This was a bad idea. I knew it the moment I left the ground, my body sent hurtling into inescapable doom by a male elf who is three times stronger than his wiry body would imply. I can only make silent (as I am busy screaming through clenched teeth) fervent prayers that I don’t splat against the lid of the sarcophagus or miss it entirely, landing in the foul water that surrounds it on every side.

Please let me fall into the giant black coffin. Please let me fall into the giant black coffin. Please let me—

I’m smacked out of the air and go bouncing down the lid. Only the last-second reflex to cast Frost Armor prevents my bones from liquidizing on impact as I slide off the top of intricate patterns and smooth edges of a giant carved replica of the Basilisk while the real thing slithers around the black coffin to surround me. I only stop skidding when I desperately reach out and wedge my fingers in a random dent in the engraved pattern.

“You wish to follllow me dwaaaaarf.”

He roars in my ears and in my mind.

You’ve taken 60 damage.

You’ve taken 25 damage.

The System chimes but it’s a slow, languid voice, as if something is distorting its omnipresence. I cough blood and wonder why getting smacked by a snake monster didn’t kill me through the Frost Armor, but I shrug that minor inconsistency away as trying to stand without looking up at the Basilisk is rather hard with bruised ribs.

“I thought me and you had a good thing going?” Gods, sarcasm hurts, but I gotta continue. “I couldn’t let you leave without giving you hug.”

It laughs, a hearty, merry laugh that is filled with madness and merriment, making my heart shrink inside my chest and down into my navel. De’Polo moves right up to me, the searchlight of his eyes sizzling my exposed flesh and making me turn my head as far away from him as possible as his giant head gets so close I can feel the natural heat emanating from his nostrils.

He is all-encompassing, he is a god, and I am a mouse.

“I can take you home,” its voices drones, and I shudder. “The gods will come for us all. Why not enjoy yourself as the world you know ends? You will die here. The elves have not told you the truuuth.”

Andreen and Mixie lie to me? Well... no, NO!

“Cold—”

It happens quicker than I imagined possible. I’m smacked hard, really hard, into the distance, and I see myself briefly in an out-of-body way; my limbs flailing in directions they’re not supposed to, my head turned at a weird angle, and a cartoonish indent in my chest before everything goes black.

Sweet oblivion.

...

....

.....

Shame.

I’m not awake, but I’m also not really here... I’ve felt this before, but my mind shudders as to why this feels familiar.

You were starting to become really interesting.

That’s the Void. Why is the Void talking to me?

Oh, your Luck. You have 0.000001 Health left. That has to be a system error! System read Minor Lucky Star.

Minor Lucky Star :: Increase all chances of reaching desired probable outcomes by 50%. Desired outcomes that deal damage now deal Critical Damage ( Deal 50% more damage)

Mike Sammons, here is one freebie. The Overseers' would like the cattle to stay on the reservation. Authorize Lich Guard Skill.

What is Lich Guard?

It is how you humans say, get out of jail free? Take advantage, take sweet advantage, and live to suffer, and suffer, and SUFFER!

And then laughter unlike anything I’ve ever heard shakes the abyss as the creature I call the Void expresses an emotion I can only interpret as unmitigated glee.

Skill unlocked Lich Guard.

Lich Guard :: At less than 0 health yet somehow still alive, gain a ghostly astral form and the title Lich. As a Lich, you can cast spells without cost and with fewer restrictions. Gain 60 mana every time you kill an enemy in this form. You lose 1 mana every second, and any damage to your astral form is done as loss of Mana. When you lose all your Mana, you die unless you have restored at least 15% of your Health during Lich.

Somehow I read that before I returned to my body, and OH GOD IT—

PLEASE USE LICH GUARD

The System insists in a voice so loud it cuts the pain being speed-delivered to my brain so that I can concentrate on speaking through the cracked and bleeding lips and the collapsed lungs-

“Liiich... guuuuard.”

Then the pain isn’t there. Not ignored, not simply disregarded, just not there. I look down, and I see myself, well not really myself, just an approximation of myself, but the dwarf, no... this was the man I was. On the inside, my original size, my original legs, and hands and feet but not really, not even close. I am a purple and blue fog of something else...something I can’t quite describe with words, just feelings.

