We might have underestimated just how many Undead would be drawn to our little battle. Instead of maybe a dozen or three enemies, as we would have drawn while Shattered roamed the streets, there were hundreds of them, maybe even a thousand. After a little over an hour, no more enemies managed to reach the roof through the stairs, my magic formation continuously pouring freezingly cold mist down the stair while more and more enemies tried pushing into the house.

Lia, in a bout of curiosity, made her way down the stairs, braving the cold, vitality-draining mist to find out what happened and came down with a slightly problematic report. We had managed the create a clog, the undead had started to climb across their dead as the mist killed them slowly, but as more and more piled on, they started to freeze until it turned into one big, messy pile of frozen Undead. Most of them had perished but that didn’t mean their bodies disappeared, they simply piled on. Only my mist could get through the narrow gaps between them, and even that only worked in a limited fashion. The pile itself was completely frozen by it, as it started to pool in front of it.

“So, we need to use another way to get off the roof anyway?” I asked once Lia reported to me. She simply nodded, and I looked up, into the sky, to estimate how much of the night we had left. Unless we wanted to spend the day in the city, we would have to leave within the hour, or sunrise might catch us on the way back.

“Why don’t you go to the edge of the roof, see if you can kill a few of the climbing Shattered, while I pump more magic into the spell I’ve got going? Should spread the mist further, kill a few more undead, and in about thirty minutes, we’ll see about getting off the roof?” I asked her, hoping to maximise the number of kills we could accumulate.

“I wanted to train the use of my hook anyway, maybe even a bit of magic. May I, Mistress? I’d need to drink a bit of your blood, if I push myself,” she pleaded, looking quite adorable in her eagerness to use her magical powers on the Shattered that were trying to climb the building. Most of them had failed to get up, the Ice I had conjured a rather formidable barrier to stop them from finding purchase, leaving them in easy range of her attacks. She might even be able to reach them with her claws, but would have to lie flat on the roof and swipe down, not something anyone sane would want to try in a fight. Especially not against enemies that would gladly take the attack, grab her arm and drag her off the roof in response. Shattered didn’t have any real self-preservation drive so a suicidal attack was not unlikely.

Once the determined time came, I sent one more burst of Astral Power into the formation I had created, mist blasting out and down, spreading a little further before the formation shattered as I stepped away.

“Let’s go,” I told Lia, “Have you checked which direction has the fewest enemies?”

“That way,” she pointed and I followed her guidance, stretching my magic into the Ice I had used to stop the climbing Shattered. The Ice didn’t react easily, most of the magic I had used in its creation had settled and was no longer under my control, so I had to make something new.

It wasn’t easy, trying to form a path off the roof, but we had time and it didn’t look like the Shattered were smart enough to realise what I was doing. Or maybe they simply didn’t care, either way, I managed to conjure a stretch of Ice across the gap between the building we were on and the next, keeping my hands on it to stabilise it.

Lia was the first to go down the slide, looking a little insecure but she trusted in my magic, trusted me to see her off the roof. It was a rather amusing sight, the slide I had conjured looking more like it was supposed to be in some sort of amusement park, with the countless dead bodies making an eerie counterpoint.

Silva went after Lia, whining piteously and not liking the idea in the slightest but at the end of the day, needs must and all that. She got off the roof, though I felt the drain from keeping the slide stable, Silva was quite heavy after all.

And then, it was my turn.

Looking off the roof, I suddenly wondered if just hopping onto the slide was such a good idea. Sure, I loved heights, but mostly on my terms. Not when I wasn’t certain I wouldn’t fall to my death.

Closing my eyes for a moment, thinking of the many times I had soared through the air with Lenore, I stepped forward, onto the ice and let myself go. My magic kept a tight hold on the Ice below me, though I could feel that things immediately went wonky, my tether to the Ice shifting too quickly to remain stable. I had a feeling it was the same effect that kept me from simply stepping onto a piece of Ice and using that to fly, while also keeping me from facing the recoil that should occur when I launched an Icicle at my enemies, only that it wasn’t quite like either of those situations. Thus, the magic stabilising the slide didn’t immediately fail, nor did the slide crumble, it only made me feel as if I was in a laundry machine that had its spin-cycle activated.

By the end of my ride, I was quite glad that I had made Lia go first. I stumbled off the slide, barely able to keep myself from face-planting on the roof, trying to get the world to stop revolving around me. Or maybe it was just spinning, I wasn’t quite sure.

Either way, it wasn’t really fun.

Stepping away from the slide, I considered reaching out and dropping it to the ground but quickly decided against it. It didn’t look like the Undead or Shattered had realised that we were gone, so I simply concealed myself and Silva with Darkness. Lia got the idea and followed suit, allowing our party to simply disappear.

The building we were on didn’t have a roof-access but it was low enough that we could get down relatively easy, just a bit of jumping cursing and falling, nothing we couldn’t manage with our rather high attributes.

As we were walking away from the sheer carnage we had wrought, I checked my log, grinning widely as I went over the numbers. It had been quite a successful night, and it wasn’t even over yet.

The biggest achievement I had managed was getting another level, bringing me to thirty-five. In addition, I had gained a level in my three primary rune masteries, bringing Ice to twenty-nine, while Darkness and Blood sat at a neat twenty-six. Lastly, my Ice Magic had gained a level and reached twenty-nine. Soon, I would be able to start wielding multiple frozen Shuttles, just like I had on Mundus, which would allow quite a few interesting options. I was considering whether to integrate magical runes on my shuttles, making them somewhat disposable while allowing me to channel power directly into them, creating Rune Formations at distant places with decent efficiency.

The idea to let one of my shuttles serve as origin for things like the freezing mist or maybe even some other devastating area of effect attack was quite interesting, something I would have to look into. I would have to make sure the magic I was using was suitable to be carved into Ice, but that only required experimentation.

With such interesting ideas on my mind, we moved out of the city, checking a couple more Undead for their levels, mentally making notes for the other people, trying to get a good idea how to fight here. For lower levelled people, the undead were both opportunity and immense danger, they wouldn’t be able to fight them to the point that they couldn’t get at them but at the same time, killing them would grant others a lot more EXP than me. Even Lia had gained three levels in the fighting, while Silva only gained two, though I was quite certain she had been close to her first level-up anyway.

Meanwhile, I had barely gained a quarter level, just barely covering what I needed to gain one. The curse of power, I would have to consider where to get stronger. Maybe I would have to start wandering somewhere, though I doubted I’d be able to find more powerful enemies elsewhere.

Maybe I just had to wait, to wait, gain more skills and diversify my power-base. Wait, until worthy prey emerged, prey that I could slaughter for my own advancement.