The zombie horde shuffled forwards, arms reaching out for their new targets as the sweet scent of living human flesh reached whatever remained of their noses. The squad tensed, then lashed out as the undead charged into the range of their respective weapons.

First up was Angela, who started dropping sharpened pillars of stone on their heads as soon as they stumbled out of the tunnel entrance. Each time one hit, it would smash the zombie's head open and nearly split their entire body in two. However, considering the falling distance and the lurching, unpredictable gait of the undead, her aim was far from perfect. More often than not the stalactites only clipped a shoulder or shattered on the ground, peppering their shins and shin bones with chips of stone. This was effective in its own right, as it turned several areas into dogpiles of prone zombies all knocking each other over as they attempted to stand.

With his spear, Charles had the longest reach outside of spells, so the zombies stumbled into his range next. He lashed out at the lead zombie, stabbing it through the chest. As he pulled his spear back, crimson formations lit up along its length and a stream of blackish-red blood followed the head. It hung in the air as the spear pulled away from the quickly desiccating corpse. A ribbon of unhealthy blood formed in the air before the exsanguinated corpse fell to the ground with a clatter of bones and dusty skin. Charles slashed out with his spear at another zombie, and the trailing stream of blood was flung forward like a whip, wrapping around the zombie's legs and dragging it towards him. This time Charlie stabbed it straight through the head, putting it down instantly.

However, Charles alone was far from enough to turn the tide of dead, and there were enough zombies that they pushed into his range relatively easily and made for Lillian. Something about the brilliant shade of her robes or the extremely vital scent of her magic attracted these undead to her like moths to a flame, and Charlie actually had to shift closer to her to distract some of the swarm.

Lillian had her own weapon though. Wielded properly, her green stone quarterstaff had nearly as much range as Charlie's spear. She thrust out with it at the first zombie, and with a flash of white light, it dropped to the floor like a puppet with cut strings. The corpse started dissolving into flakes of ash, but before it could lose its form, another corpse fell on top of it, and another. Every strike with Lillian's weapon was accompanied by a flash of positive energy and a new body dropping. Occasionally a blow would land too far on an extremity and the monster's arm would simply dissolve while it continued to advance, but those weakened zombies were quickly finished by the next attack.

Alex also displayed significant skill once the zombies actually reached him. They might as well be walking into a blender, as quick strokes of his sword removing tendons from knees, arms from shoulders, and heads from necks. The infrequent zombies which lasted long enough to throw a punch at him (sometimes literally) were easily blocked by his shield. However, more notable than his efficiency was his style. His hair flowed in the wind of each movement, his sword twirled in his hand whenever he had a moment between slashes, and his footwork resembled that of a ballerina more than that of a warrior. Still, despite his panache, the semicircle of corpses around him was being dwarfed by the numbers piling up in front of Lillian and Charlie's larger kill zones. In fact, some zombies were already being deterred by the wall of corpses around Charlie. Alex was actually being given more of a workload as the lazy undead refused to climb over even such a simple obstacle and shifted towards him and Lillian, whose piles of ash were easier to traverse. With her wider kill zone, Angela was also racking up quite a few kills, though her hands were still quite clean in her position at the center of their formation.

Fang had dropped ​Red's arm when the first stalactite crashed down, startled by the noise. Since the foolish hand tried to escape, he spent his time hunting it while his old pets made friends with his new pets. His new pets seemed tired, but it was perfectly normal for them to be tired when they're sick. Napping was important after all, it was good for them to lie down for a while

That was an awful lot of blood though. Well, he hadn't taken the time to really decide if these new ones were pets or prey. Whichever one it was, everything was according to plan. He either got new pets, or he brought some nice live prey for his first pets. He did like the red one though, he hoped it would survive. Its arm tasted good.

