Chương 48

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Bryce shouted while I pressed her face in the grass.

"Just making sure that nobody gets hurt."

"What do you even mean, you bastard?" I had taken care of Bryce way more easily than I had thought, which meant that my theory was probably right. And now, looking at the lines of power on her back, I had no doubt left in my mind. This was all a ploy from the undead. I used a new Skill I had gotten from the scroll: Focus Point. Focus Point allowed me to take any wide-radius Skill and immediately restrict it to a focal point.

I had shot a private message to Bluemont in chat, and he had said that a Skill like mine would need auxiliary Skills like that one to truly shine. But since it was impossible to really pick something specific on the first floor, Bluemont had not mentioned such a thing, to avoid distracting me. But he had said that this would make my Skill even stronger.

More specifically, after getting it as a reward for killing Bryce's second-in-command, I could now focus the Sphere of Intuition on a single spot, losing all the range but gaining an immense amount of detail. I closed my eyes, looking at her back. The Sphere of Intuition had roughly pointed at that as the source of my unease. And when I looked again through Focus Point, there was a web of runes moving and snaking, looking like they had just come out of a horror movie, inscribed with a mix of blood and ink.

To call it scary and creepy would have been the understatement of the century. It looked like there were letter-shaped spiders crawling all around her back. And seeing that, I knew that Bryce was being used as a catalyst, just like Father Okonkwo had said. So if we had sent Alice to face Bryce, she would have easily killed the woman, given how easy it had been even for me.

And then we would have been absolutely fucked, without the shadow of a doubt, because she would have turned into some undead monstrosity beyond level twenty-five. As I looked at the woman's back now, I realized not only that Father Okonkwo was right, but that these fuckers had tried doing the same fucking thing. I could see the strands of mana, the power. It was more subtle, the craftsmanship better compared to the one I had found on the second night.

But I could tell that the runes on Bryce's back were doing the exact same thing that the sarcophagus had been doing with the boss. Bryce was being treated like a cocoon, so that a more powerful being could emerge after her death. I took the enchanting pen while holding Bryce still, with thousands of undead now clattering against the energy sphere generated by the Duelist Glove. And then I just scribbled over the runes.

"What are you doing, you freak?" Bryce shouted.

"Do you think you can just do this to me? Do you think nothing will happen?" I slammed her face into the ground harder, and I refocused on her back. The parts where I'd scribbled with the pen had partially made the runes dysfunctional. I didn't really know how enchanting worked, nor how any of this made sense, but I had Bluemont in chat. The runes seemed to have lost some effectiveness when I wrote over them.

"Start from the actual runes," Bluemont replied.

"Extend them, cross them, but start from the center of each rune, and once you see that there's no more mana coming in or out, that's it. Then, for good measure, use the brush to cover it all, like you were painting a wall." Thankfully, the pen was magical in nature and didn't need to be refilled with ink. I could just keep writing, and so I scribbled on Bryce's back for about forty minutes, tickling her, making her frustrated, and being accused of being a sexual deviant more than once.

"You will pay for this," she kept shouting, now half crying. She was clearly losing her mind, and I just said nothing. I was drawing from the runes outward, and the runes had slowly lost more and more power. Finally, I saw no more mana coming from them. Then I just took the brush and slowly, painstakingly covered all her back in black ink. Now, there was nothing left. The runes had been swarmed with ink, but Bluemont had warned me to not do this as the first thing.

We had to make sure that the runes were ineffective. Otherwise, they might have survived being covered like this. Now, with all her back inked, Bryce was mana-inert. I heard a cascade of notifications for all the scribbling and the brushing, but I ignored them. Something about runes. My heart was still beating in my chest, and the situation felt unreal. I held her down, and I saw her finally twist, managing to look at me just as my glaive was pushing down.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. It went through her chest. I twisted and removed it.

"You…" Her voice died in her throat, but then, moments after, her flesh started rotting in real time. She looked horrified.

"What is happening to me?" I looked at her tag. [Zombie - Level 1]"What did you do to me?" Bryce shouted as her decayed flesh fell to the ground, and she painstakingly, almost comically, managed to get to her feet. She looked down at herself. She didn't have arms anymore, and her body was rotten and weak.

"What is this? Why am I…"

"They wanted to use you to become this monster. There were a bunch of runes on your back that would have turned you into a super undead. Last forty minutes, I was just scribbling them away. So now you're just a weak zombie, I guess."

