Nico finished drawing the arrays. The team was ready.

A hush ran through the hallway as everyone held their breath.

Chris lifted his magical bow, and pulled back the glowing string. Three yellow arrows appeared, fully knocked. He murmured with a commanding but oddly calm voice, “Steady."

Nico knew he was supposed to feel nervous, but strangely, he felt normal. He wasn't even a certified Guild mage. And yet, fate or God or the big spaghetti monster in the sky placed him in the Next Over to fight alongside actual Guild mages.

Did Measure calm his nerves? It wasn’t...confidence running through him like extra gas in his engine. Not quite.

Instead, he felt he couldn't imagine a situation where he was supposed to feel nervous. The party leader prepared them well, especially considering Nico was a new, if albeit temporary, addition to their team. Chris’ mixture of paranoia, absolute command, and steady thinking would bolster anyone’s confidence.

Nico thought’s evaporated when the doors to the treasure room swung open as if a behemoth pushed them. Yellow torchlight glinted off of piles of gold that would make Scrooge Mcduck don his swimming trunks.

Between the open stone doors and the piles of gold were several upright corpses, still as statues. Measure counted twenty corpse-statues. Behind them was a black coffin engraved in intricate runes. It stood erect and ominous.

The corpse-statues’ skins were tight and wrinkled, as if dried of any water. They had no lips or noses, only slits for closed eyes.

Nico’s heartbeat rose a little at the sight of corpse-statues. They looked familiar. Instantly, Measure recalled drawings of Grey Dead in a book. They weren’t statues at all.

Their slits for their eyes opened. They strode forward, graceless and strained, their stiff bodies moving in angular twitches, as if waking up from a long nightmare. Rotten skin covered their mouths, muffling their pained screams.

Nico could only stare in horrified fascination.

"Ghouls!" Chris warned as he loosed all three yellow arrows. They sank into a ghoul’s knee, shattering bones.

Keith widened his stance and grinned, banging the shield with his mace. He roared a battlecry, rippling the air ahead of him in phosphorescent waves. The ghouls changed their direction toward the towering warrior.

Blue power hazed beneath his metal boots, igniting the magic regeneration array drawn on the stone floor with black marker.

Vera snaked her fingers in intricate forms while speaking incantations in her sing-song voice. Her buff spell perfumed the air with the lilacs and freshly-rained earth. It covered all the party members, sharpening Nico’s senses.

He sensed harmony between their three distinct magical energies. Nico felt like a guest within their collaborative magic. He wanted to contribute with his own buff spell, but didn’t dare risk disrupting their synergy.

The ghoul’s jutting walks accelerated to a fevered jaunt, some leaping at Keith, who widened his stance and pulled back his mace in response.

Nico stood on his magical regeneration array and counted, "Three. Two. One."

Before Keith’s mace smashed into the ghoul’s face, Nico activated the debuff array the ghouls landed in. He waited another half second until the other ghouls entered. The ghoul’s movements slowed considerably, unable to dodge the steel ramming into its face. It flew back, landing into the other ghouls behind it.

A notification screen appeared.

[Movements of the Grey Dead slowed up to 15%]

The warrior’s non-mace hand blurred, the edge of his shield knocking back two ghouls at once back into the debuff array.

In one fluid motion, Chris knocked and loosed blue arrows which thundered into the ghouls the warrior knocked back. The arrows sank into their skins, electrifying them with what seemed like a stun effect.

Keith sidestepped between the ghoul’s erratic attacks, his movements sharper with Nico's modifications. One of the ghouls got him, its taloned claws ripping through his steel chestplate.

The warrior bellowed a command which Nico guessed to be a variant of old Norse. Metal formed over the tear in his chestplate, but Chris winced at the fresh wound.

Luckily, Vera whispered a soft incantation that somehow filled the hallway with its sound. Nico felt his own bruises from the day heal and watched his stamina bar rise by twenty eight percent. Chris’s pained expression left him.

Nico’s eyebrows shot up at the sudden buff. Impressive. While Chris took on the damage while Keith focused on lowering enemy mobility while picking off easy kills.

The warrior and archer had the front covered.

Vera spoke her incantations to summon the party’s general buff spell every 12.87 seconds, and with no sign of her magical power going down. She stood on Nico’s regeneration array, which replenished her magic quickly. He even modified it to adjust to her magic-style specifically since he had a good idea of how her magic worked. It allowed her to be more effective in the timing of her buffs and heals.

Nico slammed his palms the edge of his palms together and scanned, tired of not being actively useful in the fight except for the debuff array.

[Ghouls are resistant to physical damage.]

"Super helpful," Nico complained. He hoped the debuff array would lower their defenses as well, but it only affected speed. He would have to figure out more ways to apply the mods creatively to the undead array.

Keith tore through another ghoul with his mace. Nico even caught a hint of a smile on his face.

"I could get used to this," the warrior yelled over his shoulder while slapping a ghoul’s bite with his shield.

"Don't get overconfident and watch your left," Chris chided, dodging the claw of another goal. Still, even he seemed more relaxed.

Nico traced a few more spell arrays in the side of the walls for the debuffs, in case the ghouls broke past Keith and Chris. He could slam one of them into the wall, and slow it down even more.

Even thought he wasn’t really doing much except for channeling and triggering mana into the debuffs, he couldn't help but feel proud. It was the first time he truly felt like a magician and not just a hedge mage.

Nico slammed his palms together, this time investing five times his usual amount of MP for the Auto-Scan. He felt a knifelike thrill run through him as if his magic could slice anything. The prana piercing formation compounded with the written spell array in his hand worked perfectly in tandem.

He said, “Analyze general health and stamina of Grey Dead. Analyze which of the ghouls are the weakest, and highlight which one is the most prone to die.”

A new window appeared.

[Ghoul stamina tied directly to health]

The goal third farthest back from Keith glowed red in Nico's vision. He yelled, "Third farthest back from you! Aim at his left knee!"

Nico expected the party leader to to hesitate, or shoot at him an annoyed look again. Instead, he loosed two silver arrows.

The arrows darted through the air, changing angles three times before punching through the designated ghoul’s knee. The ghoul’s lower leg split in half and fell to the ground. Without hesitation the ghoul crawled.

Bright warmth filled Nico. Chris listened to his advice without hesitation. The archer turned over his shoulder and asked, “Keep em coming!”

Bright ecstaticy coursed through Nico’s veins. Not only had Chris listened to his advice without hesitation, Nico was now a valuable member of the party.

Nico slammed his palms together and grinned.. “Forty eight degrees to your left, five ghoul’s back from Keith. It’s chin is shattered!”

For the first time in his life, Nico felt he was exactly where he was supposed to be.