Chapter 92 - How Strong I’d Grown

  Maybe it was my shocking burst into the air, or maybe they’d just noticed us anyway by that time, but Kara was spot on. It looked like every undead in the area was making tracks toward us as fast as they could shamble. Ready or not, it was go time!

  “You still tied in?” I shouted up to Kara.

  “Yup.”

  “Good.”

  I sent mental commands to Sue, keeping it relatively simple. The dinosaur would use their Fireballs on any larger collections of undead—ideally groups of three or more—and chomp any singletons. Also, Sue was to flee the battle area if their health went under a quarter, and I sent the order to keep Kara safe no matter what.

  Would it be enough? I had no idea. Giving standing orders meant I wouldn’t need to continuously monitor the dino during the fight, though. I had a feeling I was going to need all my attention on the battle in front of me, at least most of the time.

  I burst into action, darting to the right, where a large cluster of skeletons approached. A Fireball sailed over my head, slamming into the center of the pack. Two of the skellies blew apart in the blast, and the others were damaged. I cast Health to Mana to recover what I’d spent Flying, then dropped the nearest with a Drain, recovering my health. There wasn’t time for the Drain to cycle before the other three were on top of me, though.

  Hope dashed forward, yanking a tibia out from under one of them. It dropped to one knee, unable to keep its balance, and Hope continued her attack, savaging the skeleton further.

  That left two more for me to fight. The first rushed me, and I braced my shield, then slammed the shield forward into the thing as it came up to me. I’d grossly underestimated my new strength; the skull shattered under my blow, fragmenting like a bomb went off inside it. The skeleton collapsed completely after that.

  The other one was still coming, so I swung my short sword at the thing, first slicing off an arm, then cutting through its neck, severing the head from the rest of it. Holy shit, that Strength stone made one hell of a difference!

  We were seconds into the fight, and five of them were down already, just like that.

  I checked over my shoulder to ensure Kara and Sue were still doing okay. Sue bit the head off a zombie—must have been a relatively recent burial. Kara crouched on the dinosaur’s back, firing off one arrow after another. She wasn’t missing, either.

  Knowing they were in good shape made me feel better about moving forward, pushing deeper into the cemetery. It was still plenty light enough to see the enemy, and they were bloody everywhere. There had to be at least a couple hundred undead still waiting around the graveyard. Even without fences around the entire exterior, most of them hadn’t wandered far. Now a good chunk of them were headed our way.

  “We have a target rich environment here, Hope,” I said. She barked—agreement? I flashed Hope a grin, then started forward at a brisk walk.

  A skeleton came against me and I simply batted it aside with my shield. Fighting it was like swinging at someone moving in slow motion. The shield impacted with the force of a pile driver, breaking its arm and blowing apart its ribs. The skeleton fell. Another took its place. I easily ducked under its grab, then swept both legs out from beneath it with my sword. It crumpled into a heap of bones. I smashed the skull with my boot, just to be sure.

  A thwap sound behind me got my attention. I turned to see a zombie already collapsing, an arrow through its skull. I sketched a salute to Kara with my sword.

  “Thanks!”

  “Stay alert!” she replied. I gave her a nod.

  The thing was, I wasn’t all that worried about these undead hurting me. The next set of skeletons came at me three at a time. I blocked one with my shield, cut another down with my sword, but the third managed to get claws into my shield arm, scraping lines in my skin. Thanks to the tier five Stamina, though, what would have been massive wounds for a normal person were just mild scratches for me, and they started closing up almost instantly.

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  My linothorax protected my body from really serious injury, and my enhanced body either deflected or healed most of the rest.

  I had no illusions this would work for every monster, but the things I was facing here were all tier one undead. Basic skeletons, for the most part, with a few basic zombies tossed into the mix. It was finally sinking in that it would take an actual army of tier one creatures to be any sort of threat to me.

  Until this moment, I hadn’t quite realized just how strong I’d grown. It was intoxicating.

  The fight carried me further away from Sue and Kara. I glanced back periodically, making sure they were still doing fine. Sue was taking occasional hits, so I tossed a Heal Undead at the T.rex every so often to keep their health up. Kara wasn’t in much danger unless Sue went down. There were no skeleton mages here to fire ranged attacks.

