World Tree MUSH

    Terrified villagers toting torches and farming implements storm forth away from the crypt. They said it was haunted alright, but Dante wasn't exactly expecting some of the locals to sack up and actually follow him in. "So much for the scrub tax." He quips to himself. It's probably best they get outta dodge, less likely chance of collateral damage for the action he's being paid for.

    Hefting Rebellion over his shoulder, the Son of Sparda whistles a little tune as he ambles toward the mausoleum, noticing the earth shift and sink as sudden corpses emerge from graves.

    "Hope they don't mind me axing grandma." He mutters, before he goes to work, separating a ghoul's head from its shoulders before kicking the head toward some of its brethren.

>> SUMMARY[Dante] >> Zambies, boi.

    It also appears that Dante isn't alone. Either that or this is some really odd weather we're having -- a handful of small fireballs rains down, peppering a nearby walking corpse. Dry corpses just happen to be really good kindling too. So there's a flame-y, screeching, walking corpse now! But before it can do any more damage, there are two red flashes, one down from the sky from right to left, and one more horizontally from left to right. The corpse freezes... and then falls in two pieces, separated at the head and waist.

    After that second red flash, there is suddenly a human shape, dressed in dark clothing, with a cape that billows in a breeze for a moment, before settling down. The slim figure has its back to Dante, but the right arm is outstretched, the hand holding a blade that's almost as long as the figure is tall.

    The figure's cloaked, but as it turns, putting the arm down to its side, there's a little bit that can be seen of the face -- a pale chin, an almost feminine-looking mouth, and near-white blonde hair with a light curl to it. That mouth is set in a hard line, though. This person is not here to play.

    And whoever this is, it's unquestionably not human. It feels like a predator of some kind, radiating a kind of darkness that is almost palpable.

    Dante is fairly surprised for once, as he skewers a particularly bloated and corpulent zombie. A lot of fire suddenly, and it doesn't seem like a torch did all that. And then another player joins the game! Dante pries his sword loose, flinging the fat zombie into the air before he joins it, following that up with a flurry of strikes that tear the corpse apart.

    He swaps out Rebellion for his pistols, and Ebony & Ivory let out a barrage of fire at the growing crowd of zombies. He hits the ground running, knocking over a zombie and using it like a surfboard as he skids across the ground. "Woo hoo hoo! Hell yeah!" His guns are inhumanly accurate in Dante's hands, unclear if that's the weapons themself or his demonic abilities at work.

    "Hey pretty boy, you here for the money or is this just you venting?" He calls out to the new fighter, leaping off the remains of his 'board' and pistol-whipping a zombie hard enough to cave in its skull.

    "If you're gonna be here, we might as well head for the crypt. What's causing this has to be down there!" He says, grappling another zombie, this one particularly fresh, and dashing its skull against its own tombstone. Ow.

    The figure doesn't stand still too long. Which is a good idea, considering standing still on a zombie fight tends to end with chunks bitten out of you. Given the strength of the strikes of that sword, too, this fella's strength is about where Dante's is. A couple of zombies are dismantled with a combination of said sword strikes and fire flung from the folds of that cape.

    Dante's question doesn't go unanswered, either. "Keep the reward," he replies. "This must be done." He has a deep voice, one that's quiet but still heard over the loud din of battle. As for the crypt? The figure nods. "In all likelihood," he agrees, still clashing with the undead as he speaks. It's to note that he seems to know exactly where to hit these things to quite literally dismantle them, dropping them quickly.

    The good news is the crypt's entrance is right beside the remains of a church. Bad news is that there's a LOT of zombies between them and there. "You got anything for crowd control?" Dante asks, nimbly leaping into the air and using zombies as leap-frog platforms. He bounds and hops, firing away at the odd grabby ghoulie or booting a head along the way. "Dante, by the way. Don't think we met."

    "Not exactly," the cloaked figure notes. "But I can clear a path." So saying, he grips the edge of his cape, and draws it around him... and seems to disappear in a pillar of light. However, he reappears a moment later, on the other side of Dante, pointed in the direction of the church. And as he flings the cape open again, two large, lava-like fireballs appear, trailing black smoke. They move slowly, relatively speaking, not like the quick fireballs from earlier.

    "Keep up," the figure cautions. And then he starts to run after the fireballs, keeping close enough to them that they'll push back any zombies that don't get incinerated. He's sort of in their 'wake', so it should keep the path fairly free of zombies, at least long enough for them to get to the crypt.

