As the group started out Terry opened his stats and put seven into constitution and strength and ten points into agility. Then moving over to his abilities page, he finished off Summon Skeleton and Summon Bone Armor with three points each.

It took the group just over two days to get to their first destination. Over those two days the four groups of hunters ranged out and hunted what monsters they could find. All of them leveled up at least a few times, with Edith and Jean almost catching up to the others, Terry leveling up six times. The two women were proving to be quite the assets, especially after they got a few more levels on them to make their classes just a bit better.

As Terry was with Edith, he was learning first hand that her class was a pretty good reflection of her personality. As both tended to be somewhat uncontrollable and fiery. Jean on the other hand was more laid back and easy going, at least from what Izzy had told him about her. She pretty much had a monopoly on Jean so he didn’t get to interact with her as much as Edith. The three women must have worked something out as they were all getting along quite well. He just hoped that nothing would come between them and mess up their team work.

It was mid-morning when the group was able to finally see their destination. They had decided not to go out hunting that day, as they knew they were getting close. Over the last two days they had only had a handful of run ins with monsters getting too close to the whole group but the two hunter groups that were there were able to handle those easily.

It took them almost two more hours to get to the edge of the town. When they got closer they started noticing that it wasn’t like the other cities they had been too. There was no smoke rising from any place, there was no broken glass, no noises whatsoever. It was a complete ghost town.

The group slowed their pace and Terry had his skeletons circle the group with the hunters spaced around as well. There wasn’t even the stench of death in the air.

“This is weird, isn’t it?” Izzy asked from the rear.

“Dat be an understatement.”

“Shhh. Keep your eyes and ears open. This is definitely fishy.”

The group slowly made their way into the town. As they moved they looked in all the windows and doors that they could but still they didn’t see anyone, not even a body. It took them over half an hour to find their way to a grocery store. Even that was eerily quiet.

“Spike, Edith, Tabitha, Bradley and Susan come with me, we’ll check out the store and sweep it first. Pope, throw up something to conceal the group. Izzy, you know what to do.”

“Got it.” They all responded.

Terry and the five he called out made their way into the store. They each brought out a torch. “Tabitha you take Bradley and go down the front of the store. Edith you go with Susan...”

“Uh, no, I’m going with you.” Edith shot back before he could finish the sentence. “No offense Susan, you’d just be better off with Spike here.”

“That’s alright, I prefer him anyways.” She replied and then called Spike and they headed down the middle.

“Little brat.”

“It’s not like you don’t rub some people the wrong way.” He chuckled and started off towards the back.

He couldn’t help but think back to the other store that had the kobolds and he shuddered. He didn’t feel like going through that again. Although they at least had a few more people to help out this time.

The store wasn’t very big, it only had about ten aisles, a bakery and a deli. He thought it was weird that they passed a produce section but it all looked fresh and it wasn’t smelling. As the two made their way to the back of the store their torch lights bounced off cans, bottles, bags and other food that threw the light in weird angles.

They got to the back of the store where the deli counter was. Terry leaned over and looked through the glass, seeing meat that should’ve spoiled but was looking just as fresh as the day it was sliced.

“Are you seeing this?”

Edith walked over and looked through the glass. “Umm, should’ve this have all been rotten and spoiled by now?”

“Exactly. Something’s going on here.”

They moved away from the counter and continued on through the back of the store. Making their way to the backroom doors. Pushing open the doors their lights lit up the room and they could see that almost nothing had been touched. They didn’t even see any dust on the boxes or floor.

Moving into the room they quickly swept it for anything dangerous but found nothing. Moving back out into the store part they were met by the others.

“You guys get the feeling that this shouldn’t be like this?” Tabitha asked in a low voice.

“Yeah, everything is still in excellent condition.”

“I don’t like it.” Susan mumbled just loud enough for them to hear.

“I agree with her.” Bradley said.

“Me too, let’s get out of here and go to the other town. We’ll leave this place as it was.”

The six of them walked back to the doors and informed the rest of the group about what they found.

“Dat does sound weird, but can we make it to de o’ter town?”

“Yeah, we’ll have enough but we’ll definitely need to find food there.”

The group had just started to turn and head back to the highway when they heard a bloodcurdling wailing sound. The whole group turned and looked down the street they had been on and watched as something materialized about five blocks away.

From what they could tell it was white with tattered robes that were see through but they couldn’t see what wore the robes. As they watched another formed followed by another and another. Not ten seconds later there had to have been at least two dozen of the things down the street.

Everyone stared at the ghostly images and as one they all took a step back.

“Izzy, you lead. Take the shortest route back to the highway. Hopefully they won’t follow to there.” Terry said in a whisper.

Even though he tried to keep his voice low after he was finished talking it was like a starting gun had gone off as the ghosts all turned their heads towards the group and started rushing towards them.

“Go!”

With that the group turned and Izzy started leading them back to the highway from where they entered the town. They could go cross country if need be to get by the town. Terry and Spike were in the back bringing up the rear.

He turned and fired a firebolt at the ghosts, he didn’t take the time to keep an eye on it to see if it did any damage but when he took a quick look at his combat log he saw that it did but not much. He wasn’t sure if that was because of the distance or their ghost status. He didn’t really care at the moment though.

As he watched the group he saw that Izzy and some of the other hunters were starting to pull ahead of the rest of the group. “Izzy,” he shouted, getting her attention. “Slow down.” He saw her nod her head as they pulled back and got back to the group.

