The bloodied bodies of three people staggered through the darkness. Jack's arms were draped around his companions, and he carried the heaviest injuries. The others scrambled to take out their weapons.

"I left my spear behind at the pool!" Hans shouted and started running. But Theodore was there first. He simply raised his hand and the spear rose with it.

Telekinesis, Mark thought as the weapon soared through the air and into Theodore's grasp. He then threw the spear into Hans' direction, where it lodged itself deeply into the wall.

Mark wore a thoughtful look after he saw that show of force. The man was both a mage and a fighter. He wondered how that came to be, and how he compared.

Theodore remained silent as he strode in the direction of the battle. Burning flames rose in his hands and coalesced into two massive arrows, lighting up the silhouettes of an entire horde of skeleton soldiers. They carried swords, spears, shields, and bows - weapons of all shapes and sizes.

"What happened?" Elise's voice trembled. "What is that?"

"A lot of skeletons," Mark said. "Theodore doesn't look scared at all though."

The man had instead started walking faster. He broke out into a run once another swarm of arrows came flying towards Jack's team. A magical barrier appeared in front of him like a shield, blocking the incoming attacks completely. Then fire roared to life around him as he stomped the ground, erupting in an explosion of heat.

The attack blasted the undead away. Theodore used the distance to take out a smooth, shining longsword and began a massacre. His sword cleaved straight through a skeleton's neck and then swept towards another pair. It traveled past them without stopping and bisected a fourth skeleton, ignoring its shield and armor.

Then Theodore took a step backwards. Mark, Elise, and the mage in Jack's team had begun a barrage of spellfire, aiming to kill as many skeleton archers as they could. The skeleton warriors continued advancing towards Theodore. But this caused the archers to lose their shield protection. With Theodore pulling the two groups apart, their spells were able to carve a wedge in the undead.

Theodore remained a whirl of blade and magic, easily killing swathes of enemies in close and medium range. He was nigh-untouchable, and even when a skeleton managed to hit him with its spear, it bounced off an unseen armor. It looked like the man knew about some sort of mage armor as well.

Extremely skilled, Mark thought. I wonder how much he's willing to teach us? With how effective Theodore was in battle, Mark stopped worrying about where to run and committed wholeheartedly to accumulating experience, in addition to studying how the man fought. Elise had mentioned learning her fire arrows spell from him, after all.

Mark's thoughts wandered to her condition, and was surprised to see her face scrunched up in pain. She took a few steps backwards and knelt down. He had noticed her wincing before - a familiar sign of excessive magical exertion - but this was way faster than he expected.

Then in the span of a second, she somehow managed to stand back up and continue returning fire. Her spells even appeared to have improved slightly and her eyes stayed open.

"Are you okay?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, I'm fine." Her flaming arrows blew through a skeleton warrior and buried itself into another archer. "I just leveled up and put the points into Wisdom."

"Really? That's what prevents headaches?"

"Yeah, more Wisdom makes things easier," she replied. "I used to do this a lot when I was running around alone. Not anymore though. Do you not get a headache?"

"Not after practicing for a long time with a spell," he said. "Probably the difference between your fire arrows and my Magic Missiles."

"It is," replied the mage standing beside them with a baseball cap on her head. After settling her teammates down, she had joined them in the defense, leaving James to guard their bodies. "I've discovered spells have different levels of magical theory and knowledge required to practice them. Magic Missile is one of the more basic ones, so it makes sense to use less effort to cast."

Mark raised an eyebrow. She seemed more amicable than before, even though her words didn't show it. "Quite friendly you are, talking to me," he said.

"After what I saw, there are no hard feelings between us," she replied. "Our team leader will agree once he finds out you've had our backs. I'm Annabelle, by the way."

"What about Jack?" Mark asked.

"The conflict is between you two alone. Just don't let it go too far," she said.

Mark nodded. Fine with him. As long as Jack continued to stay out of his way, he'd ignore the situation. He would be lying if he said he never had a grudge against the man, but this was not the situation to continue hostilities. Especially since he appeared to have changed.

The three of them supported Theodore in killing off the rest of the skeletons as the man eventually began to accumulate injuries. With powerful spells all maintained at the same time, he had to be close to running out of mana. But his potions were plentiful, and he gripped both blue and red colored variants. Each time Theodore drank a pair, his wounds would vanish, and his magical attacks would surge back to the level from the beginning of the fight.

The last of the skeletons fell to Mark's rapid-fire Magic Missiles. After Theodore's rampage ended, the man looked exhausted, though a gleeful smile remained on his face. He quickly replaced it with a frown as he walked back to them.

"What happened?" he asked. Another healing potion appeared in his hand, and he poured its contents into Jack's throat. Then, he gave the rest to the team leader sitting against the wall.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"It was an ambush," Annabelle replied. "Other people are here."

Theodore's eyes narrowed. "How dare they? Show me where they are, Hector," he demanded.

Hector was a muscular man with a shaved head. With a slight wince, he said, "Things are not looking good, boss. Victor disappeared while we were running." He grabbed Jack with his arms and shoved the man upwards, drawing a moan of pain. "I want to go get him back."

"Sorry about this, Mark," Theodore turned to him and said. "You don't have to come with us if you don't want to. We've just got a little problem to deal with right now. Your vine will need to wait."

"It's not a problem. We can save that for later. I am curious about what you're going to do, though."

