Tybalt found himself in a dark space.

  What happened? he wondered. Where… am I?

  The faces of people he had known began flashing before his eyes against the black backdrop. First, there was his mother and his uncle, then his father, tutor Balthus, the Baroness, and Miranda. Then the vision began to speed up. He saw the Army personnel he had known, starting with the recruiting officer, then the mage who had reaffirmed Tybalt’s class-less-ness, then his drill sergeant. More faces flew by. Soldiers whose names he could hardly remember. Men and women and children who he had killed.

  There was the Commander, Baldwin, another sergeant, the rest of the old guard of Volusia’s squad. Brandy’s face was the only one in this part of the vision that made him smile. He had been with the squad on leave in Verma when they met. Had those been the happiest months of his life? The vision didn’t stay on her face long enough for him to think about it.

  Next came the new additions to the squad, the loathed Private Graven, the naive Lieutenant Sperry—and somehow, improbably, the fox girl, who Tybalt had never met in real life.

  She dominated the vision for a moment, her gaze turning to focus on Tybalt in the present. The fox girl’s eyes locked onto his, and he suddenly realized this was no memory.

  She shouted, “Tybalt! Open your eyes!”

  He suddenly felt an agonizing pressure—hands, wrapped around his throat!—and Tybalt’s eyes flew open. The darkness was still there at the edges of his field of vision. He still couldn’t breathe. There was only a tiny pinprick of light remaining, a glimmer at the end of the tunnel.

  In that little gap in the darkness, he saw it. The face of his enemy. The monster that stared at him with those hungry, malicious green eyes.

  Tybalt’s hand moved again, grasped something hard—the dagger hilt!—as the darkness overtook his vision. He was barely aware of what happened next, but he found himself able to breathe again suddenly.

  Then he felt a heavy weight sink down on top of him and clumps of a thick, sticky substance striking his chest and face. He instinctively shut his mouth against it and turned his head so that he could breathe without inhaling the viscous material.

  He felt the familiar surge of strength from leveling, and he used it as he shoved the bulk of the monster off of his body.

  Thank the gods, he thought. No, thank you… He remembered the face of the fox girl who had helped him wake up. Even if she wasn’t real, she had made a big difference in the final moments there. Helped him to fight through impossible conditions—unconsciousness and a complete lack of air!

  I should really give her a name.

  He sat up, cracked his neck, and began wiping away some of the thick greenish stuff that lightly coated his face and throat. The goo that he now realized was probably some form of partially decomposed blood. The physical sensation of touching that material pulled him out of the dream-like state his mind had fallen into.

  That foul creature. I’m pretty sure I know what it was now that I can think. I have heard that paralyzing touch described before. A ghoul. I had only heard of it in spook stories, the kind told to frighten children. To think that it was a real monster and truly possessed that power… To think that something so monstrous existed in this world, or could exist. Incredible.

  Now that he had survived the fight, the fear had begun to recede, replaced by a sense of the strangeness of this encounter. The world was larger and more surreal than Tybalt had ever realized.

  He shook his head and looked more carefully at the monster, curious about it now that he was safe.

  He saw what had happened to the ghoul—what he had done to it. His right hand had continued moving in his desperate determination, even as his vision faded to nothing. He saw the rough stab wounds lining the ghoul’s neck and the dagger at the end of the trail of puncture holes. The hilt protruded from the ghoul’s gaping ear canal.

  When he touched it, he confirmed that the blade was firmly lodged.

  I stabbed it pretty forcefully there. I hadn’t realized I was that strong. His mind returned unbidden to the unexpected violence he had inflicted on Baldwin. Then he slowly shook his head. Well, the imminent threat of death will do that for you.

  In the distance, he could already hear the sound of the next crew of undead readying to fight him. Even with the level up having restored his stamina, there was a mental exhaustion creeping up on him. He badly wished for a break in the action.

  But as Tybalt had no reason to expect any quarter in this place that was meant to test him, he turned to face the enemies.

  Thankfully, it was another crew of skeletons, though this time, the number had swelled to twenty-five.

  The tower continued to escalate its challenge.

  Tybalt sighed, reached down, and began slowly and carefully wiggling the dagger free from the ghoul’s ear canal. He expected he would need the weapon for future fights. He knew he could deal with the gang of skeletons—with his bare hands and feet, if necessary. But he was leery of his next fight with a ghoul.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He began breathing more carefully, an ancient method for regulating the energies within his body. Now that he had come so close to death, he wanted to pull out all the stops. He wouldn’t leave anything on the table.

  Even options that he knew he had not developed adequately must be tried.

  So Tybalt reached into his core and pulled on his supply of mana for the first time since he had entered the Tower.

