"Did you just mock them to death?" I asked, absolutely flabbergasted.

  When the ghouls came out of it, whatever had affected them, they were more pissed off. Well, assuming they felt pissed off, they snarled a lot more. But then again, they were snarling, ghoulish undead; perhaps that was their default setting.

  "I am not sure how many times I can do that. You wouldn't have a weapon I can use?" Marius requested, not even a trace of fear.

  With no further thought, I withdrew one of my plundered blades and handed it over. Marius made a few practice swings of the simple steel short sword before entering a guarded position.

  "On guard!" He said, ready for anything.

  I wondered whether he had had any prior training with the sword. If that were true, maybe he could teach me a thing or two. The system knew I needed to learn some swordcraft. Perhaps the memories I stored could be of use, but not now.

  Three ghouls came charging, and before they took more than a step, I hit all three with a blinding notification. With their initial stun, I activated my blade and charged. Only to stop as they shook off the effect. Showcasing their above-average intelligence and skill with the system's features. That or they could see without their eyes.

  Time to ponder was gone as the first ghoul, probably the fastest one, reached me. He had his claws, and I had a mana-empowered sword with only about half mana left. Hopefully, I didn't run out of juice.

  The clash was brutal and sudden. Claws lashed out, straight for my throat. I parried the first attack, but the creature was fast, much faster. Its offhand claw raked across my shoulder before it tried to bite my head off. Ignoring the pain, I ducked out of its reach and then slashed it across the chest.

  The ghoul shrank back from the strike, and I seized the advantage, slashing wildly. Striking its shoulder, face and even nicked his leg. I was using too much stamina, but the ghoul was too fast to let it remain. I ended it with a kinetic strike to where I assumed was its heart.

  Using a decent amount of force, I punched its heart out of its chest to land on the ghoul behind him. Only a bloody hole remained, along with a very confused ghoul on the other side. Collapsing in a heap, one enemy was down and three to go. Wait, where did the third one come from?

  Before it was just three ghouls, now it was four, minus heartless over there. Were they going to flood in en masse and slaughter us with sheer numbers? Hopefully not, because there were very few places to hide.

  Two ghouls practically mobbed me at the same time. Leaping back to get some distance, I clipped one in the face as I jumped back. Didn't even faze it at all. They just kept coming, ravenous little ghouls, either for flesh or just for my death. Either way, I need to dispatch quickly.

  Drawing in as much force as I could bear, I blasted the one on the left. Since it wasn't a precise strike, it only took out a chunk of its chest. The creature stumbled backward, and my shot revealed its organs through the gaping wound. I felt that power waning; using too much energy for each attack was draining.

  Shaking away the weakness, I drew my blade across and sliced the neck of the second ghoul. It completely ignored this and leapt atop me, claws going straight for my eyes. Barely dodging the strike and thoroughly pissed off. I hit it with consecutive kinetic strikes at important organs.

  Pulverising flesh at the head, heart and gut. The exertion was terrible for the body. A wave of heaviness descended, and I could barely raise my weapon. Two more remained, and I knew the battle would be a slog.

  Kinetic strike was a peculiar skill; every use drained stamina. Or, more precisely, put more pressure on my body from the blowback. As a result, I can't use it too much, and yet it was my most powerful skill.

  Naturally, the two ghouls teamed up, the damaged one not even caring about the wounds I inflicted. I was tiring of the undead. Marius was chill, but these dudes were just the worst. The two surrounded me, not charging yet.

  Out of the corner of my eye, an ethereal form swiftly approached, drawing up from the ground in motes of light to reform into a human. Within its grasp, a spectral axe took shape and fell upon the wounded ghoul.

  Instead of phasing through, the weapon remained solid and split the ghoul's head in two. Without hesitation, he turned to the other ghoul; the creature trying to claw the shifting mist.

  "Oh, that is just cheating." I commented on how the ghost could axe someone but was immune to strikes himself.

  I shifted focus to Marius, who stood rigid in place. His gaze unwavering, but his body trembled with great exertion. Thin wisps of miasma billowed out of his body; I could see he was going through something.

  Sensing the Revenant was pouring his energy into the spirit. I decided not to waste any more time and leapt into action. I approached swiftly, noticing that every spectral strike was getting less and less corporeal until the last phased right through body.

  Using that opportunity, I circled around and decapitated the final ghoul. Tag-teaming these dead guys proved very effective. Now that the ghouls were dead, I returned to Marius.

  He was down on one knee, his spectral bond fading into motes of light and returning to his body. If he could breathe, he would be ragged and would gasp for air.

  "You doing alright?"