And the overarching feeling was power, but power that is burning. Mana represents an extraordinary spiritual feat and effort, and I am living that theory. This is extraordinary....

“You lose 1 mana every second, and you die when you’re out of mana.”

Oh right, I have a snake to kill.

I’m still in the cave, there is still the black coffin, and I see the elves below me. Or one elf. Andreen is hovering over my body, his face racked with guilt but also concern. Concern? Am I not dead? And not an elf? Why would he—

“0.0001 Health.”

I heard the Void say that, but now I– I can see it, a broken body, and a dwarf hanging on by slowly fading heartbeat. And Mixie? No, focus. FOCUS.

The coffin is still here.

I’m not sure how to walk or whether the concept of walking exists for a ghost, but I know I need to move and move now!

So I jet forward, my mind screaming at me to check my Character Screen-

Character Status

Health : 0/104

Stamina : 47/56

Mana : 57/155

Conditions : Curse of Grave Water - Greater Resistance (Your mind has proved harder to break than most, which has drawn the ire of the Basilisk! Kill it before he makes you submit) Lich (You are a creature of pure Mana, immune to physical damage but not much else. Your losing 1 mana per second)

I try not to waste time cursing. I only have 57 seconds before I die. So I try to move as fast as I can toward the sarcophagus, my new form showing me the eerie, eldritch glow that pervades the air around it, how reality itself seems to go off-kilter from its mere presence. How it emanates pure evil, an evil that seems to speak to what I’ve become.

I scream, a rage fueled ghost roar that doesn’t shake the physical cave but something deeper, something that affects those who understand Mana because what’s left of the snake stops slithering inside the coffin instinctively. That is the moment I need. I cast Frost Armor on the coffin, the spell leaving my mind quicker than I realized possible and rocketing toward the black box of evil. The sheen of the spell enveloping the outside and starting to creep in.

The snake screams. It rockets out the small opening provided by the closing lid and instantly finds me.

“YOUUU!”

“Round TWO!” I scream back and then start shooting an overlapping barrage of Cold extremities and Spine Chill, attempting to overwhelm with cold damage and gain FrostBorn.

The snake moves quickly, not letting the beam of cold power wash over him for more than a few seconds before returning fire with a spray of hot acid. I dodge it, fearing what it’ll do to my body as “not immune to much else” echoes in my head. The snake leaves the coffin and smacks it hard as we fight, breaking the frost armor. I try to cast it on the water itself, but then the water turns a warm red that seems to dispel my attempt the moment it lands.

“Domain,” the Basilisk spits out with venom as the fetid water turns a bright crimson and the bloated corpses of humanoid and non-humanoid creatures rise to the surface. I can even see the three men who dived into the river to assist their master in the pile.

“Raise Minions.”

The water begins to stir as the dead things on its surface start to shudder and scream into existence. Their bodies boil and rip into new grotesque forms, with slacking flesh and rotting muscles. They shamble not swim out the water in a clumsy yet determined gait.

“They can’t harm me,” I scream at De’Pollo

But he only laughs as time continues to tick, my less than a minute almost up.

“But they can harm your little elf.”

And probably rip apart my body as a bonus.

“RUN, Andreen!” I scream, but he doesn’t need me to tell him. He scoops my body up as carefully as he can and tries to run. I say tries because, while the zombies are slow, acid spit is not. I only have seconds left. I run toward the projectile substance while casting Frost Armor on myself using Multicast in the vain hope that the extra bit of armor will he—

Andreen watches me in wide-eyed awe as I collide with the acid spray, before covering his face out of reflex as globes of hot acid rain in every direction, diverted by my ghost-like form-

You have taken 115 Damage.

The force knocks me backward, but everyone that matters is alive...

Except me.

Character Status

Health : 2/104

Stamina : 49/56

Mana : 8/155

That’s 7 more seconds in this form. And FrostBorn has only ticked twice. He must have a way to cleanse status effects. And on top of Domain which can probably nullify my buffs. But why didn’t he use it before? It must have a long cooldown.

Andreen groans, and I see that one of the acid globs hit his left leg. He begins to collapse in a heap with me in one hand and barely any health to speak of. And the acid is still burning.

