The day of the Midsummer’s Ball dawned bright and sunny. It was an additional rest day for all the staff and students at the Academy. Many of the students whose families lived within a few days’ travel would be giving tours of the facility to those families. Those taking weapons classes would be demonstrating their prowess in sparring sessions that ran the whole day in the arena. Visitors from Lanport and further away were given group tours – this was the one day a year when the Academy was open to the public.

Duncan missed all of this. He entered the Sawiskin dungeon before dawn and spent most of the day practicing his Techniques and skills against the monsters within. I might be obliged to attend the ball tonight, but I don’t have to waste the whole day. He exited the dungeon not long before sundown, having had to fight a Sawiskin adventuring party inside on his way out. He left the dungeon, Blinked up and away at an angle to avoid the Sawiskin guards outside, and flew back to the Academy.

He Blinked into his room, stored his armor, and proceeded to the baths to clean up before the ball. There were half a dozen other students already there doing the same thing, chatting amongst themselves. Duncan ignored them and they ignored him, though he heard a couple of muttered comments about the smell when he cleaned his armor in the laundry tub.

Back in his room, he summoned his clothes for the ball. They were made with silk, a ridiculously expensive fabric that apparently came from the far East. He had to admit it felt and looked good, though. Probably not worth the gold it cost, but gold isn’t really all that hard to come by for me.

Preparations complete, he sighed and made his way down to the grand ballroom where he checked in with the school staff, then entered the room, summoning his cloak of the unseen, which made him fade into the background in peoples’ minds. He wasn’t invisible – he just wasn’t noticed, considered just another face in the crowd.

And there was definitely a crowd to be lost in. Every noble family within a few days’ travel had a representative at the ball. Rich merchants and guildmasters from all the trades were present. It was one of the biggest social events of the year in the southern part of the empire, and the undead invasion had provided more reason to talk.

Duncan wandered around, catching snippets of many conversations. It seemed most people saw the undead incursion as an opportunity, now that they’d survived it. Apparently, some other cities that had been attacked hadn’t fared as well – a few cities had been entirely overrun, their populations wiped out and converted to undead. Most of the conversations seemed to revolve around what that meant for trade routes, supply lines, and markets. What about all the people who were killed? What about the massive undead force created? Where will those undead armies go next?

The ballroom was massive, and the balconies above it and the meeting rooms around it were swarming with people. After a while, the headmaster stepped onto the stage. A sound mage amplified his voice as he spoke to the crowd. “Thank you all for coming to our annual midsummer ball. I trust that you’re enjoying yourselves and finding the conversation stimulating. The dancing will commence shortly, but I do have some announcements to make in the public interest.”

“As you know, there was a widespread uprising of undead a short while ago. Many of our friends and neighbors were lost, and we regret their passing. Lanport was able to defeat the insurgence here thanks to the actions of many brave heroes. Other cities were not as fortunate. Eighteen cities in the empire were attacked, and two, Killarney and Braithwaite, were overrun. Battles are still going on in several other cities, and several huge armies of undead have been sighted in the empire.”

“The undead in Killarney and Braithwaite were entirely wiped out by the dragon Gwynneddhothstein, which entirely demolished both cities, burning them to the ground. We also know that the dragon has destroyed at least one undead army in the Empire. Gwynneddhothstein hasn’t been seen in over a century, so her appearance now is troubling. It’s fortunate that she seems to consider the undead her enemy.”

“Other cities in other nations were attacked, and we hear that other dragons have also risen from their slumber to destroy them. I don’t know if the return of dragons is helpful or harmful in the long run, but for now, they are attacking only the undead, so we must be grateful. No one has been able to determine why the undead have suddenly risen in such a coordinated fashion.”

“But tonight, we are together to celebrate the students here at the Academy of Steel, and those at the Lanport Mage and Healing colleges. The latest representatives of the empire’s best and brightest have arrived to join their elder peers. They are the future of the empire, and we invite you to get to know them. The dancing will begin at eight bells; in the meantime, we invite you to continue to enjoy yourselves.” The headmaster waved at the crowd’s polite applause and retired from the stage. Conversations picked up again immediately, as people pondered what the arrival of dragons meant to the conflict.

Duncan had promised Amelia that he would dance with her and was regretting that promise now. I should have practiced that. Here’s hoping my strength and agility will translate to grace on the dance floor. Fortunately, he wasn’t dancing the first dance, or any of the ones with significance beyond the dance itself. He settled in a corner, anonymous in his concealing cloak, to watch the first few dances. They seemed formal and choreographed, a significant change from the circle dancing and wild abandon of the dances of his youth in the Valley. Uh oh. I’m going to make a fool of myself if I have to know specific steps, he thought.

There was a commotion at the far end of the hall. Some sort of scuffle? Suddenly, screams rang out and the crowd surged into the hall, away from the entrance. Duncan summoned a sword under his feet and rose up above the crowd, trying to get a look at the problem from his corner. As he rose over the crowd, he saw a black beam of necrotic energy sweep across the crowd near the door, cutting dozens down. Three meters from the door, the Lich stood, a dark miasma rising off it.

