Harvey walked towards Gary, pulling his squeeze bottle full of lightning ink from his slipsack and conjuring one of his Inkbound orbs.

  “Harvey!” Gary snarled. “I was hoping you’d live long enough for me to kill you.”

  He just rolled his eyes. Seeing Gary again made him realize how much he’d been affected by his fear-based skills back in Veils End. Sure, the man had been the first to gain an Imprint and the strongest warrior in the Outpost when the quest ended, but Harvey’d grown a lot since then. Seeing his savage grin and the black blade at his side would’ve made the old Harvey wet himself. But after fighting a dragon, all the bravado was almost comical.

  “But first, I need to thank you for the armor. I never liked wearing it back when it felt good to bleed, but now that I’m a revenant, it’s helped me hunt more than ever!”

  Harvey struggled to hide a slight smile. You’re gonna love it even more in a minute, he thought. Modular Array easily connected to the traps he’d left in among the dense inscriptions covering its surface, proving that not even the Ossari could detect the true purpose of his arrays while they were dormant.

  “I’m glad you like it! What’s it like? Becoming a revenant?” he asked, filling a second Inkbound Ordnance with even more lightning.

  “Hurts like a bitch,” Gary admitted, looking genuinely terrified for the first time. “Sadly, you won’t get the chance to see for yourself.”

  Gary’s aura exploded out, and he felt a subtle pressure on his mind. Gary was trying to use Harvey’s fear against him again, but this time Harvey pushed back. He may not be able to match Gary’s Strength, but there was no way he’d lose a battle of Willpower.

  “Uh-huh,” Harvey replied. He tried to keep a calm demeanor, but it still took some energy to whittle down Gary’s aura and push against his weave using his own. It was something he’d never done before, but feeling Gary try the tactic on him gave him a blueprint. He felt the resonances within their auras clash. Harvey tried to burn away the blood with a mix of steel and forgefire, and was surprised to find it actually worked.

  Gary paused for a moment, standing 30 feet away. He looked uncomfortable having his aura suppressed, so he distracted himself by continuing his speech. “You know, Marcus asked me who made my armor. Said it was good work, and that turning whoever made it might be worth the cost.”

  “Just me? I thought he wanted to convert all of us?” Harvey asked.

  “He says that to get you to let your guard down, but he could never afford to convert that many in here. Not while they’re still cut off from the true Necrolords. He only saves truly unique specimens. The ones whose true value dies with them. Like me.”

  “Oh, you’re nothing special, Gary. There’s a lot of angry men in the world, but not a lot of smart ones,” Harvey replied.

  Ignoring Harvey’s jab, Gary continued. “You may be smart, but you backed the wrong horse here. Look around, Harvey. The Veilstriders are going to die, and the only way out of this place with your mind still rattling around inside those bones is to surrender.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. As long as Julian’s still alive, I like our chances,” Harvey replied, jerking his head toward the hulking form in the distance. His body and sword were engulfed in flames, lightning arcing with every strike he made against the onslaught of bone warriors.

  “He’ll die soon enough. Marcus will make sure of that,” Gary grinned.

  “We’ll just have to see. So, you were saying your boss likes my work?”

  “He did until he learned it’s what killed hundreds of his children. You would not believe how angry he was when I told him this armor and those nifty little traps of yours were made by the same person.”

  “Angry enough to let you off your leash so you could come kill me?” Harvey asked.

  “You son of a…” Gary growled, charging towards him with his sword held high.

  Harvey activated the lightning arrays buried under the crystals embedded in Gary’s chestplate. Steely light radiated as they snapped, and the untamed essence dove into the first body it could find. Gary screamed in agony, clutching his helmet as he staggered forward.

  “Bad idea,” Harvey said, activating the Kalthera Venom runes. Sickly green mist began leaking from the slit on Gary’s helmet. Harvey hoped to hear a fit of wretched coughs, but it seemed Gary’s undead body could handle the mist much better than his first trap. It was too bad Harvey hadn’t managed to detonate his traps back when Gary was alive. They might’ve killed him the first time if he’d been wearing the armor back then. But, he had to be satisfied that half of his trap had worked wonders while the other still impeded his vision somewhat.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “RAAGH!” Gary bellowed, swinging madly around him. Harvey easily backed away before throwing both of his prepared lightning orbs. He’d poured as much of his Imprint as he could into the balls, using up a large chunk of what he was starting to think of as mental energy in the process. The cost was steep, but the added lethality of the lightning was worth it.

  Harvey almost felt bad for the man, but he steeled himself when he saw Gary shoot back up after falling to one knee.

  “You’re dead!” Gary screamed. “You’re dead! You’re dead! You’re dead!”

  A sudden burst of speed brought Gary into striking distance, his sword aiming to lop off Harvey’s head. Frantically raising his shield to block, Harvey felt a familiar stab attacking the strand of his weave embedded inside the shield.

  Gary’s strike was stealing his lifeforce.

  It was just like the Graveweaver’s silk. Even with his shield, he felt a piece of his soul go so cold it almost burned away. A burst of retaliatory lightning knocked the blade back, and Harvey let Booster carry him 30 feet backwards.

