Today's Earth date: November 4, 1991

The demon numbers weren't exaggerated. There must be hundreds on each floor. Their bodies dissolve completely when they die, so we can't count corpses. I tried counting my kills but lost track when the ugliest thing I've ever seen charged at me.

I don't have words for describing demons, and I worry that my nightmares will be stronger now that I know these things exist.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

The party expected to find Julian in a large chamber–like a proper boss fight–but that was not the case. He was in a sizable side room whose entrance was in a corner rather than on a flat wall like all the others.

If that corner was like the one in the Water Temple, it could close. That seemed like something a lich would do to trap an enemy. Fergus whispered that a lich could do that with a normal door too, which was true, but the corner entrance still felt ominous to Wayne.

More curious than the room's odd location were the three red dots within it. One was off in a corner while the other two overlapped one another, moved in unison, and never separated.

Wayne entered first.

Armond buffed his agility with Ner, so between that and Blitz, Wayne's entrance was more akin to teleporting. Hector led the rest of the party in after.

This room was the size of a high school theater–in a normal school, not a rich kid school–and had tables and chairs made from the same stone as the dungeon. A wide ribbon of dwarvish circled the room. Wayne spotted three Dwarven Diagnostic Cubes stacked in a corner, and there was a pile of stone tablets with the same surface area as the cube faces. Several of those were propped against each of the walls as well piled next to the cubes. Many were missing corners or large chunks, as if they had broken off.

Julian wore pants and a jacket made of animal skins, deer mostly but with accents of something fuzzier and softer at his cuffs and around his neck. He wore a green hooded tunic beneath those, and his hood was down. He seemed tall for someone who used to be human, and his bones were a dull gray. They looked too thick to be natural, like someone wrapped clay around them. The lumpy indents on the surface even looked like finger prints.

The two connected dots were still on Wayne's HUD, but Julian was the only visible monster where two dots should be.

Perhaps a lich glitched his system?

Glitch lich. Ha! He'd have to tell Fergus that one.

As for the third red dot, Wayne saw a dog the size of a football, but the proportions were off. Its head was a little too small. Its legs were different lengths. And the profile of its spine dipped and rose at odd intervals.

"Heroes? No… Not Heroes. Saviors?" His voice was soft, as though it was weak from underuse.

"We know you got screwed, Julian," Wayne said. "And you know that this is no way for a druid to live. It's time to let go and pass on."

"You are no druid."

"That's true. Pass on quietly, and we'll tell your story."

"Or, now that you have broken the barrier, I rise to tell it myself."

The dog dashed across the room and lunged at Wayne, baring teeth the same gray as its body.

Wufbam.

The attack dog burst into dust. Like Hrglut, Wufbam seemed to be literal. Exploding small dogs meant exploding small dogs.

Julian roared. The whole room shook. Vines thicker than Wayne's arm shot across the room entrance, sealing the party's only escape route. Wayne felt the floor vibrating and dove, dodging a root that thrust straight up from the ground beneath him.

"Armond!" Wayne yelled.

"Oh, I tried it as soon as I saw him. I didn't know we were going to talk to him first."

"Ha!" Fergus boasted.

The roots targeted the Zeroes as well, but they couldn't penetrate Armond's barrier.

"He's resisting my spells!" Fergus yelled. Wayne assumed his friend tried Rot and Gra to no avail.

Linebacker.

A football robot zoomed to park itself between Wayne and the lich.

"Ahh, a true wizard I see," Julian said.

Wayne and Fergus dumped Missiles into the lich. Before the smoke from the barrage could clear, Wayne Blitzed and swung at Julian. The lich sidestepped his blade with the casual ease of letting someone pass him in the hallway.

Julian's eyes glowed blue, and Wayne felt his mouth go dry. A ball of water formed in front of the lich and fired at the Zeroes, ignoring Wayne entirely.

When the water bounced off of Hector's Mirror Shield skill, Julian had enough time to recognize his error but not react to it.