Duncan dismissed his cloak and finery, replacing it with his dragonskin armor, necrobane sword, and dragontooth sword. I have to get it outside the hall. It’ll be a massacre in here. Most of these people are so weak they’ll die if it so much as looks as them. He Blinked behind the Lich and slammed his Necrobane sword into its back, then followed up with his dragontooth blade. Five blade echoes followed each attack, and the Lich howled in agony.

Something crashed into Duncan’s side with overwhelming force. His armor caved in, his ribs caved in, and his organs were pulped. Blackness took him.

He opened his eyes to find Master deBouteville’s wife Daphne standing over him. His chest was restored. “Get up quickly,” Daphne said. “We need you in the fight.”

Duncan got to his feet, grabbing his swords as he did. The room was littered with bodies. A dozen warriors were facing a giant undead monster that seemed to be made up of corpses. At least half a dozen bodies formed its torso. Each arm was another body, and five human arms grew out of the bodies that it used as arms, each one acting as a finger. The monster’s head appeared to be the result of half a dozen or more human heads being jammed together, eyes looking in multiple directions. It held a massive mace in one ‘hand.’ As Duncan watched, it swung the mace with insane speed, smashing one of its opponents right through his shield. The unfortunate warrior was knocked ten meters to the side, ending in a crumpled heap on the floor. Ah. That’s what happened to me. That thing is terrifying.

Across the room a second huge monstrosity was facing a single warrior in plate armor with a large shield and mace of his own. The gargantuan undead smashed its mace into the warrior almost faster than Duncan could see. Four strikes in under a second should have pulverized the warrior, but he took all four blows on his shield without yielding and struck back with his own mace, doing no noticeable damage to his massive opponent. If I live through this, I’ve gotta see how he’s standing up to that.

The Lich was still standing near the door, several ghostly creatures swooping and flying around it. Eight or nine mages were flying about the room, sending ranged attacks at the Lich and the abomination facing the larger group. There seemed to be an agreement to leave the other monstrosity to the lone warrior.

Most of the remaining people in the room were clustered around the exit opposite the Lich, a mage in a white robe projecting a hazy white barrier between the group and the Lich as the group filed out through the door.

Alright, let’s try this again. Duncan Blinked behind the Lich and stabbed at it, only to find his blade blocked by a black sphere that appeared around the monster. He immediately Blinked five meters up and summoned a sword to hover on. The ghosts swirling around the Lich began to pass through Duncan, and he felt the faint tug of spiritual damage. He swung at one with his Necrobane sword but the blade passed through it without doing any damage.

“Why do you not die?” the Lich screeched below him. Duncan Blinked away a moment before a thick bar of necrotic energy swept through the place he’d been hovering. He Blinked twice more in random directions to avoid potential follow up attacks. He swapped his dragontooth sword out for his spirit sword as the ghosts rushed at him and he flew erratically to meet them, still wary of the Lich’s necrotic beam attack.

The battle around and below him continued to rage. Mages on the ground, in the air, and on balconies sent a variety of elemental attacks against the Lich, the huge undead monstrosities, and the ghosts. Healers standing behind the white misty barrier healed the warriors fighting the monstrosities and any mage within range. The ghosts attacked the flying humans and the huge undead continued to pummel the warriors in front of them. The Lich attacked Duncan repeatedly with its necrotic beam, clipping him once on the hip, forcing him to use Destrin’s Restoration immediately to recover. Fortunately, his Necrobane sword halved the damage he took from necrotic attacks, and he wasn’t close to being killed outright by the attack. Still, it was all he could do to dodge the attacks and occasionally take a swing at a nearby ghost.

Slowly, the number of guests in the ballroom dwindled as they escaped out the East door, behind the hazy white shield projected by the mage in the white robe. Necrotic beams that struck the shield just dissipated.

Duncan Blinked above the Lich and struck at it with his Necrobane sword through a fold in space to bypass the necrotic shield. The Lich hissed in pain and the shield exploded outwards, catching his legs as he tried to Blink away. His feet rotted away in his armor, and he was forced to use Destrin’s Restoration again. Mana’s going to become an issue if I keep letting this thing hit me.

Fortunately, when the shield exploded to hit him, it gave the mages in the room a moment to attack the Lich freely, and several of them landed telling blows. Lightning coursed over the Lich and it was struck by Wind Blades and what appeared to be a high pressure jet of acid. A new shield snapped into place around the Lich after a couple of seconds, cutting off the attacks.

“Do that again!” a robust mage in a fancy robe shouted at Duncan. Duncan, however, was dealing with the attention of the ghosts and renewed necrotic beam attacks from the Lich and was back to dodging for the most part.

As the last of the non-combatants left the ballroom, the mage who’d been maintaining the misty white shield used a Technique that sent a beam of white light at the Lich, shattering the black sphere around it. Another wave of attacks from the remaining mages in the room slammed into the Lich, causing significant damage before yet another black shield appeared around it. The mage in white shattered the shield again with another beam of white light, and again the mages threw everything they had at the Lich. With a shriek that inflicted spiritual damage on everyone within hearing, it dissolved into a greenish cloud and vanished out the door at an astonishing pace.

