“Mother fucking System bullshit!” Alex spit on the ground as he stared down the figure standing between him and the next grave-mound.

  Another skeletal sentinel.

  This one had no open grave to be put into. It was just another enemy Alex had to overcome. He knew how to fight these already, but he couldn’t dip into his stash of enchanted crystals every time he fought one.

  It didn’t help that skeletal knights, warriors and dread rangers still generated even more threat to Alex as he was out in the middle of the fields as well. Even as he stared down the sentinel, he formed a [Shield] spell, which sent a dread ranger’s arrow careening off into the dirt. The other skeleton staggered and charged.

  He didn’t have time to curse the system further. A skeletal knight came at him from the side first, its rusted sword a blur. He ducked under it, spun, and crushed its skull with a full-bodied swing of his dagger.

  Too slow.

  The skeletal sentinel was already on him . Alex barely rolled out of the way as the greatsword came down like a guillotine, throwing out dirt and rocks from below his feet. The sheer force of it sent out a shockwave, toppling a dread ranger’s arrow mid-air and throwing up even more dust.

  “ Nope. Nope, nope, nope! ”

  Alex scrambled behind a the body of a downed warrior. Arrows hissed from behind—the Rangers had taken up flanking positions. He raised the downed warrior’s iron buckler, catching one arrow with the buckler and deflecting the other with a [Shield] and sending it into another warrior’s skull by sheer accident.

  The system flashed a notification, giving him credit for the kill. That was nice.

  “ Alex, you’re at 62% aether capacity and dropping. Two knights, two dread rangers, three warriors and a sentinel.”

  “Yeah, I noticed!” Alex shouted back at Obby in frustration.

  The Sentinel surged forward , a blur of bone and bronze. Its blade came down in an arc that would’ve bisected him if he didn’t dash to the side, nearly slipping on a loose ribcage from an earlier kill as he went.

  Skeletons surged in around him like water from a broken dam. He couldn’t fight them all. Not here in the open, he’d be surrounded and beaten down with no way out. Alex dove toward another body, narrowly dodging a Knight’s lunge, then slid in the dirt to another killed warrior. He stopped behind its armor and shield once more. The protection it gave was basically nothing, but he both heard and saw the impact of two more arrows splitting the shield partially before being stopped.

  His breathing was ragged. Blood ran down his arm from a shallow gash. His aether surged with adrenaline and fear. He closed his eyes.

  Unpredictable, resourceful. People can’t take advantage of you if they don’t know what the hell you are going to do. So just go crazy, bro. Adam’s voice entered his head. It was a strange moment to hear his brother, but he knew where the memory came from.

  Adam and he were out at a meet for their martial arts regional. Adam had just made the quarter finals, and Alex was having a rough time of his match. His brother had come to talk to him between rounds, to give some advice.

  Alex ended up making it all the way to the finals that day. It was Adam who beat him in the end.

  Regardless, the memory came up at that moment, and he remembered the lesson that day had taught him. One, Adam could really fucking fight. Two, sometimes playing by the rules was how you always lost. So do things others won’t expect.

  He opened his eyes in time to see the sentinel bearing down on him. Its sword flashed downward again in a blur. Instead of moving away, Alex stepped into the attack, catching the sentinel’s leading arm with his dagger.

  The move let Alex get under the skeleton’s arms, avoiding the greatsword entirely. The sheer strength from the sentinel was a new problem though, as it drove Alex into a low crouch, making it difficult to move for any follow-up attacks the sentinel had. He didn’t care about that, as Alex simply rolled forward and underneath its legs.

  The sword crashed into the ground behind him, sending up a spray of dirt. Alex focused his aether into a spell pattern, and cast [Flare] while crouched directly under the sentinel. The skeletal sentinel sailed into the air like a scarecrow in a hurricane. Its massive greatsword slipped from its grasp mid-flight and landed in the ground, the blade embedding itself upright in the dirt like a tombstone.

  Alex didn’t wait.