  I’d gotten a little too far away, though. Now I had undead on all sides, closing in fast. Two of them grabbed me from the front and two from the rear, and I panicked for a quick moment as their claw-like bones grabbed hold of my hair, my arms, my shoulders.

  One leaned in to bite at my face. I dropped it with a Drain Life that healed my injuries. I beat another back with my sword, smashing its skull. But there were still more coming at me, flowing around me. My strength was so much that they struggled to hold onto me, but if enough of them grabbed on, they’d literally bury me under their weight.

  That wasn’t going to happen. I engaged my flight, zipping skyward. Two skeletons had a good enough grip to hold on at first, but a slash with my sword cut one in half, and a Drain killed the other. Their broken bodies toppled back to the ground. I cruised fifteen feet through the air before settling back to the dirt again. My landing was a bit better, this time, but I still staggered when I cut off the Flying spell.

  Guess I needed to practice Flying some more. Oh no! What a horrible fate. I grinned to myself, really enjoying all of this. For most of the past week, I’d been running from monsters, fighting evil humans, desperately struggling to stay alive, beating off huge hordes of undead, and all sorts of other wild stuff.

  This fight was one of the first times, maybe even the first time, where I felt like I could cut loose and just have fun smacking these things around.

  Each one that fell represented advancement for Kara and I. We were going to get more powerful with every undead we killed, which was awesome. Just as cool, though, was this sense of raw power I felt as I rushed back in at the enemy.

  My shield was up, sword in front of me, as I sprinted into the edge of the group that had been trying to pin me down, moving faster than the swiftest Olympian could have daydreamed about running. The charge hit with so much force that the skeleton I slammed with my shield blew apart, the pieces flying back into two more skeletons, which also came apart from the force of the debris.

  Then my sword was flashing, each swing so swift that if I didn’t have enhanced Agility I bet I’d barely have seen the motion. My blade became a flickering orange bar as it reflected the fading evening sunlight.

  Less than a minute later I was surrounded by piles of bones. I’d killed a dozen or so skellies in that time. It was nuts, and the sword wasn’t even something I was especially good at!

  What I was good at was casting spells. I concentrated, firing off a Control Undead at the nearest skeleton. It was mine instantly. I had five more points of Control available, so I cycled the spell as quickly as it would cast. Once I had control of six skeletons, I set them to guard me, fighting off any others that attacked, while I looked at those bones to see what I could do with them.

  Now that my Animate Dead spell was tier six, I could control thirty-two points of undead. I’d already seen how strong higher tier undead could get, but unfortunately it looked like tier three was the highest the spell was willing to give me, so far. I really wanted to try building eight tier four skeletons, because that would be a powerhouse. But either my tier wasn’t high enough, or the raw materials I had to work with weren’t strong enough, because it wasn’t gonna let me.

  At tier three, I had a couple of skeleton options. The skeleton mages were only tier two, but at tier three there were ‘fire skeletons’ and ‘skeleton juggernauts.’ Curious what they were, I brought up a fire skeleton first.

  It rose from the rubble of broken bones, clambering to its feet, and then the bones themselves burst into flames! I took a step back, surprised, but the fire was magical. It wasn’t actually burning the skeleton, and when I approached it, I discovered it wouldn’t hurt me, either. I sent the fire skeleton to attack an approaching set of enemies. It cackled as it moved toward them, then launched little bursts of fire from its hands. It took a couple of hits before it took down each tier one undead, so the damage was pretty light, but it was at least as strong as the Harm spell the mages used. Maybe more so.

  The juggernaut was cool, too. When I Animated one of those, the bones flowed together and jumbled into a mass, doubling up in most places. The doubled bones then merged with each other, forming one set of much thicker, stronger bones. The finished skeleton was about seven feet tall and was built like a truck. When I sent it plowing into lesser undead, it tore them apart like it was a force of nature.

  In just a few minutes, I had five fire skeletons and five juggernauts formed up in rows in front of me. The juggernauts carved apart any undead they ran into while the fire skellies just blasted them from range. It was a good team effort, and vastly sped up the rate I could carve through the undead.

  Then I heard a sound from behind me, like the earth was tearing itself apart. I whirled, alarmed, as Kara let out a terrified scream. I’d just pivoted enough to see her before she and Sue both dropped out of sight!