Daniel instantly realised his mistake. The alarms were closer than the humans downstairs. They were in the stairwell itself, so it was no wonder that Priscilla had not contacted him. However, at his alarm she was running back towards him.

He was out of bed in an instant, knowing that his rapid movement had woken Ivey, but there was no time for half measures. Daniel sprinted toward the stairwell, turning downwards, his club in hand. He skidded through the door and placed a hand on the joints of wood that filled the space.

Wood and Animal Sense combined to give him the details of the attackers and their exact positions. They were only attacking tentatively and had not made any serious progress. But the spikes he had built would not last long against the zombie claws. Wood was not strong enough.

The group assaulting his barricade was not large and were probably bored animals united in a common desire to expand their territory as opposed to a directed assault. There were four of them, but they were all elite. Three massive ones and a smaller one that was like the twins. Earth armour encased it.

They were all attacking and were making progress. The thicket of spikes that he had set up was holding, sort of, but every now and again one would splinter and inch by inch, the massive force of teeth and claws was pushing forward.

Priscilla arrived, and she focused on the blood the traps had already created. All three of the hulks were bloodied, and as one they had retreated to let the earth zombie who was not being hurt by the spikes attack at will. Completely unaffected and emboldened, it was slamming its paws into the wood stakes with frantic effort. Each blow did less than the Hulks, but it was making an unfortunate amount of progress.

Daniel ummed and ahhed for a moment regarding how to deal with the earth zombie.

Screw it. He couldn’t afford to let it tear his hard work to shreds.

His magic glowed, probably bright enough for it to leak through the barricades, and the wood opened up a pathway for the single zombie while closing the way for the following Hulks with a threatening shift of the spikes.

“ROARAG.”

Daniel had been hoping that his manipulations would go unnoticed, but the shifting wood enraged the Hulks. They threw themselves up the stairs, making the entire stairwell quake, and the barriers of wood he had put in place bent and creaked alarmingly. A lot of the spikes broke, with the angles being wrong and the Hulk’s skin too tough for them to pierce. Others cut in but slipped out as the Hulk thrashed. A couple penetrated deeply and stayed embedded.

He only needed one per zombie. Almost contemptuously, he expanded those spikes that had impaled the zombies. Daniel sent shoots of wood out like a flower from just below the point. This was the technique the club had used, or at least a variation of it. He did not make the wood spin but just grew it out, using Wood Sense to target the heart. Roars became whimpers, and when a tendril finally reached the heart, then there was another blast of power. Those tendrils grew and whipped around like snakes, cutting and multiplying the internal damage all within the monsters’ heart.

Elite or not, they would not survive.

There was a grinding sound and the barrier he had left in place to hold the earth zombie gave way as it forced itself forward.

“ROARAG.”

It was so close Daniel had to blink to clear the spit that had splattered over his face.

The twin still stood there, challenging him rather than attacking immediately. He had never been one to hesitate. He swung the club and felt it draw on his growth magic to distort. The sharp points, both the teeth and the claws, withered away from the zombie, withdrawing into a club.

What?

The thought went through his mind as the club hit with a flat bang and bounced straight back. Daniel saw the zombie’s eyes focus. It was still armoured, and till it lost its protection, immune to his blows. He was incapable of hurting it.

Speed.

Daniel retreated up the five stairs to the landing and slammed the door shut.

Time froze.

Priscilla using her abilities through their bond compounding with his own speed. She shared an image of the third Hulk retreating and the two dead bodies.

When time started up, he released speed and threw his weight against the door to hold it in place for when the zombie got high enough to attack. He had spent a lot of magic to kill the Hulks, so for now, he restrained from depleting his reserves first.

Time froze again he could tell from the sudden silence in the world. The earth zombie was halfway towards his doors, which to be fair was only a stride and a half from where he had hit it. The monster’s face was filled with fury, but Priscilla was not focusing on that; she was assessing it with her abilities. It was borderline elite, a rung below what the twins had been at. More advanced earth armour and a weak passive strength.

Daniel relaxed slightly. Time had returned, and with his speed, this monster was not that dangerous. All he had to was kite it till it had to let its armour lapse. Time sped up again, and the door shuddered as the weight of the zombie slammed into it.

“Daniel.” Ivey was up, checking on him. He had no time for her.

Priscilla and his Wood Sense kept track of the zombie. Holding it at bay with a door between him and it was a good first step.

Another thud and cracks radiated through the wood. He fixed them with a tiny touch of magic. He multitasked the repairing the door with checking the barrier to the lower floors. The Hulk strike had weakened it, but not overly so. As Priscilla’s image had showed him, the two Hulks were dead, with surprising little blood dripping out. He guessed that made sense, as they had died primarily from internal injuries. The third was still retreating. With a couple of flicks of energy, spikes bent and the two bodies fell off them and they sprang out ready and waiting for the next zombie that would be stupid enough to challenge their sharpness.

Just a warning, but hopefully it would give any other threats pause. After he dealt with the earth variant, he would need to reinforce the barrier further.

“Daniel!”

Thud.

The entire door rocked as parts of the concrete block wall around the door frame crumbled.

“Hide,” he yelled back at Ivey who had followed. That passive strength packed a wallop.

Root tendrils shot out, anchoring the frame to a larger number of blocks. He would only need to hold the door for a couple of blows more and the earth armour would fail, and then he would finish it.

White light billowed behind him. It was soft like a candle and nothing like the intense blinding pinprick of light that Tamara’s equivalent spell generated.

“Stay back.”

Thud.

He could now clearly see the spreading lattice of cracks in the struggling door beneath him. Thanks to his continual reinforcements, the damage was mitigated and turned superficial, but he knew Ivey would see the cracks and probably assume the door was failing.

“I will fight with you.”

There was no time to reassure Ivey it was unnecessary.

Priscilla linked with him, and a countdown appeared in his head. She had cracked the zombie’s abilities. Its armour spell was going to fail in three seconds. The monster was pulling back for another shoulder charge he saw, as Priscilla shared her viewpoint.

There was no point wasting his magic and wood resources unnecessarily. The door unlocked even as he stepped neatly out of the way.

The zombie burst through the door with a crash, but having not met the resistance it was expecting, it careened into the wall on the other side of the corridor. It left a hole in the wall.

The force of the impact had disoriented it. As the zombie stumbled backwards, he could see it shaking its head slightly.

Using no abilities, Daniel took a step across and pulled his club up.Starting a countdown in his head.

Three.

Two.

Hold! It stumbled forward almost over balancing using both its hands on the wall to support itself and then it pushed itself back straight and into the arc of his strike.

One.

Daniels muscles tensed and he started to bring the club down. The club did not ask for anything special, it was happy with his trajectory and the amount of force he was using all it wanted was a bit of magic. A tiny amount was sucked away and Daniel did not resist. It reformed the club, creating the nasty spike to devastate skulls.

The club wanted blood.

He could feel the weapon directing him, and now that he knew it was alive and on his side, he did not fight it, letting it guide his motions.

Zero.

The earth magic failed right on schedule. The club bucked in his hand as the hard bones of the skull briefly resisted the sharp tip. Only briefly. Bone splintered, and it slapped home, driving deep into the brain stem. Satisfaction radiated from the club, and it did not even bother using its flower ability to puree the brains.

Victoriously, Daniel yanked out the club, knowing that if the zombie was not already dead, then it would die shortly. He trusted the club and Priscilla; she was behind him, agreeing with what he had concluded.

Downstairs, he thought. It had only been seconds, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more zombies, biding their time to launch a surprise second attack.