12: The haunting begins!

The remnants of ShadowFall City stood only a short trek away from the grimly named Devil's Throat Region.

Under ordinary circumstances, it would require a mere quarter of an hour to traverse the distance on foot.

As Val was sprinting, it took him about five minutes to reach it!

It was an impressive feat that would have left many in awe if they had witnessed it, as not many could do it since they didn't have the ability to see in the dark and weren't fearless like Val.

The ruins of what was once a glorious human settlement stood before him.

Crumbling stone houses, with their moss-covered roofs and shattered wooden shutters, came into view. They lined the deserted, cobblestone streets.

All over the ruins of the city, flickering lanterns hung haphazardly from rusted iron poles, casting an unsettling glow across the streets infested with zombies.

A lone zombie wandered meaninglessly through the same deserted street as the one Val had just entered. Its back was to him, and thus it was wholly oblivious to Val's swift but silent entrance into its territory.

The sight of the hapless creature sent a predatory glint dancing across Val's eyes. As silent as the encroaching darkness, he initiated his approach. He was like an apex predator on the hunt as he closed in on his prey.

Low-level zombies were not known for their intelligence. They were known for relying heavily on their vision and hearing to detect prey.

The zombie, with its gaze elsewhere and Val's footsteps nothing more than whispers against the wind, remained blissfully unaware of its impending doom.

Embodying the essence of the Grim Reaper himself, Val skulked ever closer to the zombie until he loomed ominously behind it. He towered ominously over the zombie, casting a shadow that cloaked the creature in impending doom. Even with his towering figure overshadowing it, the zombie continued its aimless wandering, its decaying mind incapable of perceiving the looming threat despite the obvious signs.

After reaching behind the zombie, Val drew his sword from its sheath, its blade glinting under the flickering lantern light. He raised it high into the air. The blade was poised for the kill.

Whoosh!

After a moment, he brought it down swiftly. The sword plunged down, severing the zombie with a clean, brutal strike. The blade bit into the decayed flesh with an unsettling ease, cleaving the creature from the crown to the pit of its being, rendering it into two grotesque halves.

A splatter of black, putrid blood sprayed into the night, splashing on the pole and the desolate cobblestone street as the two halves of the zombie crumpled to the ground, spilling their grotesque innards into a sickening heap.

[Ding! You've vanquished a level 1 minion of the Corpse Devil. You earn +3 EXP.]

This signified that Val had taken another step towards gaining power. He had 22 EXP in his possession. He only needed 8 more to level up!

Wanting to farm more zombies, Val moved forward, heading deeper into the ruins of the ShadowFall City.

He completely missed the fractures manifesting in the very fabric of existence just behind the rusty pole to which the flickering lamp was attached.

Tearing through the fabric of reality itself, an entity of unearthly origins made its appearance!

This being sported an unnaturally large nose, its face a perfect circle, and its eyes bulged horrifically from their sockets like grotesque orbs. Its skin, rather than the warm hues associated with human flesh, was eerily white, bearing a closer resemblance to a coat of fresh paint. Random, disturbing blotches sporadically peppered its face, causing its horrid face to become so horrifying that it would leave anyone who looked at it unsettled.

It seemed to be dressed in black, cloaked in the void's embrace.

In one of its gnarled appendages, it firmly gripped a broomstick, the symbol of its power.

Its other hand held a wickedly curved shovel.

If Val had seen it, he would recognize it as the manifestation of the hair-raising tale whispered around crackling fires at night to scare the children into sleeping!

As Val proceeded deeper into the ruins, its monstrous eyes followed his withdrawing silhouette, its gaze filled with a bone-chilling malevolence.

"I've finally found a mortal whose fear I can feed off of. It will be so much fun to hunt him down."

Saying so, as abruptly as it had materialized, the Eldritch being dissolved back into the icy grip of the night.

A silence swept over the city once more, erasing all signs of its chilling presence.