Cursed Sorcerer King Of The Arcana

Chapter 28

Rika looked around the corner, seeing three of the walking corpses. Her eyes looked towards the closest one to her. It was at a distance away from the other two. She strapped her hand pistol and slowly pulled out the combat knife. With soft steps and the military boots making sure that the undead couldn't hear her, she moved closer to the corpse. Her arm wrapped around its neck and the blade of the combat knife buried itself into the corpse temple. She kept her eyes on the other two corpses that were unaware of the undead struggling against her hold. Her gloved hand gripped the handle harder and twisted the embed knife turning the cerebellum into a crude paste, the body went limp.

Putting the enervated corpse down on the corner, looking between the two. There was enough space for her to easily move through them, they were blind and facing away from her. She looked towards the door, it was only partially open. She took the chance, her strides were long and slow, making sure that her steps were controlled and soft, the rubber under the military boots reducing the sound of her steps. She made her way through the door, the undead unaware of the passing presence. She easily made her way down the hallway, she turned and entered what was like an office working area. She hadn't been more than two levels further down but she did see the area in the map.

She entered the room, it was a mess. The chairs and tables were flipped over, papers were thrown everywhere on the floor. Multiple light bulbs were shattered with a few pieces of glass on the floor. She made sure not to step on them, she was certain that the undead would be able to hear the sound of the glass bits crushing under her boots. She checked around the room, finding nothing much of value, that she had expected to find any. She saw a small refrigerator in the break room, searching around she found a small cold beer bottle, she was tempted to drink it, her habit of drinking alluring her to take a small sip, but she stopped herself. She needed to keep her mind straight and get the generator back on. She stashed the bottle in one of the pockets of her cargo pants. Exiting the break room, she looked around, her eyes sweeping around the room one last time.

She stopped when she saw what looked like a janitor's closet. The door was thin barely big enough for someone to enter it. Strangely enough, the door was covered in what looked like decades of thick dust, which didn't match the room that looked still pristine. She moved towards it, her gloved fingers wrapped around the dusty handle. With a grunt, she pulled the door, it creaked and groaned, its rusted gears from decades of unused straining against the pull.

She jumped and almost yelped when something fell on the floor with a thud. Her pinkish-red eyes widened at the sight. It was a body that had been wrapped in black canvas sheeting bound with a sturdy ship rope, with rivets placed over the rope burying in deep. As she looked at it, it filled her up with a deep feeling of wrongness just as it did whenever she saw people get bit and come back as undead corpses. She reached down and pulled the body out in the open, noticing how strangely light it felt. She also noticed dust on the body, giving her suspicion that the body had been in the closet for a long time. Once at a proper distance, she let go and moved to inspect the insides of the closet, seeing nothing of significance only a small area gathering dust. She didn't move the door to close it, since she did not want to make any noise other than when she couldn't do anything about it. She turned to the wrapped body and crouched down next to it. Her gloved hand peeled away the top to reveal the body's face.

Whoever this person was looked like they had died centuries ago, the skin was mummified and was stretched across its skull like brittle paper. Although she wasn't a doctor or a nurse like her best friend Shizuka, it was plain to Rika that the manner of execution had been particularly brutal, half of its cranium had caved in and there was a tight lacerating grot wrapped so tightly around its neck that it had bit deep into the ghoul's flesh. Whoever the killer was must have decided that the other injuries had not been sufficient as the throat had also been violently slashed open. The person's final moments had been captured forever in a permanent snarl of pain and hatred, stretched wide across the face, exposing a row of broken rotten teeth. As if to add even further insult the cadaver's eyes were missing. They looked like they had been gouged out wide a crude instrument. The hollow sockets stared back at her like a pair of black holes, a mirror into an infinite well of madness piercing her very soul.