The battle wasn’t going as quickly as I had hoped. I needed to pick up how quickly I ended the undead. Right now, they were piling up at my dome, but they weren’t climbing on each other like the living rats did. The undead rats were acting just like regular zombies and skeletons. They seemed to have an almost natural order that kept them from piling up.

The only time that I had seen them act differently was in the forest when the trees were calling them. They would pile up at that point. However, now wasn’t the time to worry about why they acted like they were. I needed to finish them off and move on.

The Huge Giant Rat that got turned into a Hell Spawn had just stepped into the light. Which meant that I could hit it if I wanted. It was about twenty feet away, and I didn’t expect it to trample on the rest to get at me. Of course, if it had still been alive, it would, as the other one showed; that was how they acted.

This huge giant rat hell spawn was a zombie, meaning I had more that could damage it. It also meant that it could take far more damage than the others. As I was finishing off another few hell spawn, my decision to attack was made up for me. It turned out that, as a zombie, the thing could still do its acid attack.

So when it opened its mouth and vomited acid, I knew it had to die right then. It wasn’t enough that they were all attacking me. I was planning on killing the thing because I had to. However, the nasty smell from the attack changed my game plan.

I needed to get the acid off my dome, as it took 15 seconds off as soon as it was hit. So I dropped the dome, but by the time I got it back up, I was twenty rats deep in my pocket, which meant I might as well not have even had the standard up.

I shifted up several stairs and threw my standard towards the big guy. I wanted to see first if he would react, and second I needed it that way to use it later. Even if not turned on, it would give me a bonus to my passive healing, which I was about to need.

I drew my second dagger and shook my head. It might have been the most serviceable, but a bleed attack when fighting undead was next to useless. I needed something that could truly mess them up in mass. One-on-one, I was more than a match for anything the lich could send my way. I could outlast most things I encountered just because my equipment was better. That said, they had the numbers on me.

As my second dagger came out, I triggered room to draw. Which, while meant for a sword, worked fine for a dagger as well. The close by rats went flying back, and then I fired off the stone sphere at the big guy. Unfortunately, as I had learned before, the ring would only fire about once a second, even if I spammed my attack.

I jumped into the mess of the undead and started at them. I let myself slide into my skeleton death dance even though zombies were around. As I encountered them, I would drop out for just a moment to parry or jab. My daggers were in and out of their sheaths as I needed to make room using my belt.

As I spun around with my dance leading me to a Lay-To-Rest, I saw the big guy hunching up again for an acid attack. I forced myself to drop for just a moment out of the dance as I sheathed my dagger of pausing and threw my last spike. It was the one that had the same pausing runes as the dagger.

As the big one was just opening its mouth, the spike hit him. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I was hopeful as I forced myself back into the dance. I flipped backward and cartwheel kicked a skeletal hell spawn. My supporting hand was bit, but the vambrace held its teeth back.

As my flip finished, I took the jaw and only the jaw of the one that bit me. The rest of the zombie hell spawn stayed put. Which made me laugh a little, seeing what was now a jawless rat jump at me. I blocked it across with my new dagger, which caused the rat to fly past me.

Then I was back in the flow of the dance. As I moved, I shifted how I struck. The zombies, while they were slowing me down, no longer dropped me from the dance. Then as it got close to a finish, I saw the movement of the big one again. The front of its chest was missing. Clearly, I had interrupted the attack in such a way that the acid blew out its body.

However, despite its disgusting appearance, the wound didn’t seem to slow the thing down much. Nor did it appear to make it stop trying to use the same attack as the motion I saw was the acid flowing out of the wound as it jumped forward.

The big one was done being support as I moved through the horde with little resistance. I hadn’t finished them all off, but I had made enough headway that few of the attackers were unharmed.

I smiled as he was doing just what I wanted. By closing distance, he made it so I had few of the other ones I needed to fight. The zombie hell spawn rat was big enough to clog up most of the hallway. This meant that if I got close enough, I would have fewer targets to fight.

