“Don't Call Me That!” Molly shouted, or at least the equivalent of a shout from an orb can make. “Call me by my new name… X-”

“MOLLY!” Kassandra shouted, interrupting Molly. “Why are you doing this! Even for you, this is too much!

“Nonsense! This is everything I could have ever dreamed of!” Molly shouted back, then added. “Except for being trapped here... thanks to those spirit callers…” she muttered the last part.

“Molly. Stop this right now. You know this isn’t right!.” Kassandra said, trying to make Molly see reason.”

“Enough! I hated you the second you arrived, a ditzy airhead who played goody toe shoes with everyone she met. Bad enough I had to marry a bleeding heart, but with the two of you, my life was a living hell!” Molly shouted. “I could have married up, or gotten myself a nice boy toy, could have had full control of my house… but I had to share it because my parents didn’t trust me to rule… they were scared of my potential… they were right to fear me…”

“More like they thought you were a batshit insane sociopath…” Rudrick muttered under his breath. “Gahh!” his body then suddenly spasmed as if multiple electric shocks went through it.

“No comments from the peanut gallery. Don’t forget. I. Own. You.” Molly said menacingly.

Rudrick grunted but said nothing more.

“Enough! Why do you do this Molly?” Kassandra tried to plead. “What’s the point of all of this?”

Molly began to laugh a little. “The point? The POINT!? The point is for the first time in my life I have people who do as I say! The point is I can do whatever I want! The point is… I have absolute power… and therefore… absolute freedom…” saying that last part almost reverently.

“Freedom to do what? Torture others? Steal and hurt as you please? Is that all you ever wanted!? Why!?” Kassandra asked, now a little confused.

“BAH! As if you could ever understand! Understand what it’s like having parents always looking down on you, having an older sister who is better than you at everything! Being forced to marry someone you didn’t want to!” Molly said angrily, then her voice took an ominous turn. “That's why I had to get rid of her... if she was gone… then I was free…”

Kassandra gasped and Rudrick’s hands tightened into fists.

“Why Molly!? WHY!?” Kassandra yelled back.

If an orb could shrug, Molly just did. “Honestly…” she chuckled. “It was an accident. It seemed she drank some of the potions that I was experimenting with. Have no idea why… but the next thing I heard was she died and no one could find her body. Either way, I was in charge now. And it felt great!” she said in a joking manner.

Molly then started to laugh, and Rudrick and Kassandra seemed to have taken what she said at face value. Rudrick trying to contain his anger, and Kassandra being strangely silent.

But Van was thinking something else. “Wait… something about what she said isn’t adding up…” he thought. “And as far as I can sense… she isn’t lying either…” But any idea to pursue that inquiry was stopped when Molly began to talk once more.

“That’s enough gloating.” Molly suddenly said, as if switching characters. “Now it is time to deal with a few pesky intruders. Rudrick, deal with them!” Rudrick hesitated, but almost as if against his will, his body started to move.

“Rudrick! NO!” Kassandra shouted.

“I’m sorry Kassy… I can’t help myself… You shouldn’t have come…” Rudrick was just able to get out.

“Well... it looks like we are in a fight.” Van thought, then shouted. “Lyn! Azra! Get ready!”

“You do not know the power of the dark side!” Lyn then started to let electricity run throughout her body and she raised herself higher, brandishing her halberd and pointing it forward in a dramatic fashion.

“Meow! HIssss!” Azra called upon darkness and it swarmed around her, coalescing onto her. Slowly she grew a shadow body around her own body. Now she had a shadowy form the size of a large puma and gave a larger roar.

“It will take more than a fairy and a cat to beat me! I hope you're ready, young man!” Rudrick said, strangely into the fight. He then let his mana disperse into the surrounding corpses, raising them from stillness. They grabbed nearby weapons and shields, and slowly made their way towards Van and his group.

“Rudrick has always been a little. Gun ho when it comes to testing his minions…” Kassandra said with a sigh.

Then the orb grew interlocking shields of mana that slowly moved around it. “As if a novice can beat my last boss! Please struggle to the end, I haven’t had such entertainment in a long time!”

Van put the lantern away and clasped it to his hip once more. He then drew his sword and charged it with aura and spiritual energy and freed up his other hand to cast spells at a moment's notice.

