A group of twelve ratkin were running. They had started with a party of 20, the biggest party sent out by the Chieftain. Their mission had been to investigate, search, and if possible, kill the Prowl-Shadow lurking around their clan's land. For weeks gatherers and hunters had gone missing without a trace.

  A badly injured clankin had limped to safety, warning about a living shadow with teeth and fangs. A shadow that ripped and tore his friends to pieces, leaving him injured just to snack on a later date. He had crawled through cracks in the walls to escape. He told how it prowled around him, trying to find a way to him.

  He died, just after giving his stark warning.

  Death was a constant companion in the dungeon. Nobody died of old age. Everybody dies. Only the Chieftain and the Shaman had lived an unnaturally long age. They were old, ancient even. At least in the eyes of the ratkin.

  Fang-Knife was one of the oldest warriors in the clan. The difficult hunt was given to him, and he had accepted it without a question. It was his duty to keep the clan's lands and its holdings safe.

  His name was a little mystery to his companions. Was he named after his long, curved knives or did he name his knives after himself? Nobody knew— nor cared. All they needed to know was that Fang-Knife was the best their clan had. The weapon and the kin alike.

  He had led the group to the Castle of Stone-Men.

  They should be asleep now. The clan had wiped them out months before, reduced them to rubble. They were the creatures of the dungeon, spawning after a time so they had to be culled by the champions.

  Piles of rubble were untouched, no stone-men around, but there was blood— a lot of it, and the stone-men did not bleed.

  They had arrived at the spot where the gatherer group had died, and they were surprised by what they found. The ancient enemy of corpse-walkers. Foul concoctions of dark magic, masquerading as living creatures. The Olds had fought them after the Gate-Travel. Barring them to the Netherworld where they came. The Bar-Gate had been breached and the dead were walking among them again.

  The ratkin had seen them from far away. Three— no, four— bow-lengths away. But they were surprised by arrows and shadow magic.

  A whistling arrow had struck a ratkin in the back while a Shadowbolt had blasted one of the kin to pieces in the front. The magical bolt had left a stream of wispy shadows on its trail. More powerful than usual.

  A man-arrow. Long and straight. Nothing like their crooked arrows. And magic, a lich?

  Fang-Knife ordered his kin to retreat, to the shadows, away from the open ground of the halls. If they got to the smaller corridors they'd have the advantage. Tactics honed by generations of sacrifice and blood. Tactics of ambush and surprise.

  But there weren't any corridors close by. Only stone pillars where they could take cover. A Shadowbolt chipped a melon sized piece away above Fang-Knife's head when he peeked into the dark hall.

  A litter of dead kin lay on the floors of stone. Blood spread to the cracks in the slabs, spidering towards Fang-Knife. Mocking him of his mistakes.

  A group of seven men was slowly marching forward. Five at the front with shields, two at the back. Bowman and the lich. An arrow was loosed and ricocheted off the pillar, disappearing to the darkness.

  Ordering his own bowkin to prepare, Fang-Knife organized his own group. Leapers prepared to break the shield wall, and the ankle-slicers drew their freshly forged fang knives. Only the best to this group, a gift from the Chieftain. A smile rose to the original Fang-Knife's face.

  A faint skittering drew Fang-Knife's attention from the preparations. The undead were still far away, two bow-lengths, but steadily closing.

  Surely they didn't... run?

  Fang-Knife turned away from the approaching undead and saw a pair of his kin lurk out from the deeper shadows. Slowly coming closer to his group. Others also saw them. They happily greeted the survivors of the gathering group, offering helping hands and encouraging words.

  Fang-Knife's warning came too slow, too late. The kin attacked his group, fang and knife meeting flesh and bone. A warm squirt of arterial blood splattered the group, freezing them in their place. Dull, undead eyes looked at the living. The abominations attacked, but met their match in melee. They didn't bleed — or scream — when struck. Only stared. Yells from the other side, behind the other pillar told Fang-Knife the others had been attacked as well.

  He screamed tears in his eyes while smashing his kin's brains on the floor. He knew him. Wrong-Fur. The one with weird coloring on his back. A fine hunter and warrior. Now head smashed open by Fang-Knife. It was the only way to keep undead down for good. There wasn't fire for purification. No time.

  In the confusion Fang-Knife made a snap decision. They were already dead, but that didn't mean a message couldn't be sent. The fastest scout was chosen— Shank-Tooth— she would deliver the message to the clan. A warning about the undead.

  Loaded with food and the only good potion, she ran among the corners of pillars, to the safety of the never ending corridors.

  All that was left was to wait. Wait for the end and final push. Steal the last seconds for Shank-Tooth.

  A leather-clad foot appeared behind the pillar. It was their signal for the push.

  Screaming their warcries, used by the forefathers before their forefathers, the last ratkins met their foe claw to steel.

