To kill a fighter-zombie. Even with my new spell, such a feat seemed impossible. Still, even if I wouldn’t be able to do it, I would at least be able to learn something for next time. Always think positive. But of course I wouldn’t pick a fight if there wasn’t at least a perceived chance of victory.

My previous schemes didn’t need much preparation, but this one was different. In fact, it mostly relied on me creating certain objects and placing them in specific locations. The locations had already been mapped out in my mind, so my main concern was gathering everything I for the plan to work.

To get the necessary materials I first went to one of the storage rooms in the basement. This room was mostly filled with pottery of all kinds, among which there also were bottles designed to hold fluids. I picked some of those that had a lid, a volume of roughly half a litre and a strap attached, hung them over two of my arms and moved out towards the previously mentioned ‘specific locations’. While walking I began working on the bottles.

The theory for this project was created when I made the ice forming spell. Back then I had tried to encase explosive gasses in an ice bubble. The idea behind it was to create an object that would allow me to cause an explosion whenever and wherever I wanted.

By using the explosion spell normally, I had to spend a certain amount of time to concentrate the explosive gasses at a point before setting them off. And if the enemy moved away from that location or didn’t even go there in the first place, it was pretty much wasted. But by storing the gasses in an easily movable object I would be able to cut the preparation time and activate it anywhere I wanted.  And it worked.

The bubbles made a good container and were easy to throw. Setting off the gasses wasn’t a problem either. But of course ice didn’t have the highest durability in the face of time, meaning that it would only be useful for short term use. Therefor I began searching for other ways to store the explosive gasses.

That’s when I remembered the bottles I had seen in one of the storerooms. Even though I wanted to try it out as soon as possible, I decided to first finish the spell creation experiments before trying anything else. And afterwards I thought it was better to first increase my mana. That’s how I got there.

Since I wanted to use the bottles as actual weapons and not just a plaything, I had a problem that didn’t occur with the bubbles, which was the correct adjustment of gas pressure. I didn’t place much importance on it when I had experimented with the ice bubbles, but I wanted the bottles to have as much destructive power as necessary.

Because of this, the thin walls of the first bottle were torn apart by the pressure. Luckily I was able to discern the threshold, allowing me to avoid any further accidents. After filling in the gasses I closed the lids and added a lager of ice to the bottleneck, just to be sure it wouldn’t open up.

By the time all bottles were filled up, I had arrived at the room I wanted to make into a base camp of sorts. It already contained some of the books I had collected for a later date, so I decided to also use it for other purposes.

I placed 10 of my self-made bombs in a corner and went to prepare an area for my fight against the fighter-zombie with 9 bottles remaining. On the way I also picked up five daggers from broken skeletons and attached them to my body with ice.

Taking them off afterwards would be a bit complicated, but I intentionally made the connections in a way that covered neither blade, nor handle to an extend that would compromise their use afterwards. My plan was to heavily relied on traps, but having a weapon at hand is always a good idea.

To construct the first trap, I first had to fly to the ceiling of a corridor. Once there I began to amass a massive block of ice. I only unstably attached it to ceiling and walls and added two bottles to the upper left and upper right corner of the block.

Then I went to prepare the next two traps, which consisted of a bottle frozen to the ground in the middle of the corridor each. They were placed some distance away from each other and the first one, to avoid any interference. For the last trap I put one bottles on both sides of a doorway, placing them at shoulder height. This one was meant as a last resort if all other options failed. I trusted that it would be able to dismantle the head of any undead being hit by it, including zombies.

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With this my preparations were completed and I went to lure in my prey. I was targeting a zombie that guarded an intersection near the necromancers’ camp. By eliminating it I might also be able to get a chance to sneak in and take a look around.

But all that still lay in the future, since I would first have to win before doing anything else. To get the zombies attention, I attacked it with an ice shard. I could have used one of my bombs, but the noise would likely have attracted the necromancers’ attention. The shard didn’t even piece the zombies leather armour, but it still fulfilled its purpose.

The zombie looked around and, as soon as it noticed me, started charging towards me. Actively using the push spell to increase my speed, I lured it towards the first ground-trap. During this time, I was surprised to discover that my own base speed wasn’t too far behind that of the zombie anymore. The increase in body strength really showed. But I didn’t have much time to be happy, because we arrived at the trap.

Just when the zombie ran across the bottle, I set it off. The explosion threw it off its feet. But just when I thought it would fall face flat, the zombies arms sudden shot forward and stopped its fall. Then it pushed itself back into a standing posture in an impressive athletic manoeuvre. I could see that the zombies’ legs were badly burnt and there wasn’t much left in regards to boots and leg protectors, but that didn’t stop it from continuing to chase after me.

I lured it to the next trap, the block of ice. Here I used the explosion to break the block free from the ceiling and make it fall on the zombies head. I judged the blocks weight to be around 10 kilograms and with the additional propulsion from the explosion, I thought that it would be able to kill the zombie. I was mistaken. When the bock had hit it, I heard a cracking sound and the undeads head was bent in an unnatural angle, but after a short reorientation phase, it continued chasing me.

I couldn’t help but admire how tough and durable these zombies were. Compared to them, the skeletal undeads were a mere joke. The hunt continued, although the zombie wasn’t as fast as before. When I used the second ground trap, the zombie finally fell, its legs being burned to the point where it couldn’t stand up anymore. It still tried to crawl towards me though. Truly a frightening endurance.

I broke a dagger away from my body and carefully approached the zombie. Evading a strike of its right arm I jumped close, put the daggers tip onto the undeads head and used the full powered push spell on it. On this close distance it was able to exert considerable force and there was no possibility of missing the target.

The dagger slid into the zombies’ head, but it still continued to struggle. I had to use two more knifes until the undead finally stopped moving. Shocking. Simply shocking. I proceeded to crack open its skull and search for the crystal. When I finally found it, I was thoroughly disappointed. It wasn’t even half as big as that of a spectre. I couldn’t understand where this great strength came from if the crystal was so small.

I got my answer when I absorbed the crystal. From what I learned, the zombies had most of their crystal spread across, and integrated into their entire body, making it both stronger and tougher. The main crystal acted as a ‘brain’ of sorts and only controlled the rest instead of directly controlling the body.

For me this meant that I would only be able to take a part of the zombies’ total crystal mass. This just strengthened the resolve that had formed while fighting the zombie: I would never again fight against one of them unless it was absolutely necessary or I had found a method to easily deal with them. Everything else was nothing short of madness.