THE ZOMBIE SYSTEM-Chapter 71 - 70: United Front

"You’re not facing this alone."

Damian’s voice cut through the chaos as he staggered into the chamber. His enhanced sword crackled with residual magic despite his mangled arm hanging useless at his side. Blood soaked through his Iron-fang armor where crystalline golem claws had found their mark.

Behind him came survivors from multiple guilds united by desperate circumstances. ARES remnants marched beside Iron-fang veterans. Sanctuary healers supported wounded Association hunters. Guild politics meant nothing when dimensional entities threatened everything they’d sworn to protect.

"Defensive perimeter around the healers," Damian commanded while raising his sword one-handed. "Nothing gets through."

Sergeant Morrison limped forward with his cracked shield. "Sir, we’ve got maybe thirty seconds before that thing breaks through the ceiling."

The commander’s rage had grown beyond containment. Its dimensional presence pressed against the chamber walls like water against a dam. Stone cracked under pressure that belonged to other realities.

Leon felt Elise’s healing magic burning through the last layers of vessel corruption. Her power blazed like molten gold as it restored his human consciousness piece by piece. But the process was killing her.

"Elise, you have to stop," Leon whispered. "You’re burning out."

"Almost there," she gasped. Blood streamed from her nose while her skin grew pale as parchment. "Just hold on."

Damian formed the survivors into a defensive circle around Leon and Elise during the purification process. Veterans who’d fought each other over territory disputes now stood shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy.

Above them, the commander summoned reinforcements from dimensional portals that tore through reality like wounds. Lesser demons poured through the openings, their forms barely contained by physical laws that struggled to define entities from other realms.

Battle erupted in the ancient chamber as hunters faced an overwhelming demonic horde. Sword met claw while magic clashed against alien energies that defied classification. The air filled with the sounds of combat with steel ringing against chitinous armor, spell energy crackling through superheated air.

Leon and Elise continued their ritual while others bought them precious time. Her healing magic had evolved beyond normal classification, bridging life and death in ways that rewrote fundamental magical theory.

A lesser demon broke through the defensive line, its claws dripping acid that ate through stone. Damian intercepted with his one functional arm, sword blazing with enhancement magic that made the air shimmer.

The creature was faster than human reflexes should handle. Its strike would have decapitated a normal hunter. But Damian’s desperation fueled power beyond his usual limits.

His blade caught the demon’s claws in a shower of sparks. The impact drove him to one knee, but his sword held firm. Enhancement magic flowed through the steel, channeling every point of mana he possessed into a single devastating counterattack.

The demon’s head separated from its shoulders in a spray of black ichor. Its body collapsed, dissolving into shadow that dispersed like smoke.

Damian’s one-armed fighting style inspired other wounded hunters to continue. They watched their impromptu commander refuse surrender despite injuries that should have forced retreat. If he could fight with a mangled arm, they could push beyond their own limits.

An ARES veteran missing his left eye coordinated with an Iron-fang mage whose staff hand was shattered. Sanctuary healers shared their remaining mana with Association hunters whose interfaces had failed completely.

The chamber behind them explodes and they find themselves in the dungeon, established beneath the houses.

Coincidentally the dungeon leads to the altar that the Skin walker used.

The ancient chamber’s altar began responding to the combined struggle. Stone carved with symbols that predated the Hunter Association glowed with inner light. The power grew stronger as Leon and Elise’s bond deepened through shared sacrifice.

Elise’s healing magic touched something fundamental in the chamber’s construction. The altar had been built as a dimensional anchor, but its original purpose was protection, not invasion. Their combined power was awakening defenses that had slept for centuries.

The commander realized it was losing control of the carefully orchestrated situation. Centuries of planning had accounted for every variable except the possibility that mortals might achieve genuine cooperation across factional boundaries.

Dimensional portals began closing as the altar’s defensive systems recognized threats to local reality. The chamber was designed to maintain dimensional barriers, not facilitate invasion. Leon and Elise’s purification ritual was reactivating protective protocols built by forgotten civilizations.

"Impossible," the commander hissed as its reinforcements were cut off from their dimensional anchor. "The binding circles were consecrated for invasion."

"Maybe they were," Leon said as his consciousness cleared completely. "But you built them on something older."

The altar’s true purpose revealed itself through carved symbols that blazed with increasing brightness. This had been a sanctuary long before becoming an invasion point. A place where dimensional barriers were strengthened rather than weakened.

Leon’s remaining undead evolved into something beyond normal necromancy. Instead of being animated by death energy alone, they drew power from the balance between life and death that Leon and Elise had achieved together.

The demons found themselves facing undead that operated by different rules. Traditional weaknesses no longer applied when death energy was balanced by life force. Holy weapons that should have banished spectral forms instead resonated with their hybrid nature.

Elise’s healing magic began affecting demons directly. Her evolved power recognized dimensional corruption as a form of spiritual disease that could be purged through sufficient force. Green light blazed from her hands as she projected healing energy that burned through alien flesh like acid.

Lesser demons retreated from her presence as their forms destabilized under exposure to purification magic. Their physical manifestation couldn’t maintain cohesion when life force actively opposed their corrupted nature.

"The healer has achieved synthesis," one demon reported to its commander in harmonics that bypassed human hearing. "Dimensional corruption cannot coexist with balanced life-death energy."

The commander made a desperate attempt to possess Leon directly. If it couldn’t complete vessel transformation through gradual corruption, it would force immediate takeover regardless of consequences.

Dimensional energy lanced toward Leon like living lightning. The attack bypassed physical defenses and struck directly at his consciousness. Cold alien intelligence pressed against his mind with overwhelming force.

Leon felt the commander’s possession beginning as his awareness fragmented under psychic assault. The entity’s consciousness was vast beyond mortal comprehension, carrying knowledge and purpose that spanned multiple realities.

"Your dimension will serve as our gateway," the commander’s voice echoed inside Leon’s skull. "Your reality will anchor our expansion across the multiverse."

Leon’s consciousness slipped away piece by piece as something older and more powerful took control of his body. His enhanced abilities became weapons directed against everything he’d tried to protect.

As the commander’s possession deepened, Leon felt his humanity dissolving like salt in water. Soon nothing would remain except a shell wearing his face while serving dimensional invasion.

Elise screamed his name as she watched alien intelligence replace human warmth in his eyes. Her healing magic reached toward him desperately, but the possession was happening too fast for purification to counter.

Leon looked at her with eyes that held starlight and shadow instead of human warmth. When he spoke, voices that didn’t belong in mortal throats carried the commander’s authority. ƒreewebɳovel.com

"The vessel is secured."

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