  Gary took the opportunity to stab his sword into the ground, freeing his arm to wrestle the helmet still spewing Kalthera mist off of his head. Harvey wanted to stop him, but was too consumed by the teal smoke hanging around the blade to do anything.

  “Ohhhh yes,” Gary chuckled. “Blood was always tasty, but I like eating life more!”

  Harvey’s stolen vitality gathered on the edge of Gary’s sword before a sweeping slash sent a razor blade of undeath right at his head. It wasn’t the thanefire he was used to, but a weaponized form of pure thanum. Undeath essence born from the life stolen from Harvey’s soul.

  Dropping to the ground, the wave of cutting force flew over his head, not stopping until it cut a deep groove into the wooden wall leading to the collapsed hotel behind him. He expected another attack, but Gary just charged towards him once more. It appeared that his blood-based class had been morphed by the transformation process of becoming a revenant. In place of the blood powering his old skills, Gary needed stolen lifeforce. The extraction process must’ve been a lot more tenuous as well. Otherwise, he would’ve carried a nuclear bomb’s worth of energy with him from all the Veilstriders dying all over the battlefield.

  Just don’t get hit. Harvey thought, extracting his weave from his shield. Doing so meant losing the benefits of Soul Forge, but he needed to be able to block freely. Two Fireballs shot towards the man rampaging forward like a blind Stonetusk, and Gary made no effort to block. He ignored the flames, letting the small explosions detonate against his chest while he swung. Harvey’s shield arm buckled under the force, but he managed to keep Gary at bay long enough to introduce Aftershock to the side of his head.

  Hitting the man felt like hitting a mountain, the arrays absorbing kinetic energy charging almost instantly. A single drop of black blood was Harvey’s only reward before a brutal kick sent him staggering backwards.

  Just how much Vitality do you have?

  With only his left arm remaining, Harvey cheated his blocking efforts to cover his right side. Gary, who’d obviously trained to circumvent this issue, spun around like a basketball player, sending a vicious backward swing into Harvey’s back. The blade bit into his armor, but stopped before it could draw blood. Sadly, it didn’t need to. Burning cold assaulted the strand of weave in this piece of armor as well, forcing him to sever the connection. A smaller stream of life was still being leeched from his skin beneath the steel, but the pain was bearable.

  Harvey staggered forward, using Booster to add to his momentum and fly a few steps ahead. Turning around, he blanched when he saw thick swirls of aquamarine smoke flying into Gary’s mouth. Instead of the crimson luster his weave adopted after drinking blood, his body was now covered in glowing teal lines.

  “You taste good!” Gary laughed.

  “Burn in hell,” Harvey swore, squirting lightning ink into an orb. The essence within turned the drops into a roiling storm. He threw the orb as hard as he could, but was shocked to see Gary nimbly dodge out of the way. His speed had noticeably increased, and it took all the Dexterity Harvey had to block before the blade hit his helmet. Gary swung again and again, the light radiating from his weave rapidly dimming as whatever boosting skill he used rapidly consumed the Vitality it had absorbed.

  He was relieved to see the boost was temporary, but the rapid strikes let Gary steal even more. Something had to change, so Harvey flooded Echo Forge with essence to conjure an arc charge that he dropped at their feet. Too distracted by the onslaught, a few of the lightning bolts managed to latch onto him as well, but the majority bore into the steel covering Gary’s flesh. It slowed him enough for Harvey to bury Aftershock in his back, releasing the pent-up lightning from before.

  Smoke rose from scorched hair atop Gary’s head, and the light from his weave disappeared as he consumed whatever energy remained to heal the wounds beneath the surface. Wasting no time, Harvey took an arc charge from his slipsack and threw it at Gary’s feet. He only had a few real charges left, but using them was better than his strained weave tapping into dwindling essence reserves.

  Gary had always had monstrous Vitality and Endurance. The fact that almost the entirety of Veils End hadn’t been enough to take him down the first time was proof enough of that. Add on the insane healing every time he consumed life force, and his body almost felt like self-sustaining steel.

  So, Harvey would just have to make sure he never got the chance to heal. Lightning erupted from the baseball-sized metal orb, teeing Gary up for a home run swing of the hammer. Then, a second burst from the arrays that gave Aftershock its name stunned him again, long enough for a second arc charge to be brought out.

  Harvey repeated the process over and over again, expending his prepared arsenal with reckless abandon. Feeling bones cracking beneath his hammer kept him motivated as he pounded the body over and over again. Gary’s body's resilience was almost incomprehensible. The combination of an Epic Class and Profession, a Strength-based imprint, and a cocktail of boosting and healing skills made for a mind-boggling body, but it couldn’t match weeks spent preparing for this moment.

  Harvey’s entire body ached as he hoisted his hammer one last time, ready to crush the Dread Tyrant’s skull once and for all. Triumphant, he took a moment to scan the battlefield.

  What he saw erased all thoughts of the dying man below.

  “No!” Harvey screamed.