"Just some payback," he replied. "Should be easy. If you come with us, you'll get to experience a lot more things in these mines than staying on this floor. You look quite ready, after all."

Mark didn't feel the telltale sign of an Identify landing on his body again. Perhaps Theodore had begun to trust him now. "Seems good," he said. "I'm very interested in that magical armor spell of yours."

Theodore smiled. "Maybe later. Good to have you with us," he said. "Elise, Hannah, James, you three can also take up another task if you want. Try to find Aria and Henry. Tell them what's going on, and then come back here."

The three of them looked at each other. Going down the tunnel was likely very dangerous, but it would become much worse when the enemies they were fighting were humans.

"I think I'll take my chances with you," Elise said. Her eyes took a glance at Mark.

Hannah nodded as well. "Let's go quickly," she said. "We can leave a note behind."

James did not say a word, but stepped away from the rest of the group. Mark thought his back looked lonely as he wandered into the opposite tunnel.

"He'll be alone," Mark said. "Are you sure he's going to be safe?"

"It's fine," Elise said. "This is just routine for him."

Theodore did not say another word as he turned around and strode into the darkness with Hector. While he and Annabelle pushed Jack to march faster, Mark took his sweet time looking over the items the skeletons had dropped. Though there was a considerable quantity, none were what he was looking for.

Instead, he wanted to pick up their bodies and stuff them inside his pocket plane. Most were heavily damaged by magic, but some were cleanly killed. And even bone pieces would be good material for him to practice necromancy on. Maybe later, he thought. He had to see how this expedition went first.

Hannah, Elise, Hans, and Carol were quiet as they walked beside him. Their grips on their weapons were slack and Hans almost dropped his spear. It was clear they didn't have the stomach to fight other humans yet. But Mark strode forwards without a sound, a ruthless tempo in his movements. He caught up to Theodore and Hector and struck up a conversation.

"What's the plan?" he asked, fully aware of how dangerous it was standing at the front. But this was the best chance to show his mettle.

"We need to find where Victor is," Hector said. "We were sneaking around a place with lots of undead when strangers suddenly appeared and alerted them all. It was all too suspicious, so we thought it was an ambush."

"A mass of undead..." Mark tried his best to keep his eyes from lighting up. "Sounds similar to where I found that mana core," he said.

"Indeed." Theodore now looked a lot more excited, instead of simply going to fulfill his duty as the group leader. "Can you tell us more, Hector?"

"There were a lot of powerful enemies there. Not just your rank and file skeleton soldier, but something stronger. Victor fell behind while we were running away."

"So is he dead, then?" Theodore asked bluntly.

"It's possible, but Jack convinced me otherwise," Hector said. He jabbed Mark's boss with his elbow.

Jack coughed. "I saw a silhouette take Victor away," he said, the first words Mark had heard him say since they entered the tutorial. "Just a glance. A glimpse. I might've been wrong."

"Calm down, it'll be fine," Theodore said. "There's a chance Victor's held hostage."

Mark began thinking. He had decided to commit to solving this problem for the group, not only to achieve more merits but also to explore the undead location to its fullest. From what he heard, there were a lot of juicy details involved.

"How are we splitting this up?" he asked. "I see many enemies to deal with once we head down there. One, hordes of skeletons. Two, strong leaders among them. And three, intelligent humans."

"Let's try to avoid the strong undead," Hector said. "They'll be pretty far inside, though I don't know if some followed us after we pissed off the horde. Guess we can expect one or two groups."

Mark nodded. "Annabelle, can you deal with large numbers?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I'm better at facing stronger, less mobile enemies. My spells can take fairly long to cast but they're powerful enough to shatter shields."

"So your team might still be better against the undead leaders," Mark said, and looked to Theodore for his approval. "What do you think?"

Theodore was watching them plan with a smile. "I can handle anything thrown at me. You should plan around yourselves first."

"It's not what we'd like," Hector continued. "Keep in mind we're all injured."

"It's either that or face larger swarms with your lesser numbers," Mark said. "Or would you prefer to hunt other people?"

Hector put a hand on his chin, then nodded. "Actually, yeah, I would prefer that. Boss, will that be fine?"

"If you're willing. Your share of the loot will be much higher."

Mark also smiled. During their discussion, they had slowed down slightly to wait for the others to catch up. "Hey, Carol and Hans, how comfortable are you with fighting people?" A bit to the point, but he wanted to know their weaknesses as early as possible.

Carol's lips were glued together this time, but Hans shook his head. "Never wanted this," he said. "I can't kill other people."

"Even if they're attacking you?"

"I wouldn't go for killing blows like I did with the goblins," he emphasized. "That won't make me the best choice."

Elise nodded her head, emboldened by having someone who agreed with her. "Me neither. I would rather face the undead," she said.

Hannah stayed silent, but her body language revealed what they needed to know.

"Then it's settled," Theodore announced. "You four can stay together, fighting off the swarms. But be aware you might be attacked by the stronger undead lurking around."

Hannah hesitated. "What...will you be doing, Theodore?"

"I will naturally head towards the most dangerous area," he said. "A leader must lead, and I'm the strongest fighter. But I will pursue the other group once I catch sight of them."

"Thank you, boss." Hector bowed his head. Annabelle and Jack followed suit. Mark was thinking of the best way to get his hands on as many powerful bodies as he could.