Out of curiosity, I checked the mouse's status, specifically at its mutation tab.
**Level 1 Psychic Mouse**
**Name: Vengeance**
Huh, a psychic mouse. That explains somewhat, but something still feels odd about him. Why would it want to name itself Vengeance? Does it have a vendetta against some cats?" I thought with amusement.
"Drink this if you don't want to turn into an undead in a few hours," I said to the mouse and handed him a vial of holy water.
Valcy and I drank it as well. To my surprise, we gained a temporary buff of necro miasma resistance for 6 hours. That was convenient, so we took out our gas masks.
Our plan was for me to be the distraction for the bone dragon while Valcy took Vengeance to the place where the phylactery was buried so that he could destroy it.
I realized I would need to solve my vision problem, as Valcy would not be around. "Actually, infrared rays might work here, as the undead we came across smelled of sulfur; they will probably emit some amount of heat," I murmured, "Summon."
My incorporeal form was transported to what looked like a weapons storage room. Inside, I saw neatly arranged assault rifles, shotguns, sub-machine guns, frag grenades, headgear, and much more. I had to rein in my urges to summon more weapons, reminding myself that I would need my mana and summon count in case of emergencies, so I had to ignore the babies for now.
After a few seconds of looking around, I found military helmets equipped with night vision, infrared rays, and headphones connected to walkie-talkies. I also spotted a spy earpiece, which I thought would be suitable for the mouse. Each of these items cost approximately 60 MP and used 1 summon count.
After I returned to my body, I was already wearing the helmet. Valcy looked at me curiously.
"This will help me solve my vision problem," I explained to her.
'Moment of truth,' I thought. After turning on the infrared vision, I looked towards the bone dragon's resting area and was shocked by what I saw. The bone dragon was massive, similar in size to a Boeing 747.
It was resting inside a large cave approximately 600 meters away from our location. The undead near the cave were numerous too. 'Damn, it will take some time to clear those hordes, even for Valcy,' I thought.
"Put these on; it will help us communicate long-distance via radio signals," I explained to both of them. I gave a helmet equipped with a headset to Valcy and the spy earpiece to Vengeance.
The earpiece was too large for the mouse, but somehow, the mouse made some modifications and made it fit perfectly in its tiny ear. I was quite impressed by the mouse's ingenuity.
"If you are in trouble, don't forget to squeak more than 3 times so that I will reverse-summon you back to Earth," I reminded the mouse.
"And Valcy, if you run out of ammo, just run. Don't worry about me; I still have one trick up my sleeve," I assured her with a smile. To be honest, my plan B was to summon explosives with high damage and make a run for it if I got overwhelmed.
After helping her strap on the helmet, I turned on the headset. We did some mic testing, and it actually worked without any problems. So, I put Vengeance in her vest's side pocket. "Okay, you guys are good to go. Be safe," I encouraged them.
Out of the blue, Valcy gave me a tight hug, almost lifting me off the ground. "Don't die; you still owe me," she whispered in my ear. Even though other parts of her body were lean and fit, her melons were really soft. "Now I definitely won't die," I murmured in pure bliss.
"Okay, time to get serious. You know what to do. As soon as it rushes out of the cave, it's your cue to rush there and assist Vengeance in locating the phylactery," I reminded Valcy.
After Valcy and Vengeance took their positions, which were 200 meters away from my location, I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves.
"Okay, I am ready. Time to attract the aggro of that beast," I warned them on my headset. So, I took out the holy RPG and aimed towards the bone dragon's cave. I was not sure about the range accuracy, so I slightly tilted the launcher upwards up to 120 degrees and pulled the trigger.
The rocket made a "Vssshhh" sound, and after 2 seconds, the rocket impacted near the bone dragon's resting area. I heard a boom. After the dust and debris settled, the bone dragon was unharmed, but it directed its ominous red glowing gaze directly towards me. I felt slight shivers coursing through my body, as if I was standing naked in a cold place. At this moment, I saw a notification in the corner of my vision.
It read:
{Death Gaze negated due to holy water buff}
'Damn, that was a spell,' I thought while gulping my saliva in nervousness. Just to be safe, I drank one more vial of holy potion and showed my middle finger towards the bone dragon. I had its full attention now, but it still didn't want to move out from the cave, so I reloaded the launcher and corrected my aim so that it would land on top of its body this time. Then I pulled the trigger for the second time. "Vssshhh" and boom. This time I saw the rocket impact directly on the bone dragon's skeletal form and blast off some of its bones.
I intently watched as it wriggled and thrashed inside its cave due to the holy damage. 'Damn, that looks painful. If it still has vocal cords, its shrill scream will be heart-wrenching,' I imagined. After 10 odd seconds, I saw its form enlarge and recover from the damage.
This time it directly flew out of the cave and towards my general direction.
"Gray, get ready. It's coming your way," warned Valcy on her microphone.
So, I quickly reloaded another holy rocket on the RPG and took my position on top of a hill, almost 30 feet above the valley ravine. It would need to come as close as 200 meters towards my direction so that Valcy could make a detour from another direction towards the cave while it's distracted by me.
