The mage type undead emerging from the gateway stood almost half again as tall as the normal skeletons and zombies. They wore tattered robes in dark grey colors, and ominous, deep purple particles swirled in the air over their heads before coalescing into an even darker, shimmering orb. Before Luke even made it to the tank, a ray of magic, born from that orb, shot out and reached its destination in an instant. From his terrible vantage point, Luke couldn’t see who’d been hit, but figured that person was no longer with them. He knew he couldn’t save them all, but it still stung to lose someone without being able to do a damn thing to stop it. Full of rage and frustration, Luke bellowed as he swung the quarterstaff over his head to bash the skull of a zombie in, turning the chaos of the fight around the fallen tank to the Integrated’s advantage. Together with several other fighter-type classes, he pushed the zombies and skeletons away, swaying back and then pressing forward to avoid the quick slashes from the skeletons and the rending swipes of the more slow-moving zombies.

  With the immediate threat dealt with, Luke made sure the tank had sustained no life-threatening injuries, then set off again, searching for the old man, hoping to reattach that hand. A sense that something was wrong washed over him, and Luke turned and saw the undead mages charging up another death beam. The red-glowing eyes inside the dark hoods turned in his direction as their skeletal hands moved, drawing patterns in the air.

  "SHIT!" Luke shouted, throwing himself to the side as, sure enough, the beam made another appearance. It missed by a narrow margin, but sheared through a tree trunk that groaned and splintered as it fell to his right.

  Leaves and branches covered him as Luke struggled to free himself. A groan reached him from somewhere within the fallen tree crown, and to Luke's horror, several zombies were in there with him, shuffling through the branches, falling, crawling, anything to reach him.

  As the quarterstaff was stuck under a branch, Luke had to reach down, put it into his inventory, and then bring it back out into his hands, but there wasn't much he could accomplish with the weapon. Since it was too long to swing among the branches, he used it to push instead, thrusting it into the creatures' chests and heads, but there were too many of them, and some simple shoving would not deter them.

  One got near enough to reach him with its clawed fingers, and several long rents opened in Luke's arm. He drew back and grunted, fell, and kicked forward to give himself a moment to get away. He rolled, got up, stepped over a branch, and saw a way out of the tree crown. Shouldering his way forward, he thudded into yet another zombie, pushing it to the side and off balance.

  With a snarl, Luke lifted his leg and drove his heel down onto the zombie's head, crushing its brittle skull before moving back to create some distance between himself and the still advancing zombies within the tree. Blood trickled down his arm, past his hand, and dribbled to the grass.

  The din of battle was all around him, and the undead mages released another attack, obliterating a new target. Luke stepped back, holding onto his bleeding arm, and blinked. An undead mage was gone, but as far as he could tell, no Integrated had reached them, and the spells flung in their direction were all met with a barrier. The few arrows soaring through the air didn't reach their target, either.

  Three zombies stumbled forward, pursuing Luke, who stepped back and readied himself, grasping the quarterstaff despite his wounded arm. They lunged for him, then stopped mid-attack. Luke wasn't sure what had happened, but he wasn't about to waste the opportunity. His quarterstaff slammed into the side of one's face, breaking it. Yet the monster didn't fall.

  The two remaining zombies groaned as their eyes turned white, burning with light. They sizzled and popped, a sickening smell emerging from within them as their brains burned inside their skulls.

  Luigi and Hannah stepped up.

  "Hey, you okay?" Luigi asked.

  "Yeah, thanks," Luke said. "Thanks for the save. Just need to take care of my arm. Can you watch my back?"

  "You better hurry," Hannah said. "Lots of people need healing."

  Luke sat down and closed his eyes. "I'll go as fast as I can."

  "It isn't looking good out there," Luigi said.

  Using the skill Needle of Life, Luke punched through his skin as he stitched the wound closed, grimacing and gritting his teeth at the pain. It wasn't a pleasant experience, and when it was done, he found himself covered in sweat. Upon closer examination of the wound, his Weaver's Eye revealed an infection, and Luke purged it with healing while he kept an eye on his mana bar. A considerable chunk of mana had disappeared.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  "Done," Luke said, standing. "Liza isn't with you?"

  "She's on the front line, helping with barriers of our own. But she tried stopping that beam, and it almost knocked her out."

  Luke surveyed the battlefield. The small group of Integrated was fighting with intensity and bravery, but they weren't making headway toward the mages, and many struggled to keep the press of the horde back. Without the tanks, the undead would’ve overrun the Integrated in moments.