  Jumping on shields, stabbing and slashing. Poking and tearing. Only to be mercilessly smashed and hacked off to the floor, finished by blunt ends of shields or sharpness of a blade. The undead fought well. They had experience fighting against ratkin and attacked the ratkin clinging on their comrades shields, not the one on their own.

  Fang-Knife slid smoothly below the shields, slashing tendons and ankles as he went. Two sworman lost their footing for a second. He was showered by blood, kinblood from above. He heard a frightened scream cut short by wet smack of a mace and a body hitting floor.

  Before losing momentum, Fang-Knife placed his feet on the ground, pivoting himself onto his feet and met his enemies head-on.

  He had made a mistake. He thought there was a lich there. All he saw was a warrior with a spear readied for a thrust. A thrust that he almost dodged, but had to take on the shoulder.

  If he wasn't a lich, why was there a floating, festering green eye above him? A general of the lich?

  Warm pain spreading through, Fang-Knife yelled his last words, a vow of a warrior to protect. The undead bowman shifted his gaze on him, sunken dead eyes without mercy or compassion, notching a long slender arrow on his bow.

  An arrow struck the leader to the chest. He stared at it. A kin-arrow. Dungeon made. THEIRS. Eyes lulling he turned to see two more of his kin. Bows and arrows notched. There was more troops, more bowkin in the side of the undead. Hiding in the shadows protecting the rear.

  Fang-Knife bellowed in defiance, making his final attack, a slash filled with his rage and will to survive. A slash securing Shank-Tooth's journey to warn everybody of the incoming danger: the dead were risen.

  He died before making another attack, filled with arrows and anger towards the undead. In his final breaths, he looked up at the leader of the undead. Their eye met, and in his dying moment Fang-Knife saw cold eyes of a killer.

  ───?───

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  Seventh looked at the leader who had died last. At least he thought the bigger, meaner and clearly angrier ratkin was the leader. A perfect subject for his next experiment.

  He had felt the connection between his minions breaking when the ratkin sent in pincer attack had died. No need to check any menus for that.

  Distributing ratkin potions to the most wounded human undead, Seventh checked the health status of the remaining minions.

  Too low. He would have to do some culling and raise new undead. He had tried raising the same corpse over and over again, but their health dropped lower each time. Raise Dead had its limits. Broken arm wasn't good for attacking, even when the spell fixed some minor breaks and cuts.

  Sitting in the middle of the carnage of the battle site he started his post battle checks and castings. While meditating he couldn't move, so first he untethered the Wandering Eye nesting over his shoulder, sending it up above for a bird's eye view.

  Ratkin were ordered to bring the bodies, check for potions and useful gear. They didn't have any use for food or water the ratkin were carrying, but Seventh had received some simple adventuring gear. Small pieces of chalk, string, more rope, flint and tinder.

  Nothing too useful, but he had started to collect them to his satchel. You never knew what was important in the dungeon. The potions were the best loot they could receive.

  Charles collected his arrows, grunted loudly and shuffled around angrily when they were found broken or bent. He had a good amount, but soon he would be forced to use shorter ratkin arrows.

  Others were slowly gaining their health. George and Adam were almost always around 80%, and brothers Eric and Frank were slowly gaining them from the 65% range.

  Dylan was still the poor target practice with multiple arrow hits per battle. He used a lot of their potions and was even now patiently waiting for a new one, arrows sticking out from both of his legs and shield.

  Seventh still had his emergency potion. A real potion made by the dungeon. He didn't use any of the other potions. Others needed them more than he did.

  But the damage stayed.

  Wounds. Bitemarks. Broken bones. Cut sinew. Scars remained, even on Seventh.

  He felt his mana reaching the maximum amount and slowly started to fill his own body with the magical energy. After using Shadowbolt against Bob, he had gained some — insight and new information was available.

  While casting normally, mana flowed automatically through the body for the spells. If the casting failed for some reason, like trying to cast a spell with insufficient amount of mana, the arcane energy just moved back.

  Seventh had a faint memory of spell failing more dangerously, a lightning erupting from someones back, but he didn't know why it had failed so spectacularly.

  Higher ranking spell? Too much mana? Botched incantation?

  To strengthen his spells, Seventh could collect mana to his body without releasing the spell.After a great deal of mana was collected, he could cast a more potent version of the spell.

  With Raise Dead, each casting costed more mana and with channeling he could control bigger groups. Normally Seventh could control three ratkins with full mana, but with Meditate the undead cap raised to six. Or use more mana for creating more powerful minions.

  While waiting for his mana to replenish, Seventh checked his status.

  His long meditating stops had leveled his skill, but the skill description didn't change. He could feel it working faster and even verified it with LOG. It took around thirty minutes for Meditate to fill him up now.

  Seventh had dared to use Wandering Eye after the first casting. All he needed to do was not to look directly at himself. Then everything was fine.