  "It is taxing to command the dark powers, but I will recover." He responded, still hunched over.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  "I don't think your powers are inherently dark, but whatever."

  "They are deliciously dark and terrible." He shot me a grin.

  Deactivating my blade, we took the brief respite to get our energy back. I had levelled a few times, and he rose several levels as well. Fighting high-level opponents does that. I even watched the distribution of experience points during a battle.

  The system tagged a fraction of the energy released from every defeated foe and directed it to my companion. I and my greedy friend Jen gobbled up the rest, which would probably dissipate.

  With the pause between battles, we got time to rest. But I could already hear a few more footsteps approaching, along with a few ghostly wails. Reactivated my blade just in time for two more ghouls and a ghost to arrive.

  Looks like someone or something is just throwing everything on hand at us. I suspected a necromancer was about. Spamming the raise dead spell and sending corpse after corpse.

  Marius and I raised our swords, along with his apparition exiting his body to stand beside him. Before we clashed, Marius began a spell song, the same one he used to raise the spirit of the dead quester with the axe.

  Wondering what he was doing, perhaps raising the spirit of the ghoul? Well, the more the merrier if we can get another spirit on our side. The ghouls approached carefully, their claws itching to slash our throats. But the ghost behind them was stock-still, entranced by something.

  The spectre wailed at the top of its ghostly lungs before spectral talons ripped into the two ghouls. Through the back of their heads and out their eyeballs.

  "What the hell?" I couldn't help but say.

  Rather than answer, the ghost just wailed, turned around and charged in the opposite direction. Flabbergasted at the retreating and screaming ghost; I couldn't help but look to Marius for answers.

  "The poor dear had quite a vengeful streak." And that was all he said as he walked on.

  Not understanding what had happened, I chalked it up to esoteric magic and followed along. While I knew a bit about the system, specifically how martial and arcane archetypes worked, esoteric was just too dynamic to work out. Heavily specific to the individual and generally specialised for the situation.

  Seems Marius had a class designed to screw with necromancers, and it was pretty clear a necromancer ruled this place. Someone was sending ghouls, and someone set up all those undead. Although I was pretty sure vampire spawn weren't undead, what were they doing here?

  Shrugging at the utterly confusing set of circumstances, I just followed along, pondering how Marius class worked.

  "Your ability seems like an AOE type. I'm assuming it affects everyone within range to hear it?" I asked as a truly torn-up ghoul ran at me.

  Something had ripped a chunk out of its stomach; its guts were out, and its health was probably minimal. Still, the undead ran at us as if it were the last thing it desired in its brief life. Not much of a threat, I dug in my heels and sliced it across the torso, bisecting the ghoul before it even tried to kill me with its stump of an arm.

  "AoE?" Marius questioned, perplexed.

  "Sorry, dude, you're probably not up on the lingo. AoE means area of effect. It refers to any technique, spell or skill that affects a wide area." I explained, which felt weird as that was a common phrase at the company and probably here .

  "I understand now; I would assume any poor soul that hears my voice would be affected. Would that be an AoE ability?"

  "Yeah, that's kind of the definition."

  We both nodded, getting over this slight linguistic barrier. I was not sure who this new undead companion was. He very well might be an ancient evil or a pleasant dead man. That he could apparently speak Elder suggests his age. Few speak that language, and the system currently runs in common. The derivative version of Grimgardian.

  More injured ghouls came by one after the other. I dispatched two of them. With the other two defeated by Marius and his ghostly companion. He attacked with his own blade, slicing up the riddled and half dead ghoul with surprising skill. While his ghost companion phased through the ghoul and tore apart the one behind him with several swings of the axe.

  I tried out a few sword techniques. I didn't use established techniques because I had no clue how to fight with a blade. So I just tried a few different things against already weakened enemies.

  Stabbing the ghoul through the chest before deactivating my blade and reactivating it to slice up against the wild claw swing. But I could not reactivate in time, my blade appearing shortly after the claw entered my guard and nearly tore my face off.

  Jumping back, I quickly re-evaluated this technique as being utterly foolish unless I had faster reflexes than my opponent. But if I were faster already, why not just kill them with superior speed?

  Not holding back or trying to do cool moves, I killed them with several wild swings, slicing them to bits. Each attack proved how unskilled I was and in need of a teacher.

  With the corpses on the ground, I pondered my fighting style. We had a few moments before another wave came by. Staring at my blade, I wondered if instead of deactivating the blade, I could somehow shrink and extend it mid-battle. That way I could do some surprise moves while also keeping my blade available to guard.

  But that would have to wait until I had time to develop it. For now, we had ghouls to kill and whatever prick was at the end of this corridor. My money was on a lich.

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