Outworld Liberators-Chapter 201: Pushing Through Corpse Mountain

In the opening stretch, over three hundred mortal participants were already out.

Too much planning on the mountain and too much thinking about gaining the greatest advantage did the job.

The tower’s rock face offered what looked like footholds, chips and ledges scattered like a mercy.

Raj took the lead. He moved with a dancer’s confidence even without cultivation, springing up in quick bursts, palms slapping stone, boots finding edges that should not have held.

Ropefist followed second, built for climbing, fingers like hooks and forearms like rope itself.

Ropefist reached for the next hold and the stone shifted under his hand.

The foothold cracked. The round edge around it flexed, then bit down.

"Fuck," Ropefist yelled.

He did not cling to pride. He let himself drop and caught a lower hold by instinct, arms screaming, body swinging.

Above him, the false foothold chewed shut like a mouth that had tasted him and wanted more.

Below, the flesh golems started climbing too.

They moved slow, heavy, and certain. Five meter bodies hauled themselves up in ugly patience, never rushing, never tiring, like a bad fate that did not need speed to win.

Almsgiver climbed as well. He tried to speak to one of the flesh golems, tried to calm it the way he had calmed other conjured horrors.

These were not mindless skeletons. They were tiyanak bound into shape, each carrying its own stubborn hunger and its own crude will.

His words found nothing to grip. So he did what he knew. He worked like everybody else.

Tabulae climbed on the other side, slower than the flashier fighters, steady as a stitch.

She bolstered herself with Stamina Tonic and kept her breathing controlled, hands moving in the rhythm she had learned from the words of Sackmace, Lonequiver, and Reelfisher.

Above her, a skeleton’s skull pushed out from a crack in the rock, eager, jaw clacking like it could taste her fear. It snapped toward her face.

Tabulae drew her crossbow from her waist without looking away from the next hold.

At this distance it was hard to miss. She fed qi into the bolt and fired.

The skeleton’s jaw popped off and spun away into the air. The skull still bobbed and snapped, headbutting at the air.

Tabulae grabbed the skeleton by an eye socket and used it like a rung, hauling herself up while it thrashed.

She did not waste a thought on the other participants. Her mind held only one thought. To climb.

Lonequiver was near the lead as well, but he climbed like a man who expected the wall to betray him.

The reason was simple. He had only one arm, born without the left, and he knew one mistake would cost him the opportunity of a lifetime.

Still, he used what he had. Reaction speed. Creativity. Now that he carried qi, he made it work.

He tied a bolt to a string and looped the other end around his wrist. With the short stump Heaven had left him, he whipped the bolt in a tight arc, fed qi into it, and let it swing like a flail.

Each strike cracked skulls and sent bone chips spinning off into the rock face.

Irongrit climbed stably nearby, steady and unshowy. In his hand was an estoc he had bought through exchange, thin and long.

He used its reach to poke at skeletons from safer angles, qi sliding down the blade in a clean line before the tip punched into bone.

At the five hour mark, a hundred more people resigned. The number of skeletons popping out increased, and the false holds kept appearing, biting at hands and boots like hungry mouths.

The remaining participants clung where they could and panted hard. They found respite with wits, not comfort.

Tabulae, light as she was, decapitated a skeleton, dragged its body out of a crack, and tucked herself into the crevice it had occupied.

Others found a foothold just wide enough to take half a butt and dared to rest on it for a few minutes, legs shaking, fingers numb.

It was not real rest.

Below them, the flesh golems still climbed, slow and relentless.

Everyone knew those creatures did not get tired. Everyone knew they did not forgive pauses. So the climbing had to continue.

Raj, still near the lead, felt the air stir above. Not intuition. Not fear. Real movement. Something shifting where it should not.

He could have pushed on. Pride would have demanded it. But he had learned that hubris did not take a man home.

Radeon had made him a deal. Accompany him home. Home was on a farther continent, and Raj did not even know the route.