Speaking of ​Red's arm, the damn thing was still attempting to crawl away on its fingertips while he contemplated his own multi-layered genius. He leapt after it, paws landing on the back of the palm and squashing it to the ground. Fang bit onto the thumb and gnawed on it lightly. The finger attempted to impale itself on his teeth. Or maybe it was trying to attack his head? Humans were confusing sometimes. He bit harder to tell the thing off, then stood up, carrying the arm behind him, the bloody shoulder joint dragging through the dungeon dirt.

Fang was getting tired of hunting this particular arm, he wanted something new. For now, he took his current toy and trotted up to Lillian. He wound between her legs to get her attention, causing her to stumble in surprise and nearly take a rotting zombie slap to the face. She looked down at Fang with exasperation and tried to move to the side, but Fang followed her, winding around her feet. He wanted attention now, and he would not be easily denied. He would certainly not be passed over in favor of his own new pets! That was simply unthinkable. Lillian repeatedly broke her stance to avoid stepping on Fang, and the press of undead bodies pushed closer, taking advantage of the small openings.

She shooed him away with her foot, trying to both maintain her martial stance and keep Fang at bay at the same time with mixed results. Luckily, even when she didn't splatter their heads, even a light tap to somewhere vital was enough to incapacitate a zombie. Eventually, she stomped down, crushing ​Red's arm at the elbow and turning the hand to ash in his mouth with a flash of white. "Chairman Meow, please, not now! This is serious, either help or stay back with the familiars." The other familiars were indeed staying back, with the two flighted ones flitting about to give their masters warning from multiple angles, while Ori was doing something like an interpretive dance on the ground, roughly matching the movements of the thick ribbon of blood following Charlie's spear.

Fang was taken aback by the outburst. Betrayed like this by his own pet? Unacceptable. If there was a table around he would start knocking things off of it right now. However, Fang found himself unable to express his displeasure in the traditional feline fashion, so he simply turned his back on her and stalked off, right into the crowd of zombies. If his current pet was going to be so ungrateful for his presence, he would just have to find a new one. He was a very popular cat after all. He wove between the tightly-packed legs of the zombie. They were pressed so close together that it was impossible for most of them to even bend over, and Fang only occasionally had to deal with a pair of hands reaching down to grab at him.

These were pathetically slow and clumsy though, even for humans, so he simply brushed up against them, allowing his adoring fans to pet him at least once before moving on. None of them were very good petters. They all seemed intent on scratching or squeezing him, so he didn't stop to let any of them have a second attempt. He simply moved on to the next and the next. One time, a pet almost stepped on him, but before he could even dodge out of the way, its head was splattered by a spike of stone, and Fang saw the heavy stone atop the body teetering towards him. He needed to dodge again, a more difficult proposition than it would otherwise be due to the press of rotting bodies crowding the ground, creating walls of legs in every direction.

Fang was getting tired of having to move this way, so he did what he usually did, and took to the trees. He leapt up onto the stone pillar that had supplanted the rotting pet's head as it fell, then jumped onto the neighboring zombie's shoulder, using short pulses of Dimensionless Stride to give his leaps an extra bit of distance. The pet he landed on reached up for him, but he looked like a bad petter, with gnarled yellow nails, so Fang leapt again. Frankly, none of these pets seemed like good petters. Most of them would get his fur filthy just touching it with their rotten mitts. He leapt from head to head, seeking an at least halfway decent pet.

Then he saw him.

​Red!

Fang made a beeline for his preferred pet. The red, bloody zombie was in the middle of an almost perfect circle of higher quality zombies. Most of them had an almost full set of body parts, and they looked healthier than the others. Healthier being a relative term of course. The faces he bounced off of were still deathly pale, and most were missing large clumps of hair. A number of them also had deep claw marks on their face or shoulders, but Fang didn't know anything about that, no sirree.

Fang only had eyes for the pet he had already claimed. He swiftly traversed the small sea of bodies to leap onto his pet's remaining shoulder, ready to give ​Red a nice, affectionate cheek rub.

Nobody could have predicted what happened next. The sheer improbability boggled the mind, but for the second time, his pet's arm just so happened to rebel against its body at the exact moment Fang's weight landed on it. Fang was loving and caring towards his pets, he would never dig his claws in as he landed, and he certainly wouldn't grip down hard enough to cut through something rotting and weakened.

