we get them all once we start running."
The first of many finally emerged from the abyss, a man contorted into a frenzied beast. Vapid screaming, vacant rage, hurtling himself towards us without a hint of relent.
Jin sighed in resignation and immediately began bracing himself just as Tayuma did, "This, I'm not looking forward too," he muttered.
"Sora, go. Now," signaled Tayuma, his voice a pitch higher than normal.
Heavy and numb though my legs were, despite it, their resolve had me committed. A burst of determination pried me loose from all uncertainty and into swift, unhesitating movement. Rounding the corner, in time to hear the fierce clangor that signaled my window of opportunity.
The strike of grinding metal rang out, increasing both in volume and intervals. Interlacing the sounds of battle, strain grunts and shouts indiscernible from friend or foe resounded across the dungeon walls.
I didn't have the privilege to worry about them, the spastic quivering of my fingers fumbled my attempts at uncorking a bottle open.
A painful cry undeniably Tayuma's instilled me with a swelling lump of urgency and in an act of pure desperation, I lifted the bottle to my bare teeth, sinked my jaw into the cork, twisted, and gnawed it off with a violent jerk of my head.
The cork fell from my lips, splashing in the growing puddle of oil, cascading down the inverted bottle I shook feverishly in my grip, sporadic droplets forming beads, beads forming splotches, dribbling rapidly to form bigger puddles.
Second bottle, uncapped just as crudely, made to glaze every inch of dry stone with its essence. A pour and a run, a pour and a run.
Halfway depleted, when a voice tore through my concentration, choked with raw unbridled panic, "TOO MUCH, TOO MUCH, WHY ARE THERE THIS MANY ALL THE SUDDEN?!"
I cocked my head back, my ears pelted with a sudden cry of terror, "SORA!"
Heart beating with the force of a sledgehammer, I diverted focus back to the task at hand, shouting as I did, "Almost! Just - just hang on a bit longer!"
The growling and shrieks just kept increasing and so did my recklessness, the third bottle slipped and fell from my hands, shattering into shards with a noise that pierced through everything else that was audible.
I saw it collapse into shards, fragmented pieces of a fatal mistake, floating atop our salvation of a puddle that still wasn't large enough.
"Sora, any day now!" Jin yelled, "Can't hold them any longer, are you done?!"
Breathing was all but forgotten as devastation and realization flooded my senses.
I gritted my teeth, "It's done!"
The torch raised, I spun around to face the music, feet barely inches away from the darkened stone.
Footsteps of two, then the footsteps of many, magnified the tension to an unbearable degree.
The two came into view, looking worse for wear, revealing health bars flickering the danger of red, limping, and rippling through the shallow waters towards me.
Jin reached me first. With my hand extended, Tayuma came second. The two shared a gaunt expression that seemed to convey utter despair and fear.
"They came out of nowhere," spoke Jin, subdued to a meager whisper, "We don't stop them now… we don't stop them at all."
Tayuma tightly squeezed my hand, his hazel eyes brimming with absolute solemnity, "Make this count, Sora. We can't outrun this one."
Apprehension, fear, dread… restrained barely in a blank expression and a silent nod of understanding.
"Okay," I simply said.
Then I felt it. A familiar sensation.
A tremor. The faint rumble of stone.
I half expected the ground to swallow me up. It would have been preferably as opposed to what had transpired instead.
What came first was a screeching like no other. Secondly, came the thundering stomps that shook everything. Finally… in a view so mystifying, they came.
A massive swarm. An alamagation. Uncountable. Immeasurable. Clustered densely into every inch of space possible. The stark edges of innumerable weapons held in innumerable hands firmly pointed towards its target.
The howling of seemingly millions deafened the sounds of their charge.
Frightening numbers that proved insurmountable, that screamed at every fiber in my being to retreat as far as we could.
Yet still we firmly stood there. Waiting for all of them to cross the threshold of dampened stone.
Halfway across, and the insanity glinting in their eyes were made distinguishable from one another. But not yet… some still remained out of range.
"Sora, just do it now," hissed Tayuma, treading back slightly, "Don't risk it too much."
Their gums discernible from their bared teeth as they delved ever closer.
The torch wavered in my grasp, "Haven't risked enough yet."
"Sora…!" Jin warned but didn't say anymore.
Some were still beyond reach of the flames. The third bottle would have solved that.
In its stead, patience and courage continued to be pushed to its limits.
Three-quarters of the way and a flung dagger grazed my cheek.
"NOW SORA!" Tayuma yelled.
"DO IT!" Jin hurriedly backed away.
Face to face.
"NOT YET!" I shouted.
Madness meeting madness.
The last thing in sight before the wispy cinders of a plummeting torch set ablaze the darkness in a raging inferno was the tip of a blade glistening inches from my face.
An explosion of blinding light.
The sweltering heat of surging flames knocked me to the ground. From the ear-splitting cries and the crimson silhouettes of burning agony within the fire came a sense of awe.
What I was witnessing didn't feel real, yet it was.
Slowly, I dragged myself away from it, releasing a breath I had been holding for so long.
"Oh, you did it. You did it." said Tayuma, scrambling to help me to my feet, "Shit! Took you long enough."
Jin planted an arm on the dungeon wall, leaning heavily against it, fearing his legs would fail him, with another hand clutching tightly at his chest, "Too close, too close," He said in a wavering breath.
Meanwhile I could only ooze away the tension in a deranged sort of chuckle, "Didn't fuck it up this time," I muttered silently to myself, still in disbelief.
Together we watch as the flames gradually subsided, one by one, observing as the countless became countable. To the thirties...the twenties… meager tens, to a solitary one.
As the flames waned, as the ashes crumble, engraved within the blackened scorched earth was a sense of victory I had never felt before.
For once, I started feeling hopeful.
For once, I believed we might actually stand a chance.
We might just actually pull this off.
"Jin, yeah? Don't think we've been properly introduced," spoke Tayuma, stumbling his way towards a feeble-looking Jin, "My name's Tayuma," He offered his hand.
For a moment, a frozen gaze remained etched as his only form of acknowledgment. A heavy breath escaped him before he accepted the handshake.
"For the record," Jin said, releasing his grip, a hint of a genuine smile forming slightly. "Not the worst of first impressions."