We walk up to the front door, which is predictably locked and has a few hundred pounds of furniture blocking it on the other side. After a few seconds of deliberation, Daniel takes out his new dagger, the one with the spatial edge enchantment, and cuts an outline around the door, freeing it from its hinges and locks in a matter of seconds. Corvax pulls the door off and leans it against the wall, then he starts cutting through and removing the barricade with his axe.
The bear is one room ahead of us, and it has started moving all the undead except for its three armored guards toward us. As the undead start to group up and push toward us, I can feel the bear's mana form a denser cloud around them, like some sort of miasma. The areas where the undead leave, the bears' mana leaves with them, and a new idea pops into my mind.
“I’m going to get behind them and work from the other side. Don’t go after the bear without me.” I tell the other two.
Daniel gives me a nod, and Corvax turns around, a slightly worried expression on his face. His eyes move to my missing limb. “Run this time, if you’re going to lose another limb.” He turns back around, almost through the barricade.
I scan the now empty room on the second floor of the mansion for any hiding undead and open a portal once I’m sure it’s clear. The room is mostly empty except for a desk and bookshelf, both collapsed onto the floor from decay. Everything is covered in a layer of dust, but a few footprints on the floor betray that an undead was just here. I walk through the open door into the main hallway of the second floor, which has the staircases leading down at the other end from me.
There are about twenty undead still on the second floor, all moving to get down the stairs and into the entrance room, where the other two have just started cutting through the horde. I reactivate my sword and move down the hallway as stealthily as I can, but once I get a few feet away, the last few undead turn around. Once the first undead enters my sword's range, I pierce its brain with a simple thrust, killing it. As my sword enters the next undead's, I feel the bear gather mana there, in the same way I do to protect myself from blows. I feel some resistance on the blade, but my sword overcomes it easily and kills another undead.
The horde splits into two groups, and one of them starts coming after me while the other, larger group goes after Daniel and Corvax on the first floor. I feel a few of the undead closest to me start gathering mana in their chests, so I respond by making sure I’m ready to block any potential mana attacks.
As I lunge at the nearest undead and take its head off, it and two others unleash their mana at me, shooting three spears made of the bear's mana. The mana feels like death. That is the best way I can describe it. It feels thick and corrupting, like its very nature is antithetical to life.
I dodge two of the spears with a quick hop backwards, but one hits me right in the chest. I push my mana outside my body and make a thin barrier with it, blocking the death spear. It eats away at my mana, trying to reach my flesh, but I don’t let it. I reinforce the barrier and quickly dispatch the two undead that launched the spears. I feel several more undead start to gather mana in the same way.
“Two can play that game.”
I locate the bear, sitting in a dining room on the first floor, and start creating rifts right above it. I create rift after rift, and each of them gets blasted away by the bear long before it can form, but that’s ok. I just need to distract it enough. The death spears launch, and I block or dodge them once again and continue my war on two fronts.
I work through the group of undead as quickly as I can and ramp up the number of rifts I create to distract the bear, as it seems to be distracting it well enough to slow down the amount of mana it uses on attacks. About a minute later, I meet Daniel and Corvax back on the first floor, who look no worse for the wear. It seems we all had ways to deal with the death spears. I can feel some kind of mana from Daniel's chestplate that I didn't feel earlier, meaning he probably found a way to enhance the protection of his armor with mana. Corvax looks like he took a few hits, but his sunlight energy is already healing him, and it looks like it fights off the bear's mana that's clinging to him incredibly well.
I keep making more rifts near the bear and its last three undead, forcing it to waste mana and concentration on blasting them away. The longer it goes on, the better it gets at preventing them from stabilizing, however. With each rift it uses less and less mana and does it faster and faster. I start adjusting the rifts, making them sturdier and more resistant to external mana, but the bear still tears them down.
I point at a hallway at the other end of the room we’re in. “The bear is in the room at the end of that hallway. It’s made its nest in there and has the three armored undead in there with it. I don’t think it can leave that room. All the other doors are too small. We have it cornered.”
“This is a strong beast, and smart too. It chose this place to have its last stand. We need to be careful.” Corvax says as he takes the lead down the hall.