  "What do you think?" Hannah asked.

  "I think we are losing," Luke said.

  Kirk, the commander, directed part of the crew in the distance, pointing and shouting rather than using his booming voice. Perhaps his mana had run out.

  The Integrated would not win this unless something changed. Racking his brain for some sort of catalyst, Luke willed the shop open, scanning the lists of usable items. It didn't take him long to find one that might just be what they needed.

  "What do you think happens—"

  Luke began and stopped himself. There was no time to discuss this. The price tag on the item was steep, but with the sale of the Groll Champion Monster Core, he had enough.

  "What?" Luigi asked.

  "Let's hope this works," Luke said, activating the item from his inventory.

  Item: Portal Containment: Used to contain a Monster Portal for 60 minutes.

  Using the item made it disappear from Luke's inventory, and they looked up to see the portal's pink swirls freeze and shudder, like it was resisting the item.

  The undead mages ceased their attacks, glanced at each other, then all eyes turned to Luke before they stepped back into the portal, disappearing as the portal's color dulled to a light gray and the swirling patterns slowed before coming to a stop, like cement drying.

  All skeletons and zombies, more than a hundred of them, dropped in that instant, all of them dying without a sound.

  System Message: Congratulations! You have reached level 6!

  System Message: Congratulations! You have reached level 7!

  "Holy shit," Luke whispered. "I got experience from all of them."

  "What did you do?" Luigi asked, as Integrated everywhere sat down right where they'd been standing, collapsing from exhaustion. Weapons, armors, and shields were stashed into inventories, allowing the fighters a moment to breathe.

  "I sealed the portal. It'll last an hour."

  "Won't they just come back in an hour?" Luigi asked.

  "At least then we can be ready," Hannah argued.

  "Can you tell Kirk?" Luke asked. "There'll be people that need healing right about now."

  Luigi and Hannah agreed, and once they were off, Luke hurried to a woman with a long gash down her side, from armpit to hip. She was on the ground in the fetal position, mumbling to herself, still holding on to a saber flecked with blood.

  "Hold on, I'll heal you," Luke said.

  As he worked, stitching her together, she didn't move or cry out in pain, and her staring eyes never blinked, not once. Several others were injured, needing his attention, all of them bitching and moaning about the pain. One guy even wept as Luke pulled a skeleton's sword out of his thigh while stitching him together and searing the arteries shut with mana so he wouldn't bleed out. Bunch of babies.

  A stunned sort of silence fell over the large group while Luke worked to keep the wounded alive, setting bones, stopping bleeding, and even removing the damaged part of a young pale guy's liver to stop the internal bleeding after someone had the great idea to yank the spear out of the poor guy's midsection.

  The old man with a hand was nowhere to be seen, and when Luke was done, hands and arms covered in blood, sitting on the ground, panting, a mere twenty minutes remained on the item.

  Kirk walked up to him. "Good thing we have a healer in our midst."

  "There are only twenty minutes left before that thing opens again." Luke nodded to the still unmoving gateway.

  "Your friends told me," Kirk said. "We need to be ready when it does."

  "How?" Luke asked, turning a skeleton's sword he'd removed from a patient this way and that, inspecting it. His eyes widened when he realized the answer himself. "The riot police."

  "What about them?" Kirk said. "Their guns won't do any damage."

  "We could give them these," Luke said, holding up the sword.

  Kirk took it, turning it around before he looked out across the field of dead monsters. "I'll talk to the operations commander," Kirk said, pointing. "He's still over there. Good thinking." He groaned as he stood, plates of armor clinking as he went.

  A few of the Integrated were getting to their feet and walking away.

  "Hey!" Luke shouted. "Where are you going?"

  A man and a woman in their late forties, both of them in medieval style armor, carrying swords and shields, blood flecked on their faces and even in their hair, turned. "We have done enough. We are leaving," the man shouted back. "This is for the police to handle."

  "You know they can't!" Luke shouted back and stood. "We touched the orb! We have to deal with this! It's our job now!"

  "My job is selling insurance!" the man shouted as his retort, before they both turned and left. A couple of others followed, not meeting Luke's gaze.

  "Not a great look," Luigi said from Luke's left, shaking his head.

  "Bunch of cowards," Luke spat.

  Ray appeared out of thin air and sat to Luke’s right, holding the severed head of an undead mage in his lap. "Yeah!" he shouted. "Cowards!"

  Just as Luke was about to ask about the head, the portal's color shifted and grew a little warmer as the pinkish glow returned and the motes resumed their swirls.