I jumped over a rat that was biting at me to land with both feet on the back of another one. I crushed it on impact and rolled out of the way as the big one swiped where I had been standing with its claw. The claw moved fast enough that it caused the wind to whistle through the holes in its paw.

As I came out of the roll, I saw that it had swiped a few of its own, which meant that I somehow triggered it to act differently. Before, when fighting, they were only making attacks that were controlled enough not to hit each other. Now, however, the big one was rampaging.

The acid attack fired again. Since it couldn’t make it out of its mouth, it just flowed out in front of it, puddling on and at its feet. Then it lurched at me. I jumped to my left and lashed out with my dagger feeding fire fist into the seax as its own magic of pausing hit as well. Then I used my new cinquedea more as a dagger than the slicing it was meant for and slammed it into the dead side of the giant hell spawn zombie.

Once my dagger was in place, I pulled myself up the beast. As I climbed up, I hit it twice more with my dagger of pausing. Then the fun started. I had about two seconds where it wasn’t moving for me to finish my attack. So I fired my stone sphere first at the head where the brain should be.

The stone sphere entered the head and crushed the skull. I knew that wouldn’t be enough, so I fired a second time right between the shoulder blades of the front legs. With the point-blank shot, the stone crushed its back. Then the pausing ended, and it bucked.

I wasn’t expecting it to go up with a buck. I thought that it would have buckled, and I would have gone forward. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and I was treated to the same arrangement I did at the start of the fight. Only I was the one that was being slammed into stone. My stone skin kicked in and drained completely, which was likely the reason that I was alive.

After the single buck from the giant headless undead rat, it fell forward. Its legs no longer worked right, which was honestly kind of amazing. Unfortunately, I had the dazed debuff, so when the rat fell, I fell. I couldn’t get my feet under me before I slammed head-first into the wall, which caused me to fall.

As I hit the ground, my armor was splashed with the acid attack that had been leaking all over the place. My skin started to bubble, and then my heal kicked in. I rolled over and got my right knee under me when I got slammed by another zombie hell spawn the size of a dog.

With the daze debuff still going, I fell back to my right once again in the acid. Or perhaps it would have been better to say still in the acid as my hands had never left. The giant rat was right in front of me. Its skull was caved in, only one eye seemed to function, and it was missing half of its teeth.

I wasn’t sure if it was doing better than me, but it didn’t give me time to think. It shoved itself forward using just its rear legs. I got slammed back into the wall by the cross between a bulldozer and a T-rex. My daze doubled, and my right arm broke.

The good part was I was now on my feet. The bad part was that the thing was still shoving. It couldn’t use its mouth to bite me because it lacked control now, but it was still trying to crush me. The smaller one was still alive but equally as pinned.

I started to laugh, which hurt my head, and I saw a concussion debuff flash. I couldn’t move my right arm, which was broken and pinned, which was where my stone sphere ring was. My left hand was free, but I had no dagger for it as the one that I would use was sticking into the side of the giant rat. My other one was lost somewhere.

My right arm was twisted where my palm was resting on the rat, which meant that my ring was aimed at the wall. So that wouldn’t work. I could fire off Lay-To-Rest, but that wouldn’t do much to this guy unless I used the large spell. Which I could do, but then I wouldn’t have much mana left over.

Nope, with most of my body guarded by the frame of the giant hell spawn, I spun up my Drain Mana. I had a range of about a yard because of how low-level my skill was. Once I was able to personally level this would be a game changer. Until then, however, life would suck.

I took all the mana from the little one pinned next to me. Then I started to take it from the big guy. As others got close, I fired off the spell at them. Then since I couldn’t move until it died, I started to use a new spell.

I shot a dark bolt at the next closest, which drew it closer to me. The smaller ones were still not climbing on each other. This meant that as I slowly killed the big guy, no one else would get on top of me. It would be until he died that they would advance closer. Until that happened, I had to attack them enough to override the room requirements that they seemed to have.

Once it moved up close, I hit it with a drain mana. Which then gave me a boost of fifteen mana a second. It wasn’t quite enough to give me a Lay-To-Rest every second, but it was enough that I could keep the healing on my feet going as the acid tried to melt them off. However, that was something that I was just going to have to deal with.