"No." Bryce looked down, then said, "Wait. Don't kill me. Please. Maybe I can undo this. Maybe."

"Any second longer I keep you alive, more people risk dying, Bryce." And then I just stabbed her through the face, activating Judgment of Raziel. Her body exploded, and I saw that Regulus had run away after bringing me here. So now the Duelist Glove's barrier went down, with a ridiculous congratulation: Congratulations! You have the makings of a great duelist. You have won your first duel. After that, I found myself surrounded by thousands and thousands of screaming undead. And for a moment, they all lunged at me.

Yet a shockwave suddenly propagated from Bryce's body. And as it touched all of the undead, they fell lifelessly to the ground, rotting at accelerated speed until they were just dusty bones. The shockwave reached the walls, where many defenders were swinging — and found themselves facing piles of bones while they were still midway through their attacks. Several people stumbled forward and fell. A few dropped to their knees, kissing the ground. This had been their second battle against the undead.

The second time they had been besieged by these disgusting creatures, whose only purpose was to kill and turn the living to their side. I put the glaive on my shoulder and started walking toward the wall. I couldn't believe that we had actually won. It was incredible. I was so happy to have figured out the undead's plan. General Skullthrax was silent, and this time, he was not the most feared person at the table.

"General," the high priest growled.

"Yes." General Skullthrax turned and said, "We can still salvage this. We will organize more uprisings for the second floor, and—""Our Lord just communicated to me that there's not going to be a second floor. The System said it is changing the shape of the dungeon for the rest of its duration. And my Lord wants you to go meet him right now, so you can receive your punishment." The high priest held two short staffs made of gold, inscribed with many hieroglyphics.

And General Skullthrax looked at the priest, knowing that if he went and met Anubis right now, there was a very good chance he would be sacrificed.

"Your Unholiness, I have military business to attend to. I will, however, make time for the Lord as soon as I can."

"Do you dare defy our Lord's divine command?" the high priest asked, furious. His jaw was partially dislocated in its undeath, and it looked like he wanted to eat Skullthrax alive.

"We have to reconvene about the next moves. The Lord will understand," Skullthrax said.

"Disobeying the Lord is treason, Your rotten Lordship," Xivitz commented.

"Someone here knows the law," the high priest hissed.

"You will come, Skullthrax, or I shall personally reap your soul, here and now." A powerful, grim aura came from the high priest, tinged with divine power. And Skullthrax was forced to go. He got up and walked in front of the high priest, who summoned several servants of Anubis — dog-headed undead created by divine power from their best and most powerful bodies. Skullthrax had feared that if he did not deliver during this moment of reconstruction of the empire, he would be replaced by Anubis.

He suspected that the dog-headed god would replace them all with more faithful and loyal servants, not caring about the dynasties that had reigned over the Sorvos Empire. He mentally checked the amulet around his neck, thinking that there might be a battle waiting for him in a moment. But he had prepared. Gods were not all-powerful in mortal lands. And so, if Anubis really wanted him, he would have to pay a dear price.

When he entered the Lord's chamber, he found Anubis sitting still like a statue, with a large scale in his hand. As soon as the god's eye fell upon him, he felt the amulet on his neck starting to burn and disintegrate under his armor.

"My lord," Skullthrax choked as he felt Anubis's power grab him.

"Skullthrax. I see that you tried to defy me. But fear not — your punishment wouldn't be so simple as death would be. In fact, I have interceded with the System for something much, much better." Skullthrax suddenly felt a beam of mana come from the scale and hit him squarely in the chest, before he could even unsheathe his sword. But instead of being consumed, he felt a powerful life force being injected into his body. And he saw his armor slowly fall away, turning to rust and rusty powder.

His undead body shrank from its large size until he was under six feet tall. And then the rotten flesh on him started mending. From its pale green color, it became rosy. And a heart started beating in the general's chest.

"No! What is this?"

"You have been cut off forever from death magic. Your failure to eliminate the humans of Earth means that now you shall be one of them. Undeath will be barred from you, and death magic as well — so that you shall never regain your power. Nor your title."

"No!" General Skullthrax shouted.

"My lord, you can't do this to me."

"I can, Skullthrax. And I have." A teleportation spell appeared below the naked man. And Anubis said, "You will now join the tutorial. Have fun. And remember — I will be coming for all of humanity. And for you."