Niff ran through the zombies. She was small and unnoticeable. And she had Elurn’s blessing of stealth, The Lady’s Shadow it was called.

One of Elurn’s three blessings. There was a smell to him, a sad one.

It wasn’t the smell of kindness or empathy, though she smelled those too, but you’d be stupid to trust someone just because they smelled kind.

And Niff wasn’t stupid, no matter what people might think.

No, the reason she trusted Elurn more than anything was because of his hate. In all her years of living, she had never met someone with so much hate. He hid it and maybe he didn’t even feel it most of the time, but it was there.

It was like an underlying smell to all of his actions, hatred. At first, she had been scared, but then she grew curious. And as she sat in that seat next to him, she started to wonder what it was he hated so badly.

Then he said the words, “Half-Demon.”

In those words, she smelled more hate than she had ever smelled before. It was a vile combination of disgust and malice… and it was all pointed at himself.

Niff didn’t know how strong demons were or what exactly they could do. But if it needed to fight Elurn and take him over to change him, then she felt assured that the man would rather end his own life than turn into that.

The only time that smell of hatred lessened or even changed was when the two talked about magic. That was partly why she was so insistent on talking to him about it. She could smell his soul light up when he started talking about the stuff.

And even now, even as she ran through hordes of zombies cutting them down at the nape. She could sense the hate lessened as Elurn cast his spells.

Niff struck, cutting down at the zombie’s nape.

That was her third one.

They were now acting like a normal party hunting for corpses down here.

They were all supposed to hold back a little, that’s what Elurn had said. And they were each going for the least amount of damage on the zombies. The corpses were valuable after all. These were premium bodies fresh from the land of the dead soaked in years' worth of mana.

They were the best available parts for necromancers throughout the city, and they were necessary for the undead population, or so Niff had heard.

Elurn had said that these parts tended to go to the rich undead and that regular undead would settle for biomancied flesh soaked in residual mana.

Niff dodged another zombie's mouth. These things fought in a strange way. She wasn’t a large target, but they kept leaping for her with their mouths wide open. Grabbing her or swatting at her would have been more efficient, but they all tried to eat her instead.

Niff was still careful. Zombies could also have natural enhancements and strengths.

Ghouls were their stronger variants, and death knights could equal one five-star silver-rank adventurer.

But the most dangerous thing about zombies was the swarms. When engaging with a horde you needed two things, one was limited entrance and the other was a clear line of retreat. Both needed to be absolutely clear to win the fight easily.

Elurn was at the back making sure their path of retreat was still open and he was also the one casting the funneling spell.

One of Elurn’s blessings was a large-scale illusion spell, The Lady’s Web.

She could somewhat see it, more feel it.

When you looked at the surrounding area, you wouldn’t see a wall or a barrier, because there was none. But you would feel it. She had tried running at it as fast as she could and she had flinched as she passed through. She knew there wasn’t a wall but a part of her expected one there.

Elurn had explained that it was an instinctive illusion, only fooling one part of the mind. When she asked why he didn’t make it more real he explained that making it more real would require more of a sacrifice. He had given up about half of his mana pool to cast this illusion alone.

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He said the smaller the illusion the more complex it could be.

Overall he was playing the support role. This battlefield and battle method was his doing. The normal way to engage with hordes was to find naturally barricaded battlegrounds or using an earth element spell scroll to create one yourself.

A flying boomerang knife stabbed into the back of a zombie a few feet away from her.

That was also Elurn.

He was low on mana so he threw knife boomerangs instead. It was a weak attack but for zombies, it would be enough.

But it wasn’t Niff’s blade.

Niff concentrated, and burst.

The ground beneath her boomed and the small square-mouse-kin blurred. There were fifteen zombies in front of her and in a flash of an instant, they all fell.

Concentrated speed allowed her to break through the sound barrier and rip the back of their necks open. The movement ate out a chunk of her mana, but nothing she couldn’t refuel over the course of half an hour.

