Chapter 159

The man who stepped out of the wagon wore a midnight blue robe trimmed in silver. He had long, dark hair pulled back from his face and tied into a braid that was thrown over one shoulder, and pale, sallow skin. A sneer rode on his lips and he regarded the exhausted trio with anger in his eyes.

“Well,” he said, his accent somehow crisp and snooty at the same time as he dragged out the word. “This has been a disaster. On the bright side, I won’t have to pay all these guards now and I’m close enough to the city to make it there without any further issues.”

“Hah,” Val said. “All I see is one last corpse I need to make.”

Luke knew he didn’t cut an imposing figure at the moment. It was all he could do to keep from dropping on the spot, but Ruca and Val could still fight. The man didn’t look scared. If anything, he looked bored. He couldn’t be that high a level or someone would have said something, not unless he was some east continent version if an inquisitor with XP dampening skills.

[Analyze] would cut right through that. Luke just needed to pull himself together enough to activate the skill, which was turning out to be harder than he’d expected. Double [Life Surge] had really done a number on him. It took him four attempts to trigger the skill, and he did not like what he saw.

[Name: Torwin Melathese]
[Level: 36]
[XP: 165421/171264]
[AP: 0]
[Strength: 5]
[Agility: 9]
[Stamina: 31]
[Perception: 8]
[Skills:]
[Athame Focus (3)]
[Mana Sight (5)]
[Mana Manipulation (5)]
[Fractured Mind (5)]
[Blood Adaptation (4)]
[Telepathic Focus (4)]
[Reanimation (5)]
[Reconstitute (4)]
[Life Surge (1)]
[Ritual Caster (2)]
[Soul Scaffold (3)]
[Eledarn (3)]
[Old Ganish (2)]
[Consortium Standard (3)]
[Tirvok (3)]
[Cooking (4)]
[Butchering (5)]
[Cleaning (3)]
[Steady Hands (3)]
[Torturer (2)]
[Anatomy (2)]

Luke only recognized a few skills off the list, [Life Surge] being the big one. But the general trend was obvious. Torwin was a magic user of some kind, and from the looks of it, a particularly gruesome one. He had the fashion sense to fit right in with those weird LARP people who ran around pretending to be vampires at the park near his family’s old apartment too.

Really though, with a skill called [Reanimation], it seemed pretty obvious to him what they were dealing with. The other two had no way to know though, and Luke didn’t have a way to tell them unless he wanted to make them curious how he knew. Maybe if he was in top form, he would have considered it, but then again, they were going to find out soon enough anyway.

“Corpses? What do you know about them, you stupid little girl,” Torwin said, scorn dripping from his words.

He gave a theatrical twirl of his hand and pointed at the body of the nearest guard. Luke had killed the man in typical fashion, by crushing his skull with one swift, decisive blow. The fact that the guard’s brains had splattered across the road and his eyes were hanging out of the sockets did not in any way stop him from crawling back to his feet.

“Necromancer,” Val hissed. “Abomination.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard it all before. Behold my rebuttal,” Torwin told her. His finger jumped from corpse to corpse and five more guards stood back up. “Now, it’s not that I need to speak for them to obey my commands, but it does make for a better show, don’t you think? No? Well, it’s not like your opinion matters. Kill them all.”

Ruca and Val surged forward to meet the undead, but Luke didn’t have the strength left to pick up his weapon and fight. He could only watch helplessly as the zombies ignored blows that would have crippled living opponents. The two bandits were pushed back one step at a time, slowly at first, then faster as new zombies joined the battle.

They weren’t like the ones in the movies. There was no groaning, no stiff limbs, no shambling gait. The guards moved just like normal people, though thankfully without all the strength and agility the system had granted them in life. That was the only reason the bandits hadn’t been overwhelmed immediately, but they were tired and Torwin just kept making more of them.

Luke needed to use [Life Surge] again. Torwin was a soft target. He was close, and he was physically weak. 31 stamina wasn’t enough to survive even a single blow from Luke’s mace. It was the aftermath that Luke was scared of. There was a very real possibility that the skill would kill him. If he didn’t use it, they were dead anyway.

He tried to activate [Life Surge], but the skill wouldn’t respond. “System… why… isn’t it… working?” Luke gasped out through ragged breaths, though he was afraid he already knew the answer.

“The strain on your body would be too great. You would die immediately.”

There was nothing Luke could do to influence this fight. He couldn’t even save himself. The first zombie to come at him was going to kill him.

* * *

It didn’t take Zea long to figure out what she needed to do. A fucking necromancer of all things had slithered out of that carriage. She’d been expecting some sort of pampered merchant or nobleman, given the accommodations. The man obviously lived in the carriage while he traveled. That he’d been a magic user had been a nasty surprise.

And of course there was no inquisitor around now that someone who actually deserved a little attention from the church had shown up. After months of being hounded by them, here in front of her was finally a threat worthy of some time in a confessional. The irony was not lost on Zea.

