Merlin is irritated, and even this is a somewhat new feeling for him. His claws explode out of his hands and bisect and dismember a few monkeys. One of them drops low to the ground and dodges all five of the blades, right before using its ape limbs to shoot itself towards him.

He quickly dispatches orders for the flying skulls to shoot a certain pack of advancing enemies. Then turns his head and scythes his necrotic beams along another patch of them.

The furry creature arrives close enough to attack, Merlin sees the rapid swipe coming for his leg, he’s seen this attack already, the monkey wants to trip him and then pummel him into the ground. He lifts his foot and stamps down right on the animal's wrist and just as he’s about to necro laser his life away a palm bursts out of the ground.

The attack hits his face causing the beams to miss the trapped primate. It does not save the animal's life, another mage skeleton shoots it to death with their own necrotic beams.

The palm returns to the ground, like a snake, and disappears, leaving no sign of a hole on the ground.

Merlin turns his head and uses {Death Ray} again to kill another monkey, this one punching the head of a skeleton, almost popping it off.

There are several irritating things about this engagement. Firstly, the fact that he is between Kaiman and Gorger. Meaning his forces are sandwiched between two rampaging beasts, which makes all the enemies naturally funnel themselves towards him.

A monkey jumps and makes the mistake of aiming its paw towards Merlin’s face, he simply rays the limb off, before grabbing the animal by the throat and squishing it’s neck into jelly with bone fragments.

He waits a second, expecting another cheap shot… It doesn’t happen.

Another irritating factor is that all the monkeys attacking him seem to have a special fight skill called {Kong Boxing}, it’s not a problem for him particularly.

His durability, his long {Reave} claws, and more importantly, his constant spars with Stinger make it trivial for him to fight these enemies. The other mages though, have a bit more trouble, that combined with the high amount of enemies and their mobility means quite a bit of his students are getting their skulls and legs slapped out of them, or under them.

Merli elongates his claws and launches them against the furred mob.

Right before they launch off a hand sprouts out of the ground and hits his arm.

The claws fly wide missing most of their targets.

This is the most annoying thing, this being is a [Katren Monkey], a monkey with long arms that can stretch even longer. It also has a plant class, a moss fur type class, this gives him high regeneration and also camouflages him to undead senses, plus the ability to attack through the earth.

But the worst thing is that the monkey is smart, it always attacks when Merlin is preoccupied with something else, focusing on disrupting him.

Well, irritation aside, the advance is going well.

But it could be going better, faster.

He looks around and sees the high amount of living beings advancing towards his group. He asks his Teacher for a little help. He slightly turned his head behind himself, even from here he could see the large black plume of death mana passing through the skull entrance, that deep necrotic mana from the insides of the dungeon.

A multitude of flying skulls went there and started to maneuver around the mana, guiding it. Those were some of the highest level flying skulls, [Mana Wind Flying Skulls], they all had a powerful capability of guiding the mana around.

Guiding it directly to him. He sent a message to Jack, who was farther away mostly supporting with his throwing skulls.

The animals start to screech and scream again, no doubt seeing their death in the coming dark cloud.

Merlin controls his mana, he felt his connection to the crystals on his body, his connection to {The Dead March} and together with the other mages he screamed back.

“DIE!“ The necrotic infused shout passed through the monsters, silencing them. It was not a particularly strong attack, it would not kill them, but it would stun them.

Merlin starts throwing as many {Reave} blades as he can, transforming them into necrotic fire.

The death cloud comes close enough and he pulls the necrotic fire back towards him using {Death Gasp}. The [Mana Wind Flying Skulls] have given the cloud a momentum of its own, it was slowly falling downwards on its own. The mana wind skulls fly around the black cloud, slowly transforming it into a dark descending whirlpool.

Merlin’s flames fly upwards, using all his concentration on it the two forces meet. Then they start to spin together.

“DEATH!” Again the necrotic scream echoes through their enemies, stunning them.

Shadow flame Skulls thrown by Jack sail the skies and fall into the floating whirlpool.