The door at the end of the hall is open, and through it, I see the bear with my own eyes, sitting there and staring back, still shutting down all of my rifts. The left side of the bear's face is a charred mess, and its eye is missing, likely from the one blow Corvax landed on it. It has black and gray fur and stands at about ten feet off the ground on all four legs. I don’t even want to know how tall it is if it stands up. The room it’s in is lit by the light of the sun coming in from several windows on the far side. Corvax is the first one in the room, and the bear growls as soon as it recognizes him.
Daniel and I step into the room behind Corvax, and the last three undead mirror us, standing in front of the bear. The room is about fifty feet long and twenty feet wide and obviously used to be some kind of dining room based on the massive collapsed table in the center of the room. One corner has a pile of mattresses and blankets, where the bear was sleeping, and another is just full of bones.
The bear is near the other end of the room. Tendrils of mana invisible to the naked eye but obvious to my [Mana Sense] are whipping off of it and destroying each of my rifts before they can form. I know the bear is using more mana than me, so I keep it up in hopes that the bear gasses out before I do.
There are a few moments of us just standing and staring at each other, and then a crack rings out from the man next to me as Daniel shoots a shot at the center undead. The shot lands dead center on its chest and causes it to stagger back a few steps, but it doesn’t kill it. It doesn’t even break through the armor it’s wearing, but it does cause a pretty big dent. I’m sure it also broke some ribs, not like that affects an undead much, though.
Corvax begins glowing red as he activates his [Berserker Rage] and charges for the closest undead, smashing his axe down on it. His axe cleaves about halfway through the undead before it gets stuck and he can’t pull it out. Corvax, in all his rage, just picks up the now dead zombie and throws it and the still attached axe at the bear. The armored corpse launches about fifteen feet before crashing into the bear, causing it to roar in annoyance. Corvax just laughs and charges forward, all four of his fists glowing from both his rage and sunlight energy.
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Daniel launches another shot, this time at the undead in front of me, and charges forward toward the other armored zombie. I charge forward as well, as my sword is nearly out of mana, seeing the undead dodge Daniel’s shot and take a step forward, swinging its sword at me. I put my sword in the way, expecting it to cleanly slice through the steel sword, but it doesn’t. It just bounces off after the blades meet.
I examine the sword a little better and realize that it’s enchanted, and the mana I feel from it is not that of the bear, but maybe something to do with sharpness. That’s the feeling I get from the mana.
We exchange a few more blows but never manage to land a hit on each other. This undead is fast, not as fast as the assassin was, but fast enough to force me to use a constant mana boost just to keep up. Even with how much I have to focus on dodging and blocking this undead, I still keep creating more and more rifts around the bear. I’m also constantly adapting them, trying everything I can think of to make them even harder to get rid of.
Corvax and the bear are in an intense fight. Neither is defending much, and they are both just giving and receiving blows. I’m surprised Corvax can take such powerful hits without being thrown to the ground, but it doesn’t look good for him. He’s clearly on the losing side of that battle. Daniel and I need to finish quickly and help him.
I follow the small movements of the undead in front of me and guess that he is going for a lunge next. I shut off my sword and try to act surprised, like it just ran out of battery, while also creating a new rift, hopefully one the bear is already too distracted to notice.
As the undead lunges at me, sword aimed to pierce my heart, I open five simultaneous rifts. Three of them are around the bear and have no real purpose other than to distract the bear. The last two, however, are connected. One is right in front of me, in the direct path of the undead’s sword. The exit is right behind the undead Daniel is fighting, right at the back of the neck.
The sword passes through my rift and straight into the neck of the other undead, easily passing through with its enchantment. I drop the hilt of my sword and step forward, grabbing the undead around the neck with my hand. I create a spatial edge around the inside of my hand with [Space Control] and [Condense] and push my hand forward, decapitating the undead with one clean move.
[You have slain multiple creatures]
[Level 25 Undead City Guard]
[Level 26 Undead City Guard]
[You have leveled up to level 22]
Daniel and I briefly look at each other before we rush forward toward Corvax and the bear. I pick up my sword and turn it back on as we run. Just as we are about to reach the bear, it swats Corvax with a powerful swipe, sending him tumbling backwards several feet. His entire front is covered in shallow wounds from the bear, and he has some deeper ones on his arms, causing his green blood to spill out and cover him.
I expect to see a pained expression on his face, but he just smiles and gets back up as Daniel and I reach him.
“Having trouble?” Daniel asks as he stops next to the four-armed giant.
“Just having a little tussle.” He says before he roars a battle cry and rushes forward.
I follow behind Corvax and see him pull something out from behind his back with one of his lower arms. It’s the dagger that he got from the assassin I killed. The only effect it had that I could figure out was the same corrosion that the assassin used, but weaker.
Daniel launches a shot at the left side of the bear, and it hits with a loud thud but doesn’t even break the skin. The bear shrugs off the impact and moves to intercept Corvax with another swipe. I break off from behind Corvax just as he catches the paw with all four of his arms, and I run along the side of the bear, cutting into it with my sword. I feel major resistance from the bear's thick fur and hide but still manage to cut a few inches deep before it feels like I hit a wall.
The bear hits me with a blast of mana that physically launches me back several feet, slamming me into the floor. I feel another three death spears all launch at me, so I quickly roll out of the way and get back to my feet.
The right side of the bear has a gash running from shoulder to hip, leaking dark red blood onto the floor. The bear lets out a roar and stands up on its hind legs, reaching a menacing fifteen feet tall or so, and letting out a huge pulse of mana at us. This pulse shreds through all of my rifts and leaves a cloud behind that makes it impossible to form more. There's too much mana around, preventing any rifts from forming.
Corvax steps forward and starts pummeling into the bear with his glowing fists, releasing a burst of light with each impact, which leaves behind scorched fur and singed skin. I rush forward and reach the bear just as Corvax catches another of its massive paws. I notice the dagger embedded in it and how the paw already seems weaker than just moments before.
I step forward and swing my sword into the bear's leg with all the force I can manage. I use [Space Control] and [Condense] to refine the spatial edge even more, but it’s still not enough to sever the limb, and my blade stops just after hitting bone. The sword gets ripped out of my hand and deactivates as the bear lets out a loud roar and smacks Corvax away with its other paw before turning to me and attempting to bite my head off with its massive jaws. I drop to the ground, dodging its bite, but putting myself in an even worse position.
The bear looms over me, and in its eye I can see rage, and fear, and maybe just a little bit of pleasure. The kind of pleasure you get when someone you hate finally gets what’s coming to them. Its massive paw is already coming down, aiming to crush my chest and probably kill me in one blow. I’m not in a position to dodge, and there’s no way I can roll out of the way in time. Its reach is too long. I’ll never make it. Daniel is behind the bear, about to hamstring it with his dagger, but it won’t be in time, and even if it is, it won’t save me.
I push all of the mana I can into [Space Control], creating a rift right up against my chest, and then spreading it all along my skin. With the rift forming so close to me, it’s mostly unaffected by the bear’s mana, letting me spread it until it covers my whole body. I manage to complete this in just under a second, and the moment before the bear’s paw ends my life, I disappear from where I was lying on the ground.
I instantly reappear about twenty feet back, at the exit I simultaneously created, outside of the bear's immediate range. A wave of nausea and dizziness washes over me, but another angry roar from the bear pulls me back into the fight. I notice the room has gotten a little bit colder, but I ignore it as I take in the fight.
Daniel managed to successfully cut the hamstring of both of the bear's legs, causing it to collapse onto the ground. Corvax frantically turns his head around, and once he spots me, I can see a bit of relief in his eyes, then amusement, before he turns back to the bear and starts pummeling it in the face again.
The mana from the bear has dissipated enough for me to teleport my sword hilt directly into my hand, and I turn it on while feeding it the last of my mana, only keeping a small amount in reserve for boosting my body.
By the time I reach the bear, Corvax is using two of his arms to keep its mouth closed, and the other two are uppercutting it, completely ignoring the bear's attempts to slash him with its claws. Daniel has jumped onto the back of the bear, near the head, and is putting the barrel of one of his pipes loaded with scattershot into an incision he just made with his dagger.
My sword pierces the bear’s one remaining eye just as Daniel fires his shot, and the bear goes limp in Corvax’s grip, dropping to the floor.
[You have slain a legendary beast]
[Level 52 Deathclaw Necromancer]
[You have leveled up to level 23]
[You have leveled up to level 24]