"Sorry," said Stacy.

  I didn't respond, on account of being preoccupied by heaving. Dry, now, but only because I'd run out of stomach contents.

  "Perhaps you shouldn't sneak up behind them?" suggested Daniel.

  "Not to mention wasting mana on weak mobs. You should be saving it for the boss," added Lee. "Not to mention the Kobold Village later."

  Ten mana for over one and a half thousand experience seemed like a fair trade to me, and there was no way I'd need my entire mana reserves to deal with the boss. The assassination experience was about thirty times the value of the mobs themselves. Using the rest of the party as a distraction to sneak up on mobs was the only reason I'd agreed to join this group!

  Not that I could explain any of that. Why did zombies smell so bad?

  "We should get him cleaned up first," said Felicity, pulling out a water bottle and tipping it over my head. It helped—it removed the zombie sludge from the immediate vicinity of my nose—but it just washed it down my body and into my armour. I needed to strip and dive in a river to have any chance of getting clean. And, to state the obvious, this dungeon did not have rivers.

  Even if it did, they'd probably have zombies in them.

  "Let's just hurry up and complete this damn dungeon," I muttered, once I could speak again.

  "Sorry," repeated Stacy, and having used up two of her annual word quota in such quick succession probably meant her apology was sincere.

  "Wow, you smell bad," laughed Ryan.

  "At least you can walk away from me!" I complained. "I'm stuck here. Eww... I feel zombie brain dribbling down my legs!"

  "... Perhaps you should follow a little behind the rest of us?" suggested Daniel.

  "Fine by me," I agreed. It gave me a better opportunity to slip away unseen when we encountered more mobs. They thought this little incident would put me off? No chance. All it meant was that next time I'd stab and run, rather than stand there and let myself get showered in zombie.

  Speaking of which...

  "Another two," said Daniel, but I was already moving. The way the rest of the party stopped walking, waiting for the slow zombies to come to them, gave me ample time to circle around them.

  Perfect. None left alive for anyone to splatter me with.

  "You really shouldn't be wasting mana, however much experience you get for backstabbing them like that," said Lee.

  "I have plenty left. Don't worry; I'm not going to spend it all on the mobs."

  Besides, I wanted my next level. I'd earn enough Stat points to bring two more to a hundred, and one of them was going to be Memory. The way I kept coming out with phrases that I shouldn't know was growing a little alarming, and the fact that I'd done it in front of the bastard prince without even noticing raised the alarming possibility that I'd done it in the past, too. It was unlikely the Mark for reaching a hundred Memory would help explain it, but I couldn't think of anything else I could try.

  "Hold that thought," said Ryan. "I see a sarcophagus."

  We all followed his gaze, where indeed a stone box was sitting atop the soil, rather than the simple headstones and crosses that marked the other graves. While the gravestones were unmarked, this one had writing scrawled across its lid. Or, at least, an alien facsimile of writing; it didn't match the alphabet that I knew, and given the lack of consistency between words, I wasn't convinced it was an alphabet anyone knew. It gave the impression that someone who'd seen a few signposts but didn't know how to read had been told to decorate the sarcophagus with writing.

  Was that 'someone' the dungeon?

  "Stacy, give me a hand," said Lee, gripping one end of the lid.

  Stacy wordlessly gripped the other, and the pair grunted as they lifted it and shoved it to the side.

  A loud wail sounded, coming from inside, and a white haze arose from the grave. The mist took shape, forming the vague outline of a head, torso and arms, albeit without any sign of legs. The base of the ghost just faded into nothing as it hovered above the tomb. A pair of blue lights lit up in the head, the only nod to a 'face' that the monster produced, and their malevolent gaze focused on Lee.

  Before the monster could strike, Daniel thrust his stick. Where the crystal impacted the white mist, it billowed and parted, forming a hole straight through the ghost's torso.

  The monster turned to Daniel and howled. The noise was painful, a thousand needles piercing ears and brain. Everyone winced from the attack, but Daniel didn't let it slow him as he thrust and swiped, poking hole after hole into the monster.

  The ghost didn't let the holes stop it, either, and they even seemed to be closing up slowly as the white fog refilled them. It stopped howling and lunged, reaching out for Daniel's throat with its arms of cold mist.

  He calmly back-stepped and thrust again, this time impacting the ghost's face. Again, despite having a hole poked straight through, it didn't seem to have any effect beyond making the monster angrier.

  "This isn't working," he complained.

  "Decapitate it! Aim for the neck!" shouted Lee.

  Daniel made the attempt, swinging sideways. The crystals weren't large enough to completely sever the head, but they left only a thin strand binding the chunks of white mist. The ghost still didn't slow. Nor did a second swipe help, despite severing head from body completely. The head simply hovered in place, fixed exactly where it should be.

  "Any other ideas?" asked Daniel, dancing in circles as the ghost repeatedly tried to grasp him.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "Keep going until it's completely erased?" I suggested.

  "Am I erasing it, or am I just making it invisible?" asked Daniel, poking the ghost again and again. Both eyes went. One arm was severed at the elbow, but like the head, the forearm simply remained floating exactly where it was supposed to be, moving around unimpeded by the lack of visible connection.