The necromancer didn’t seem to realize she was there, which made sense when she factored in the fact that she was still under the effects of Luke’s [XP Mask] skill. She also hadn’t joined in the main fight, had in fact only come out of the trees for half a minute to save Luke after that horse riding guard with the spear had caught him just as [Life Surge]wore off.

There were no windows in the carriage either. It was a perfect recipe for obliviousness. It also meant that Zea had the opportunity to sneak up behind him and kill him. With any luck, the zombies would go down as soon as their boss died. If not, well, at least there wouldn’t be any more of them.

The necromancer seemed to have some kind of sixth sense for where the guards had died. He would point at them, often at ones behind him that unerringly targeted despite not so much as glancing in that direction, and another one would rise up to join the fight. Zea decided to take advantage of that by circling around to the back of the caravan and working her way forward. Given the man’s position in front of the lead wagon, she figured she’d need thirty seconds to run all the way to the front.

That plan went out the window when she saw the first driver. He let out a startled yelp as she walked by, scaring her so bad that she almost yelled too. She’d been so focused on the necromancer that she’d forgotten Luke had spared the people who hadn’t fought back. Noble of him, but also very stupid.

She should have noticed him before she got there. Zea’s perception was at 21. It had been simple negligence on her part that she hadn’t paid attention. [XP Mask] worked both ways, and she couldn’t feel anyone else’s XP either. She’d known that, but it was still a hard thing to see someone and not be able to feel their presence.

Regardless of why it happened, the guy’s yelping was going to get her caught. There was nothing she could do but kill him to shut him up, and she expected a new corpse appearing on the battlefield would catch the necromancer’s attention even more than his yell had. If she couldn’t hide, it was going to be a game of speed now.

Not for the first time, she wished she’d put just a few more points into strength. Zea took off in a sprint, still quiet thanks to her high agility, but not nearly as fast as she wanted to be. Luke could have done it in two seconds. It took her twenty times as long. More shouts followed her from various drivers, but Zea ignored them and powered ahead.

“Who’s this?” the necromancer said, his head tilted as he turned to regard her. “You don’t have an aura either, just like that useless fellow over there. What are you hoping to accomplish?”

Zea did not have Luke’s combat skills. Maybe if she did, she would have reacted in time. The guard standing up in front of her was too slow to catch her before she went by, but he was a distraction anyway. A crossbow bolt slammed into her back, right between her shoulders, and Zea’s run turned into a stumble that ended with her falling to her knees.

It hurt. Holy fuck it hurt more than anything else she’d ever felt. It hurt so bad that at first, she didn’t even realize a second bolt had pierced her back lower down near her waist. Waves of pain rolled through her, paralyzing her. She couldn’t even scream her pain, it was that bad.

For all that, her mind kept working. She knew if she didn’t move, they’d shoot her again. If she didn’t reach that necromancer, more undead would keep rising. She’d die. Luke would die. Those bandits would die. The slaves… Well, they’d probably wish they were dead by the time they reached the end of their journey.

Zea struggled back to her feet, two bolts jutting out of her back as she moved. She heard the distinctive twang of another bolt being released and jumped to the left, closer to the wagon. Fresh agony lanced up and down her back, but she pushed past it. There was no time for that, not right now.

The necromancer was almost in range. She’d reach him, and she’d kill him, and then she’d help Luke. The stubborn jackass had pushed himself too far this time and certainly wasn’t going to be taking care of himself any time soon.

Another guard rose up, this one directly in front of her. Zea had anticipated that move, and her razor prong whip snapped out to dismember the moving corpse in seconds. It fell to pieces in front of her at the exact same time the one crouching on the roof of one of the wagons fired another bolt. Her strategy of hugging the side of the wagons to get a bit of cover paid off, and the shot went wide.

She rushed forward the last fifty feet and raised her arm to swing the whip at the necromancer, who was still regarding her with an expression of amusement. At the last instant, just before the enchanted razor prong shards could lash out, something struck her from behind.

Zea was hurled to the ground and nearly blacked out from the pain of the bolts stuck in her being jostled. She pulled herself together and rolled, an action her back did not appreciate at all and which drove both bolts deeper into her body.

Looming over her was the undead she’d dismembered just seconds ago. All of the pieces were back in place, but now there was some sort of dark light coming from the spots where the limbs connected back together. Zea didn’t hesitate to swing the whip again, knowing as she did that no damage she inflicted would be permanent, not as long as the necromancer was still breathing.

She just needed it to drop for a few seconds, which it thankfully obliged her in doing. She wasn’t going to give the necromancer a chance to put the body back together again, not when she only needed to stand back up and strike him.

As the guard’s body dropped, she saw the other one, the one with the crossbow, jump down from the wagon he’d been perched on and raise the weapon to point at her. Really, he couldn’t get a better shot. The undead that had been blocking her line of sight was in pieces at her feet and she was still on her back on the ground, the bolts digging into her muscles as they twisted sideways under her weight. There was no way the guard could miss at this range.

The undead pulled the trigger and the bolt shot through the air.