Each of the three giant undead was at least fifteen feet tall and they all stank of the Undeath Affinity as Serenity came closer.
Serenity was somewhat less than pleased to find that smell was still the sense most impacted by the Affinity that was much like his own, yet so different. He’d always thought that it was simply because he was undead and nearly all undead had no sense of smell, leaving that feeling to be repurposed for other things. Apparently that wasn’t the only reason.
Most of the things he remembered smelling as an undead were disgusting and the Undeath Affinity was no different. It smelled like rot and old blood.
Serenity stopped at the maximum range of his aura, where he could easily sense the three undead. Despite their size and power, if they didn’t have the ability to attack from a distance they weren’t a real threat; he could simply keep them at a distance, drain them with Eat Death, and throw Death Magebolts at them with the power he harvested. The real threat was still hidden.
The real threat was whatever raised them.
It almost had to be a lich of some sort; normally they didn’t gather in groups, but when they did there was generally one that was in charge. It wasn’t unusual for the subordinate liches to become deranged and the one he’d killed certainly hadn’t acted sanely.
Of course, that usually meant that the dominant lich was using the subordinates for something, often a larger ritual. Still, that was a longer-term threat; Serenity simply needed to know if it was close enough to threaten them that night. The fact that there were four of these things wasn’t a good sign.
The skeleton and one of the zombies charged towards Serenity. They moved far faster than movie zombies, but were still not as fast as Serenity could run. He started to move away from them, but as he did the last zombie, which had only taken a few steps towards him, roared and spit fire.
All over its two supposed allies.
“Okay, that’s different.” Serenity changed his path to circle around the stationary zombie at a distance. If he could, he wanted to keep the two that still seemed intent on chasing him between himself and the stationary one, but he’d need to be significantly faster than them. While he was faster, he wasn’t certain he was fast enough.
What he could do was run in an expanding spiral. Once he was far enough away and far enough ahead, perhaps he could cut in across the spiral and pull them between himself and the extremely slow undead that spat fire. The trick would be getting it to spit fire at the right time.
As he ran, Serenity kept his senses out to try to find the controller. This would work as long as the controller didn’t give instructions; the giant undead were if anything even dumber than the ordinary undead, and neither zombies nor skeletons were known for their brains.
Well, other than the ones they ate.
Serenity pulled off the cutting-the-corner trick to shrink the spiral and get the fire-spitting zombie inside his aura for a while twice. The first time, he barely evaded the zombie’s fire spit, but the second time he timed it correctly and it landed on the two undead following him just like it had the first time.
Each time he was close enough to the fire spitter, he peppered it with Death Magebolts. He didn’t bother against the two who were chasing him; they were being continually worn down by his Eat Death aura and shooting them might slow down his running.
They were definitely showing the damage they’d taken, with the skeleton blackened with some of its bones starting to crack and the zombie looking like a withered, dried up husk. Bits were even starting to fall off the running zombie.
Serenity was glad that he didn’t run out of stamina from simply running; he’d been running at something close to a sprint continuously for something like half an hour. He could feel the burn and the additional stress it was placing on his mana and essence reserves, but he kept the Lure spell running anyway. He definitely wanted to keep the attention of the giant undead; it was probably part of the reason the running trick was working.
Naturally, that was when the plan fell apart.
Serenity was close to the Dead Swamp, as close as he’d gotten yet and as close as he wanted to get at all. The ground was still solid, but Serenity didn’t trust it farther in; running in a swamp was problematic in so many ways that he just didn’t want to bother.
A fiery net flew from the direction of the swamp; it was outside Serenity’s aura so he wasn’t certain what launched it, but he saw some vague movement between a pair of trees. It was only a short distance from the relatively clear area where the three giant undead emerged, so there was a good chance the attacker was the undead controller.
Serenity tried to dodge, but he was running at a pretty decent speed already and simply wasn’t able to turn sharply enough; the edge of the net clipped his left shoulder, but the rest of it folded around him. It burned a little where it touched him, but Serenity’s Heat Resistance was more than up to the task.
Unfortunately, the clothing he was wearing over his armor wasn’t. It was some of the plainest clothing he had that was appropriate for Zon, but it was still annoying. He was going to have to go shopping again.
The prospect of going shopping with Andarit again was far more distressing than the net itself. While the net did try to burn him and was definitely restricting his right arm and head, it hadn’t done anything to stop him from running.
Serenity ran in the direction he’d already been headed for a moment as he considered his options. The net changed things; it indicated that this wasn’t just undead. Low-tier undead rarely had magical items, and the net was definitely a magic item; it was dungeon-produced, probably, since there wasn’t any sense of a monster core powering it. That probably meant it was a single-use item.
