I hissed as I opened my eyes and cracked my neck. Stars, this felt weird. My whole body tingled, like a dozen feather-bearing runts launching a simultaneous tickle attack. Kinda reminded me of when I’d first appeared in this mana dense cave, and come to think of it that was likely for good reason. The soul energy was magic too, and my senses were boosted by at least twice as much as before.

I went over my new values and double checked everything.

Speed: 6

Agility: 5

Dexterity: 4

Constitution: 6

Toughness: 3

Metabolism: 11

Senses: 14

Yup, my Senses was more than twice as high as before, and that seemed about right. Every breath sounded louder, and I could hear Garrett’s heartbeat without even trying. Nice. I swiveled my ears around to get used to it. More sensitive than before, but it didn’t seem too bad. I’d have to wait and see what it was like somewhere more noisy. Hopefully I wouldn’t run into any more enemies with sonic attacks before I had a chance to get used to my new hearing.

Garrett grunted and stretched. “Alright, I’ve invested most of my levels. I’m saving one for a Skill, but it’ll take me a while to solidify that.”

“Skill?”

Garrett clarified grudgingly, but he did clarify. “You can spend your levels on more than Stats. Skills let you dedicate a level to getting a distinct ability. Something like my Venom Fang.”

Would have been nice to know that before I invested everything in stats. Still, I would have made the same choice either way, so I’d forgive the human for now. “I focussed on upgrading Senses, with the rest getting what was left.”

“Senses?” Garrett frowned. “Sure that’s the wisest decision?”

I hooked a thumb over my shoulder at the puddle of alchemical goo that was providing our only light. “How many of those you got?”

Garrett winced. “Not enough. They last a long time, especially if I don’t expose all of it to air at once, but not forever. I’ll have to see if I can get some kind of Darkvision skill…”

With a Senses of 14 I could see for the both of us if I had too, but I wasn’t going to point that out. I wouldn’t trust him in the dark either.

The two of us spent another ten or so minutes in the tomb before moving, completing various necessary tasks. Garrett was repacking all his crap, which I graciously let him. I’d looted it fair and square, but I couldn’t afford to pick fights if I wanted to use the adventurer to haul my ass out of here. I picked out what thorns were still salvageable and rebound them to where they’d gotten torn from my club. It wasn’t quite enough to fill in the blanks, but it was better than nothing.

Once I was done I went to the most hollow sounding bit of wall and lightly rapped it with one knuckle while holding one newly enhanced ear against it. Yeah, definitely hollow. Whoever had sealed up the undead bastard hadn’t bothered to dig out their own tomb, and had just thrown up walls in some existing cave in the dungeon complex.

That meant we could break through, as long as we didn’t have a problem letting anything outside knowing we were coming. I glanced back at Garrett. “Got any excavation tools in one of those pouches?”

Garrett didn’t bother to look up from the glowing ooze he was trying to scrape back into a spare vial. “I’m an adventurer, not a miner.”

Right, cause running around beneath the earth for a living didn’t give you any overlap there. The bastard had the room for a full alchemist’s cabinet and he hadn’t bothered with so much as a shovel. Typical.

I turned back to my task and felt my way over the carved bas relief to pick out the fine lines where individual blocks met each other. There was little to no mortar, which was impressive. With no margin of error each block had to be precisely fitted, and I didn’t see so much as a single misaligned detail in the carvings that sprawled across multiple stones.

Unfortunately the fruits of the ancient stonemason’s labor were my loss. There was no mortar to slowly pick away, and no gap wide enough to pry at. The only evident solution was pure dumb ol’ brute force.

Speaking of the devil, Garrett was wrapping up with his alchemical light. At least he had the sense to conserve it. “Can you hit hard enough to break stone?”

Garrett walked over to join me by the wall, although he kept a few feet between us. “That’s the plan, isn’t it?”

“I was holding out hope we’d be able to pry apart the bricks slowly and quietly. Reality just had to prove me wrong.” I looked over at the adventurer. He’d actually managed to pull a brand-new cloak out of his ass when I wasn’t looking, and had draped it around his shoulder above his bandolier of pouches and knives. “Daggers aren’t a brute force kind of tool. Are your’s really sharp enough to cut stone?”

That would be nice. I can’t believe I was hoping for an adventurer to have sharper weapons, but that was what my life had come to now.

“That’s a good question.” Garrett muttered, and he drew a dagger to lightly draw it across the stone. It cut with a narrow furrow with a high-pitched screech. He turned the dagger over in his hands, examining the edge and lightly running his thumb over it. “So I can, apparently. I wouldn’t want to hack through a full wall though, the edge on this is ruined. I’d break half my daggers if I had to go with that option.”

“Are you seriously so green you don’t even know what you can cut?”

Garrett glanced down at me, but didn’t rise to the provocation. “I’m not so green I’d ruin a perfectly good edge by stabbing rocks for no reason.”

I grunted. He had me there. “Well, since you don’t have a convenient pickaxe, my next best idea is using the sarcophagus as a battering ram.” Making Garrett use the sarcophagus as a battering ram that is. No way my spindly goblin arms were going to stand up to that.

