He peeked behind the corner and couldn't hold back his smile. The man was a magic rogue. An absurdly strong class with one of the highest damage-per-second rotations out there. Han knew it ranked seventh from the top. However, they were in a low-level crypt, and the class's biggest downside was immediately clear to him. Suddenly, the figure paused, and Han smiled in anticipation.

  "Ah, wait. They're called crypts." The figure added and crouched down, readying for something.

  Exactly! This punk listened.

  Meanwhile, Han had snuck up right behind him. He had chosen this class to target for two reasons specifically, the magic rogue had fewer defensive stats than the regular variant due to them being distributed to intelligence, and secondly, the rogue was already muttering something under his breath and reaching for his daggers.

  The cast times!

  He used his zombie host's full jaw capacity to munch through the rogue's thin clothing, specifically targeting the gap just below the small leather chest plate.

  —Ding!

  The ping noise startled him. He opened the menu while wiping his bloodied mouth. A message greeted him.

  [ 2609 EXP GRANTED ]

  In an instant he went from level 1 to level 5, but Han wasn't exactly happy about it. He stared at the zombie's stats as it was now level 13. The zombie had taken the majority of the credit; the gap between level 8 and 13 represented nearly triple the EXP Han had received. But that wasn't even the weirdest part. The fact that the zombie had leveled up at all was.

  Han’s plans changed instantly. But before he could really think about it, he glanced at the ground. The magic rogue's corpse hadn't disappeared while not anything new to him. The body remained for longer when it was a PK. That meant that he was still held as a player, but since his hosts were mobs, the game treated him differently.

  He bent down and tried to interact with the body as he normally would, however there was no menu to loot him or anything. Not wanting it to go to waste, he tried it the old-fashioned method. He turned the body over, grabbing the daggers first — one was on the ground, the other in the hip sheath. Once both were in his hands, a new box appeared.

  [ ? Curved Iron Daggers - LVL 3 ? ]

  Did… did this bastard really run around with under-leveled gear.

  What was unusual was that he couldn't equip them like he would as a player. His inventory tab was empty, yet he couldn't put the daggers in. Hoping they would still function as weapons, he went through the hassle of looting their sheaths as well. The armor, though probably just as weak, really did look appealing. However, this form was already slow.

  Slow? Wait…

  His mind jolted at the realization and he rushed to the stats menu. His own stats matched his level, and finally his resistances weren't in the negatives, in fact, they sat at 4 across the board, with all his other stats at 5. What was different about the zombie was that not only had a hard-coded crypt mob leveled up, but he could also choose where to allocate points. This shouldn’t be the case as players couldn’t choose which stat to prioritize, Nira already knew which one they wanted. Without a moment’s notice, he dumped every—

  I’m calling them level-up points.

  The zombie’s agility went from a staggering 6 to a 12. A whole potato bag was lifted off of him. Now he was as agile as a fit sixty-year-old. A major improvement. At least now he had a chance to fight back if need be.

  Actually, no. It’s better to be… what’s the word… prudent, yes, prudent!

  While Han's host was already over-leveled for this crypt, the average player he might encounter here was now five levels below him. His final decision was to get another one or two PKs, then go deeper into the crypt.

  If I’m correct, the skeletons and the crypt boss wouldn’t count as “fellow mobs” since they’re a different race from the zombie.

  That meant he could actually yield some EXP from them, propelling his strength without risking a bad ambush. While an actual player doing this would be stupid, a time waster given how EXP scales with enemy level, his life was on the line. That thought process effortlessly shut off his other nature. That didn't mean it was easy.

  PRU-DENT! PRU-DENT!!

  Time moved again. He didn't even have a way to check it. Usually the menu had both an in-game world time and a notch to check the real world's. Now he had to rely on his internal clock, a clock that had been and was completely worn out.

  At least if I got hungry or bored, even.

  As the thought of staleness surfaced, he noticed something. He hadn't felt anything yet, no actual anger, fear, or sadness. The main thing driving him to continue was that he didn't want to take the chance and "live" forever with himself. As big a motivator as that was, he had to move.