A group of six came running up on my right. They were just in range, so I started to cast drain repeatedly. The one pinned with me gave up its mana, so it fell apart, which meant that the big one shifted some, and I took more weight.

I grimaced as pain lanced up my right arm. My healing equipment had already done what it could, and my spell couldn’t move bones. I had an acid poisoning debuff which I didn’t know was a thing, and two limps.

The monster was still pushing with its rear legs. Its head was now hanging limp between the wall and the rest of itself, which seemed to keep it from crushing me more.

I needed to change everything as my plans were all not working. So I started to fire off quick casts of Lay-to-Rest. It wouldn’t be an instant kill, but it would put a large area effect damage on several of them at once. The hell spawn had gone from orderly rows that seemed disinterested in me. To bodies pressing tight to get at me.

It seemed they didn’t like the spell, but they also weren’t smart enough to run away. The ones that closed in on me, I cast my drain mana. Then, for those still waiting, I cast lay-to-rest into their midst. I could quick cast the spell every five seconds for 60 mana to create a five-square-yard attack.

The big issue with my lay-to-rest attack was that it only did one point of damage per second. That was because it was still sitting at level 1, which meant that I needed to keep them in the damage area for a minute before they died. Of course, the other option, since I didn’t think that one would work, was stacking the spell.

The problem was that my bleed debuff showed that I would bleed out if I wasn’t healing myself more often. The acid had melted through the bottoms of my feet, and I was losing blood. If it hadn’t been for the pain training from Sam, I wouldn’t have been able to keep going.

I yelled in pain as the dying monster undead giant rat hit me with a fresh batch of acid. The vomit smell mixed with the melting flesh from both him and me was enough to cause me to throw up myself.

I had to try something, or I’d die, and then Kasidy would die. The pain was getting too much to handle as I grasped for a thought, an idea…

I cast out Lay-To-Rest again on the largest setting. As it started, I thought about what Irwin could do, pushing himself further than he should. Then I felt it start to move the limiter on the variable use of the spell. It was just a sound difference in one word with the spell. Most of the time, I just thought spells. This time I spoke it as I screamed.

I noticed it was the same part of the communication spell that I used to reach Sam that charged the spell. With a simple change in tone, I could open and shut how much mana was used. With a change in the flow of mana, new power unlocked, and my entire body was consumed by one thought.

If I was going to bleed out and melt in the stomach acid of a zombie rat, then he would die with me. Maybe my spell would reach the lich and kill him too.

I pushed everything I had into the spell, all the mana that I was bringing in from the monster pinning me, I looped in. My brain caught hold of the “LINK” rune and in my mind I slapped it in place. Then I attached my other mana drains right into the spell. It made so much sense right then. In the pain, as I was pinned there, dying, the flow of mana and the limiters in place, I saw how the spells were formed, from the runes to the words.

My Ki Focus was just mana, not something else. It was no different, just another word. The range of the spell was limited only by the understanding of how it worked, and in the next moment, the flow of power balanced.

The speed a spell could be cast was different. It was used to ensure the parts of the spell didn’t collide. Just like packets down an Ethernet cable, it was timed to talk to the central part of the spell, the hub. But I changed that as I brought things through in my new spell. I replaced the hub with a bridge and assigned IDs to parts of the spell.

I adjusted my spell from Lay-to-rest to a self-propitiating spell virus. I spliced into Lay-To-Rest, Drain Mana, and tied the communication spell Unlimited Mana Usage into it. Then I put on it a short delay and used the rune for “More.” That rune carried the idea of creating three more of itself as far away as it could find a mana link.

I was laughing like a madman, watching my health fall faster and faster as I tied the end of the spell and let it cast out.

My mana was the first pulse of the spell which meant that I wasn’t going to see what happened. I would pass out by mana loss and then bleed out in a pool of acid. Just like in my spell calling on Sam to answer a question, my mana plummeted.

Then I knew no more.

* * *