As soon as he arrived, Aleric saw them. His heart, already battered from his own fight, seemed to stop for a full second. It was not like his four. There were sixteen. Something cold settled in his chest, a heavy, leaden weight that made his earlier victory feel like a joke.
So this was what Athena meant when she said she'd draw them away. She hadn't just distracted them; she had challenged the horde.
When he reached the edge of the forest, he froze. The air here felt different—thicker, charged with a tension that made the hair on his arms stand up.
Athena stood alone in the center of a wide clearing while sixteen Lesser Undead closed in around her. She had pulled them nearly two hundred meters from the road. And the terrain wasn't random. She had scouted this, probably with the help of that owl, even as they marched.
The clearing was broad, ringed by dense trees whose roots twisted above the ground like coiled serpents. The earth here was firm and dry—no mud to steal footing, no tight choke points to restrict her movements. The canopy opened just enough to let sunlight cut through in angled beams, illuminating drifting dust and the faint shimmer of Athena's armor. She looked like a beacon of gold in a world of grey.
She had chosen this place deliberately and now she waited for them to make their move. Low moans curdled into snarls. Rotten throats scraped with hunger as empty sockets fixed on her. As they advanced, they began to spread out, instinctively trying to surround her. It was a slow-motion nightmare, a closing circle of decay.
Athena stepped back once, calm and measured. The horde kept coming. They staggered closer.
They shambled forward through the clearing. Rusted scraps of armor clung to some torsos—bent breastplates, shattered pauldrons, corroded chain links fused to rotting flesh. Others wore what remained of peasant cloth, hanging in torn strips. Skin sagged from bone. Jawbones showed through ruined cheeks. Fingers ended in blackened splinters where nails had once been. They weren't just monsters; they were the tragic remains of people who had once had names, families, and lives.
The smell reached Aleric even from the treeline. It smelled worse than what he experienced during his own battle. It was a cloying, heavy scent that seemed to coat the back of his throat.
His stomach lurched.
Athena looked at them in silence. "Poor mortals…" she murmured. Her voice was soft, but it carried, vibrating with a strange, ancient sorrow. "Even in death, you are denied peace."
Her grip tightened on the spear. "Whoever made you into this mockery will answer for it."
Athena was a goddess of war. She respected warriors. To die in battle was an honor. To pass on to the Fields of Elysium was a reward. To be dragged back into rotting flesh—Unforgivable. Even Hades did not desecrate the dead so crudely.
"All I can offer you now," she said, raising her shield as bronze caught the filtered sunlight, "is release."
The first wave lunged.
Athena didn't retreat. