Dressed in dark gray, almost black robes that didn't flutter in the wind, a monster stepped out from behind a burning building. Like with Darius, it was like Luke's attention drifted away from it, like his eyes didn't want to look at it. Forcing himself to focus, Luke watched it approach. While the hood was up and forward enough to hide most of its head, glimpses of bone-white still showed, surrounding red-glowing eyes. A skull.

  Skeletal Archon. Level 16.

  "It's even holding a staff," Luke said, shaking his head. It looked like the Grim Reaper.

  Four zombies emerged from the burning building and rushed forward and past the Archon. Two of them were on fire, but they didn't seem to mind. While the monsters charged, their boss held back, a spellweave forming over the small black orb at the top of its staff. The thread crafting the intricate pattern of whatever magic the Skeletal Archon was preparing to cast proved difficult to read. Not just because the symbols were unknown, but the dark color of it made the damn thing blend into the background.

  With no more time to think, Luke reached forward with Threads of Mana, Weavestepped past the charging zombies, and sprinted forward, heading toward the Archon. If his rush surprised the monster, it didn't show it. The spellweave fell in on itself, and seven dark orbs appeared floating over the mage. One flew right toward Luke, and two more arced left and right to come at him from the sides. Rather than fly through the air on smooth trajectories, they moved in irregular patterns, jerking this way and that, as if trying to go their own way. This made it almost impossible to unravel them. Instead, Luke dodged.

  Weavestep brought him past the orb coming right for him, and dodging forward and to the left got him out of the path of the other two. Another couple of strides took him to the Skeletal Archon. By now, the zombies were on his heels, but Luke didn't care. In that moment, his focus was on the foe in front of him. Smashing the staff down on the skeleton crushed it into pieces, like the strings directing it had been cut, and its robes fell over the remains.

  Something struck Luke's side. It didn't result in pain, however, but more of a dull pressure. Weaver's Perception told him something was wrong. Very wrong. The area touched turned necrotic in an instant, and the stench of rotting flesh reached him as it began to spread. Turning, confused since the zombies should still be far off, he saw the dark orbs still coming for him. They hadn't disappeared when he dodged them.

  "Fuck," Luke muttered, slicing away at himself to staunch the spreading corruption.

  That hurt. A lot.

  Weaver's Renewal restored the area but at a heavy toll on his mana, and two more orbs were still coming for him, along with all the zombies. Not losing his cool, Luke jumped back as the other orbs moved as well, the ones that'd been hovering over the staff. Even the jumble of bone pieces from the crushed Archon were moving now, piecing themselves back together.

  "Dammit," he grunted, clamping down on his jaw to focus as he reached out with Threads of Mana.

  One, two, and then three orbs got to taste his threads as he unraveled them, but a fourth struck his leg. Before he had a chance to deal with that, a fifth found its target on Luke's shoulder. Ignoring them, he plucked the final two out of the air just as the zombies reached him. Unable to put weight on his leg, Luke would've fallen the moment they touched him, but he used his staff as a crutch to hold him up.

  Reaching forward with four threads, Luke sneered at the low-level zombies trying to reach him. Four monster cores found their way to his inventory, followed by their corpses, but more zombies were approaching from behind the burning building now. The fight was not over, not by a long shot, not with the Archon coming back and Luke being riddled with necrotic tissue. Not to mention the new monsters charging. First things first. The rot inside him spread at an alarming rate. Luke had to deal with it. With no other option at this point, he cut large pieces of flesh from his own body, excising the corruption. Unable to deal with the pain, since the areas were too large, Luke felt most of it, and it was like having someone take a sharp ice-cream scoop to your flesh and tear large portions away.

  Weaver's Renewal was still on cooldown. Blood stained his clothes, soaking them through before he managed to deal with sliced open arteries and half-gone muscles. Stumbling a little, Luke found himself forced to use the brute-force method of healing. It'd been a while, but the resulting warmth was as familiar as the massive mana cost, resulting in a throbbing headache and the threads of The Greater System starting to show.

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  The zombies were getting too close for comfort now, and Luke didn't have much fight left in him.