The amount of water seemed unimpressive at first glance. Whether it was the magic that shaped the water into an orb or it was some miracle of surface tension, the spell was like hurling a giant water balloon.

Wayne pictured Jimmy Flipnicki eating a water balloon to the face at Missy Stevens' eighth birthday party. The balloon didn't pop when it made contact, so for a moment squishy water was more like a heavy beanbag. It wrapped around his face, broke his nose, and hurled his body sideways with his head leading, like a giant hand grabbed his skull and yanked.

The balloon waited to pop until Jimmy was properly airborne.

What ruined Missy Stevens' birthday party was upsetting for Julian as well. The splash of water came a moment after impact, like the water balloon that flattened Jimmy Flipnicki. Julian, however, managed to stay upright, but he stepped back several feet, his body bent sideways from the force.

Wayne shot forward again, determined to land a hit with his silver longsword. Julian parried with a bony forearm and shifted across the room, like a slower version of Easy Out. Gray powder hung in a cloud where sword and bone had connected. In that flash of a moment, Wayne saw that Julian's left hand was missing three fingers. Only his bony pointer and thumb remained.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

The lich shot back with a fireball. Linebacker bot jumped in front of it before Wayne could react. The blast sent the robot rolling across the room, but it landed on its treads and came whirring back to the fight saying, "hut hut hut hut" despite having no mouth.

Julian roared, the sound having enough force to stagger Wayne and his party. They dug their heels and leaned in like it was a hurricane wind.

Skycat zipped in spamming Missile.

When Wayne turned to see Hector slammed into the ceiling by a thick root, a different root punched Wayne in the chest. Julian wielded it like a whip. As Wayne cartwheeled across the room, he heard the whistle of Personal Foul activating.

"What magic is this?!" Julian shrieked.

Before Wayne could check his hitpoints, he felt Armond's Heal spell. By the time Wayne got his system open, his hitpoints were back to 137 of his total possible 169.

A silver arrow penetrated the animal skins of Julian's jacket. He directed his fresh rage at Margo but nearly every vine that shot up or forward missed the rogue. She deftly dodged the few that would have hit. That was the Doran skill from Phantasy Star II, Wayne believed. The spell lowered Julian's accuracy, and even without a face, the lich's anger clearly compounded.

Armond cast Ner on Margo, and the speed with which she nocked, drew, and loosed arrows blurred. For a brief moment, she was like an automatic rifle, taking shot after shot after shot.

Three of those arrows hit Julian. His efforts to block and evade mostly worked otherwise, but the lich now favored a wounded leg. The one with three silver arrows sticking out of the thigh. For a moment, Wayne questioned the mechanics of that. Was the arrow stuck in the femur? Liches didn't have muscles for quads, right? The physics of undeath were so very confusing.

Linebacker bot threw himself in front of a root launched at Wayne like a thrown spear. The robot broke into hundreds of pieces but successfully protected its master.

Skycat circled Julian again, pelting him with Missiles.

How was Skycat still flying? Wayne had forgotten he had even summoned the fighter jet. Was this the new Auto-Target skill at work?

Taking a risk, Wayne Blitzed into Julian with his shoulder down. The force hurled the lich into the wall. Julian struggled to get to his feet, surrounded by loose powder from the blow. Two more silver arrows hit their mark, these two in his shoulder. And then Wayne was on the lich.

Feeling the silver hit the lich was different from how it felt to strike a monster with flesh. Instead, the resistance felt like paper, enough friction to be noticeable but not nearly enough to be meaningful. Julian's body was in pieces on the floor seconds later. He rotated his head to look Wayne in the eye with his empty sockets. They lit up again–green this time–and Julian shrieked.

He held the awful screech, the pain driving the party to their knees. When it stopped, Julian fell still. His bones glowed with the green of leaves in the middle of summer. Wayne saw graphic artifacts flicker in the aura, like those he saw on his system menu. Fergus looked at Wayne with alarm. Fergus saw them too, Wayne thought.

A soft feminine voice whispered, "Julian? My love? Where are you? What is this?"