With that, Van charged in, sick and tired of always being the passive one, he moved forward and off to the side so as not to be surrounded. He came in slashing, only to find that the corpses had the surprising skill and blocked his attacks. Runes glowing on their bodies.

“That’s not going to work on my personal creations. The runes augment their abilities and defense! Not even a simple fireball would be enough to take them down!” Rudrick shouted.

Van jumped back in annoyance. He felt it when he struck the corpse that what Rudrick said was true. These things were enhanced thanks to the runes, stronger, faster, with the runes also making their bones and flesh harder. It will take more than a few slashes to deal with them. And with their numbers and them slowly surrounding him. He had to think fast otherwise it might be too late.

“I can’t believe I’m going to do this, but at least I might do some damage…” Van then pulled out several small flame bottles and just started chucking them at all the corpses around him. They were hardly better than Molotov cocktails, but at least it was something.

But as expected, even after throwing all his bottles away, most of them were hardly damaged. Lyn and Azra were hardly doing better. Though they were too quick for the corpses to catch, they didn’t do much damage either. The runes protected the undead greatly.

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“Come on, surely you could do better than that?” Molly jokingly teased.

Van then went on the attack once more, but this time using his aura, the feeling of speeding up and time going slower becoming familiar to him. With newfound power, he laid into the corpses around him, doing damage, then jumping back, then charging forward to do more damage before jumping back once more. Hit and run. And whenever they got a little to close, and grouped up. A fireball was their prize. Though more than one since they seemed to have some resistance to it.

Slowly he was whittling them down, taking one down there, and another over here. Lyn and Azra slowly formed up around him and then worked together to beat down on the undead around them.

But for all their teamwork, it still wasn’t enough. What few were destroyed, was slowly replaced by the corpses lying down on the floor. Thankfully there did seem to be a limited number, but if they were all like the ones they were fighting, it was still too much. And Rudrick and Molly hadn’t even joined in on the fight yet.

Van took out his lantern and banged on it to see if it was any good. But other than a brief look of irritation on Rudrick, the corpses seemed largely unaffected, the runes seeming to be helping protect them and continue despite the effects of the lantern.

Slowly, the noose was tightening around them. And Van did something unexpected, he jumped onto the wall behind him and stuck to it. Using his aura to prevent him from falling.

“Hmmm…” Rudrick looked at Van with an arched eye. “That’s impressive, you're pretty young to have such mastery of aura… but I don’t think you have the aura pool to keep at it for too long… I fear it will be a waste of aura in the long run…”

Van chose to ignore him and focus on thinking of a way out of this predicament. He could use the amulet, but why use it now? He was going to see if he couldn’t give everything he had first before escaping. Lyn flew up to him, and Azra joined by going through the shadow.

“What now master? Those things are pretty tough…’ Lyn said, uncharacteristically solemn. Azra meowed in agreement.

Van thought hard, from what he knew of necromancy, he couldn’t just take over those undead, especially since it seemed those runes also helped control them. He couldn’t exorcise them either, that took too much energy, and they didn’t seem to be using true souls, but a form of pseudo ones that he was used to, meaning it would be less effective anyway. But what about his shadow magic?

A plan slowly formed on how to deal with the corpses. It will be slow. And tiring. But it should clear them up. Taking advantage of his mental link with his familiars, he set the plan in motion.

Azra jumped down, losing her new shadowy form and instead of casting it outward towards the undead. The shadows entangled themselves upon them, holding back their movement.

“Let's go, Lyn!” Van said as he charged downward. Empowering his whole body, he quickly moved in on the corpses, putting some effort into his swings, and one by one started to decapitate them.

But from the corner of his eye, he couldn’t help but notice Lyn. before she would just zip about and take some potshots at the corpses, but now it was different. She was all fired up, electricity firing off of her in waves. She would raise her halberd, aura, and blue electric energy forming on its tip, lengthening it. And with one smooth swipe, a head would fly.

Two, three, four. The second she finished off one, she zipped to another. Her movement was graceful and stunning.

“I can’t believe how much she has changed in the few months I've known her.” Van thought wide-eyed. “She’s like a completely different person… I wonder where she is getting all this energy?”

