The tannoy system was still garbled, but with prior knowledge of precisely where they'd be arriving to, he felt he could just about pick out 'Blackhall' from the noisy distortion. The name was still lame. It was also probably apt.

Darkness beyond the windows fell away as the train started to slow down, the eerie red glow of the next platform bleeding into view. It was another open one, with another track running parallel on the opposite side. As they were about halfway down the train now, they got a look before the train fully came to a stop.

Before the doors even opened, John knew this one was going to be an absolute clusterfuck. Mana Sense pinged him the locations of dozens more monsters, all approaching at a remarkably consistent pace, equally spaced out. It took him a second to understand what he was feeling, and then his frown deepened to the point it felt like the corners of his lips were going to touch his jawline.

Their train came to a stop. The haunted jingle sounded out, aiming for cheerful but finding only horror movie refrain. John could only assume the timing had been pre-determined as the doors hissed open.

Because the other train pulling in at the opposite side seemed to arrive at the perfect moment to fuck them over. There weren't that many monsters on the train John and his companions had been riding, but the one across from them looked like it had just come from rush hour in hell. There were countless rat monsters packed into every carriage, some of them having clambered atop each other. It reminded him of those videos he saw from Japan, where station staff had to physically cram people into the carriage.

A quick flash of Soul Vision confirmed they were all blues. Small solace, when there were that many. The previous station's fiasco had showed that quantity of monsters was a quality of its own.

"Run," John said, and hastened to follow his own advice.

The others were a step behind him as he broke into a sprint, charging down the platform. They had maybe a few seconds before the other train came to a stop, and there was still a decent number of monsters that had managed to get into adjacent carriages on their own train. Not anything like the previous horde, by any means, but enough to slow them down

They screamed as they came bundling out of the carriages parallel to the one John's group had escaped onto. There were monstrous facsimiles of mundane animals: mammals, insects, reptiles, birds. So too were there the mixture of eldritch and downright bizarre abominations that had frankly seemed more common throughout this nightmare so far. Despite the vast variety of monster on display, they were all unified in one purpose: kill the humans.

The noise of their advance was deafening, even with the other train still pulling in. They wasted no time attacking, and John responded in kind. He threw out generous helpings of Fireball, Wind Shear, and Burning Gale enhanced by Accelerate, aiming for anything that got too close.

It felt like his arms were constantly on the move, blurring even when he wasn't using Accelerate. Fireball and Wind Shear were limited only by how fast he could perform the physical motions necessary for the magical attacks, and so he sought to sought speed.

Upgraded Accelerate Level 1 -> Level 2

-1000 Aura

The upgrade took Accelerate from five heartbeats to ten, while keeping the cooldown at five seconds. In a stressful situation like this, blood and adrenaline pumping, ten heartbeats didn't count for much. He was tempted to hit it with another upgrade before the first Level 2 Accelerate even came to an end, but held off. There was no telling when he might need something else.

They ended up tearing a path through the monsters that had barred their way to the exit, but it had cost them precious seconds. Worse, they'd been forced to spare a decent amount in their haste. John tried his best to launch attacks behind them as they ran, more monsters from carriages on the opposite side giving pursuit.

Barely four carriages down from where they started, another jingle echoed through the station, somehow overpowering the cacophony of the horde pursuing them. The rats on the train had seen what was going on, and their train was rocking from side to side from the mob's enthusiasm to get out and tear them apart.

John briefly hoped that might activate some kind of emergency mechanism that prevented the doors from opening, but dismissed the naive thought. This wasn't a real train line. No one gave a shit about health and safety here.

Indeed, there was a hiss of static on the tannoy system, then the doors of the opposite side started to groan open. The rat monsters came pouring out.

Only a few seconds of reprieve was granted to them. The rats were so frenzied in their desperation to exit the train that they caused a crush, smashing their kin to the platform and trampling over them, quickly created a pile-up almost as tall as the doors.

But soon they were climbing over the pile of deceased rat-things, and they rushed out onto the platform.

John and friends had managed to make it a few more carriages along in that time. They were probably less than a hundred metres between their position and the exit tunnel at the far end. It felt like miles.

Fireballs and Wind Shears lashed out, punctuated by Burning Gales and Force Pushes as appropriate. The others joined in with their attacks, intermittent pink flashes lighting up the platform, but John didn't see the golden machete projection or any triplet crossbow bolts. Glancing back, he saw they were dealing with the other monsters in pursuit behind them.

John focused on his job. With so many rat monsters packed in together, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. He aimed to set fire to the piles of bodies partially blocking the doorways, and it worked pretty well. The rat monsters were rather flammable.

But rat monster corpses were just like any other: they dissolved rapidly, and the fire only accelerated the process. Still, it was doing a job. The train would eventually have to leave the station. The more rats he managed to keep trapped in the train before that time, the better.

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A jingle rang out, and John's heart soared with hope, but it dropped once more when the train they'd ridden in on shut its doors and began to pull away. They still had a few more seconds before the rat train would leave the station, and the platform ahead of them was starting to fill up.

The problem was, John's Fireball and Wind Shear could only go as far as he could throw them, and the platform was hundreds of metres long. Even as they ate up the distance, there was still plenty more ahead of them, and he hadn't been able to work to block as much of the rat train's doors as he would have liked. Now, he had to turn his attention from blocking the train to clearing a path ahead of them.

