Chapter 7

7 Neo glanced around, waiting for the next command. But he was met with other tired and weary gazes. They were all too spent to even come up with a sound idea. Scholar finally broke the silence, his voice accompanied by the whistling sound of the wind.

"If we can make it across this beam, alight the ladder, we would hustle our way through the horde, I would override the defense HQ and activate the gate. Our salvation lies beyond the gate," Scholar said, pointing to the almost imperceptible gate in the distance. His hand trembled, either due to the cold or his fatigue. Neo couldn't really tell which.

Neo's hope was suddenly ignited. The salvation Scholar spoke about was very alluring. Very pleasant to his ears. Although it was easier said than done, Neo didn't really care. He just wanted to get out of that hellish landscape. No matter how bleak their chances of escape were, it was like a beacon of light at the end of a harrowing, torturous journey through the night. He almost felt like he deserved it...almost.

Suddenly, Neo's morale plummeted as the harrowing reality dawned on him. He wasn't part of these people. He wasn't even part of that reality at all. Considering Reaper's eccentricity, what might be their salvation might actually be his doom. He had only one assignment: "eliminate the threat" of which he was already on the path of failure, no matter how much his imagination ran wild, he just couldn't pinpoint who the real threat was. His insecurities were messing with his mind. He was on the verge of going crazy!!

Suddenly, a self depreciating smile escaped from his lips. Looking back at the glee he felt when he heard Reaper's call, although it was a few days prior, he couldn't help but feel so naive. He already had his plans set in stone. Enter the afterlife, get strong, form a powerful search party, and find his family. It all sounded like a great logic. It all sounded sweet. Only for him to be plunged into a suicide pact with strangers he wasn't even sure existed, with an insurmountable challenge at hand even before entering the afterlife. If he could travel through time back to when he was concocting his ridiculous plans, he would definitely mock himself to death. Maybe it was just fate messing with him, or showing him how truly weak he was on the grand scale of things. All in all, he had it coming anyway.

"Ascender Dale, you had better start those burial arrangements," Neo winced,

the crew started to move, dragging their tired self along with them. When they finally got to the edge of the roof, the whole length of the DCC finally came into sight. The whole length of it stood like a beacon of elegance. There were several lofty and relatively minute buildings arranged in a maze that screamed of elite architectural design. The only taint to this beauty was the presence of mindless wraiths and corpses of their kind sprawled all over, with a hazy figure dashing between them with relentless and frenzied speed, tearing everything in its way apart. The mindless wraiths didn't know the concept of fear, or perhaps they had lost it. So they just waltzed around aimlessly, waiting for their turn to enter the meat grinder. The monster was having a rather nice and easy dinner.

"I just hope I won't end up as dessert," Neo thought inwardly.

Suddenly, the disturbing wail of a masculine voice echoed through the night. Shitface had been mesmerized by the scene of carnage below, and he failed to notice a half-dead wraith that had been disconnected from its lower limb make its way to his leg. The sturdy iron rod was already impaled through its rotten head, but Shitface was a little too slow. Bits of his flesh could be seen hanging loosely on the dead wraith's teeth or fang - whichever it had.

A clear undeniable mask of panic appeared on Shitface's face. Even though he tried to hide it under his misplaced sense of masculinity, it was quite obvious.

Beauty was attending to the injury, to the best of her abilities. Considering their lack of energy, she was doing a really good job.

The fact that she still had enough energy to rip clothes apart to nurse the injury was a surprise for Neo. Despite all those efforts, the vivacious muscle glory wasn't in great shape still. But that wasn't the only problem on their plate, actually. The loud wail Shitface made seemed to have attracted the mutated monster enjoying its buffet in the distance. The monster stared at the crew for a while, it's resentful and fear striking eyes narrowed, sending a menacing signal to Neo, shivers ran down his spine. The monster turned it's head and then went back to its meal, much to Neo's relief.

The crew went peacefully across the beam and descended the ladder, only to be met by a hungry party of wraiths closing in on them fast, the moved very much like broken puppets, many of them were missing several body parts but they didn't seem to mind, the sight or probably scent of smooth, glossy skin made them rejoice with dark glee, Neo almost lost his mind staring at them.

"I'm sorry reaper, you know, I really do not hate you that much actually, those were the ignorant days, please have mercy."

Neo pleaded, hoping he would get some reaction. Of course he did. The wraiths speed suddenly increased, as they climbed over each other in order to get a chance to sink their teeth into sumptuous human skin.

The invisibility they had been enjoying seemed to have diminished too, for some reason. A vivid evidence was the calamity that saw Shitface lose his flesh to one of the rabid wraiths.

The mutant monster had killed his fair share of the wraiths, but what was left was still enough to give them a headache. They only had two choices: climb back up to await their death or fight through the horde and still die. There was no demon or god that would help four weak humans fight through three hundred rabid wraiths. It was simply impossible.

Suddenly, Beauty's eyes narrowed. She moved with grim resolve, stabbing a bone through Shitface's chest from behind. Hot, boiling blood covered in black stains streamed out of his chest, with several expressions flashing across his face in an instant. From fury to disbelief to regret to grief and finally, betrayal.

Shitface's body convulsed wildly in an attempt to free himself as blood cascaded out of all his orifices, but it was all for naught. He was just too weak. More so, he had lost a lot of blood earlier incident. The metal rod finally fell from his hand, announcing his death like a funeral bell.

Beauty picked up the corpse and tossed it towards the approaching horde. They covered the corpse like hungry wolves, biting and chewing in a crunching mess of flesh and bones.

This bought them a few seconds of reprieve.