  He sprinted forward, ignoring the arrow that grazed his shoulder, pain blooming before it was drowned by adrenaline. The Sentinel’s flailing shadow passed overhead. Alex dashed beneath it, reached up, grabbed its leg mid-air and yanked it down with all the force of gravity, muscle strength, and desperation he could muster.

  The Sentinel hit the ground hard. Bones cracked. Runes on its chestplate flickered erratically, sparking. It tried to rise but he was already upon it. He plunged the d agger into the eye slit of it’s helmet, teeth clenched, destructive aether from his [Demon Asura Style] surging through his arm like a live wire.

  The thing shrieked in a bone-rattling resonance only undead could produce, but its strength withered as the dagger drank the essence from the undead sentinel on impact . Alex’s muscles flooded with stolen power, and for a moment—just a moment—he felt like a goddamn juggernaut.

  He flipped the dagger in his grip, and he stabbed it again. And again. And again. Until the glowing lights in its eyes dimmed to nothing but gray dust. The dagger in his hand flashed, energy shooting up and down his arm. His head throbbed, a system notification blinking into existence, which he swiped it away. He’d done it.

  But there was no time to breathe . A Dread Ranger’s arrow found its mark straight into Alex’s thigh. It burst out the other side, spraying the dirt with his blood.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “GAH- fuck!”

  He staggered, almost falling. A warrior charged him , sword raised high. Alex, now fueled with pain and rage, ducked low and slammed a fist into its midsection, lifting the skeleton into the air and slamming it down in a spine-cracking suplex.

  “ Four enemies left. Energy at 51%. You are not looking great, buddy. ” Obby’s tone was dry. “ You should’ve increased your wisdom so I could help coordinate these fights when I had said. But nooo , you wanted more muscles and— ”

  “Obby, I swear to God , if we live through this, I’m going to focus on upgrading my [Glyphcraft] and then uninstalling your personality off that pebble.”

  “ Ha! Bold of you to assume you still have that option. ”

  A Knight came next, its blade far more refined than the warrior, its timing tighter, but nowhere near the sentinel. Alex lowered his dagger to the side in his left hand and caught the knight’s blade against a flickering [Shield] spell that projected from his right hand, The spell barely deflecting its descent.

  He locked eyes with the thing, as if eyes were even in there. It was just sockets full of hate.

  “Try something unpredictable , huh?”

  Alex headbutted the knight.

  The thing actually stumbled. He yanked its own blade out of its hand and drove it into the skull of the warrior charging behind it. Now the dagger, then a twist, bones, screams.

  Alex’s mad battle carnage continued. He had many more skeletal enemies to dismantle, and he went about the job with a newfound glee. For once, he felt like he was starting to embody the essence behind the [Demon Asura Style]. Battle for the sake of battle. Rage, wrath and chaos focused towards the goal of enjoying the moments of bringing down each enemy. An aura of aether radiated off his skin like dark steam. Unbeknownst to Alex, horns of shadowy energy flickered on his forehead once more.

  It was a beautiful feeling. And it also scared him.

  Sylvaris warned him about this. It was a powerful state of mind, Alex fought beyond his level while in this state, but it was one he knew he could lose himself to entirely.

  He wrestled back control of his mind and body, stopping himself from running off further into the endless field. Rage-filled Alex had wanted to engage the group of fresh skeletal warriors that were clawing up from the ground. He looked at the closest mound Obby had highlighted, and ran towards it instead.

  Adrenaline still pumped through his veins when activated the next grave.

  “ Wow, that was amazing. You fought like a mad man… and used 68% of your aether capacity. Get to cultivating meatboy or you won’t make it to the next gravestone.”

  “That was not amazing. I let myself go too far there. Sylvaris warned me about what the [Demon Asura Style] could do, I can’t become a mindless fighter.”

  “ But its so… fiery! If I had hair, it would be standing on end right now.”

