Light rays couldn’t be outrun, which meant the attack that proceeded from the corpse wasn’t made of actual light.

A beam of searing energy chased after me, nonetheless, intent on blowing my head clean off my shoulders.

I swerved in time to allow it to collide with the wall. The resulting explosion threw me onto the ground and flat on my face. Loud bells tolled in my head.

The skeleton mage uttered a word that sounded like a groan. More malice spilled out in that one groan than I had heard in a lifetime. But, the skeleton mage was skeletal . . . if I could be forgiven for stating the obvious. By what power did it manage to speak?

A second beam roared in answer.

Less thinking, more running, Damien!

I scrambled out of the way in time to avoid the magic that gutted the floor. Wooden fragments peppered my back, sharp enough to sting, yet not lethal enough to deal actual damage. Neither [Stealth] nor [Dark Stalker] promised to help in the fight, so I deactivated both to conserve my energy.

The tactic only served to embolden my adversary. With little need to navigate the pews, the Wood Elf Mage drifted about twenty meters away to the other end of the room. Prime position to lob magic attacks.

The maneuver also afforded it an unobstructed view of the exit, in case I tried to make a run for it. But, today wasn’t a day for cowardice. Instead, I peeked over the pews and cast [Identify] to size up the enemy.

Just like I’d guessed, the infobox had changed.

Barrow Wight LVL 26.

My left eyelid twitched. Level 26? I was still at level 11!

A bright sigil formed beneath my feet. I blinked in confusion, then sprang aside the next second—in time to avoid a geyser of white.

The magic attack pulverized the rafters and the slates behind it, reducing a section of the roofing to dust. The violent display provided an insight into its firepower.

Forget my earlier statement. Bring on the cowardice!

I put all of my Common Dexterity to work and raced for the exit. The Barrow Wight didn’t so much as twitch. Intense sunlight radiated from its position, flooding the majority of the room.

The light slammed into me with the force of a sledgehammer, leaving me as an indent in the wall.

[System] notifications went haywire.

You have been struck by [Radiance].

You have been Blinded!

Build your Willpower to increase resistance.

My eyeballs stung like they’d been immersed in fire. Those goddamn bells tolled again in my head. But, I had enough sense to dive blindly to the floor, even though I nearly lost teeth to a footstool in the process.

The telltale sounds of falling rafters informed me of the wisdom of my choice. I stumbled past the geysering magic in a blind daze and sought refuge among the pews.

The air grew heavy with palpable pressure. Even with my impaired vision, I could tell that the wight was readying a spell.

You really should have picked a Caster class, Damien. Forget about retaliating, I wouldn't even make it to the exit at this rate.

My helplessness left me with only one avenue for a counterattack, and it roared to life at the same time that the last of the dark spots faded.

[Fear Aura] rose like an invisible maw seeking to pluck the wight from the air. Its influence seeped into the tomb and the floorboards, corrupting all it touched.

I only needed to distract the wight for a few seconds. If I could achieve that—

Barrow Wight has resisted [Fear Aura]!

The Barrow Wight swung its staff, and a second wave of [Radiance] crashed down on the tomb. Two [Fear] stacks popped up in my vision—the only colors amid a sea of white.

“Mercy,” I croaked, over the ringing in my ears.

The assault ceased.

Mercy?

That was it, wasn’t it? The wight was attuned to Compassion! The guess was little more than a gut feeling, but I couldn’t draw any other correlation between the staff, the tolling bells, and the purity of light.

I took the gamble. Being right would provide me a way out of the situation. Being wrong, however . . .

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I staggered into the aisle between the two rows of pews and prostrated before the wight, Yoruba-style. “Mercy! I beg of you. Please!”

The wight wavered. I couldn’t see through my partial blindness, but the pressure in the air lessened a fraction. Compassion probably didn’t stop its users from killing in cold blood, but this monster had once been a priest. Surely, fragments of its past life remained.

The Barrow Wight drifted to the aisle, unsure of what to make of a penitent foe. A tired groan issued from its mouth.

I waited with bated breath for the inevitable resumption of hostilities, but the monster simply hovered beside me, at a loss for what to do.

Sensing an opportunity, I inched toward the door—prostrate, ass first, like a freaking worm. The hilarity of the motion wasn’t lost on me, but survival by any means necessary meant the death of finesse.

I made it about halfway across the aisle before the Barrow Wight thumped its staff against the ground. My heart froze in my chest.

A blood-curdling scream issued out of the Barrow Wight’s mouth. Yet, I understood it clear as day:

“Death,” it said. “Swiftest mercy!”

It took three minutes to arrive at that conclusion?!