If he went alone, he was certain he would die somewhere stupid.

Another five hours passed, and the participants finally reached the second layer that Raj had sensed earlier.

The sight confused faces all along the climb. Chickens.

Headless and featherless, their bodies rotten and slick, hopping and flopping over the jagged holds.

When they landed, they smeared a slimy film that made the stone unusable.

It looked almost childish at first glance, a stupid joke. It was not.

There were thousands of them across that stretch, a living carpet of rot and slipping death.

Joyhide saw it first. She was a well known female mortal fighter, eighteen years old, judged useless for energy cultivation.

Her family had not despaired. They supported what she loved, and she loved to hide and strike, to move unseen.

At first she almost laughed, even licking her lips.

"Hey, can we take this chicken home?" she joked.

Then one hopped close and the stench hit her like a fist. Beyond rot. Beyond disgust.

Her stomach turned and she gagged until bile came up.

She tried to wipe her mouth. The chicken bounced again.

It landed on her head. Warm slime soaked into her hair and crawled across her scalp.

Joyhide shivered so hard her teeth clicked. Her fingers loosened.

Her grip failed. A barrier snapped around her and caught her before the fall could finish her, dropping her onto the special seating for eliminated participants.

It also cleansed her of injuries and the chicken slime she had picked up.

Joyhide sat there shaking, face pale, still feeling phantom slickness in her hair.

She had seen rotten flesh. She had seen dismembered men.

But not this. Not something that turned the stomach and the mind at the same time.

Manpowder moved through it like a fish in water.

He had requested custom pellets from the ghost attendants, powder that would burst on impact, after exchanging a thousand Two Arm Radeon Flags and a thousand No Arm Radeon Flags for one True Flag.

Not lethal. Just a cloud of ordinary talc.

The headless chickens were already chaotic, blind and deaf, hopping on instinct.

When Manpowder tossed a pellet, it popped and dusted the holds white.

Talc mixed with the chicken slick and turned into a greasy paste, slicker than anything already there.

The chickens slipped on their own mess, bodies skidding and flopping off holds they had ruined.

The crowd watching roared, raucous and delighted. People cheered like their bets had teeth, certain they had not thrown coin into a grave.

Skeletons still popped out of the holds, and now the headless chickens turned every grip into a gamble.

The mountain face became an arduous climb.

In this segment alone, at least three hundred more withdrew. The count fell from two thousand forty eight to one thousand three hundred eleven.

Still, the survivors began to notice something new.

Some of them were finally close enough to meet.

On one side, Reelfisher found himself in a desperate situation.

Four mortal assassins had boxed him in.

Blowgun darts peppered his position from below, tapping stone near his fingers, forcing him to cling tighter and breathe shallower.

Reelfisher thought fast.

He hooked his rod, snagged one of the rotting chickens, and dragged it close.

He had already smelled the slick they left behind. Even his stomach had turned at it.

He gritted his teeth, swallowed the disgust, and swung the chicken below him like a long mace.

It slapped one assassin full in the face. Juices sponged out of the fat rotten body and smeared across the man’s mouth and nose.

The assassin shivered so hard his grip failed, and he dropped.

The other three were not fools. One of them raised a hand.

"Reelfisher. Let us go. We’ll be on our way."

"Do you take me for a three year old child?" Reelfisher sneered. "Take this."

He swung again.

The assassin was quick enough to parry with his sword.

Big mistake.

The chicken split on the blade. Its innards spilled out and splattered across the man’s chest and hands.

He tried to grit through it, but the smell crawled up his throat and into his skull. He gagged.

His arms weakened on the stone, and for a heartbeat his fingers slipped.

What were these chickens exactly? Tiyanak work.

They had made them by hand from scraps that should have been thrown away, packed together with the stink of eleven different excrements and foul extracts.

Then they controlled the things remotely, not with strategy or mercy, but with mischief, competition, and endless laughter.