When they hit us, we had just passed the halfway point between the dead town and the Tree of Peaceful Rest. Blink didn’t even get a warning that they were there as they were all under the ground. It was like any horror flick I could think of. The arms just pushed up all around us.

Yet, unlike in a movie, they didn’t move slowly like they were pushing out of loose dirt. They moved more like the ground was a pool, and they were climbing out of it. I gazed around at the dozens of skeletons and handful of zombies that were now surrounding us. I slammed my Standard into the ground.

This would be the perfect time to test out the totem and see how it worked against the skeletons. My shield flared to life, creating a shield of hard air around me. Then I dropped my pack so that I would be free and able to move. I looked around, and the numbers had already increased to a hundred skeletons at least and dozens of zombies. Each one was swinging its arms, trying to bash in the shield. I felt little additional drain which meant that their attacks were physical and not magical.

I pulled my Totem around my body on the sling that I made for it and set it directly in front of me. It was just inside the barrier created by the Standard. I didn’t want to be between the totem and its targets. As soon as the Totem of Conflict was on the ground, it started to shoot out hot smoke at the mass of undead. While this was going on, I began to dance for a large Lay-to-Rest.

This at its base took 40 mana, so the large casting would take 60 either way. It was more than I could do with the mana I had available to me unless I took it from equipment. However, I figured that if I did that, I would end up needing it later, which would shortchange this test of my new stuff. So I worked on my Dance for the next several minutes to gain the power that I needed to use my mana to finish it out. If I wanted to, I could do a medium cast, but that just didn’t seem like it would be beneficial.

The smoke seemed to be slowing down the advancing undead. Happily, it also seemed to be doing damage. As I was casting out my spell, I was watching what was going on and noticed that the skeleton that was being hit directly looked like it was turning brittle. Cracks were showing up, and even a hand dropped off. The ones beside it that were picking up the bellowing smoke looked less damaged but did look like they were getting hurt somewhat.

It was a tense two minutes as my spell came out. When my Lay to Rest came out, about half of the skeletons in smoke broke apart. The others were noticeably weaker in my 5-yard area. Since I had no more mana that I could draw on directly, the large casting would only last for the base cast time of thirty seconds.

I took a moment to focus on one of the skeletons to see what I could glean from it.

Skeleton (Human)

Undead

HP 100

Weight between 15 to 20 lbs

Armor rating 2

Weapons

Bone hands blunt 1

Bite blunt 1, Magical 1

Any thing that can be picked up

Skeletons are one of the oldest forms of undead. The body doesn't need to be only bone in order to be turned into a skeleton. Many times the skeleton is the last physical rendition of an undead as the body has decayed and can no longer support a heavier form.

Skeletons will use any thing they can pick up and use as a weapon provided they had used it as a weapon in their lifetime. Skeletons can not learn though they can be empowered.

Skeletons are strong towards piercing and slashing attacks and weak towards blunt trauma.

Skeletons are strong vs elemental attacks of Cold weak towards heat immune to rot

Not what I was hoping for. I wanted something weaker than me, like the gremlins, not something that was stronger than me and numbered close to 100. But instead, they were the same as what was in the dungeon. So while I had already faced them in the past, I hadn't done so with this many.

I had already dropped around 15 between the totem and the Lay-to-Rest, but my attack would only do 30 damage to the skeletons in the affected area. Now that was all but a few of them; however, that attack would only knock a third of the damage off.

The totem was killing the skeletons. However, the area of attack for it was limited. It seemed that the bellowing only spread out about a yard in each direction before the smoke was too cool to cause damage. This meant that the totem, which could shoot for 16 minutes, was technically able to generate enough damage to take out all of the skeletons would likely not be able to because of how they clumped.

I could only reasonably expect to take out about a third of them as they were now entirely around my shield, bashing it in. The other issue I faced was that the standard just didn't have enough power to last as long as the totem could. It was holding back the attack, and they were draining the mana as quickly as possible. This meant that something needed to change.

I was still relatively calm during the battle. While it was a mess at this point wasn't too bad. We had beat this number before, and I had other things that I could do to beat back the skeletons. They were, after all, just the base model and not the armored or empowered versions.

After a few more moments, it became apparent that the numbers weren't going to be in my favor, and while the Totem of Conflict was taking out the skeletons, it just wasn't able to blast through them as I wanted. There were just too many of them. I would end up draining my whole standard and the totem before we finished if they were the only thing in the fight.

