Kenny felt his body start to move sluggishly as the Freezing Cold Debuff stacks grew more and more by the second as the ghosts flew through his body. He had tried to dodge them the best he could but after the amount of ghosts had grown from the four to ten after killing the Turned Zombies, he didn’t have the perception to keep track of them all. To make matters worse new Turned Zombies had manifested shortly after he finished killing all the ones that had appeared earlier. He was starting to get overwhelmed.

Was it a dumb idea to try and aggro the ghosts that had been assaulting Val? Yeah, but he couldn’t leave them to do whatever it was they were doing to her. Especially not after hearing her screams. He was no saint, no white knight, he wasn’t trying to be. However, he told her he would protect her.

That meant even if he couldn’t damage these ghastly bastards he would still try to do something so she could recollect herself and get back into the fight. He had some faith in her. At least, he told himself he had some faith in her.

She wasn’t as useless as he knew she believed herself to be. She was a lot more useful than she realized really. The two abilities she had were amazing. To be able to not only slow down a creature but also make them feel pain? If he had her abilities with his style of fighting he believed he would be invincible.

Of course, Val was no melee fighter. She was meant to be a backline supporter. Although he guessed she wasn’t a full supporter since the Pain attack packed quite the punch. He would know since he had experienced it firsthand.

That meant with some training and some proper guidance from someone who could or is utilizing similar abilities, she would become a powerful Tower Ascender. And if he did things right, he wanted her on his team. No matter the cost. Even if it meant looking like a fool trying to punch these ghastly ice pack bastards.

Damn he wished he could just punch these guys. If he could do that then it would make things so much easier. Of course, he knew not all problems, or monsters, could be solve with either a good punch or a swift kick to the face, but these guys had both ganged up on Val and were annoying the shit out of him. He wanted to do anything to make things less of a hassle for her since her abilities were limited to the two, but in the end all he could do was turn their attention and ire onto him.

Two ghosts ran through his body causing a faint cold sensation to run throughout his blood. He let out an irritated grunt as he pushed through it. Being in this situation made him extremely grateful he received this jaw mask since it lessened the Freezing Cold Debuff.

Without it he probably would have ended up like Val by now. Laying frozen stiff on the ground. He didn’t know how long the effects were for her since she didn’t have an item like his, but he was hoping it was almost gone because he didn’t know how much longer he could hold out.

As if the universe heard his grumbles, a sudden blast of mana slammed against a ghost as a murky ball of grey mana sent another ghost into a sudden fit of pain. Kenny grinned as he teased, “Enjoyed your ice bath Princess?”

“Ha, ha, ha, very funny,” Val dryly stated as she tried to keep a straight face before sending another ball of mana from her wand right at the ghost that was hit with her Pain ability.

To both Kenny’s and Val’s shock and surprise, the ghost that was writhing in pain exploded into a dark purple cloud of smoke. Kenny wasn’t sure, but the amount of power behind that magical spell seemed to be slightly more powerful than usual. Or maybe it was her Pain ability that was powerful and the mana blast was just enough to finish the creature off?

Kenny didn’t have much time to ponder on it as the rest of the ghosts didn’t waste time and raced over to Val. Kenny cursed as he turned to try and protect her. However, due to the debuff that had stacked over time his movements were slightly sluggish and made him feel like he was trying to trudge through snow storm.

He watched and was about to yell at her to run, but before he could open his mouth he saw he was too late as the swarm of ghost swarmed her and took turns running through her body.

“No! Val!” Kenny shouted as he tried to move faster. He then swiftly came to a stop as the ghosts started to explode one after another. After a giant cloud of smoke finally disappear, Kenny saw Val standing there unaffected by the Debuffs.

Val flashed him a smirk as she said in a teasing tone, “Aw, are you worried about little old me? That’s cute.” She then moved her hands high enough to reveal the runes that were glowing a sinister dark purple. “No need to worry anymore. My Defense Skill Tree awakened and I’m essentially immune to Debuffs now.”

Kenny’s brows furrowed as he tried to process what he was seeing and what she had said. Excitement grew within himself at the realization she had found her last trigger and awakened her last Skill Tree. He wanted to celebrate and congratulate her, but the zombies behind him told him that would have to wait. So instead, he decided to tease her. “You know you’re the last person who should be calling themselves little…beanpole.”

Val let out a loud chuckle as she was completely caught off guard by the comment. She didn’t take offense by the insult as she understood he meant it as a joke to what she had said. So instead, she countered, “You’ve got jokes I see. But then again, I guess you would know all about being little, huh short stack.”

Kenny let out a loud laugh of his own as he turned around to fight the zombies that reached his location. Seeing that Val had a way to protect herself against the ghost’s Debuffs, Kenny felt a weight fall off his shoulders and focused on what he could do. Punch these damn zombies in the face.

As they took turns fighting both the zombies and the ghosts Val had discovered the mechanism or at least what she believed was the mechanism for this fight. After Kenny killed the zombies they turned into ghosts. When the ghosts formed Val would kill the ghosts. When the ghosts were defeated the smoke would make its way into the mausoleum. After every second ghost was defeated the unlit torches would come to life.

