Chapter 161

Luke was so exhausted that he didn’t think he could fight back even to save his own life. The necromancer might have been content to ignore him since he wasn’t a threat before the crossbow incident. Now the black-robed man was staring daggers at him, and Luke was wondering if there was anything he could buy with 22 AP that would save his ass in the next ten seconds.

Zea was dealing with a half dozen undead chasing after her after she’d been disarmed and basically lost a hand. Ruca and Val were still trapped in a circle of zombies and slowly getting more and more tired. Even superhuman levels of stamina had limits, and it looked like the bandit duo was about to find them. There was no one there to help him.

It was a little late to worry about people thinking he was crazy now, and since System understood him in every language anyway… “System, is there any skill I could buy that I can actually use right now?”

“There are quite a few,” System said as he appeared. “Most of them fall into the passive category, such as sensory and mental enhancement skills.”

“Are they any that are going to keep that guy from killing me in the next few seconds?” Luke clarified.

“I’m afraid that is unlikely,” System told him. “If you had a higher AP budget, a few of your bloodline skills would aid you, but lacking that, the situation does not appear to be weighted in your favor.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Luke said. “Shit.”

“What language are you speaking?” Torwin asked him, still talking in Consortium Standard. “I’ve never heard anything like it before.”

“Go ask your mom,” Luke told him. “I taught her a few words the other night.”

“You… my mother has been dead for twenty years,” Torwin said, confusion evident on his face. “And I refuse to believe some ruffian like yourself has mastered the art of necromancy to such an extent that you can communicate with the spirits of the dead.”

Luke couldn’t help himself. He started laughing. “I guess it doesn’t translate over well. Let me try again: Go fuck yourself.”

That got through to the man. “How droll. Very well, I’m on something of a short clock, thanks to your little stunt. Time to die.”

There was a tearing sound and a roar, which surprised both Luke and Torwin. The necromancer flinched and spun in place to look back at the caravan, where Zea was cackling and the zombies who’d been chasing after her were being crushed in what appeared to be long, thick, leathery tentacles. There was no animal attached to them; it was just a ball of dozens of them knotted around each other and going in every direction.

There were currently four zombies caught up in the tentacles, but even as Luke watched, the knot of them started slapping against the ground and dragging themselves toward Torwin and Luke. It was deceptively fast too, especially considering its size. Those tentacles were half a foot thick at the base and probably fifteen feet long.

Instantly, undead started swarming it. Fourteen zombies rushed toward their master in attempt to shield him with their bodies, including six from the crowd surrounding the bandits. The tentacle ball snatched them all up indiscriminately, and the more zombies that were tangled up inside it, the slower it got.

New zombies rose up from farther back in the caravan to take the places of the ones caught up in Zea’s insane tentacle monster thing, including the boy Luke had spared in the initial assault. His neck was clearly broken, not that it mattered to him anymore. Torwin must have decided he couldn’t leave witnesses.

An arrow thunked into Torwin’s chest and drove him back a step. He blinked and looked down at it, then shot Luke an incredulous glance. “Your little group just keeps getting bigger. How many more of you are there hiding in the trees?”

The only answer was another arrow, this time in Torwin’s leg. He rolled his eyes, reached down, and yanked out both of them. A trio of zombies started towards the trees in the direction the arrow had come from.

“Time to wrap this up,” Torwin said. “I’m going to want a break here soon, and I’d prefer you were all thoroughly dead by then.”

In English again, Luke said to System, “If I just dump my AP straight into stamina, would it help me right now?”

“Somewhat,” System said, “though you should not expect to operate at anything close to full strength.”

“I just need to hold out long enough to outlast his [Life Surge].”

“I think this will be rather poetic, though I’m sure you won’t appreciate it,” the necromancer said as he leaned down and picked up the bloodied bolt Luke had shot him with. Then Torwin strode forward, picked up the crossbow from where Luke dropped it, and fitted the bolt into place.

Luke dumped all his AP and felt vitality flood through his limbs. It was a bare fraction of what he normally worked with, but the sheer exhaustion weighing him down to immobility washed away. His mace was behind him, only a few feet, but out of easy reach. He’d do this with his bare hands instead.

[Twitch Reflexes] told him exactly when Torwin pulled the trigger, and he was already pushing himself out of the way. Luke bounced up from the ground and spun to get his feet under him, then lunged forward to grab at the necromancer.

“Unhand me, you brute!” Torwin cried out as he tried to jump back. As weakened as Luke was right now, he was still stronger than a man who’d barely spared a few points for his stats. Luke got a grip on the necromancer’s robes and pulled him forward to wrap his hands around the man’s neck. Torwin’s stamina was too high to beat him to death, but Luke could still choke him out. Probably. The guy had some sort of blood manipulation skill, so even that wasn’t a given.

As long as Luke could keep Torwin pinned down for a few seconds, [Life Surge] would wear off and the necromancer would be easy pickings. Hopefully his zombies would go with him, and none of them would kill anyone in between now and then.