I had already used my ready mana, and while I could pull out the geodes and use that mana, I had no reason to deplete myself here when I had another much better solution. So I fished out one of the tree growth stakes and slammed it into the ground. Then I linked it to the tree I was next to and watched as the skeletons started to fall apart. Any undead under the canopy took 10 damage a second, and they were being called away from me.

The ones that were watching me kept coming, but the second and third rows were turning to the tree. They weren't attacking it because the peace function just brought them in. Also, the Lay-to-Rest was a slow enough process that they didn't attack the tree as they were only after things with bones.

I slung my pack over my shoulders and grabbed up my standard and totem, and started to move out. When I picked up the totem, it stopped bellowing out smoke, and so as we pressed forward, the undead that were attacking the dome parted and were drawn to the tree.

Once I was about thirty feet away from the tree, Blink popped up and finished off the zombies and skeletons that were following me. Another twenty or so seconds at a full sprint, and I turned off the standard. I had about 10 minutes of combat left on it after that battle.

I smiled and spoke to the air, "well that went a little worse than I was hoping but better than it could have. I am going to have to use the stakes earlier so that the standard doesn't run out of power."

I felt Blink send through the bond a low-level apathy to my idea. Then she sent thoughts of fighting the undead ogres and hell dogs with excitement and joy.

"Blink, you worry me some times. I get hunting things for food and even killing things that want to kill us or might harm us. But wanting to get in big fights for the fun of it seems kind of overboard."

"Fights Fun, life quicks." Then she sent ideas of growing to be a huge Ropola that could knock down trees with her tail.

"Can you grow that big?" I asked as I was picking up my speed to a light jog?

Blink chose not to answer as we moved on. I wasn't sure, but I thought that she didn't know or, if she did, was afraid of the answer. It wasn't something that genuinely mattered now, but it might later. If she did grow that big, then who knows what would happen when we traveled or if we could.

It wasn't long before we came to The Tree of Peaceful Rest. I was caught off guard, however, by how much it had grown in the past two days. Where before it was a large tree, now it had grown to be rather huge. The trunk was at least ten feet in diameter, and I couldn't see the top of it through the lush branches around it.

I was unable to approach the tree, however, to check on the core and see how much it leveled as the ground was covered in the undead. They were all moving slowly but surely toward the tree. The monsters were tightly packed like the front of stage at the best concert. There was hardly any room around the tree. Those at the back pushed in as the ones at the front finally succumbed to the magical field.

It was somewhat surreal being in the presence of hundreds of monsters but with none of them looking at me. As we skirted the mob, I questioned how this would all turn out for me. If there were this many undead in this one area, how full were these woods, and why would they be here?

As we passed out of the line of sight of the tree, the forest changed. Not in the way that it looked but rather in the way that it felt. Even in the presence of so many enemies, the world had felt peaceful. Now that I could no longer see the tree, the forest felt haunted. Which, with the number of undead in it, made sense.

I had my head on a swivel as I hiked. We had already given the slip to two hordes of monsters today, and I wasn't thinking these would be the last, and I was right. Across the next two hours of hiking, I used all four of my remaining tree growth stakes to give us passage.

We were six hours into our day or about five of hiking without combat, and I was already out of tree growth stakes along with most of my mana. My standard was low on power; I had about two more minutes there, and my totem had enough energy for just under 60 seconds of combat.

It was about thirty minutes after I used the fifth tree-grown stake that the sixth new batch of undead showed up. Again, they were a mixed bag. They brought half a dozen hell dogs, over fifty unarmed (in some cases even missing arms) skeletons, a dozen or so armed and armored skeletons, and zombies. This was going to be a fight that I wished I wouldn't have.

I should have stopped and dug in at the last tree, but I was hoping to be a little further away before I stopped so that the ones drawn to that stake would be near me. However, my gamble seemed to have been one I lost on. I guess that I couldn't have luck on my side all the time.

"Ready Blink?" I yelled as I prepared to plant my standard.

I needed to wait until the very last moment to turn it on so that I wouldn't waste as much energy. I would only have about two minutes before the stone air fell, and that was if they weren't pounding on it. So I wanted to make the most of the time. I was going to try to trap a few of the hell dogs in with me and finish them off before dealing with the others.

As the hell dogs were closing, I activated the standard and slammed it into the ground planting it.

* * *