After approximately 1 minutes, the bone dragon had covered the 400-meter distance with its insane flying speed. 'Fck magic; it doesn't even have meat left on its wings; it shouldn't be able to fly at all,' I cursed angrily.
So, before it could get any closer, I fired another holy missile. It couldn't avoid the rocket at this distance due to its massive size. After the impact, it directly crash-landed near a hill approximately 200 meters from my location.
I knew things were just getting started. Sure enough, I saw it was slowly recovering from its damage again.
'Oh no, you don't,' I murmured and fired holy rockets every 10 seconds. Even with (A tier) holy water-augmented weapons, it was still recovering so fast within just 10 to 15 seconds. I could only imagine our fate without any holy weapons. It would have been nonchalant to our attacks and definitely turned us undead for daring to challenge it. Hell, even dealing with its undead minions along the way would have been life-threatening for us.
After firing 8 rounds of rockets, I realized that the bone dragon was actually trying to drag its massive body behind a slightly large hill, directly covering my position, and it was succeeding little by little. This was bad; it had actually understood the trajectory of my rocket and was trying to seek cover from it. I never knew that undead could be smart without any brains in their heads.
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"Valcy, have you reached the cave?" I inquired urgently on my microphone.
"Yes, and I am already fighting with undead near the cave. There are more than 200 minions guarding the entrance here," she replied. Just to be sure, I turned my gaze towards her direction, and sure enough, I saw more hordes of undead minions rushing out of the cave. I could only imagine how she was dealing with all of them.
"I might only be able to stall the bone dragon for only 5 or 10 minutes. Please hurry up," I informed her.
I was worried that after the bone dragon fully recovered again, it might direct its attention to them.
"Yes, we are almost in the cave," she replied.
While I was distracted for a few seconds, the bone dragon had almost fully recovered, so I launched the rocket again.
After a few more rounds, the undead dragon actually managed to drag its massive skeletal head behind the hill. By now, I had launched 10 augmented rockets and had also given 4 rockets to Valcy, so only 5 rockets were remaining with me. After my 11th shot, the massive bone dragon stopped making an effort to hide behind the hill, so I carefully aimed and waited for it to make the slightest twitch. But it didn't move even after 20 seconds passed.
'Are you pretending to be dead when you are already an undead? You ain't fooling nobody,' I cursed at it.
Suddenly, a bright ominous red light flashed behind the hill, and after a few seconds, hordes of undead minions rushed out.
'Shit, it has cast a spell again; this one may be related to undead summoning,' I realized that I would be swarmed by the hordes of minions if I kept focusing my attention on the bone dragon. How the fuck would I deal with them all at once?
Just when I was about to call for a retreat, a crazy idea came to my mind which might help me buy some more time. I hoped this would work, so I murmured, 'Summon ****.'
---
**Steven Rock, POV:**
I was born in Florida in 1999. Maybe my parents wanted to troll me for life, so they had given me the name Steven Rock Hard. I know it awfully sounds like a d*ck joke from a hub. Till middle grade, I was traumatized by d*ck jokes due to my name, but luckily, due to my grandfather's dissatisfaction, they shortened my name to Steven Rock.
Since I was little, I admired my grandfather's achievements. He was a living legend for me; he even fought during the Second World War as a Sergeant Major. Sadly, he passed away after I graduated from high school.
I wanted to be in the army like him, and luckily, during my college years, an opportunity to join the Army came. So, without any second thoughts, I joined them.
It has been a few years now. After months of grueling training and tests, I finally got promoted to Staff Sergeant. I even have my own team that I lead now. If my grandpa was alive, he would have been proud of me, but I was still not satisfied with my rank. My dream one day was to be at the top of the chain of command so that I can make a difference and change the rules for the better. After all these years, I have come to know that the mistakes made by our higher-ups often heavily impacted our lives and the lives of innocent people.
On September 2, 2025, I was assigned as a Joint Training Army Field Officer, in coordination with the Japanese Army, code name (UJAP).
Today was the second day of joint training army exercise.
We were training for island and amphibious warfare with our combined units during nighttime.
We had deployed 5 Abrams M1A3 a couple of erector launchers, night vision infrared drones, military boats and foot soldiers.
I was inside one of the Abrams M1A3 tanks, commanding my unit with a specialist named Tucker and a Private First Class named John.
Everything was going well until we were suddenly transported from a hot and humid tropical island to another location with thick purple-colored fog. We all thought that we were hallucinating at first, but...
"Are you seeing this, Sergeant, or are my ANVIS malfunctioning?" said John in a bewildered tone. He was the machine gunner on top.
"Yes, Private, stay calm and put on your emergency gas masks first; these fogs don't look normal," I replied in a calm tone, though inside, I was not so calm.
I tried to figure out our situation by turning on the infrared camera.
But before I could make more assumptions, I was alarmed by what I saw. On the infrared screen, there were hordes of humanoid skeletons and four-legged animals crawling towards our location from the west. Okay, those are definitely not humans, I murmured. On top of that, there was a massive bone structure, like that of a dinosaur, half hidden by the hill. What kind of creature is that? I thought, with sweat running down my forehead.
