Tonight was different though. Lily’s status page showed a cheery zero point zero percent next to her level which was still a one. Even the experience split he had set up was still stored, just grayed out. Jason pokes the panel for it and that brought up a message asking to confirm that he wanted to reactivate the split. Another look over of Lily’s status to make sure nothing else was out of place, and he confirmed it.

“I bet you level up real quick now!” And Jason scritches her behind the ear. Though to himself he tacks on his worries of if she will be poisoned again. Lily situated the night passes. The first part taken up by cultivation and the second on intense training. The only interruption is when he mentions the fight with the undead to his trainer. She makes him go into excruciating detail on what happened.

When morning comes, Jason wakes up and stretches. He isn’t as worn out as the day before and ready for whatever they day might throw at him. So of course it lobs a slow pitch right over the plate. Just a couple of half-starved wolves show up at lunch. Not much for most people, but Jason’s worries over Lily are set to rest when he checks after the fight.

Lily’s level was now three with 21.1 percent progress towards the next. Alongside that it looks like she is gaining a point of strength and toughness as well as two agility every level. This brings her up to 5, 4, and 14 in the respective stats. Besides that, though, nothing else changed on her status page. Good, because there wasn’t any more glitching out. Bad because it means her hp hadn’t increased, so she was still way too squishy. Though if anyone else heard him say that they would throw their hands up at his own 57 when an average level 10 player has hundreds of hp.

The next three days pass similarly, which brings Lily to level seven. At level five she had finally gotten a boost to her health. In fact, it doubled the same with her defense, though going from one to two doesn’t feel like it deserves to be called a doubling.

What was interesting was that she had grown some for the first time since she joined him. Not by much, and not like the other variants. Apparently serfs weren’t the fastest growing of sorts. Besides that, it interested him that her increase in defense got marked down as an increase in her base defense instead of a stat point like the rest of the increase. It made sense to Jason. Her other stat points came from level up. The defense however seemed to come instead from her growth spurt instead of the levels.

Next day the peace is over. It starts early the next morning with a zombie popping up. An easy fight, but it ramps up as the day goes on. At first the rare mix of zombies and skeletons came at them throughout the morning. After lunch it becomes groups of two to three. Then, just before they start to look for a place to camp, a big group of undead attacks them from an ambush position behind a bluff.

At the front are eight ghasts, behind that a trio of ghouls, and at the back in the command the troupe is a ghoul lord. The lord’s long rasped tongue seems to taste the air as its knife like claws click against each other. It lets out a hiss and commands the other undead in a voice half realized through telepathy, “Kill the healer first!”

The ghasts in front charge forward their nature as lesser undead limiting their mental capacity. Rosha doesn’t even bother trying to attack with her weapons bow form, the enemy too close. Jason steps up to hold them off alone while she readies her weapon.

One ghast makes it to him ahead of the others, but alone stands no chance. Jason’s war stomp had leveled up three times over the last few days thanks to the training. The animalistic ghast doesn’t even get to stand up from its hunched over gallop. A boot to the head empowered by stamina blooms into a swift death.

The ghouls laugh at this and their lord urges the rest of the ghasts to stay together. Those ghasts are slowed by this command which gives Rosha the time to join Jason and he smirks at her. She rolls her eyes, “I guess it gets to stay in this form for the rest of our time in the forest.”

From behind them Courtney sighs, “you should know this but their attacks can paralyze. Try not to get hit because I would rather deal with the enemy instead of keeping you two moving.” Then she says a short chant and darkness forms over the head of two of the ghasts who stop in confusion.

The five ghasts still charging over arrive in a jumble. Rosha takes a step back and lowers her stance. With a sweep of her bladed spear, three of them tumble backwards. Beside her Jason knocks the other two down with his arm guards. The ghouls just laugh at this and continue to saunter forward.

Then they stop laughing when Rosha swipes her spear over the two ghast Jason dropped and off comes their heads. The lord hisses, “stop dawdling you fools or do you want me to come over there!”

This gets them moving, but not before Jason punches another of the ghasts who have tried to charge back in. The headshot is enough to kill it and the final two start to crawl backwards until the lord orders them to stop. He rages at them, “damn you! Mindless undead at least would be fearless. You cowards have just enough of a mind to show fear when least needed.”

Jason laughs at this, “maybe you need some better help.”

The lord snarls, “hopefully you three will do better once I turn you all!”