  “No, I need to stay focused. We haven’t found the portal out of here yet. Those sentinels are going to start showing up more, and then who knows what after that. I can’t be risking all this effort we already made by going beserker mode.” He sat down again, letting himself rest physically while he worked on regaining his aether.

  ***

  The respite didn’t last long.

  The moment Alex's breathing steadied and his aether trickled back up to 73%, the two hours was over and the next skeletal wave rose from the ashen dirt like puppets yanked from invisible strings. Releasing sounds of cracking joints and hollow moans, it was a cacophony of the damned, and it kept getting louder. Getting bigger, meaner.

  He stood up, brushing the dried blood from his brow. Two hours was enough to build back his stamina, but his thigh still ached. The gash on his arm was barely scabbed over.

  “Here we go again.”

  Once more it became a rhythm. Fight. Kill. Dodge. Rest. Heal. Cultivate. Move. Alex himself began to feel like one of the undead, shambling to the whim of a master not of his own. There was no end to the torture that lay before him, but he couldn’t stop moving forward.

  A skeletal warrior charged him. Alex didn’t flinch. His dagger flashed out and took the thing's legs out from under it. He stomped its skull on the way past, moving toward the next highlighted mound. Another grave activated. Two hours elapsed, and another surge of undead rose to meet him.

  After his first roaming skeletal sentinel, two more sentinels appeared two mounds after. Then three more at the fifth mound after that. The damn System didn’t care how tired he was, it cared only that he kept moving. That he kept killing.

  The second sentinel cracked the ulna in his left arm and nearly took the whole limb off.

  The third sentinel impaled him through the shoulder, somehow missing the bones and arteries. He barely yanked himself off its rusted blade before blasting it apart with a desperation-cast [Flare] spell that left his vision spotty and the scent of powdered bone clinging to his nostrils.

  He had to chew through an entire squad of dread rangers with only 28% aether left and nothing but grit in his lungs and a fractured rib screaming every time he twisted too hard. By the sixth mound, his thoughts were muddy. His limbs heavier. Even Obby had stopped cracking jokes, reducing to short, clipped updates on energy levels and enemy counts.

  Then, finally, there it was.

  A shimmer in the distance. No grave-mound this time. Just a massive hill of bones and dirt that jutted out of the landscape like a broken tooth. At the top of that hill sat the portal. Iridescent, spinning slowly, like the eye of a storm. His salvation.

  Alex sucked in a ragged breath and spat out blood.

  “Well,” he muttered. “At least I don’t have to guess where to go anymore.”

  “ Yup, ” Obby said flatly. “ Only problem is the massive skeletal what-the-fuck-is-that standing guard. ”

  “What?” Then he saw it. It was no normal undead.

  The thing lumbered into view from behind the portal’s glow. A skeletal beast the size of a transport truck. Four thick, elephantine legs supported a body stitched together from what had to be a hundred corpses. Its tusks were made from curved femurs. Its spine was a ridge of rusty serrated swords jammed along its back like a butcher's spine. And its skull… gods, its skull was plated in blackened armor, with runes etched so deep they glowed from inside. Its eyes burned with twin red coals. It trumpeted a war-cry, an unholy shriek that shattered the silence of the graveyard like glass.

  The dungeon’s first level-boss.

  Looking at the giant beast, Alex didn’t feel fear. He felt tired. But somewhere underneath that exhaustion, buried under the cuts and bruises and the pulsing pain in his thigh,and the twinge in his ribs, something else stirred. Resolve.

  “Let’s finish this.”

  “ You are at 61% aether. One dagger. No plan. ” Obby iterated.

  “I have one.” Alex rolled his shoulder, flexing his fingers, and started walking forward.

  “ Please tell me it involves not dying. ”

  “Nope. Just gotta be crazier than a bone-elephant demon chimera.”

  “ Oh good. Because that always works. ”

  The beast thundered down the mound. Alex ran to meet it. He’d made it this far. What was one more fight? Then maybe, just maybe, he could get the hell out of this graveyard.