"Tucker, can you drive us away from this location?" I inquired of our tank specialist. I didn't want to get swarmed by whatever alien mobs they were.
"Negative, sir; we are stuck. My scanner sees no road, only rocks below the ravine," replied our driver. I realized we were on top of a slightly large hill. The slope was approximately 20 feet, and above us was a taller hill of about 10 feet.
Just at this moment, our communication device rang. "Hello, Sergeant. I am calling from the headquarter; we have lost your location. Where are you guys right now? Are you guys, okay?" said a female voice in a worried tone. Thank God we hadn't lost our connection with our headquarters in Japan.
"Yes, we are fine right now, but we have encountered a peculiar situation. You won't believe me if I tell you, so see it for yourself," I replied and turned on the 120-infrared vision camera.
"Omg, are those hordes of heat-emitting skeletons and wolves rushing towards your direction?" came the shocked voice of the operator from the base. "Yes, so please locate us as soon as possible; we may be in trouble," I requested with urgency in my tone.
"Please hold your position; we are trying our best to locate you," replied the female operator.
"Sergeant, the hordes have reached 10 meters close to our location. Permission to fire," requested John in a nervous tone.
"We fire only after we confirm those entities; stay calm and ready; some are about to reach 5 meters in our vision range," I replied.
I wanted to confirm their identities first; what if they happened to be a large group of civilians? Firing at them would be a terrible idea.
But I was alert and cautious as usual. By the time I had seen them rushing, I had already pointed the main gun towards the hordes, ready to blast them anytime if they turned out to be monsters.
After a few seconds, the footsteps grew louder and louder. What showed up first were the arrows.
"We are under attack," warned John. After some of the entities showed up in our vision range, I was utterly shocked to see such nightmarish creatures. There were skeletons with ominous glowing eyes and half-rotten wolves like zombies.
"Permission granted to engage, and Tucker, don't make us a sitting duck; keep on moving within our limited space; we need to keep those things away from us," I hastily commanded. It was raining with arrows outside.
Luckily, our machine gun on top was semi-robotic; it only needed John to manhandle a joystick from inside the tank.
After the machine gun was turned on, the skeletons and half-rotten wolves that had climbed up to our location quickly got demolished by the 14.5 mm anti-material bullets. Their bones were like fragile glass, no resistance at all.
There were hundreds of hordes coming towards us from inside the purple fog. They were all coming from behind the hill 200 meters in front of us. To decrease their numbers, I fired the high-explosive anti-tank artillery in the densest area of the hordes and watched as the hordes exploded and scattered after the impact.
After obliterating hundreds of these entities, they were still spawning nonstop. God knows how. If these keep on going, we will run out of ammo sooner or later. I realized that the massive bone structure might be the reason for spawning these entities, so I targeted the unknown entity with the high-explosive anti-tank artillery and fired. After a few seconds of the impact, which had shattered a few of its rib cages, I was flabbergasted to see it regenerate back in 5 seconds as if time had rewound. After it recovered again, it finally moved and managed to hide its massive body behind the hill.
'That's not good,' I thought.
"Sir, I am down to 10,000 rounds, and the hordes still show no sign of stopping," informed John. Our situation was grim, and it could only be compared to an apocalyptic horror movie scene, fighting endless hordes of undead minions and zombies.
We had been firing non-stop for 10 to 15 minutes now.
After the first waves of undead died down a little, there was a change. First, a bright light flashed above the mountain where the massive bone dinosaur hid, and soon, a large number of flying creatures, easily thrice the size of a normal grown adult, all flew towards our direction.
"Damn it, our main artillery won't be much effective on those flying creatures; John, try to bring them down; Tucker and I will try to handle the ground troops," I hastily instructed my crew. Even if we fired our artillery, there was a high probability it would not hit them. Even if it hit one of them, the explosion would be wasted as they were flying very far apart. I didn't want to waste our limited resources, as I had a gut feeling that we wouldn't be getting any backup. God knows what planet we got teleported to.
"Roger that," replied John. I made up my mind. 'If these meatless creatures want our meat, they will need to eat our bullets first because we will be fighting till our last ammo.'
Just when we had managed to shoot down some of the flying creatures, the bony dinosaur, which might be the mastermind, finally made its move. It leaped into the air from behind the hill and actually flew towards our direction.
"Jesus Christ, what the f**k is that?" cursed out John.
"We will be crushed by its massive size if it reaches us; keep on firing," I shouted.
And I pointed the high-explosive anti-tank artillery and shot at it, but it didn't even hit. Instead, the flying minions took the hit for it.
'We might be doomed,' that was my thought.
Unexpectedly, after it reached 100 meters from our location, it stopped and actually spewed out blue flames from its head, which directly impacted us. The flame was odd; it was not hot but cold, which directly stunned me.
The last thing I remember before losing my consciousness was seeing a boy with an RPG firing rockets at the beast, and then everything went blank.