  It took a minute before anything came out—Tybalt was no mage, and he had never developed the kind of control with mana that would make it a game-changer in the heat of battle. He only knew a few basic tricks, which had come with great effort. For the class-less, using mana at all was uncommon.

  Plus, his reserves were relatively small. Unlike his stamina, his mana would not fully refill with each new level.

  But against these slow enemies, with a little time to prepare between fights, he might be able to do something with it.

  When the power finally came to Tybalt, the skeletons were almost upon him. But he ignored them as best he could. He had committed to this strategy. It was time to employ his mana. He used it first to strengthen his arms and then, after he had pulled his spear from the ghoul’s cold, dead body, to enhance the spear. The energy gave a warm, hearty feeling as it passed from his core and through muscle and bone. The power always came with a slight—misleading—sense of invincibility.

  Here goes nothing…

  Tybalt threw out the strongest, widest slash he could, and he chopped through a dozen skeletons’ spinal columns in an instant.

  The rest pressed in all around him as he pulled the spear back to a ready position, and then Tybalt was rolling, punching, bludgeoning with the spear head rather than stabbing or slashing.

  He did not let the skeletons take him off his feet, and with the spearhead enhanced, even hitting the creatures in the head with it once did a surprising amount of damage.

  Before he knew it, every skeleton lay in pieces, unmoving, in the powdery gray soil.

  Tybalt immediately cut the supply of mana to the spear. He was already down to 38/50 mana after only a few minutes of this. He would need to conserve resources carefully if he was going to keep using that power.

  Hours passed, in which the challenge of the Tower seemed to become a test of his psychological endurance.

  The Tower of Death had continued to throw new and dangerous undead at Tybalt—a giant-sized skeleton was the most recent, but there had also been a pair of ghouls that attacked him together, a threat that he only survived by resorting to mana again and landing a headshot on the first one before the second one could tackle him.

  His body was covered in sweat now. Despite the strain of everything and the fact that his gambeson seemed to be contributing to how overheated he felt, Tybalt had remained disciplined and refused to take it off. He had a bad feeling that as soon as he removed the thick, padded jacket, some creature was going to manage to sink its teeth into him and nick an artery. Then his life’s blood would water the dusty soil of this place.

  A half-dozen skeletons appeared on the horizon, but Tybalt did not relax at the reduced number of his opponents. He knew it was a bigger threat than it at first appeared.

  He scanned the environment around him to make certain that the Tower was not sending some other group of monsters to flank him from the other side, as it had done once earlier.

  Then he took a better look at the new skeleton attackers and understood how the Tower had heightened the challenge.

  From further off, they had appeared humanoid in size, but now he saw the skeletons were a bit larger in stature than a normal human—though, with certain classes, some humans became incredibly large and muscular. These skeletons also had tusks.

  Tybalt had fought ogres before, and he had a strong inkling that these creatures had been ogres before they were skeletons. He wasn’t sure if this was better or worse than being attacked by a giant’s skeleton had been.

  On the one hand, the bones of these things were much thinner and would therefore break more easily.

  On the other hand, these skeletons were more agile, and their bones were still harder and stronger than human bones.

  I will have to use mana again, Tybalt thought.

  But he at least knew this nightmare was almost over.

  He had stopped looking at the numbers that appeared after each group, but he recalled that the last time he actually looked at the announcement, it showed something in the double digits. The enemies had kept appearing and somehow being destroyed after that, though Tybalt was wearing down to a nub of himself in the process.

  I must be close to the end. He promised himself that after he dealt with these creatures, he would pay attention for the actual number remaining. He was so drained that it was hard to make himself think of what came next. He could tell his body and mind were almost ready to shut down. He needed to know this would be over soon.

  Most battles that he had heard of did not last more than a day, and under an hour was more common. Longer battles usually involved one side being in a fortified position. And none of them were one man battles. Fighting by himself, with no aid, no food, and no rest had taken a toll.

  This had been the best single day in Tybalt’s life for leveling up, though.

  He had gained his first few levels in the first few months after he turned thirteen and gained access to his status. Ever since, it had been much slower. For the class-less, levels were both less meaningful and harder to come by.

  But not today.

  In the Tower, Tybalt had pushed himself harder and fought more than ever before in his life.

  He checked his status.

  I used up almost all my mana, but I managed it just well enough. If I time this just right, I think I can take these things down before I run out. The thought of facing whatever group of monsters would come next without mana was chilling, but Tybalt did not think he had any other choice. His arms could barely lift the spear, let alone build up enough force behind it to destroy the thick ogre skulls.

  Tybalt would need the enhancement to stand a chance.