Chapter Fifteen

Packs of first-floor guardians wore them down. Bone monkey kings throwing flaming lumps of coal, flesh walls that had to be ground through before they smashed the team. Rose was the first to need a restoration potion. A brown burrower snapped under her feet, crushing part of her abdomen and leg before Harmony managed to sever the clamped jaw.

The potion wasn’t perfect, even though its color and quality looked supreme. Bone damage was only minorly repaired, it wouldn’t stitch you back together, so it was best after some repair work was attempted. Harmony used her skills to move a few loose splinters closer to the bone it came off of before she drank it.

The archer’s body shuddered as the healing drought did its work. “Gah. Gods, that sucks. I can tell I will need a week at a restoration house when this is over.”

“You should visit Molly. She combines her cleric class with her masseuse profession. Therapeutic blending towards a divine touch.” Maxwell added.

Len’s turn to need the potion wasn’t as clean. A reaper, one of the first batch of second-floor guardians, nearly cut the wizard in two.

“Hold him together!” Tyler yelled.

Rose shoved some of his loose internal organs back inside.

Max held his limbs to keep him from flailing with the pain.

Harmony channeled [Manipulate Dead] in synergy with [Renew Spirit] to attempt to align everything and tie the dead cells together. She hoped it worked similarly to how she’d treated cuts where [Renew Spirit] would trick the body enough into starting the healing there.

Tyler poured the red potion down his throat.

“Ahhrgghllah!” Len half screamed/choked it down. He passed out for a few seconds before waking up with only a spotty memory of being injured.

Harmony fed her two weaker potions to Hyacinth, who did what he could, bruising himself with deflections until the enemies were too strong to do much but watch and feed her mana from the shadows.

Banshees, plated corpses, the quick, and packs of floor guardians came as they moved forward. Tyler had to take a potion because he was so whittled down performing his tank class that he couldn’t continue even as he tried to push past snapped tendons and a swollen face.

Soon after, the young lord and Sir Maxwell needed to take a potion. It was the fourth-floor guardian nicknamed The Meat, except there were three of them. Unliving masses of muscles pounding on Tyler as he yelled, “Switch! Switch!”

A crater developed at his feet. High-quality armor became malformed under the beatings. Nothing Sir Maxwell could do pulled their attention to him.

Unliving flesh resisted Harmony’s skills, only allowing for superficial wounds. Fear gripped her as Tyler’s cries became weaker. Harmony drained all her mana until the movement in her soul seemed to stagnate. Her core felt empty to peel The Meats’ eyes off Tyler and onto Maxwell, wrenching one set of eyes out of its sockets. Only by pointing their eyes at the knight did their fists halt and shift target.

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Rose raced in and shoved the potion into the groaning man.

Len’s long spell kicked in as the knight took his own turn being pounded, and a giant ball of flame captured the top half of all three Meats. The wizard sank to his knees from exhaustion, and the room flooded with the smell of cooked flesh.

Sir Maxell downed his restoration potion using his off-hand, his main hand too purple, and bent to do the same act. As it took effect, he snapped his fingers back into position.

“If we face a team of dungeon bosses, we’re paste,” The knight grunted with his pain.

“Old Bones wouldn’t do that.” Rose insisted.

Len fetched the loot drops from the charred Meats. “It shouldn’t be doing this to us now.”

“You think it wants us dead?” Tyler asked.

A shiver ran up Harmony’s spine.

The knight snorted. “You know better than to ask that question, Little Lord. People die, but slaughter only happens to greedy teams who knowingly make a challenge above what they’re capable of.”

Cold ran down the necromancer’s limbs. Hadn’t that been what she’d done when she heard the shambler host ask? Challenging the beast, the spirit of the domain. “Guys.” She fell halfway into confessing as her voice froze in her throat. Exhausted but recovering. She’d regained just enough to try to activate [Poise and Bearing] to push past any fear.

The skill found resistance, but it wasn’t fear. It wasn’t fear that gripped the necromancer’s throat, limbs, and spine. The sense of death had been so overwhelming and ever-present that she’d ignored it, but now what her body said was coming was a mountain weighing everything down. The cold ache of death, where all things come to stillness. And it was getting heavier.

Surging the skill broke through. “Guys! Something is coming, something big!” Slowly her frozen legs started pumping.

Behind them, the tunnel rumbled, and whatever detection skills they had caused the team’s eyes to widen enough, they also started moving forward.

“Run!” Len cried.

The team surged at an uneven speed as the group tried to maintain some formation despite being beaten. While one of the less injured or burdened, Harmony surprisingly found herself getting outpaced. She started incorporating [High Kick] to help push her forward.

Ahead a shimmering gate blinked into existence.

“The exit!” Sir Maxwell yelled with relief.

“It’s a race!” Rose added.

By now, everyone could feel the oblivion of death clipping at their heels. The pace quickened. It was noticeable that they started using speed skills. Everyone might need an escape sometimes, so those skills were often more prized than mana skills for skill stone slots. Maxwell used the same lunging attack Harmony had seen in the club to shoot forward. Len flew on, holding a spectral tail coming off his familiar. Rose simply moved faster. Even Tyler had some kind of trick as his whole body shimmered forward, not entirely speeding up but covering a greater distance.

Harmony kicked off harder, but it wasn’t the same. Hyacinth hopped shadows, and she could feel the exhaustion of such a task drain her toad.

The portal flickered unstably. The knight passed through first, followed quickly by the wizard.

Harmony could feel herself a bit behind them all. She caught Tyler’s face as he looked back. “Almost there, Harm….”

The maid watched all the color drain from the manor lord’s face as he saw whatever was chasing them.

Rose’s body slipped through the exit.

Harmony activated [High Kick], intent on kicking her way through the portal. Her foot struck the floor beneath her… and cracked through it, breaking through a tiny hollow, finding no purchase but empty space. Then the ground snapped around her ankle. With the sudden loss of momentum from below her top half continued forward and down, slamming her into the ground. [Small Armor]’s flow in her soul allowed her to catch most of the impact on her bits of armor. Still, even that wasn’t enough to stop her breath from being knocked out or from the vibrations of the fall rattling her bones.

She had enough time to look up and see Tyler, scared and shaken, stumbling with speed through the portal as though any desire he had to stay and help had wrestled with and lost the fight against the fear driving him through.

Half an idea deep into thoughts about how to get her foot out, Harmony watched the exit gate snap shut.

Hyacinth materialized through the darkness to be at her side, facing the force behind his partner.

“How brave, little shadow. A worthy companion.”

The voice of death was hollow and bottomless in a way that shook the necromancer’s soul overwhelming her. She could feel her ears drip with blood before blackness took her.

“Oops.” The voice said. This time in a more modulated tone.