Clearly, one of those flashy birds had snuck in and attacked his pet, viciously slicing off its arm just to spite him. The bastards were not only flashy, they could even turn invisible! Public enemies number one and two would pay for what they had done to ​Red, but their punishment could wait. First, he had to reassemble his soon-to-be pet.

Fang bent down and picked up the arm at the elbow, but while he was doing so, a hand roughly grasped his tail. Growling indignantly, Fang whipped around to chastise this terrible petting form. However, given that he currently had an arm in his mouth, he also smacked ​Red's leg out from under him with it. ​Red went tumbling down in a heap, but Fang continued to round on the offender gripping his tail. He lashed out with his claws at the offender's wrist, and he must have hit something important because its death grip loosened. Its fingers flopped uselessly as it attempted to grab on again and brought its other hand forward, this one nearly skeletal. Other rotten humans were pressing in from all directions, and Fang was getting annoyed with this entire crowd of pets. Some of them were even stepping on the prone ​Red in their rush to get to the little ball of fluff and sunshine in their midst.

​Red… didn't look too good. His chest was caved in, one of his legs was already broken where a particularly fat zombie had stepped on it, and there were still several undead standing on him, reaching down towards Fang.

He dropped ​Red's arm and jumped onto the zombie that had grabbed his tail, clawing his way up its chest and face, leaving deep scratches as punishment for forcing him to accidentally trip his pet and cause it to be trampled. How dare this rotten meat bag be so cruel to ​Red?

Fang decided a one-limbed pet wasn't worth all this trouble. He would just have to be satisfied with his four magical pets. And look at all this prey he had found for them to practice hunting! His plan had gone off without a hitch. He began hopping from head to head, leaving a trail of bloodied faces and stumbling zombies behind him as he bounded towards the edge of the circle. The zombies had started to thin out now, having trouble picking their way through the piles of corpses that accumulated in front of Charles and Alex. They were thin in front of Lillian for a different reason. Once she got into a groove, her magic was simply dropping them faster than they could shamble forward.

Fang made his way toward Charlie. He was still annoyed with Lillian, and the air around Charlie was filled with the rich scent of blood. Once he got closer Fang saw the ribbon of blood waving through the air, and his pupils shot wide. He bolted after the end of the reddish streamer of liquid, jumping forcefully enough to knock over some of the zombies he jumped off of. As he approached it, the ribbon darted off towards another zombie, wrapping around its neck and dragging it forward onto a spear point. Fang had no more attention to spare for the humans, there was some sort of wiggling, flying, rat tail just taunting him with its presence. He leapt at the newly bound zombie, but the ribbon of blood unwound as it was pulled onto Charlie's weapon, and followed the spear's flick to latch onto a new target.

Fang spent the rest of the combat chasing after the red ribbon. Several times he splashed a paw through it or got a mouthful of blood, but he could just never get a solid grip on the sanguine streamer.

Finally, the last zombies trickled through to their doom, and there were no more faces to jump off of. Fang made one last leap at his prey and managed to get a mouthful of frankly disgusting blood before he landed and looked up at the stream of blood, now too far away to reach. "Get down here where I can kill you, you coward!" he meowed irritably.

For once his complaints were answered, as the midair liquid splatted down, abruptly losing its animation as Charlie groaned and stepped back, breathing heavily. The other party members were in similar shape, panting and teetering on their feet. Apart from Angela that is. She was smiling and calm, though an alert eye would spot the heavy strain in her smile and the twinge of pain in her eyes any time she moved her head. The party all tottered over to the wall opposite the killing field and collapsed against it.

Lillian asked, "Is anyone hurt?" with the reluctant air of a child asking if they need to help with the dishes. There was a round of shaken heads, followed by a round of winces as the consequences of mana overuse made themselves known. Lillian sighed and leaned back against the dungeon wall, closing her eyes. Fang proudly trotted over to his pets and pushed up onto Lillian's lap, nuzzling under her chin to praise her for the good job she did slaughtering all that prey. The fact he smeared rotten zombie blood all over her neck in the process was obviously to help teach her how to clean herself, rather than due to carelessness. Fang started grooming himself as an example to the naiive youngster.