“I… said… let go!” Torwin gagged out as he slapped at Luke. The attacks were weak, more distracting than anything, and Luke ignored them. He kept pressure on Torwin’s throat, right up until the moment a zombie barreled into his side. The undead monster didn’t have the system enhancing his physical stats anymore, but he was still a full-grown man and Luke was running on fumes.

The three of them ended up in a heap, the guard flailing wildly at Luke and Torwin scrambling to escape Luke’s implacable grasp. Luke saw the exact moment [Life Surge] ran out. Torwin’s face sagged and his limbs lost all strength, but it did nothing to weaken the undead clawing at Luke. All the zombies kept right on attacking, and in fact a second one joined the pile.

With one on each arm, they managed to pry Luke’s hands off Torwin’s throat. Try as he might, Luke was in no shape to compete with the full strength of a zombie clinging to each arm, and they hauled him off the necromancer, who lay on the ground, hair disheveled and chest heaving.

“You should know that my control over blood extends beyond my own body,” Torwin said as he sat up right. “My minions are going to take you apart, piece by piece, and you’ll stay alive for all of it. I won’t let you die until you’ve been chopped up, joint by joint, and your belly’s been sliced open so I can pick out your organs.”

“You’re wrong,” Luke said.

“I don’t think so. As soon as I finish with your friends, you’re going to be my project.”

“No, I don’t think you understand,” Luke told the necromancer. “You’re not going to do any of that.”

“You’re hardly in a position to tell me what I can or ca-”

The loop of Zea’s whip flashed by, settled itself around Torwin’s neck, and squeezed. The necromancer’s head popped off in a spray of blood, and the body slowly fell backward. Ding. Ding.

All around the caravan, the zombies fell to pieces, in some cases literally. Without their master’s magic to hold them together, the wounds they’d taken during their post-mortem battle proved too much.

“Holy shit,” Luke said, looking around. “That was fucking wild. Glad it’s over now though.”

He took two staggering steps to get clear of the zombies, found a relatively clean stretch of grass, and promptly passed out on it.

* * *

The bandits weren’t in much better shape than Zea, with the exception of Wilby. He’d run out of arrows early on in the fight, and it wasn’t until the necromancer took the field that he’d found an opportunity to sneak in close and recover some spent ammunition. Zea couldn’t much blame him for staying out of it, considering his relatively low level. He hadn’t done much good against the necromancer anyway. That guy’s skills had been creepy.

Her elbow was shattered, utterly and completely fucked. Without magical healing, she’d be crippled for the rest of her life. On the bright side, they could afford it with their share of the spoils, though that had its own issues to be resolved after Luke woke up. But with that having been said, it fucking hurt and it wasn’t getting healed up today. Luke still hadn’t woken up from where he’d passed out. She could already picture him demanding all the food as soon as he opened his eyes.

That at least she could accommodate. Ruca had pried open all the slave wagons, revealing row after row of sick, malnourished humans sitting around in their own waste and shackled together in long lines. The four of them had done their best to break the chains and lead everyone out into open air. Zea had raided the food wagons and they’d turned the roadside into an impromptu camp while Val and a protesting Wilby had gathered the bodies of the dead guards and hauled them off for burial in a mass grave in the woods.

Zea fully planned to claim any and all money looted off the dead. She’d spent a fortune in enchanted armaments for this fight, and she couldn’t even begin to work on replacing any of it until she got her arm fixed. Even cooking was unexpectedly challenging with only one hand.

While the food cooked, some of the former slaves who knew how to do such things drove the wagons off the road and took care of the horses. They had everything set up in a ring around their impromptu campsite, though there were far too many people to fit in that ring. Wilby led them off to a nearby stream in groups of ten so that they could get cleaned up, and slowly, the slaves started to look like people again.

They were still sick, still weak, but they were clean, and they got their first real meal in weeks. Fortunately, none of them had been marked yet. Or maybe slavers didn’t do that on the eastern continent. Either way, they were lucky enough that they could still live lives as free men and women. The mark behind Zea’s ear was going to prevent that forever. Even after the magic in it died, she’d need to be careful that no one saw it.

She was sitting on the grass and cradling her broken arm in her lap when Luke walked up. “Finally awake, huh?” she said.

“Yeah. Lot of people here.”

“I suppose.”

“What do we do now?”

“We don’t do anything. Those three bandits will take it from here. I’ll try to get some money to recoup our losses from this fight, but I suspect the bandits are going to fight me about it. I can already hear that woman telling me they need it for the people here.”

“Well, she’s not wrong,” Luke said. “These guys are going to need a lot of help.”

Zea shrugged and wiggled her arm.. “They’re free now. We accomplished our objective. I’m pretty keen on getting this fixed as soon as possible.”

Luke looked at it with a grimace and said, “Yeah. Move ahead and hope to find someone or backtrack to Naldrin, you think?”

“Figure we’ll ask the bandits there what’s down the road. If there’s a city coming up, no point in going back.”

“Fair enough. Ready to go find ‘em?”

“Yeah, help me up,” Zea said, holding her good hand out to Luke. He took hold and pulled her to her feet, and the two of them walked off together.