“Death.” Merlin repeats, quietly, to himself.

It descends, the black flaming wave hits the ground and expands swallowing all in its dark embrace. The ground is scorched black, the leaves all burn and the trees creak, the animals can’t even scream before all their life is burnt to black cinder.

Merlin concentrates on {The Dead March} and controls the necrotic energy coursing through their bodies, transforming them into zombies.

Merlin watches as the newly made zombies start to kill the few surviving monsters. He tells all the mages to pay attention and waits a bit, observing the surrounding desolation.

Then he sees it. A monkey jumps out of the ground, the monkey looks like a chimpanzee with longer fur, and even longer arms it immediately tries to run away, but is quickly shot with a multitude of rays. With all the trees, leaves and vegetation gone it is very easy to follow its movements.

Just as he is about to order an advance he sees the trees in the distance falling down.

A large, about 9 meters tall, gorilla covered in wet vegetation bursts out of the forest, running straight to him. He calls for assistance.

A salvo of necrotic beams immediately shows that the vegetation protects it, just like the Kraten monkey it seems to have a lot of life energy. Merlin runs up to meet it. Unlike himself the rest of his mages would not fare well against attacks of a gorilla this size.

As he approaches the gorilla surprises him with its speed. In a single fluid movement it goes from running to jumping and attacking him. The gorillas fist go up, and then down in a single hammer-like attack.

Merlin is smacked into the ground, he feels his skin cracking, using his manipulation he makes sure it does not fall off. He prepares for another hammer blow, instead the monster grabs him by the leg and lifts him up, towards its face.

Merlin remembers the times Gorger tried to chew him, and thinks that this giant ape is overestimating itself, then it opens its jaw and he sees the vitality fruit munch all over its mouth.

Thankfully he does not need to test if that will actually hurt him. He sees Kaiman coming at top speed, right behind the ape.

Kaiman changed quite a bit, he is roughly the size of the monkey, but right now his form is that of a mutant crocodile-elephant offspring, he has four long and bulky legs, a large rounded body, and much larger crocodile head with two long and powerful tusks coming out of its sides.

Kaiman gores the gorilla on the back and Merlin is flung to the side.

Merlin is flying away, slightly upwards, he hits a burnt tree and breaks through it, before hitting a second tree and being able to hold on to it and stop his momentum.

With some difficulty he rights himself and stands on a branch. He quickly sees that the gorilla looks a bit different, all the vegetation on its body has dried and created a bark like armor around its body. Kaiman has also changed, his body transforming into a more humanoid form to wrestle the gorilla down, while using the teeth and tusks to gore it.

He stares at the fight, and at the way down the tree.

“Hmmmm.” He thinks for a bit, a plan forming in his mind.

He sends a command to a few flying skulls and sees them arrive and wait where he wants them to. He looks down again, falling would not hurt him, but it would inconvenience his plan quite a bit. He wishes he would’ve joined and jumped around the trees with Stinger when he had the chance.

He bends down and then jumps, his feet explode in flame and Merlin soars through the air, the branch blowing up in a thousand little wood splinters. Arms up he grabs one of the flying skulls briefly flying with it towards the gorilla, right as they are about to lose altitude he lets go and grabs another one.

He lets go and falls down, aiming for the head of the beast. From his fingers ten black claws grow out, they detach and unify, becoming five larger arm-length blades. Kaiman changes the shape of his head, it morphs into a weird teeths vice and clamps down on the gorilla's head, holding it still for a second. Which is enough, his necrotic blades sink into the monster, then they explode into flames.

The attack seems to have done something to the structural integrity of the skull, because Kaiman then bites the head harder, and it explodes in a shower of brain and bone, and bits of black flame.

Merlin falls to the ground. He lies there for a second and then gets up.

“You are late.” He says.

“Glurrrburlr?” Merlin turns around and spots Gorger coming closer along with his small legion of hungry zombies. He says it was really hard herding his zombies around, and of course, asked if he was going to eat the body.

He turns and stares at the headless corpse.

“Sure, but let some of your followers eat it too.”