At first the flames were small but after a couple more ghosts were defeated the flames would grow strong enough that the next couple of ghosts defeated would light the next torch. So it came down to this, two dead ghosts would light the unlit torches, two more would fuel and finish lighting the torch making the next two the fuel needed to light the next torch.

Every time a torch lit a noise could be heard stirring inside the mausoleum. Ever time a torch finished being fueled they noticed the giant ghost moving slowly closer to the mausoleum.

Their guess was they needed to light all the candles and have the giant ghost go back into the mausoleum. What happened after that they didn’t know. However, they didn’t need to wait long as they had just killed the last ghost making the last torch burn just as bright as the other fully lit torches.

Kenny breathed in heavily as he and Val watched the giant dark purple ghost float slowly through the wall of the mausoleum. Nothing happened after the ghost completely disappeared. After waiting a couple of minutes, Kenny turned to look at Val and raised a brow and asked, “Is that it?”

Val was about to open her mouth and say that after all that this couldn’t have been the end of it all. However, before she could utter a single word the flames on all the torches suddenly erupted causing both Kenny and Val to jump where they stood in surprise.

The flames raised a couple of feet in height and burned brightly before their amber color changed into a deep dark purple. The doors of the stoned mausoleum started to rattle violently as the ground started rumbling. Then without any warning the doors exploded off their hinges and flew at a high speed before they crashed and crumbled to dust against the metal fence.

Kenny and Val turned their sight from the broken stone doors back towards the doorless building. A deep throaty grunting sound escaped the building before a loud growl followed it. Kenny squinted his eyes and was surprised to see a massive dark figure stirring within it before the form started to move out of the building.

Arms and legs almost as thick as tree trunks with a torso that expanded out as wide as Kenny could spread his arms. Its skin was stitched together from what looked like different patches of skin from several people.

The monstrosity had one bulging eyeball that rolled around before settling on Kenny while the other was an empty socket with a dark purple haze flowing out. Its mouth had strings that stitched it together, but the stitching was loose enough for the mouth to open enough for sounds to escape.

Kenny and Val made a disgusted look as they stared at this new creature. The different patches of skin were grotesque and had rotting spots which made their skin crawl and the smell that wafted off of the monster was strong enough to reach their noses where they stood. This creature was so disgusting that even Kenny wasn’t sure he wanted to fight it with his hands and feet.

[Mid-Area Boss. Call of the Undead (Complete Corpse Golem/Ghost). Level – 10. Stat Talent – Intelligence.]

“Fuck me,” Kenny groaned as he stared the monster down. “You couldn’t take a shower before greeting us?”

The Corpse Golem grabbed a piece of the wall next to it and gripped as hard as it could. Cracks formed around the outside of the area its pudgy fingers were. A second later a small chunk of the wall broke off and it brought its hand back behind its head before it threw the broken piece of wall right for Kenny.

Kenny bent his knees slightly before jumping away. The chunk of broken wall dug right into the spot he once stood at before ripping out some of the grass as it slid. Kenny stared at it before looking at Val and stated, “I guess it hates showers that much.”

Val stared at Kenny with disbelief. She wasn’t sure why he was acting this way and wanted to say something, but her attention snapped back at the giant disgusting being made of corpses as it let out a roar of anger and charged right for Kenny.

Val ran to get as far away as she could before she readied a Pain spell. She didn’t want to gather this monster ire right off the bat and waited for Kenny to grab its attention. Something he did without any convincing, surprisingly. If it was her she would need several bribes and more.

Kenny quickly approached the giant monster that stood a little less than double his height. As soon as he got within distance, Kenny stomped his left foot down, lifted his right foot from behind and round housed kicked it into the meaty leg of the monster. To his disgust he heard a squish as soon as his shin collided into the monster’s leg.

He pulled his leg back only to see a slimy goo follow it. He held back from throwing up and jump backwards out of the way of a powerful fist coming down like a sledgehammer. As soon as the fist hit the ground, Kenny jumped back in and tried to punch the creature several times.

Once more he heard squish sounds with each strike he made. A slimy goo followed his fists and he tried not to think about it. After landing several attacks he went to jump back. However, as he jumped backwards the corpse golem raked its fist across the ground towards Kenny before lifting it at a forty five upward angle.

Kenny flailed his arms not due to fear, but shock at this sudden action. He then let out a curse as he felt a couple of the thorns from his Thorned Hand wraps of the Ram snag on something on the Corpse golem’s fist before being dragged with its fist.

Kenny let out a yelp of surprise as he felt his body lift off the ground and into the air before being taken for a wild ride with the monster’s fist. As Kenny felt his body being violently brought left then right he tried to see what his hand wraps had snagged on. However, due to how fast he was going and the jerky movements of the monster, he wasn’t able to actually see what was going on.

He then felt his body rush towards the ground before feeling the fresh dirt and grass colliding with his hip. A blinding pain raced throughout his body, but he didn’t let that stop him as he forced himself to dig his feet into the ground and started to pull his hand back.