  The zombie's passive skill nudged him toward a direction, snapping him out of his thoughts. Someone had entered the crypt again. With guides for the dungeon already circulating, Han wasn't hoping for another glass-cannon. He wanted a casual player. The perfect prey.

  ?

  While Han inched closer to his supposed prey, she had no clue. With skin that matched the darkness and a presence that preferred to reside in it, a player walked into the low-level crypt alone — a true healer.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  I… really shouldn’t be doing this…

  Despite being level 29, she was still far too weak to beat the majority of mobs inside the Blackwood Crypt. Her class hadn't reached the high-level DOTs, having only reached the beginner ones. Even then, it meant she had to cast a damage-over-time spell and literally hide until the enemy died by itself. She could barely comprehend how she was supposed to reach the Crypt Boss, Lich Feraun.

  The moment she stepped inside, her journal pinged, her quest had advanced to the next step, reaching Feraun. While she wasn't sure what connection the boss had to the dark elf race questline, it was strange that it forced her to go solo. She'd tried bringing a guild friend along, but without forming a party, the quest simply didn't trigger.

  She was no amateur. Despite having little to no plan, it had worked for her before. Now she faced the first mob, a zombie, standing still, not yet having noticed her. Without even needing a wand, she cast ? Inner Turmoil ?. As mentioned, it was a simple spell dealing 200 magic damage over 3 seconds.

  Once she applied it, the zombie aggro'd and began slowly, surely inching toward her. She was as decrepit as it but managed to keep her distance. With 6 casts, accounting for its default resistances, the total time to kill a single zombie was about 18 seconds.

  "Ai… this is so bad…" She face-palmed and sighed. Her mage outerwear was blacker than her skin, yet she still maneuvered through the pitch-black crypt without a single light source. This was because the quest was tied to her innate race: a dark elf. She wasn't recognized as an actual drow by the NPCs, so the whole questline was a way to prove herself.

  After spending nearly an hour skipping past zombies when she could and fighting them when she couldn't, she had burned through mana potions and was nearing the third crypt floor. The guide mentioned ten floors, the first three were basic zombies, and the deeper levels were just skeletons. One of the harder parts was nearly over, the skeletons would be a piece of cake.

  “I should’ve gone with a different cla—“ Her words were cut short when a blue box suddenly appeared.

  [ Curse lifted 0/1 | Time remaining until reusable 23:59:58 ]

  She hopped back and hit the moist stone ground. Her arm went numb. She quickly applied a healing buff. She couldn't see what had happened, but a figure rushed back and hid behind a corner as she caught just a glimpse of its silhouette.

  Once she had calmed down which didn’t take look, she ran. Despite how long the journey in had taken, a good minute of sprinting was enough to leave.

  “Ah! I-I love my class!” She said, lying down on anything but lush gray grass. What saved her was the combination of her race and class as a drow healer, she had received a necklace during the questline that blocked any curse once every 24 hours and it still had a staggering 358 uses left.

  While she lay there happily, the perpetrator was having a mild conniption. Han kept pacing back and forth in the crypt.

  I don’t understand… was it an item?

  The fact that ? Death Bite ? had failed really irritated him. The skill description didn't say whether it was a poison, a status effect, or a curse. He couldn't understand how the healer could have reacted so fast. He had heard of obscure items and talismans having unique effects, but that would mean it was an absurdly strong counter to him.

  Fuck… now someone knows about me.

  He could only blame himself. He got stun-locked by the sheer fact that she survived and had taken off running. The main reason he had even chosen to follow her was that she had no multi-target abilities. He could tell she was just reaching her DOTs through the debuffing skill tree, which meant she couldn't have retaliated even if he'd failed.

  Deciding to not risk this scenario ever happening again, he continued with his original plan.

  With the layout already in his mind, he easily found the path to the fourth floor. Without being a zombie, the brainless roadblocks would have slowed him down considerably. But here was where the fun began.