    As for his name? If Dante does keep up, he'll hear the figure offer, "Alucard." Which should probably tell him everything he wants to know about his mysterious helper, if he knows anything about fictional media.

    Vampire. Got it. Dante can't judge, he's half-devil. Following Alucard, Dante provides cover fire, sometimes stowing a gun in favor of drawing Rebellion again. As they dash toward the crypt, Dante produces a sawed off shotgun from under his coat, firing away at any strays before they can get inside.

    Deep in the dark, the atmosphere changes entirely. The two can barely see three feet in front of them, and the narrow pathways force them down one route and one route only. Shotgun and sword in hand now, Dante trudges ahead. There may be torches to light, but it's hard to tell if they'll be able to actually catch fire given their decrepit nature. It's unclear if anybody's been down here in years.

    Darkness, narrow corridors, and half-rotted torches. Alucard can't help but smirk a bit. "...Almost makes me homesick," he quips. Hard to tell if he's serious, or just BSing. Either way, they need some light. So he reaches into an inner pocket of his cloak and pulls an ornate card out. He speaks a Word, and the card disappears in a shower of white glitter.

    And suddenly, down from above, a tiny woman with dragonfly wings flies down. The tiny woman wears a blue-green dress and white boots. More than that, she emits light. And she seems to be look around, flitting about as if searching for something.

    "Just wish they'd do something about the lighting." Dante scoffs. He sees the fairy familiar, and ducks his head for her to zip off to light the way. She will find whatever she's looking for further down the hall of dead, as decayed skeletons greet them. They're not moving, thankfully. But down the pathway...

    They find their quarry in a large, open chamber; a massive, throbbing mass of flesh, twenty foot tall. It pulses like a giant heart made of the dead, hundreds of bodies piled on top of one another in a vague sphere. Tendrils sprout from the sides, and bodies peel off wetly before smacking onto the floor like meat.

    Say hello to Legion. https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Legion

    Alucard can be seen to sneer at the sight of the creature. "You again." It's hard to tell if it's a question or not. But he raises a hand, and the Fairy turns again into a card. They can probably see well enough to hit something this big. He puts the Fairy's card away and withdraws another card. This one dissolves into metallic sparkles and then reforms into a floating sword. It's a pretty impressive-looking sword, too, with a ghostly blue blade that glows softly.

    "If this is what it looks like, there is a core inside it, and destroying that will destroy the creature entirely," he notes. "The shell needs to be broken first, to get to that core." And to start breaking it? He raises a hand before him, a ghostly purple glow surrounding the hand. He moves the hand down, and then curves up and left, then to the right again, tracing a sideways half-circle in the air, and then back down.

    "GATHER, BROTHER SOUL BLADES!"

    That wasn't Alucard. That was the floating sword. The sword moves before him and seems to grow in size, then slowly moves in a circle, seeming to leave afterimages of itself. When a full circle has been completed, the ghostly afterimages shoot outwards, moving to slam into the shell of corpses.

    Dante can only mutter, "Ew." as he sees the horrific fleshmound. Alucard clearly knows what he's doing, and he nods. No need to doubt the expert. "Dead guy covered in a bazillion dead guys, gotcha. I played this level." He says cheekily, and he gets to work. As Alucard suddenly summons a floating sword, the Legion creature summons forth zombies from its shell, the dead swarming both of the hybrid warriors.

    Dante splits a number of zombies apart with every swipe of his sword. In small numbers these things are child's play to kill, but with this many things are much more complicated. The massive sword embeds into the shell, causing discolored blood and ichor to spray out as inhuman groans of pain fill the room. "I'll keep the fodder busy, work on killing it!" Dante calls out, as he lays about with swordplay, dashing forth to impale a bunched up grouping of the zombies.

    "Right," Alucard agrees, and turns his attention to aforementioned fleshmound. That's probably the best plan -- from what Alucard's seen, Dante is accustomed to being swarmed by monsters, so he should relatively easily stay on top of the large mobs of corpses this thing is dropping. Whereas, Alucard's skill more lies in smaller groups of enemies or one big enemy; if he were dealing with the corpses that dropped, he might not be able to keep them off of Dante as effectively.

    Alucard prepares for this, though -- corpses tend to have blood in them, and he's going to need all the healing he can get. So he pauses, to use his magic again. With a hand glowing purple, he traces an upwards-pointing half-circle. Then he crosses his arms at the wrist.