Accelerate was working overtime, and even with the enhancements granted by Vitality, Strength, and Agility, his arms were starting to tire from constantly working so many Spells. But he had to keep going. No choice.

The station was filled with the sound of squealing rats, the smell of burning and rotting flesh, the feeling of oven-like heat. Fires started to grow, climbing up the sides of the train. Burning rat corpses started to bar their path, and John was forced to devote his Wind Shears to clearing them out of the way. At least the fires were spreading to other rats. He was barely even having to toss fireballs any longer. On the other hand, they were forced to slow their pace to barely faster than a jog.

Then finally, mercifully, the jingle sounded once more. The doors of the rat train groaned shut, slicing through the mounds of rat corpses that had nominally barred their way. When the train pulled out, there were still hundreds of rat monsters inside the carriages, pressed up against the windows and glaring at them with hateful yellowed eyes. They were scrabbling at the glass with their claws even as the train gained speed and rushed out of sight.

Winnable, John thought, eyeing the hundreds of rats ahead of him. And he wasn't even being facetious. These fat monsters were thick as pig shit, simple-minded as the small rodents their forms were vaguely based on. There wasn't a shred of human intelligence in them, not at this level.

Unheeding of their own safety, they kept rushing forward over the burning corpses of their kin, only to catch on fire themselves. The carnage was cascading along the platform. It wouldn't be long before they were all up in flames.

But that didn't mean the way would be clear. An unfortunate fact of Fireball was this: while it let him clutch a ball of fire without issue prior to throwing it, the moment it left his hand, it was regular fire, and using the spell granted him no greater immunity to burns.

Before long, John was almost exclusively using Wind Shear, slicing a path through the burning bodies that filled the platform in front of them. Smoke was billowing into the air, and he had to dedicate his second slot to Force Push so he could keep it away from them. He knew all about smoke inhalation, and was not going to die that way after all the bullshit he'd been through to get to this point.

The other three were screaming and shouting behind him, but he couldn't focus on their words. There was a ringing in his head. It mingled with their thunderclaps of his heartbeat to drown out all other noise in the world. There was only him, the fire, and the exit. Force Push, Wind Shear. Those were the only words he knew. Wind Shear with the right hand, carving through the burning bodies. Force Push with the left, shoving away the smoke. Both were limited only by the speed of his movements, and Accelerate gave him quite the advantage there.

His surroundings became a blur. He lost himself in the repetitive movements, turning himself into a robot that existed only to slice bodies with wind and push away smoke with force. One foot in front of the other, ever advancing.

He didn't realise he was at the tunnel until his toe slammed into a step, and he almost tripped. Sensation came rushing back, his mind remembering itself. He looked around frantically, checking his surroundings. Jade, Lily, and Chester were there, bruised and bloody and ragged, covered in soot and ash, holding their elbows over their faces. They glared back at him as if to say: get the fuck on with it.

Beyond them was hell. There was nothing but fire. A blazing holocaust.

Mana Sense blasted out in an omnidirectional wave. Beyond the three signatures standing right next to him, the Spell returned nothing.

John smiled. He couldn't help it.

+3000 Aura

After allowing himself a moment to admire his work, he turned and jogged up the stairs, taking them one at a time. Looking up, it was obvious the tunnel was equally overlong as the one they'd descended back at the start of the line. He had to hold back a sigh. This was going to be a massive pain.

Indeed, it took them at least half an hour to reach the top. Despite the absurd length of the ascent, no one dared suggest a stop to rest. John was forced to the back of the group to send back a constant barrage of Force Pushes and Wind Shearrs to keep the encroaching smoke at bay. It started to lessen eventually as the monster corpses below presumably rotted away, depriving the fires of fuel, but the smoke never vanished completely. Most of it would have dissipated down the train tunnels, following the path of least resistance, but his Force Push couldn't completely batter it back down to the platform.

Finally, they reached the top, emerging onto a station not too dissimilar from the first. The room opened up to a wide space bisected by more ticket turnstiles, beyond which lay a few ticket kiosks, an empty shop, and another staircase which would hopefully take them back to the surface.

He wasn't sure where that would be. Their experience in the so-called Underworld had gotten him a little turned around. Hopefully, they'd end up further out from the city centre than where they'd started.

No one had spoke on the way up the staircase, focusing on the gruelling task. John's enhancements hadn't been enough to see him complete the workout without feeling it. He was panting for breath just like the others, though he hadn't collapsed to the floor, at least. He was probably just as red-faced, beneath the soot and sweat.

Their armour was truly battered. Lily's chain mail had been stained black by soot. Jade's plate armour had countless dents, nicks, and scratches. Chester had lost his army helmet entirely at some point, and his hockey keeper armour was hanging on by one strap.

Somehow, John was probably the best off in that regard, but even he was scratched up. His leather jacket had fared remarkably well with only a few holes and tears to speak of, but his black shirt was torn to ribbons, and his trousers were covered in scrapes and gore.

It was Lily who broke the silence, "What the fuck was that all about, y'all?"

"Wish I bloody knew, lass," Jade said.

"I don't care what it was," Chester muttered. "I'm never setting foot in a goddamn underground station again."

In a rare show of social grace, John realised that pointing out they were actually in the "Underworld" wouldn't have been appreciated before the words passed his lips. His mouth clacked shut.

"We should get out of here," he said instead. "Find out where we are."

No one had any objections to that.

When they did finally make it outside a few minutes later, John kind of wished they had.

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