But it wasn’t just Lyn who had improved. For while her new form wasn’t powerful enough to defeat any of the undead. Azra was holding them down with relative ease. In fact, as far as he could tell, she was hardly exerting any effort and instead started expanding her influence, catching more and more victims in her web of shadows and holding them down tighter.

Van made a mental vow not to hold anyone back and doubled his efforts in defeating the undead in front of him.

But their numbers hardly lessened. There were probably over a hundred corpses, both moving and still on the floor, waiting to be activated. That’s when he realized that there was always a certain number of undead active at any one time.

Glancing over at Rudrick, it dawned on him that he wasn’t taking this seriously, otherwise, they would be swarming with undead by now. Instead, there were at max, thirty to forty undead at any given time. When one dropped, another rose and took its place. Despite already dealing with over a dozen of them, their numbers never dwindled.

Van turned to Azra. giving a mental command to her.

Azra gave a small nod of her feline head and expanded her shadows even further. Now instead of holding down the moving undead, she was holding down those still on the ground, preventing any reinforcements, and allowing him and Lyn to have an easier time. Or at least that was what he hoped.

“Not bad… not bad… not the best mind you… but still…” Rudrick said, somewhat approvingly. “Unfortunately I don’t think it will be enough… it’s a good idea and all… but even if you were to deal with my minions, you still will not have the energy to deal with me.”

He then looked sadly at Van and his group. “You all hold great promise.” then turning to Van. “and you could do so much more…” then addressing everyone. “But if you continue on, I will be forced to intervene…”

“That may be so…” Van said, taking out another corpse but giving a look towards Rudrick. “But I still have to see how far I can go!” he then took out another. Leaving only twenty of the forty. with Lyn seriously going to town on the others…

Rudrick nodded. “I can understand somewhat. I too wish I had woken up before it was too late… so happy I was… just to play around with my runes and magic… who knew it would all come to this?”

Van ignored him and continued cleaving into the undead. Even if they were restrained, they still moved a little slowly, the runes on their body glowing, forcing them forward and to push against the shadowy tendrils that kept them at bay. So he still had to be careful, and still had to put some power behind his strikes if he wanted to cleave their head off.

As he and Lyn were mopping up the last few, he noticed a problem. The runes on the beheaded corpses were still active. Something about the way they were still active, a strange half-remembered memory from a long time ago, tickling his thoughts, speaking of hidden danger.

Van’s eyes widened as Lyn cleared out the last of them. “Oh, Shi-”

Van jumped as far as he could, aiming for the ceiling, for the first time in a long time, using his green aura instead of his blue and giving a mental warning to his two familiars.

Lyn got the message and flew up, heading towards him. Azra hesitated, unsure if she should just let go of all the corpses she was holding down. That hesitation cost her.

With a sad look, Rudrick made eye contact with Van. then turning back to the scene of carnage and snapped his fingers.

All the corpses that were defeated started to glow. The runes on their body, starting to burn hot. Brighter they became until it started to sizzle the flesh they were on. Then they started to blink in and out, faster and faster.

Within five seconds of Rudrick snapping his fingers, all the downed corpses exploded, in a massive and fiery conflagration.

Van was blown higher up into the air, thankfully protected by Lyn, who was using wind magic to deter most of the explosion and dragging him up higher with her own two hands to keep him safely above the now sea of fire. If he wasn’t so shocked at the moment, he would have been impressed.

But despite all the effort, Lyn put in. Van still felt like he was punched upwards. And to add to that physical pain, a spiritual one punched him right in the soul. As Azra was forcibly desummoned and sent back into his soul realm.

After the fire had left, he was let go, and he used his green aura to descend gently and safely to the burnt ground. He felt a little sick from the pain, and the smell didn’t help.

With another snap, the rest of the hoard that had been restrained slowly got up. “I’m really sorry about this… I truly am… but perhaps you could try again some other time? There’s no shame in running if you need to after all. Next time you come back, I'm sure you could beat me.”

Rudrick tried to say kindly, but to Van, it sounded condescending.

Slowly, Van got back up, burnt, bruised, feeling a little sick, he still wasn’t going to go down without a fight. For even if he knew that Azra was technically safe, and just recuperating, the scene of her wide-eyed look as she blew up will haunt him.

Now… he was mad… (“...Anna… I need you…”)

(“...I’m on my way.”) A soft feminine voice replied.