Garrett shot a skeptical look over at the massive piece of stone. “Not gonna work. Neither of us have a Strength Stat, and we’re sure as hell not budging that without it. I think I’m just going to have to punch through the wall.”

True. Someone with human strength might be able to move the lid, but the undead had shattered it into dozens of pieces when it busted out. Except… “How the hell are you going to punch through a wall without a Strength Stat?” Honestly, carving through it with a dagger sounded easier. Humans were such bullshit.

“With my Attack and Power Stats.”

I stared at the human flatly. “All right, just tell me your damn stats.”

Garrett hesitated, but he couldn’t think of a good excuse or plausible lie fast enough to get away with it. “Attack, Power, Defense, and Body.”

I grunted. “And what they mean?”

Garrett sighed. “Attack enhances, you know, attacks. Power adds a sudden surge of power to movements. Similar to what a Strength Stat would do, but it only really works for sudden forceful movements.” He mimed a few punches in slow motion, then went full speed. As soon a he passed some invisible cutoff the Stat kicked in, and his fists moved fast enough to crack the air.

“It lets me strike harder and jump farther, but not lift anything heavier.” He gestured at the sarcophagus. “So no use there. Defense reduces damage, directly weakening incoming attacks. Body is a catchall, a super broad Stat to paste over the weaknesses of having so many overspecialized ones. It enhances all my physical abilities, if far less than a more specific stat.”

An interesting way to do things I supposed. More interesting was how thorough Garrett had been in his explanation once I’d gotten him to start. He’d obviously spent a lot of time learning this stuff, and it showed.

“And you think that’ll let your fists break stone.”

Garrett rolled his eyes. “Only one way to find out.”

The adventurer drew back his fist and sunk down into a deep stance before surging forwards and slamming into the wall like a hammer. The crash echoed off the stone walls and back at my sensitive ears. I hissed at Garrett, but the adventurer was too busy hopping around and shaking his hand.

“Fuck, fuck, goddam!” Stupid human. It was only a little bit of blood, why he’d barely skinned his knuckles.

Of course, that was worse than the wall had taken, it was barely cracked. “Nice going genius. Why don’t you use one of those rocks instead of your fists.”

Garrett just glared at me and kept nursing his wound. It was almost enough to make me regret not pointing out the pile of conveniently sized stones before he’d gone and hurt himself. Almost.

I walked over to the broken up chunks of the sarcophagus lid and rooted through it for a good looking piece. By the time I’d found one Garrett was more or less done skulking and I tossed it over to him. “You’ve already alerted anything listening, so start smashing.”

That proved much easier. The only issue was Garrett’s grumbling, but he was more upset that he couldn’t break bricks with his face than anything else. The fact that he had considered it a reasonable possibility after just a few level ups worried me. Was that really all it took to give a human the strength of an ogre?

Evidently not. I shouldn’t concern myself over much with Garrett’s opinion, he’d likely seen some other adventurer do it and assumed that meant he could too. He’d be that strong one day, but no day soon. Hopefully.

The rock shattered in Garrett’s hands and he leaned in to check his progress. “Got a decent start.”

I grunted and heaved him another rock. His head snapped over with wide eyes and he barely managed to catch it before it fell down at his feet. Even then, he had to bend his entire body and sink into his stance to absorb the weight.

Garrett scowled at me. “Watch it.”

Oh, I was. Wasn’t sure I liked what I saw though. His Power Stat did little to aid manual labor, and I doubted it helped his endurance much either. Deadly for direct combat, not so great for long-term survival in a hostile environment. I’d have to baby him all through the dungeon, and wouldn’t stand a chance in a direct conflict.

So all shit I’d expected, but getting it confirmed still sucked.

Garrett slammed the rock down again and broken fragments of stone sprayed out. Thankfully from the wall this time, I didn’t want to spend all day replacing his broken rocks.

I went over to the same wall, far enough away to be safe from the jagged shrapnel, and put my ear to the wall. I did my best to pick out any other sound in between the crashes of Garrett’s improvised hammer impacting stone. I couldn’t hear anything of note, but that wasn’t saying much. Even my ears could only do so much.

Garrett let out out a deep breath as he leaned in to peer through the hole he’d made. The inch wide gap was surrounded by a small crater of chips and cracks, but he had a long way to go if we wanted to get out of here. I approved of his caution in theory, but now wasn’t really the time. I doubted he was going to see much through that even if he didn’t have worthless human night vision.

Garrett jerked back just in time to avoid a slimy tendril as it rammed its way through the hole. He retreated a few feet to pant in peace. He eyed the tendril warily, as did I, but it showed no sign of squirming through.

“What the hells is that?” Garrett asked as he fingered one of his daggers.

I grunted and moved in closer. The tendril didn’t really look anything like the tentacled monster that’d chased me up above, and it couldn’t be very long either. It writhed and struggled with plenty of energy. I doubted it had the restraint to limit itself to probing attacks. It really looked a lot like a… “Is that a tongue?”