To another species, the movement would have taken up a huge amount of mana, maybe about half of their pool, but for Niff, it barely took up a tenth of it. Her body was always running mana through certain natural enhancements like speed and sense, but it was also far more efficient with those enhancements.

Her body naturally pushed and pulsed with speed enhancements, she knew how to use it more efficiently and not waste her mana like other people. She was merely pushing her natural talent, a skill she had never really trained to learn. Back in her hometown, rodent-folk would use the speed enhancement when they were toddlers. Niff had been even younger when she started, crawling around at the speed of a horse when she was barely a month old.

In the distance, Velin sat on a slight hilltop and fired his bow. Archers had many limits, but the biggest ones according to the Adventurer’s Guild were their bows. While monster hunting where your foe could number into the hundreds if not thousands, and a bow and arrow could be a troublesome thing to use.

Most archers, Niff knew, never put themselves in danger until they had a way to remedy that issue.

Velin had a way to remedy that issue.

She thought he would use mana constructs like she had seen many high-rank archers do. But according to both Velin and El, that would be insanely stupid and inefficient. Velin had called it stupid, Elurn had called it inefficient.

Mana constructs were creations of magic, meaning in terms of efficiency, they were the worst things to use. Mana shaping was a much more prudent and respectable approach, they had said.

Velin would stomp his hooves into the ground and thick earthen arrows would come out of it ready for him to use. They jumped into his empty quiver and he fired them into the distance.

Now that was impressive but the more impressive thing about the centaur wasn’t the arrows, it was his bows. His bow was as tall as he was, and the draw strength could be up to the tens of thousands, or so Velin had told her. His bow had a thousand-pound draw range and he would load up multiple arrows and let loose on the surrounding horde.

Then there was Darvind.

He stood tall surrounded by decapitated undead heads. Corpses littered everything around him.

He was undoubtedly the one with the highest body count. He was fast, not as fast as Niff, but amazingly fast within close quarters. And more than that, he was strong.

Bodys were chopped and flying by the half dozen with every set of moves he made. His axe seemed to move through flesh as if it were water.

The air held still, Niff cut another set of zombies down, arrows flew above her and Darvind cut through the battlefield like a hurricane.

Then, Niff smelled it. She smelled a rotten sent, a lion but not a lion, a man but not a man.

Yes, he smelled wrong in the worst way. It was like she had come to smell a fruit only to smell the scent of cleaning potions and rot.

But Niff kept fighting, acting like she hadn’t noticed. That was the plan after all. Let this thing see their skills and attack them after underestimating them.

More than thirty adventurers had fallen to it already, they wouldn’t add to that number.

Niff thought for a moment, why was she so sure of their victory? She had known the team for a full day and a little more but she was ready to risk her life and fight with them.

Was it eagerness? Certainly, that was a part of it.

Niff hadn’t been allowed to be an adventurer just on pure size and fluffiness alone. She’d been barred from her dreams of battle and glory and now was her chance to dive head-first into things.

But she wasn’t stupid, no matter what other people thought.

No, the real reason was El.

Niff could smell experience and death. In the same way, people could smell freshness and rot, Niff could smell the time of a person and how they had lived.

Elurn stunk with blood. Not human blood, but with monster blood. He was a wild mage who had lived in the Woven Forest for most of his life. He had killed more monsters than even Darvind and he was so old and so smart.

The man lacked mana, true. But he was desperate and utilized everything given to him. That was something valuable in rodent-folk culture. The small and persevering were to be respected more than the strong and powerful. Those who lived through hard times can lead us through them.

That idea came from their ancestors and their past in the Wild Lands being hunted by the various monsters and beings there.

Back when their only choice was to survive.

Niff had only met Elurn yesterday, but he was a survivor, a man who limped along from one battle to another.

And she had faith in him. He had faced more than she ever had, and he had lived through them, she believed he would live through this as well.