  And then the ghost screamed. Unlike the first howl, this time it felt the need to add a mouth to the equation. The face split open below where the eyes had been, revealing a rent of opaque darkness. The tear opened wide, in a way that on a human would have implied a dislocated jaw at minimum, and then emitted a piercing noise that had every party member reflexively clamping hands over ears. Even Stacy made the attempt, gauntlets meeting metal helm with a clang. We were all wearing helmets.

  Finally, having launched its parting shot, the white gradually faded away, the edges blurring, the colour fading until it had melded entirely into the background mist.

  "Fuck," exclaimed Ryan, ripping his helmet off. A thin trickle of red blood was running from both ears.

  "What he said," agreed Lee. "That was unpleasant. How was that only worth twice the experience of a zombie?"

  "Because it was just as slow as them, and if light magic wasn't restricted, I could have killed it instantly," said Felicity. "I'm kinda feeling useless here."

  "It's just bad luck that we've had two dungeons in a row that restrict your magic," said Daniel. "It's not like Ryan's doing anything either."

  "Hey!" complained Ryan, who was indeed doing something. He was leaning into the sarcophagus, presumably grabbing the treasure. "Nor has Lee."

  "True. There hasn't been much to do," agreed Lee.

  "Just a few silvers," said Ryan, pulling himself out of the sarcophagus, one fist clenched, with a few glimpses of silver peeking through his fingers.

  "We definitely get better treasure for 'conquering' the dungeon," said Daniel, but given the five coppers a piece we got for [Farming] crystals back in the Fluffy Meadow, 'a few silvers' seemed like a lot. Not that we'd have been able to kill ghosts back then. "Speaking of which, if everyone's recovered, let's get a move on."

  "Yes please. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner Robin can take a bath."

  "Oh, I'd forgotten about that, with all the ghost excitement," I said.

  "Seriously? You stink! How can you forget?!"

  "Because you made me walk behind you? You're only getting an occasional whiff, but I'm stuck with me. I think my nose has died."

  Felicity snorted with laughter.

  "Quit whining already. We still have four more of those things to find."

  We continued on, and I managed to assassinate another dozen zombies before reaching the point at which I felt it best to conserve the remainder of my mana. Another ten fell to other members of the party, and we found our next four ghosts, along with more silver and a [Chill] skill crystal, apparently an ice aspected spell of some sort.

  It was more than enough for my next level, and the only reason I hadn't spent my stat points was because I wasn't a hundred percent sure what would happen, and there were better places to find out than a dungeon.

  Although I should probably spend the skill points before we reached the boss...

  The boss itself was easy enough to find; it was in the centre of the graveyard, and all the graves were laid out facing away from it. It was quite obvious, too, a few heads taller than anyone in our party. The shape of a regular human, despite being unnaturally large, but covered completely in bandages that didn't permit a single glimpse of whatever was underneath.

  "Finally, a chance to do something," declared Ryan as I slipped off to the side under the auspices of [Expert Stealth]. "Rain of Stones!"

  A hail of small pebbles flashed into existence, launching themselves at the towering monster at high speed. When they impacted, they... bounced off.

  The mummy reacted, its featureless, bandaged head turning to focus on Ryan.

  "Uh... Earthquake?" he tried.

  The ground shook as the stronger spell activated, the mummy sinking into the soil up to its ankles and the soil rising up around it. It tugged, and the soil bulged and popped. One ankle came free, but the other was still stuck, and the trio of melee combatants were already charging in to strike. Stacy punched, but like Ryan's stones, the bandages simply flexed, absorbing the impact.

  "What the heck's inside that thing? Feathers?" complained Lee as he struck with his sword, likewise failing to cause any visible damage.

  "Hardly," shouted back Ryan. "Otherwise it would be so light that Stacy's punch would have blown it over."

  "Stab!" shouted Daniel, and finally one of us managed to cause the monster a wound. His spear pierced the front layer of bandages, continued straight through whatever was beneath them, and popped clean out of the back.

  Alas, when he pulled on the spear, it wouldn't come back out.

  "Damn," he swore, jumping backward as the monster swung a bandaged fist at him.

  It finished tearing itself out of the soil, and with his party members too close, Ryan couldn't recast the spell. Not that he'd need to, if I had any say in the matter: those first few exchanges had been sufficient for me to position myself.

  "Stab!" I shouted, thrusting my dagger forward and activating the Skill the moment the tip made contact. The bandages bulged inward, and for a moment I didn't think I'd succeeded in piercing them, but then they snapped with an audible twang. Unlike Daniel, I had no issue with my weapon getting stuck, but no blood poured from the wound. Only dry, orange dust, and even that soon slowed to a trickle, the mummy continuing its movement seemingly unaffected.

  "What's with this dungeon and its stupid durable monsters?" I complained under my breath. Given the height of the thing, I hadn't been able to target the neck, but I'd still stabbed into what should have been spine. Had it been human, the monster should have lost the use of its legs at the very least, yet it remained standing, continuing to punch at Daniel, apparently not even noticing the wound I'd given it.

  This was probably going to take a while. At the least, I should grab Daniel's spear and rip it out from this side, so that he...

  "Heavy Blow," said Stacy, interrupting my thought by using two words in a row for the first time since I'd met her.

  The monster rippled, the shock-wave of the Skill's impact—and it very obviously was a Skill—wrapping around its torso, causing the bandages to flex. And then they tore, the monster's entire torso spilling out like a collapsing sandcastle, leaving just the pair of legs intact. They stood a few seconds longer, before they slowly toppled over.

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