  Unlike zombies that were randomly spaced out, skeletons traveled in groups. The floor itself was much the same as the previous three, stone hallways with foliage growing along the walls, but now thick cobwebs hung across the path, ready to hinder movement if not cleared.

  The skeletons, clad in nothing, their bones controlled by an invisible force and each armed with a short sword, rushed him. Since they were far lighter, their speed surpassed the regular zombie's by a wide margin. However, Han's zombie was quite literally overpowered compared to them.

  While he didn't have the rogue's skill set, the movements themselves were ingrained through practice. He effortlessly dodged the first one's blind rush, turning his body sideways as the sword sliced the air with a light swoosh. Han didn't even need a dagger his fist was enough to pop the skeleton's head clean off.

  The other two, as brainless as they were, were killed without much trouble. He could only inwardly smile at the EXP gain, though he was interrupted almost immediately by another group rounding the corner, arriving just as the first batch faded out of existence.

  “Bring it on!” the zombie's mouth mouthed as best it could, shaping what Han was trying to shout. Skeletons kept piling up, creating pile after pile of bones. They couldn't have lasted any shorter. Eventually, they stopped coming, or rather, Han couldn't find any more to massacre.

  [ 250 EXP GRANTED x47]

  Despite gaining nearly double the EXP he had gotten for killing a player, roughly two hours of grinding had only netted him two levels. It was brain-numbing, and yet fighting, despite every part of him despising it, had somehow calmed him down

  Hell… I’ve got more than enough time.

  Seeing as he was probably dead. Might as well enjoy every moment he was alive. Anyway, he still put both points into agility, bringing him to level 7. It dawned on him that all of his stats, which there were far too many to count, were increasing linearly. That meant at level 100, every single one of them would be 100 as well. While it wasn't unheard of, it was rare, but possible for one stat to reach the hundreds by the level 100 landmark, having every single stat there was absurd. However, despite the luck, he had to accept that his levels didn't matter. After all.

  I’m a fucking mana tick.

  He wished to remain with the zombie host, which he had finally given a name. Zom. There was likely going to be a problem leaving the crypt. Since with Zom he blurred the lines between player and mob, there was a good chance he wouldn't be able to leave, at least not with Zom.

  After mulling it over against a crumbled stone wall, he sat up. Mob respawn timers in the crypt were cycling, yet nobody showed up. He trusted that his internal clock wasn't so damaged to a point where he couldn't estimate a few minutes. He started assuming a bigger picture.

  His real issue wasn't the respawn timers, it was Nira's optimization. There was no need for every unseen mob to exist; they simply appeared seamlessly once a player got close enough. The only fix was to get a player in the vicinity.

  He couldn't understand why the game kept choosing between treating him as a player and a mob. The context mattered, but it was a strange situation to be in. The uncertainty ached him a tad.

  Without much to do, Han decided to wander. Standing still wouldn't help, if anything, it only decreased his chances of being nearby when a mob respawned. His plan was crumbling by the moment.

  It was hard to lie to himself, he was down to his last few options. Power-farming low-level skeletons was off the table; the gains would soon be negligible. Understandable from a developer's perspective, but now he couldn't so much as wish them happiness in life.

  The single exception was the crypt boss. It gave the same EXP regardless of level, but even then he needed a bigger head start to limit his chance of failure to an acceptable value. Zero. His thoughts were disrupted when he heard a whimper.

  Not of pain, but immense curiosity. In the darkness that even Zom's eyes struggled to cut through, two faintly glowing blue eyes stared up at him, barely above the stone floor. From the angle of them, whatever it was, had its head tilted.

  After a moment, Han could tell what it was, and he was glad his first host hadn't been a skeleton. It was a starter hound pet. Although its name sounded intimidating, it wasn't though that only lasted until level 15 or so, when it would evolve. Until then, it was a rather small, black-furred puppy.

  Despite instantly receiving the stats, identity, and pet type, his mind lagged on the most basic concept. a class pet was meant that its master was close behind.

  "Pochirin?" A girl's voice came from around the corner, but through the brain tracker, he could already tell there were three humans approaching.