That settled it.
Serenity turned his path towards the swamp. He was fairly confident that the two giant undead chasing him would follow, but they weren’t going to last much longer.
A glance backwards made it clear: they were in very, very bad shape, worse than he’d thought. It also revealed a likely reason for their accelerated damage as an energy bolt sailed at the fire-spitting undead zombie from beyond Serenity’s range. He recognized the Skill being used; it was identical to the one Andarit used in the Palace dungeon, even if she was launching it from a longer range than she’d used there. She must have hit each of them several times.
Andarit shouldn’t have come after him; she should have stayed with the others in the warded circle. Serenity found that he couldn’t really blame her, however; the right decision for a person being guarded and for an adventurer were not the same. On top of that, Serenity knew he’d have done the same thing.
Serenity slowed to a trot then a walk. As hurt as the two undead were, he ought to be able to kill them before they reached him; reducing the number of enemies was a worthwhile goal. The ax would work better on the skeleton; it was held together by the enchantment even more than the zombie was.
Before he could attack, he needed to do something about the fiery net. It was lucky that it had left his empty left hand out; he was able to lift the side of the net over his head and slide it down off his body. A glance down showed that the damage to his clothing was even worse than he’d expected; his coin pouch was seared open and everything he’d been carrying on himself lay on the ground next to or under the net. Only his boots, his leather belt, and a small portion of the lower legs of his pants had survived; the rest was partially burned cloth scrap.
Serenity grumbled. There wasn’t time for more than that; he had to handle the two giants closest to him. If either of them actually caught up to him, killing them would become a lot harder. They’d either punt him into the swamp or try to crush him. Neither would be fun.
Serenity sent the ax towards the skeleton while he tossed Death Magebolts at the zombie. One, then two, then the ax hit. The ax thunked solidly into the skeleton’s spine just below the rib cage. It was enough to damage the spell animating it and the skeleton fell, unable to control its legs. It wouldn’t have worked if the skeleton hadn’t already been massively weakened, but it worked well now.
Serenity left the ax there. The skeleton was still dangerous if someone got too close and the ax would help deal with that; simply being near antimagic like the ax would continue to degrade the enchantment animating the skeleton.
A look towards the fire-spitter told Serenity that Andarit had her piece of the fight under control. It moved slowly and seemed to spit rarely. Far more energy blasts were hitting it than it could respond to; he even saw it swallow some of its own fire as a perfectly-timed bolt caught it on the nose. She’d clearly gotten its attention deliberately; getting it to leave Serenity alone couldn’t have been easy since he was still powering the Lure spell. He appreciated the help even though it wasn’t really necessary.
Serenity turned his attention back to the last remaining giant zombie. He hadn’t quite killed it yet, but it was clearly struggling. A few more Death Magebolts took care of it and sent the zombie tumbling to the ground shortly after Serenity reached the mushy ground near the edge of the swamp.
He still hadn’t really put that much of a dent in the amount of Death-attuned mana he’d gathered from all of the undead he’d killed; the only strain he was under was the Lure spell and he could easily run it for another hour or so and not get too low as long as he kept using only Death mana from Eat Death otherwise.
Serenity examined the zombie and found that the spell animating it had dissipated. A check of the skeleton showed that it, too, was no longer animated, though the traces were different. Serenity didn’t take the time to examine them, but he suspected that they indicated that the necromancer had pulled his spell back to recover some of his spent mana instead of simply allowing the spell to be destroyed.
Serenity recalled his ax and set off into the muddy landscape. It seemed more alive than he’d expected for something called the Dead Swamp, but it was also after dark; it was entirely possible that it would look more forbidding in the daylight. In the dark, it simply looked like a pond in the middle of a forest.
Serenity searched ahead of himself as he headed towards the tree he thought the fire net was launched from. He didn’t see any signs of the person or monster that threw it, so he moved deeper into the swamp, avoiding the actual water. He could feel the mud squish around his boots and spared a moment to be grateful they’d survived; walking on bare feet in a swamp wouldn’t be any fun at all.
It wasn’t long before Serenity saw something strange from something hiding in the branches of one of the trees ahead of him: a Vital Affinity that seemed to be both Life and Death. Unlike the dhampir Vital Affinities he’d seen on Tzintkra, however, it wasn’t a healthy combination. It looked patchy, almost like the two Vital Affinities were fighting each other. The general shape appeared more or less human, and he didn’t feel a monster core, so it was probably the person he was looking for.
Serenity stopped close to the tree and stared up towards the person hiding in its boughs. “You might as well come down here and talk. You’re not going to be able to hide.”
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