Garrett squinted at it. “It just might be, yeah. Too long to be human, though.”

I pointed at the deathly pale tongue. “Too pale to be goblin.”

“Human tongues aren’t- ugh, never mind.”

I got in even closer and got a good sniff. My face scrunched up and I backed off waving a hand in front of my nose. It smelled like the kind of meat that looked fine while still bearing enough rot to kill you. “That’s not human or goblin. It’s nothing living at all.”

Garrett froze for half a second before sighing and picking out one of his daggers. “Of course it is. At least this one looks dumber than the last.”

The adventurer stepped forward, all nervousness gone now that he had some box to put the previously nebulous threat in. He rammed his weapon, a slender bladed dagger chased in silver, up through the tongue and into the brain behind it. He braced his boot on the wall and ripped it back out, letting the unnaturally elongated tongue slither back out as the corpse collapsed.

Garrett winced as he looked at the sizzling gunk coating his blade. “Ghoul. Zombie wouldn’t die to one strike.”

Fucker had a holy blade this whole time and he hadn’t used it? I glared at his back, but suppressed it before he saw it. I’d probably forget half of what I was lugging around if had as much storage space as Garrett seemed to have.

Garrett flicked his dagger and sprayed ghoul brains over the walls. “Ghouls hunt in packs. There might be more.”

His words were confirmed by the sound of slurping and crunching from the other side. Hungry bastards were willing to take their own slain comrades if they couldn’t get living flesh. I winced. Even goblins didn’t eat that messily.

I shrugged. “At least we know what’s out there now.” I gestured at the wall. “Until then, we still need to get out of here.”

Garrett made no move to resume working. “Why am I the only one doing this?”

“I hadn’t realized I was a big, muscly human with a Power Stat. Oh wait, that’s you!”

Garrett’s gaze became distinctly hostile. “Shit help is better than no help at all. If I’m going to be working right up against a wall with gods know how many ghouls on the other side I’m not going to do it alone.”

He had me there. I needed a way to not do anything that stupid. I couldn’t afford to exhaust myself this early, it’d slow me down, and that would kill me faster than near anything else.

“Got any rope?”

“I- what?” There was better. Confusion was better than hostility, though it could reverse back to it quite quickly.

“We can make this more efficient and less dangerous at the same time. We can hardly slap a proper handle on this rock with what we’ve got, but we can tie a rope to it. Then you can swing it into the wall from halfway across the room, and with a hell of a lot more punch too.”

Garrett frowned. “That… would be smart.”

“But you don’t have rope.” I guessed. He certainly didn’t seem happy, and forgetting something so critical was definitely something Garrett would do.

“No. I do.” Garrett was still eyeing me oddly, but he did start getting out some rope. Wasn’t sure what his problem was, but whatever. I was gonna watch my back around him anyway.

I had to step in and help out when Garrett proved incapable of proper knotwork, but otherwise it went smoothly. We looped the rope around and through itself to form a functional harness and Garrett hefted the rock experimentally.

“It’s doable.” Garrett looked over at the wall. “Watch out for more of the bastards.”

I pulled out a javelin from the bundle on my back and retreated to the rear of the room. I didn’t want to be anywhere the wall when ghouls started boiling through, and standing too close to Garrett’s flail wasn’t exactly a bright move either.

The adventurer swung the stone around his body, slowly building up speed. At first it barely cleared the ground, but as he swung it faster and faster it rose to whirl around his head. The rope blurred into one circle and the air howled with speed before he released it, sending the stone weight at the end hurtling towards the wall.

I folded my ears in on themselves and covered them with my hands just in time to block out the resounding crash of the impact. The crater around the previous hole had been blown completely apart, and the resulting opening was easily as wide around as a human head.

You could tell, because a decisively inhuman heads jammed its head through barely a second after the rock had passed. In life it may have passed for human, maybe even been human, but it death its worm white skin stretched tight around a narrow skull and its horrific tongue writhed slaveringly from bewtween razor edged teeth.

“RAAAARGH!” It howled just in time to catch my hurled javelin right in the roof of its mouth. I’d been aiming for the eyes, but I’d take what I could get. The blow was more than enough to kill a natural beast, but failed to convince the ghoul it ought to just give it up and die. I was readying my second javelin when the ghoul dissappeared back from whence it came, sputtering out choking screams as it went.

Garrett yanked the rock back in as soon as the unliving obstruction was cleared, and none too soon as a new ghoul eagerly replaced it. I met its appearance with a javelin to the head, but the bastard ducked down and let it glance off the top of its skull. I earned nothing more than a furious hissing glare for my trouble.

The creature wormed and writhed, but proved incapable of squeezing more than its head through the gap, even as Garrett continued to build up speed for his second swing of the flail. My eyes widened. “Garrett, wa-”

The flail shot out again, slamming into the ghoul’s head and crushing it like an overweight melon. The right half of the ghoul’s head turned into a spray of broken bone and obliterated gray matter, doing nothing to slow the flail before it impacted the wall.

Stone cracked. Rocks fell.

And the hole was now wider than a man’s- or a ghoul’s- shoulders.