5 seconds.

I rush to Andreen and aim for his leg, and with more precision than I ever had in my entire life, I cast “Cold Extremities” in a single surgical beam that hits the corroding flesh and nothing else.

3 seconds.

Andreen stares at me and then eyes the zombies with his entire body tensing as the second fight for his life is about to start. I see he has my iron wrench in his hand, and it still glows with Frost Armor.

2 seconds.

“Please?!” I ask/plead despite being a ghost he doesn’t recognize with a voice he doesn’t know in a body that looks like it can’t touch anything corporeal. Even with all that, he throws the wrench toward me, and I snag it in midair.

Mike Sammons has equipped Workmen’s Iron Wrench.

This has no reason to work, me being a ghost and all, but again, overlooking minor plot inconveniences, I rush to the nearest zombie and swing hard at its brain with everything I have—

Thunk! The iron sinks into the bloated corpse, and it crumples under impact. The System chimes the damage amount, and I ignore it as I proceed to whack into the crowd of over a dozen. Each new kill gives me more Mana and more time, and after three zombies, I feel overwhelmed with a surge of power as their swings do nothing to my incorporeal body, but my iron wrench wrecks theirs. Some of the minions require several hard thunks before they fall, and in the sheer pleasure of hearing reinforced iron smack into decaying flesh, I almost forget about the giant snake crawling back into his black coffin-

“No you fucking don’t!” I roar, and this time it shakes the entire cave, as my body seems overcharged with life-giving Mana. I charge after the snake god, hoping against hope that I’m not too late, as the coffin lid closes and the eerie glow around it intensifies.

“Fuuuck.” Something tells me that if that lid closes, that’s absolutely it, and De’Pollo gets away scot-free.

So I try to speed up the best I can and dive into the coffin with it.

“NO!” the Basilisk screams instantly, sensing my presence. It tries to throw acid at me point-blank range in a panic as I put everything I have into Frost Armor.

The pain... it’s searing! Overwhelming, blinding, even in my astral form, even though I’m basically a ghost. Everything hurts, everything hurts all at once, and I feel the power that I was surging with dissipating into nearly nothing instantly.

You’ve taken 215 [email protected]#.

The System glitches and I feel everything begin to fade—

“NO!”

My brain overloads, and everything happens at once in an overlapping fashion. I cast everything – Cold Extremities, Spine Chill, Rend Enchantments, fuck, even Cause Fear from every part of my astral body in a giant surging supernova of frost. It lights up the curled Basilisk in a rainbow of light blues and deep indigos. My Status Screen fills up with everything, every status condition, every damage number, to the point where it’s no longer legible, and the System spits out errors, and suddenly things go—

10101010

1010101010101

01010101010010100

010101010101010101010

“Oh fuck, why does it hurt—”

Mixie has my head cradled in her thighs as she uses her hands to pin me down with surprising strength. She’s found clothes since I last saw her, but she put them on haphazardly and in a hurry. My mouth stings with the familiar taste of what I can tell is a healing potion, and everything feels slightly less broken than it did the last time. Only slightly.

Andreen is sitting up against the wall, his leg bandaged and some of his cloth on partially below the waist, but also shirtless, besides the harness for his scabbards. I also see the twin swords have gotten plenty of fresh use.

Mixie is smiling, not at me, but at the coffin turned over and partially sinking.

“This really hurts—”

“Ssshhh,” Mixie interjects as if I’m talking over a good movie.

Andreen is watching the giant coffin, too, but I’m not sure why, unless the Basilisk is still alive, and I need to get up right fucking now! But even the thought of getting up is negated by Mixie pressing down on my shoulders more firmly.

“What are we waiting for!? Is it—”

And suddenly, the coffin starts to disintegrate before bursting into hot green flames. Fire shouldn’t be green. In fact, I am pretty sure I don’t want to be looking at it, but the flames are so intense that in their brilliance, I almost weep. And inside the fire is the corpse of De’Pollo. Whether he is alive or not, his corpse dances inside the emerald conflagration and in the foreground in some distance far, far away beyond the edge of reality, I can almost hear a familiar voice screaming...

And the Void laughing.