  Rather than bash the Skeletal Archon's head in again, Luke used the monster as a mana battery, siphoning from its mana channels and monster core and into himself, regaining much of what he'd lost, healing himself. That stopped the pieces of bone from moving, but the monster still lived. Slicing its monster core free and pocketing it put a stop to that.

  As soon as the Skeletal Archon died, the zombies dropped dead as well, and he got experience from all of them.

  "Huh," Luke said. "Neat."

  Victory.

  "Not so easy," Luke groaned, looking down at his clothes, still wet with his own blood to an uncomfortable degree. Healing himself restored the lost blood, but he didn't think himself able to clean the clothes with healing.

  He eyed the dark robe on the ground. It did look kind of comfy, and the Archon had been a tall one.

  Unwavering Robe of Shadows: Others are less likely to detect your presence.

  "Huh, this actually sounds really good," Luke said, glancing around in all directions to see if anyone was watching. After checking that the coast was clear, Luke removed his shirt and shorts by putting them into his inventory, then pulled the robe over his head.

  Standing up straight, he adjusted the hood and reached his arms out to either side. It fit. Also, it was even more comfortable than it looked. Nodding to himself, Luke plucked the staff from the ground. "Awesome."

  Reaching Focus of Shadows: Improved effects of shadow-based magic.

  Hannah would love that thing, he figured, and put it into his inventory, along with all the corpses he was standing over.

  Before he forgot, Luke made sure to enchant the robe.

  Unwavering Robe of Shadows (of Vitality): Others are less likely to detect your presence (+2 Vitality).

  The little experience bar for his profession was inching ever closer to the top. It was like a little mini-game, one Luke found himself enjoying a lot. While he wanted to see what'd happen when he leveled it up, this was not the time to go around spending mana just for the hell of it. More monsters separated him from the keep in the distance, a lot more, and judging by the sheer amount of monsters trying to climb those walls, time was of the essence.

  As he got running, he pondered what he could even do to stem the tide. The quest said to defend against the undead scourge, but what did that entail? He was just one guy. Stopping the scene before him from reaching its natural conclusion was impossible if he killed monsters one by one.

  Glancing down at the unmoving fabric of the robe he'd just taken off the Archon's corpse, a thought hit him. The Skeletal Archon's destruction triggered the death of those zombies. This was something he'd seen in a lot of popular media surrounding the undead, too. Kill the one in control, and its minions drop like flies. That was it. The plan. Find the big bad and kill it, thus destroying its army in one swoop. How hard could it be?

  Luke was on a jinxing roll with this dungeon, so he decided to just keep going before he got any more brilliant ideas. He'd been on this side of the portal for maybe forty minutes at this point. This whole place would soon turn into a clusterfuck of chaos with more and more Integrated pouring in, if his previous dungeon experiences were anything to go by, at least. That would be a perfect opportunity to sneak in and put his own plan into place.

  The next cluster of monsters was some way away, which gave Luke some time to think as he made his way down along the road. Where would the undead leader be hiding? From this distance, he saw nothing standing out, so that was something he'd have to figure out once he got closer. Eyes watering from the smoke of a nearby building on fire, Luke approached a couple of zombies standing around watching the flames and grunting to each other.

  They didn't seem to care about him. Walking closer and doing his best to suppress a cough, Luke brought the Tempered Staff out of his inventory and pulled back, readying a strike. Unsure what to think, he crept ever closer until he was close enough to smell them. Clearing his throat, both monsters cast about, arms swinging at their sides. Even with that, it took them a moment to spot Luke, who put their gross existence to a stop with two well-aimed strikes.

  "This robe is amazing," he said as he reached out and pocketed their corpses.

  The closer he got to the larger village preceding the keep, the more and more clusters of zombies appeared, and their levels grew higher. Some skeletons found themselves in the mix as well, and a few of those carried weapons. Luke walked past them, still careful to keep his distance, marveling at the effectiveness of his new garment.

  As he passed the first line of houses on fire, though, whatever magic obscured his passage would find a more challenging target. Another Skeleton Archon stood right there on the street, directing less intelligent monsters this way and that, ordering them toward different parts of the wall surrounding the keep.

  "Wonder if this'll work," Luke whispered to himself as he skirted the edge of the street, pressing himself against the wall.