After a few more deep breaths from the squad, blue windows popped up in front of all eight living creatures in the cave. The humans sighed and waved them away immediately, then beckoned their familiars over and did the same for their boxes. Alex grumbled, "Stupid one level per battle rule. I bet that horde would have been at least three or four levels otherwise." Fang simply glared at the familiar offender which was interrupting his teaching moment.

Level Up!

Cat class has reached level 9!

+6 status points gained. Visit the Status screen to allocate them.

Lillian's eyes widened as she looked at Fang's notification, then narrowed into a glare at the other party members. She opened her mouth, then sighed and turned back to Fang. "Chairman Meow, could you show me your status?

Fang turned his glare from the box to the human and sent irritation over their link, then he chased off the slightly different box and flexed that invisible claw which controlled his status. He wasn't doing it because she asked, especially not with that name. He simply wanted to because points were somehow important, and someone telling him to do it wouldn't stop him.

Name:

Chairman Meow

Age:

6

Class:

Cat

Level:

9

Hit Points (HP) / Max HP

41/43

Mana (MP) / Max MP

423/423

Stamina (SP) / Max SP / Peak SP

86/138/167

Status

Healthy

Strength (STR)

53

Intelligence (INT)

31

Dexterity (DEX)

188

Perception (PER)

164

Constitution (CON)

87

Charisma (CHA)

121

6 Ability Points available.

0 Skill points available.

Assign points automatically.

View skills

Lillian stared at the screen in silence for a long moment before turning to her squadmates with a stern expression, somewhat ruined by her quivering lip. "Would you three please remind me whose fault it is that I'm bound to a level nine monster with more than thirty INT?"

Alex replied, "Well, it's kind of your own-"

"Lexi's fault!" Angela and Charlie exclaimed in unison. Their enthusiasm in throwing their party member under the bus earned them a glare from Lillian, but the remainder of her pouty rage fell squarely on Alex. He shrank back for a moment, but then puffed himself up and doubled down, "Well you didn't have to go through with it! You could have just stepped out of the circle if you were so opposed to it. It's not fair to blame us when it's as much your fault as ours!"

Lillian looked like she was about to retort, but then the wind went out of her sails and she just wilted back, leaning against the wall. "I'm too tired to be mad. I'm going to take a nap." Fang's ears perked up at that. "If any of you wake me up for anything less than another horde, you're not getting healed for the rest of the dungeon." She propped her pack against the wall and lay down on it as a pillow, not bothered by the hard cave floor. Within a couple of breaths, she was fast asleep.

Lexi moved to protest, but Angela put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back. "She has the right idea actually. Tensions are high after that battle, we should all take a rest. Flit!" She held out a finger and her dove fluttered up to land on it. "Keep watch, and wake me if anything comes down this tunnel." Then, she followed Lillian's example and used her pack as a pillow, though she at least had the sense to roll out her bedroll to keep her from the cave rock. Charlie needed no encouragement to do the same, though he gnawed on a stick of beef jerky as (and after) he drifted off.

Fang meanwhile, had crawled up onto Lillian's chest after hearing the word nap. He approved of his pet's choice of activity, napping was the perfect follow-up to hunting. They just grow up so fast. Maybe he would show her the wonders of sunbathing once they all woke up. He crawled up onto her, turning a few circles and kneading on her lightly snoring chest before settling down and drifting off into his own slumber.

Alex was left as the only one awake. For a moment it looked as though he would try to argue some more, but in the end, he just sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Fine. Fara, you keep watch too, and… I dunno, flap in my face or something if something comes." He rolled out his bedroll as well and lay down. Unlike the others, Alex got a good ten minutes of sulking and brooding in before he passed out.

And so, the team slept off their hunt.