Needless to say, I didn’t wait for the rest of the speech.

A handful of monster cores detonated at its feet, courtesy of the pouch I’d snuck into my hand. It provided a brief distraction, enough to grant me escape down the aisle.

I reached the exit just as a geyser opened up beneath the door. Light magic seared upward, engulfing the entirety of my arm. Pain on the level of dismemberment speared through my skull. But, health armor prevailed, sacrificing over half my HP in order to tank the blow.

The close encounter with death supplied a spike of adrenaline. I stumbled through the doorway and out into the light. My elven sight adjusted, allowing one good burst to put distance between me and the mausoleum.

The Barrow Wight shouldn’t be able to follow. Boss monsters like it tended to be tethered to their location—

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

In a stark deviation from everything I knew, the Barrow Wight lumbered out of the mausoleum, like an anti-Messiah on Easter. Light beams rocketed out of its staff and toward my direction, visible even in daylight.

Each shot struck the ground with the force of a grenade, leaving large craters around me. I outmaneuvered the barrage, relying on tree cover and elven grace.

The dead mage couldn’t aim properly out here in the sunlight, but it didn’t seem to care about its mana consumption. My stamina bar on the other hand hovered near zero. A battle of attrition wasn’t in my favor.

Unless . . .

“Come on,” I yelled, pausing to take a breather beside a tree.

The Barrow Wight gurgled and zipped forward at ballistic speeds.

I waited until it was within ten meters, and then I threw an obscene gesture in its face. “Get wrecked!”

[Radiance] exploded around me. I staved off the worst of the damage by shutting my eyes, but the afterimages lingered in my vision.

The [System] message provided a welcome relief:

You have been struck by [Radiance].

You have Blinded.

Woah ho, you have resisted blindness!

Resist these nuts, asshole.

I surged through the blotches of color in what I hoped was the right direction.

A voice entered my head. Back again, child?

You bet, I replied. And, I brought gifts.

The turbid water of the bog bubbled into view. Greyish clumps floated on the surface, clashing with the green of the weeds.

The clumps looked a little too dubious to be mistaken for flora. Something about the way they bobbed in the water put a primal fear in my head.

The monkeys?

Yep. The goddamned bog spirit had drowned the monkeys.

Behind me, the wraith out of hell chased with no intent of stopping. It left me two options, really. Dive into the bog or accept death by illumination?

How about neither?

I packed some wet earth into my cloak, unclasped it, and launched it out into the water. [Stealth] obscured my movements at the same time.

Just buy me a second—!

The bog spirit responded first.

Massive tentacles—slimy with mucus—rose from the murk and snared my cloak. A half second later, the Barrow Wight attacked, hoodwinked by the ruse. Its visual acuity suffered a drop in bright lighting, just like I’d suspected, leading to a scene where the tentacles collided with hot, white magic.

The bog monster shrieked. Mental nails ruptured my skull, generated from deep inside my brain. I screamed despite myself and crashed out of [Stealth].

My health meter slipped further into the red.

Whatever the creature had done to me, the Barrow Wight suffered worse. It fell from the air with a moan and slid toward the bog. Tentacles grabbed it before it could rise, curling around its torso.

A brilliant burst of light obscured the scene.

Even from my spot hidden in the grasses, the heatwave warmed my skin. Had I tried to force the wight into a melee, I would have been on the receiving end of that attack. Judging by the power on display, it would have obliterated me.

It didn’t obliterate the bog monster.

A humongous creature, who made the word grotesque sound like a compliment, rose from the depths of the algae-filled water. Its squid-like tentacles vibrated with rage, covered in pustulant boils. A stench filled the air with its emergence, enough to knock another tenth out of my health.

An infobox appeared at my bidding.

Eldritch Leviathan LVL 30.

Nope. Nuh-uh. No way. I wasn’t getting mixed up in this.

I downed a health potion as I crawled away—and just in time too, for a sudden combination of [Radiance] and mental shriek took me near to my maker. My HP rocketed to a hundred percent a second before the attack. It slipped down again by twenty.

The battle between the monsters unfolded like a clash between two forces of nature. Bright lights and wounded shrieks buffeted me, inflicting a skull-splitting headache.

I collapsed atop a log of dead wood and heaved for all I was worth. Nothing made sense anymore. Not the fight, or my existence, or the freaking apocalypse. Why did I have to suffer through this?

The turmoil ceased after what must have been an eternity. I retched a final time and chanced a quick look back at the bog.

The Barrow Wight returned my gaze through sunken sockets. Then, with a defiant moan, it resumed its advance.

Straight for me.