A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 303: Chapter 294 — The World That Burned II

He put his hand on the dead man’s chest and took the corpse anyway.

`[SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETON — 80 MANA]`

`[MANA: 2,990 / 3,100]`

It came up in six seconds, ordinary, obedient, exactly as usable as any other body he had ever raised.

That was worth knowing. Whatever the red was doing to these things, it did not touch the part of them that answered to him.

He sent it wide round the barricade instead of keeping it at his elbow.

One of the soldiers turned to intercept it, which cost them the left end of the shield line, and Ronan drove forward into the space with Finn on his shoulder.

Maeve did not brand the fresh one.

She put it on the shoulder Finn had already dished, because a brand on undamaged plate is a brand on plate.

`[MAEVE CALLAHAN — HEXLIGHT BRAND APPLIED]`

Finn hit the same place for the third time.

`[RUINED SOLDIER — HP: 4,650 → 1,880]`

It stayed up.

It stayed up with the shoulder joint visibly wrong and the arm not tracking properly, and it kept its shield where it should be, and it backed toward the Guard to be covered.

Cillian had been waiting on that.

He took the leg as it retreated — a short controlled bolt, not the big one, into the knee it was putting weight on.

`[RUINED SOLDIER — HP: 1,880 → 760]`

Finn killed it with two ordinary strikes and no skill at all.

`[RUINED SOLDIER SLAIN — PARTY KILL]`

---

The Guard came in once Ronan and Finn were extended, which was the moment it had been waiting for since they arrived.

It brought the weapon down on Ronan’s shield and Ronan angled it correctly and was still driven back a full step, boots ploughing ash.

And the follow-up came across the road on the right-hand side.

Alice was already moving.

Not to Ronan. Ronan was fine and she had been told what fine looked like. The swing was coming through the alley mouth she had been given, and Maeve had not said a word, and Alice did not wait for her to.

She took the weapon line aside on one forearm.

Then she stepped inside its reach and put the red-gold blade through the middle of it.

`[RUINED GUARD — HP: 10,000 → 1,900]`

Eight thousand one hundred in one movement.

The Guard should not have been standing. The blade had gone in under the sternum and out through the back plate and there was daylight through the middle of a Floor 30 heavy defender.

The red went brighter than James had seen it since Caerleon.

All of it — every thread in the armour, in the gauntlets, along the throat — pulled toward the hole and lit, and the Guard put one foot forward.

`[RUINED GUARD — HP: 1,900 / 10,000]`

The wound did not close. Nothing about it closed.

It just kept walking.

Alice’s whole posture changed. Whatever she had been doing before this, she stopped doing it.

She took its head off.

`[RUINED GUARD — HP: 1,900 → 0]`

`[RUINED GUARD SLAIN — ALICE]`

`[EXP GAINED: 500]`

`[CALL OF SOULS ACTIVATED — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

`[MANA: 3,020 / 3,100]`

No panel came up for Alice. It never did.

The red poured out of the Guard and went straight down into the road, and did not travel one metre in any direction.

---

James’s hand had gone to the scythe without him deciding it.

”Don’t,” said Maeve.

He looked at her.

”Thirty minutes.” She was not even watching him; she was watching the last two soldiers. ”That’s what you get. We’re two kilometres from the front gate and we haven’t seen the actual floor yet.”

James took his hand off it.

”Yeah.”

”You’ll want it later.”

”I know.”

---

They finished the last two without anything clever.

Ronan and Finn broke what was left of the line. Cillian took one at range once the shields stopped overlapping. The last one tried to get back behind the barricade and reset, and James’s skeleton was already standing where the gap was and put a dead man’s sword through it.

`[RUINED SOLDIER SLAIN — UNDEAD KILL]`

`[EXP GAINED: 300]`

`[CALL OF SOULS ACTIVATED — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

`[MANA: 3,050 / 3,100]`

James finished the other with Durendal.

`[RUINED SOLDIER SLAIN]`

`[EXP GAINED: 300]`

`[CALL OF SOULS ACTIVATED — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

`[MANA: 3,080 / 3,100]`

`[JAMES GANNER — EXP: 28,145 / 69,000]`

No clear panel came up.

Of course it did not. Six dead men at a barricade were not the floor. The floor was two kilometres up the road with its gate facing them.

---

Maeve went round everybody in about forty seconds.

Ronan’s arm was fine. Finn had taken one on an axe head and nothing on his body. Cillian had spent almost nothing and said so with visible pride. Nobody was hurt.

Alice had not been touched.