The party searched the room for the source of the voice, then Wayne looked at his HUD. One of the overlapped red dots was gone, but one remained, right where Julian's body lay.

"No. What have they done to you, my little rabbit? Come back to me. Don't go."

The green glow deepened, the artifacts appearing and disappearing with greater speed, and started to lift away from the bones like rising steam.

The female voice shrieked. "They will join you in death, my love." The green smoke coalesced into an orb and rocketed upward, disappearing into the ceiling.

"Umm…" Fergus said. Everyone was confused as he was.

"That sounded less than ideal," Wayne said.

"That spirit wasn't Julian's," Armond said. "His is gone. I'm certain of it."

"I saw, well, this will sound crazy," Margo said before stopping herself. Wayne encouraged her to continue. "Did no one else see the woman?"

"The voice?"

"Yes, it was her speaking."

"Where did you see her?" Wayne asked.

"She came out of Julian and then went into the ceiling."

"God damn it," Wayne said. "That was Rebecca. Margo's Prism skill confirms it."

"One could imagine her being quite grateful for her new freedom," Fergus proposed.

But everyone knew that wasn't true. They had to go after her.

The party joined hands. Everyone but Wayne grimaced.

Rise.

Rise.

Rise.

Wayne cast Probe while his party recovered from the teleport. He caught the edge of a red dot before it moved off of his HUD. The spirit went in the direction of Cuan, as Wayne feared. They would never catch her on foot. His best option was to abandon his party and Blitz for as long as he could to catch up.

And hope he got to Cuan before he passed out.

Before he could explain the new plan to Fergus, the druid and his wolf bounded up to the party. "You let Julian escape?!" the druid roared.

"Julian is dead. We think that was Rebecca."

The druid looked in the direction the spirit went. He took a deep breath and said, "This is bad."

No one needed to say that they agreed. That much was obvious.

Tilting his head back, the druid took a long inhale and howled, his voice indistinguishable from a wolf's. The sound of paws galloping through the forest approached the party. Five wolves, all having the oversized proportions as the druid's mount, stopped in front of the druid as if the party didn't exist.

The druid spoke a few words in a language Wayne didn't know before turning to the party and saying, "Get on. Hold tight."

Riding on the back of a wolf felt like watching a point of view video from a rally car race. The wolf reacted to obstacles before Wayne's mind registered they were there, making turns and course corrections with equal finesse and speed. It didn't seem possible for a creature to have that kind of reaction time, but like a rally car, the wolves barreled forward as fast as they could and still hit every turn and adjustment with smooth perfection.

Wayne stopped trying to watch. He ducked his head down, pressing it into the fur of his mount as he held on tight.

For a brief moment, he wondered if wolves in this world got ticks, but the thought left him when the air around him lit up.

They were out of the forest, speeding down the hills at the bottom of the Wheel Mountain, charging across the open prairie toward Cuan. They had to be moving incredibly fast to cover that much ground already. This trip took two days for Outlawson.

The party was too far out to see detail, but they were certain they saw smoke rising above the city.

The druid was right. This was bad. Wayne knew they were chasing Rebecca, but what was she now? Was this a type of lich? Was she a ghost? A spectre? Why did her spirit have graphic glitches? He wouldn't be able to answer any of his questions until they reached Cuan, so he checked his system.

Hero: Wayne the Guy

Level: 10

HP: 137/169

STR: 19

AGI: 21

VIT: 15

LCK: 23

Another level was too much to ask, apparently. He yelled for Armond to top off the party's hitpoints. As Wayne felt the spell take effect, he cycled through his screens as quickly as he could.

He unlocked a new passive skill from Crystalis from the fight with Julian:

Flame Bracelet - Powers up the Sword of Flame to level 3.

Did it matter that he didn't have Sword of Flame? He only had Sword of Water, according to his system. Oh well, not like he could test it from the back of a wolf anyway.

As Cuan approached, Wayne heard sounds of battle and panicked screams. When they crested the final hill before descending to Cuan, he saw why.

The monsters were loose. All of them.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.