    "Dark Metamorphosis!"

    That WAS Alucard, to note. A bright red outline surrounds him. This one, he turns his attention back to the fleshmound and starts carving into it to try and break that shell. The purpose of that? These corpses might bleed, particularly if they're fresh. And the spell he's used will absorb the blood that falls and heal him a little should he need it.

    The Legion's thralls are all over the place by now, all trundling toward Dante only to get split into chunks. He flings his sword like a spinning saw, before switching to his pistols. Point blank gunshots and hand-to-hand combat are doing a lot of good for now, but Alucard needs to hurry. As the mass itself and its hordes die, more and more blood sprays onto Dante and Alucard. The latter will find it heals him just fine, as Legion tries to grab him with its tentacles. Eventually he reaches the core, but there's a new problem.

    Lasers fire out, blasting Alucard full on the chest. A faint glow indicates he's close to the weak spot, there's only one thing left: SHOOT...THE CORE.

    Alucard expected the lasers, but not RIGHT THEN! So yeah, he gets blasted into a wall with a grunt. His hood falls back too, but he's less worried about that. If Dante happens to look over when Alucard hits? Yeah there's fangs. Fangs that, as Alucard collects himself again, are bared. Thankfully his Dark Metamorphosis is still absorbing the blood that sprays on him, so the damage is slowly healing even as he stands up again.

    Another beneficial side effect of his spell, though admittedly a more minor one, is that his clothes aren't getting stained! Which is good, blood is a bitch to get out of white satin, like his shirt and cravat.

    But yes, SHOOT THE CORE must be achieved. And without getting lasered. Alucard dissolves into mist, narrowly avoiding being lasered a second time, and the mist begins to rise up, above the fleshmound's aim. He's not running, no. He reforms in the air, above the giant fleshmound and where the piece of the shell of corpses has been broken. And then falls towards the monstrosity, sword pointed downward. As he falls to the level of the creature's core, he growls and stabs the downward-pointing sword at the core with all the strength he can muster!

    There's a reason why Dante favors red.

    The creature's laser attacks intensify as Alucard pushes deeper and deeper, even as he plunges his sword into it. The human shaped core fights and fights, trying to push the blade away, but it fails in the end. Speared into the 'chest', Nuculais lets out a scream of pain and anger as its last barrage of energy hits Alucard point blank.

    For a being without lips, it sure can roar out a ~NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~ that even Dante's teeth tingle at. And then the corpses begin to melt, so does the Legion itself. It's -nasty-, a stench not unfamiliar to either Dante or Alucard, and they're left with a lot of goop strewn about.

    "_Christ_ that's nasty. Phew! So you've seen this thing before huh?" Dante says, pulling himself from a pile of zombies as he retrieves Rebellion, brushing goop from his shoulders and face.

    Hitting Alucard point blank at that moment is a bad idea. Since the only thing worse than having a giant sword shoved through you, is having a sword shoved through you and then RIPPED OUT. Because Alucard isn't leaving his sword behind. That was his mother's, and anything that thinks it can take something of his mother's away from him has another thing coming. Or at the very least a fight on its hands. Or in this case, tentacles.

    So the laser hits Alucard in the torso again, and throws him, though not quite as far this time, because of the grip of the sword in the thing's nucleus before the blast kicked him free. It does however destroy his cloak. Not his cape, his cloak -- the thing with the hood on it. Alucard wears a lot of layers.

    The dhampir stands up a little more slowly than the first time, with a wince. It'll heal, but it still hurts. He looks around to make certain that this was the only such creature in the area, and when he's satisfied of that, he sheathes his sword. And once more the Fairy is drawn, mainly for the light, though she'll still work at healing him with items that she got from somewhere.

    Dante's question gets a nod. "I have. Not quite in this form, but these monsters can vary in form between summonings," he notes. "Which brings another question... how did it get here? I've not known these sorts of monsters to just randomly appear. It might have been placed here for some purpose."

    Dante's cuts and gashes seem to heal by themselves just fine, "Yeah, doesn't seem like the type to just move in on its own either." He agrees. "When I got hired I heard talk about a warlock summoning demons from the villagers. Told me they'd be here, and so they were."

    Alucard nods. "A warlock. Of course," he sighs. "Have you managed to find this warlock? It's unlikely that would be the figure in the center of Legion. Unless it was a particularly suicidal or foolish warlock. Or one who was following orders from someone more powerful." Which would of course be its own trouble.