  With ranking Wandering Eye to F, Seventh could tether it on a spot. With little experimentation he figured out the eye needed to be a foot from the intended tethering target and both needed to be immobile for two seconds. After that, he could have a glowing third eye looking over his shoulder.

  With practice, he had slowly learned to look through all his eyes while walking. It was surprisingly hard to remember which way was which. He stumbled a lot while practicing and Charles hadn't stopped grinning after seeing Seventh falling over and over again on a smooth flooring.

  While using Meditate it was easy to close eyes and let the eye wander around. Plot the new course and check the shadows for hiding ratkin.

  Every now and then, he could see something move in the shadows, but when checking it out, there wasn't anything. Even when Seventh was sure he had seen something and used the whole party to surround one particular corner there wasn't anything but rubble.

  He was sure there was something else in the shadows and had George and Charles keep him company while channeling spells post battle.

  Having channeled four times his maximum mana to his body, the magic started to bleed out, prickling his skin and disappearing into the air.

  Looking through the Wandering Eye, the still corpse of the dead ratkin leader almost looked like he was sleeping after a taxing day. Seventh whispered the words that had built his foundation of survival and immoral mathematics.

  “Raise Dead.”

  The body let out a primal bellow of... something— a scream, a roar with too much raw emotion to put into words.

  The small red eyes filled with ghostly light and anger. For a split second Seventh could feel the magic burning in its veins, almost as potent as the wrath against all undead.

  But the new undead didn't attack. It couldn't. It rose slowly on its legs and arms, sniffing the air, looking around. A warrior checking his surroundings and companions. The ratkin sneered at Charles and George defiantly, drawing his long daggers out.

  Seventh could see the Death Sense aura dancing around the ratkin. It was blue— no, azure pyre of mana, slowly leaking from the corpse. The mana looked similar to the six humans Seventh had in his party, but the color was different. Azure with occasional white sparks instead of solid black and gold swirling around each other.

  A buzz behind his eyes informed Seventh that his PARTY menu had a new member, Fang-Knife of the Silent Sea.

  So that's how it works. More advanced undead are added to the party menu, not to my minion list, Seventh thought, and checked his minion list too. He had four other ratkin under his command now. Keeping so many made it impossible to use Raise Dead in combat, but he had a system.

  His party and minions killed the ratkin, he checked minion's statuses, and those who were under 30% health were... ordered to be removed from the list. Then he could raise new minion at full health from the freshly made stock of corpses.

  Counting bodies and minions. Keeping balance of health. Counting potions and arrows. Measuring wounds. Immoral mathematics of survival.

  Seventh had to stay in the black to win, to survive.

  Seeing Fang-knife's name had thrown a huge branch on his wheelhouse.

  Ratkin had names. Real names given by parents and their kind. They had lives beyond the grinding survival. They were real. Real people made into undead minions for Seventh's survival.

  “Godsdammit Fang-Knife, you are trouble already,” Seventh said in a tired voice.

  A scream of sub-30% ratkin echoed, and Seventh had more space in his minions list.

  “Raise Dead.”

  A System message disrupted his channeling. Slowly, Seventh collected the unused mana in his body, and secured it back wherever it came from to see what had changed.

  Seventh's Focus had risen! He had no idea what it was, or why it ranked up, but a new skill was always a plus in his book!

  He looked into his new skill.

  Activating the skill, Seventh felt... well nothing at first, but after a solid minute of waiting he felt a tiny droplet of mana squeeze through his skin.

  Focusing on the droplet, it traveled through his fingers, swirling around his bones before flowing upstream below his heart, straight into his Essence.

  Essence? What the— is that it is? Like the attribute?

  Opening STATUS SCREEN he looked at his attributes, and there it was, Essence. He still didn't exactly know what it and Focus meant, but gaining rank in Focus had rattled something loose in his brain. Forgotten knowledge? New knowledge given by ranking up? Something like that.

  Both of them have something to do with mana. Essence is... amount? Focus is power? Refinement?, Seventh thought while following another droplet of mana traveling into his Essence.

  After having fifteen ratkin minions even the channeling started to strain his mind and body. He had to stop. Lying on the cold floor, Seventh chuckled. Twenty-two undead, a horde.

  “A mighty army of dead rats and villagers. Truly a force for conquering dungeons,” he said jokingly to no one in particular. He heard a dry groan as a response, Fang-Knife had expressed his displeasure.

  “A mighty army of dead ratkin and villagers,” Seventh corrected himself. “Happy now?”

  Fang-Knife let out a guttural retching sound in reply.

  “As long as you don't stab me in the back,” Seventh said. “Actually, DON'T stab me in the back or anybody else in this party.”

  Fang-Knife spat on the floor, clearly displeased, and sheathed his knives.

  Yeah, he will be trouble, Seventh thought.