She lead the group in as straight forward of a line as she could remember. If it was just the hunters they could have all out ran the ghost as they had leveled up and had more stamina than the rest of the group.

When Terry turned to look back at them again, he saw that they had been gaining on the group and were now only about two blocks behind them. He quickly threw a leech life AOE on them and watched as the ones caught in the circle slowed down and the others rushed around them, or through them in some cases. Well, at least magic seems to work on them, at least to some degree. He thought as he looked at his combat log and saw small amounts of damage and health ticking away. He looked back once again and tried to inspect one of them. It came up as Ghost of the Past and was a level forty-one. Well that would explain why the small amounts of damage.

With that knowledge, he would glance back and cast his AOE leech life as often as he could to slow them down some. They were still catching up but a little slower while he did that. He looked forward and could see about ten blocks ahead of them the exit sign that led to the highway. He just had to keep them from catching up to the group until then, at least.

The ghosts didn’t stop with their bloodcurdling wailing the whole time they were chasing the group and it showed cause it kept causing a debuff of fear.

“Anyone else have any AOE spells that might slow these things down?” Terry shouted to the others as he just finished casting his leech life.

“I have something but I don’t know if it’ll slow them down.” Edith shouted back as she slowed and made her way to the back with him.

She turned and casted her spell. A line of red about five yards long appeared and then fire abruptly sprang to life in a wall of flame. The ghosts hesitated about two seconds before passing right over and through the flames.

“Well, shit. I thought that might have worked just a bit better.”

“It’s better than nothing, keep trying, even a second or two lets us get ahead of them that much more.”

The two of them kept turning back and casting their spells, causing the ghosts to slow every few seconds and others to push forward.

“We’re almost there.” They heard Izzy shout.

That was good news as the two were going to run low on mana if they had to keep the casting up for too much longer. They each casted once more before hitting the ramp up to the highway and racing up it. When they got to the top and the highway, they turned and looked back. All the ghosts were milling about at the bottom of the ramp and looked like they were brushing up against an invisible barrier or something keeping them there.

As the group was standing there catching their breath Susan walked over to Terry. “Why didn’t we just fight them?”

Taking a deep breath and then another before answering. “Well for one, I wasn’t sure if any of our weapons would work on them and two, after inspecting them it says they’re level forty-one.” After taking a minute to think about it, they had all leveled up a few times and he had leveled up six times so he was actually a level twenty-seven now. But still the weapons might not have worked and his magic was still only doing minimal amounts of damage to them.

Taking a minute to remember that he had six levels worth of points to distribute he opened his stats and took a look at them. He put ten points into strength, constitution, and agility and nine points into intelligence and willpower. Once that was done he opened his abilities and took a look. He had twenty-one ability points and he now had four more abilities that were grayed out.

Summon Skeleton Mage Curse of Disintegration

Ritual of Speed Blood Rage

He put one point into each of the abilities to see what they all did.

Once he was done reading them he put four more points into each to bring them to their level one maximum.

Summon Skeleton Mage lvl 1/3: 5/5

Level 1: The Necromancer pulls the skeleton out of a targeted body turning it into a skeleton mage and may control up to three skeleton mages at a time. The skeleton mage uses arcane death energy. The summoned skeleton is the same level of the necromancer but with average stats for the level + 10 stat points. Each ability point adds +2 stat points to the skeleton.

Curse of Disintegration lvl 1/3: 5/5

Level 1: The Necromancer hurls a curse at a target that disintegrates the targets gear (armor and weapons) durability by 25% over 18 seconds. Each ability point adds 5% to the durability loss and decreases the time by 3 seconds.

Ritual of Speed lvl 1/3: 5/5

Level 1: The Necromancer performs a ritual to enhance the speed of him and his allies by 25% for 60 minutes. Each ability point increases the speed by 5% and 7.5 minutes. Requires a pile of flesh

Blood Rage lvl 1/3: 5/5

Level 1: The Necromancer drinks a vile of blood which increases their stats by 100% for 5 minutes and adds 10 points to their blood poison meter. Each point in the blood poison meter will take 92 minutes to dissipate, dissipation will start as soon as the ability is finished and will pause if the ability is activated again. Each ability point increases the stat increase by 12.5% and decreases the blood poison dissipation by 7 minutes.

Blood Poison Meter - This is the result of the Necromancer consuming blood. When the meter reaches 100, the Necromancer will go into a blind rampage attacking anything, friend or foe, that they see. The rage will last 1 minute for every point over 100 or until the Necromancer is killed. Once the meter is below 100 the dissipation will continue at the rate of the level at which the points were added.

After reading that a couple of them would require piles of flesh and vials of blood he was glad that he had saved all that stuff when he was just starting out. He checked his inventory and saw that he had a good-sized stack of flesh and a few hundred vials of blood. Though after reading about the Blood Rage ability he wasn’t too sure he would want to use it that much. Though being able to double his stat points for five minutes could be a life saver, he would just have to keep an eye on that blood poison meter.

He thought about the meter and how long it would take for one use to dissipate. He figured it would take about fifteen and a half hours or so to clear the meter, at least right now. He would have to keep that ability in his back pocket.

Taking one more look down the ramp at the ghosts he got everyone back on the highway again and moving towards the other town. He hoped that one would be better, at least with the fire and destruction they knew how to handle that.