The ghosts that had been plaguing Duncan and the flying mages vanished when the Lich was discorporated. The two corpse golems continued to attack, one futilely slamming away at the shield of the stoic warrior facing it down alone, the other swinging overhead at the flying mages who were all that remained of the living in the room other than the healers behind the hazy barrier.

Duncan hovered over the golem attacking the lone warrior, who turned out to be a Level 112 Warrior, which helped explain how he was single-handedly holding the monster at bay, and began stabbing it with his Necrobane sword through a fold in space, placing his blows against the back of the heads that had been mushed together to form the monster’s head. He noted that the lone warrior had done a lot of damage to the creature already – his Assessment showed it to be badly wounded. Without the Technique, he’d have had no way of knowing, as all the bodies that were jammed together to create the monster appeared to have been in very rough shape to begin with.

The second monster had begun hurling pieces of furniture and corpses at the flying mages, who took cover in the rafters and continued their bombardment from there. After about ten minutes of constant damage, the monster the mages were attacking fell and the mages turned their attention to the one Duncan and the shield warrior were attacking. It fell not long after.

Duncan flew out the door to check on the evacuated students and attendees. He’d originally been tasked with escorting students to their bunker beneath the student housing, but with the Lich attacking him, he’d felt compelled to stay in the hall. And, if he was being honest with himself, he hadn’t actually remembered he was supposed to escort the students until the fight was over.

There were dozens of demolished Bone Knights and two more Corpse Golems scattered across the grounds, most badly charred. The fight inside had apparently been only a small part of the attack.

The bunker was sealed shut when he arrived at the entrance, and his attempt to Blink inside got him nowhere, as the bunker was warded against teleportation. So he returned to the great hall to see if he could help any wounded folks, only to find two dedicated healers had already healed the wounded. The remaining people in the room were all over level ninety and were milling around in small groups.

Duncan landed beside the warrior who’d been able to fight alone against the corpse golem. The man had already swapped his armor and weapons out for a formal robe and was standing with the mage who’d maintained the barrier to protect the evacuees and who’d been able to break the Lich’s black wards. It turned out the mage was actually a Level 104 Priest – the first time he’d seen someone identify as a priest to his soulgem.

“Well fought, sir.” Duncan said to the warrior. “Your ability to go toe to toe with that thing was astonishing. It almost killed me with a single blow when it arrived.”

“The warriors of the Church have an advantage against the undead and other such abominations,” the warrior replied. “We train specifically to face them.”

“The Church?” asked Duncan.

The priest replied, “The gods may have long since departed Medim, but they still watch over us and protect us. The Church is their representative in the world. We are at times offered divine guidance, and we act as their fist against otherworldly forces.”

Oh neat, Duncan thought. You lot are going to be busy with these invading powers. “You must have been among those who faced the Lich under the cemetery, then,” he said.

The priest winced. “Ah, no. We were in conclave in Rhum when the undead arose. Representatives from all over the world gathered together, leaving our cities vulnerable. The undead had suspiciously good timing for their uprising. Several of our local brethren were among those lost to the Lich under the cemetery while we were away. We only arrived back in Lanport a week ago.”

“Well it’s a good thing for us that you did. That Lich has been producing some very scary minions. Thank you for facing it today,” Duncan said, meaning it. He didn’t think he’d have been able to take one of the corpse golems alone, and there’d have been a lot more casualties without that barrier the priest erected to protect the evacuating attendees.

“It was our honor to do so,” said the warrior. Duncan bowed again and withdrew. For some reason, he felt more awkward than usual when trying to converse with them.

There were perhaps fifty people who’d been killed in the brief battle. Most had been slain by the Lich in the initial confusion of the attack, but over a dozen had been smashed by the corpse golems as they tried to protect the escaping crowd. If not for Daphne, I could have been one of them. Maybe I’d have regenerated on my own, but that assumes the monsters would have left me to do so.

Feeling a little lost in the aftermath of the fight with nothing in particular to do, Duncan retreated to his dorm room and meditated for a while, thinking about the fight at the ball, but also his day in the dungeon. Nothing in any dungeon I’ve delved has been as dangerous as the elite undead roaming around the world trying to wipe out civilization. That corpse golem almost killed me with a single blow. It’s a good reminder that being strong compared to the people here doesn’t mean being strong in absolute terms. Am I approaching Pyotr’s level of power? That church warrior today was able to absorb tremendous blows from the corpse golem thing. Although my shield could allow something similar, though probably not that many blows that fast. Am I in the same class as him? Whether I am or not, it feels like I need to grow much stronger. So many of my Techniques are still low-ranked, so I have plenty of room to grow. Raising my non-Technique skills still feels necessary. I just wish it weren’t such a slow process. I should add riding and swimming and wilderness survival back into the mix, and work on my armor skills. So much to do before I can stand up to even the minions of these invading powers, assuming that’s what’s going on.