As he yanked his arm as hard as he could to free himself from whatever was hooked on the thorns, he was finally able to see what it was. It was a string from one of the stitch linings.

Kenny wasn’t sure how he had hooked on it nor if he cared enough to think more about it. He only had one thought on his mind, to free himself before he was thrown around like a ragdoll once more. After a few more tugs he felt something starting to give. To his surprise he saw the string being pulled out of the lining and was following him.

Another surprise was that the corpse golem let out a shriek of pain as its hand suddenly grew limp. The string that held the skin together on the hand pulled the flesh apart with it revealing a shocking sight.

A cold chill ran down Kenny’s spine as he saw a pair of glowing red eyes peeking out at him from the opened unstitched skin. A ghastly hand reached out and tried to grab Kenny before he could get away.

However, the ghostly hand retracted as a murky grey ball of mana crashed right into it. A shriek of pain escaped from the hole before the torn string was suddenly pulled back and restitched itself.

Kenny quickly scrambled away as the corpse golem brought its once again working hand up in the air. It let out a painful howl as the hand shook like it was in pain. Distracted, Kenny took this time to call out, “Thoughts Val?”

“I think the ghost is wearing this golem as its skin,” Val guessed. “I think we need to break the stitches and get it to peek out enough for me to damage it with my magic.”

“That’s a strangely specific thing to do,” Kenny commented as he watched the creature start to slowly calm down.

“Its only a guess so I’m not sure how accurate it is,” Val replied. “If that’s what we need to do then you shouldn’t be slacking and letting it recover don’t you think?”

“I’m not slacking,” Kenny argued. “I was getting instructions from my tactician.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” Val chuckled. “If that’s the case then your instructions are to tear apart its stitching so I can try and stack enough Pain hexes on it to damage it. I’ll see if slow works on the body, but I know Pain doesn’t work since I’ve tried a few times and only got immunity notifications.”

Kenny let out a sigh as he muttered, “Of course that would be the case.” He then let out a breath of air, almost coughing due to the Mid-boss’s stench, and raced back in.

Before the corpse golem could fully recover, Kenny looked for any strings on the closest leg before finding one and punching trying to hook his thorns on it. Once he was able to connect with a string he dug his feet down and tried pulling and tugging as hard as he could.

To his horror, as Kenny yanked he felt the Corpse Golem kick its leg back and then thrust it as hard as it could forward sending Kenny flying with it.

As Kenny felt his body flying in the air he heard another loud painful muffled scream coming from behind. After crashing into the ground and rolling a couple of feet, Kenny swiftly got to his feet and turned to look at the monster. The corpse flesh on the leg he was trying to unstitch flapped around revealing a mass of dark cloud of purple.

A pair of ghostly hands reached out for the string that had followed Kenny on his flight and was trying to restitch the leg, but was met with a mixture of murky grey mana and a ball of mana that flew from Val’s staff and wand. She tried to send another murky grey ball of Pain at it, but missed as the ghost hands protected itself with the wall of corpse flesh.

Kenny didn’t waste any time as he got back up and raced back towards the ghost’s fleshy armor. This time he jumped and aimed for the other arm. He threw a couple of punches at the creature’s bicep as soon as he was within distance.

As soon as he felt his thorns hook on a string he tried to yank with all his weight downwards, but failed to touch the ground. Instead he felt the creature fling its arm upwards sending him flying backwards right into the side of the wall that wasn’t broken by the mid-area boss.

He felt all the air in his lungs shoot out of his body as he slammed into the stone wall. Even though his Endurance was kind enough to take away some of the damage, he could still feel his bones growing sore from being treated like a ragdoll. He was going to need a long nap after all of this was finally done.

Even though he was grumbling, Kenny was internally excited. He wasn’t sure why he felt this way, but he felt the challenge that was before him. A fight with ghost driving a giant flesh bot where he had to unravel it in order for his teammate to cause it pain with her magic? A fight that literally made him put his body on the line just to get things done. Sign him right up.

This was turning into a battle of attrition. Would the giant flesh golem and its ghostly passenger die or would his body give out before his partner could finish the rider? This fight was turning out to be a lot more fun than he originally thought it would be. He wanted to push himself to the limit and see if he had what it took.

Kenny let out a chuckle as he slowly stood back up. He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders before he grinned at the stitched-up creature. He saw a massive network of strings connected at the top of its spine. One of the strings connected to this single point ran down its back and decided to aim for it.

He sprinted as fast as he could before he leaped up as high as he could. He then threw a powerful punch right into the top of the creature’s spine. He didn’t think he would connect his thorns with it so he went to pull back and try attacking another spot, but was surprised when his fist didn’t come back.

He wasn’t sure if his punch was that powerful or the flesh he had struck had rotted too much, but either way the strings in the spot he had attacked tangled with his thorns and he couldn’t break free.

The Corpse Golem or the ghost within must have realized where he struck and what he was planning to do because when he tried to yank himself away from the body it went into a frenzy and started running around without direction.

“Ah shit,” Kenny muttered as he felt his body smacking against the slimy and rotten back skin.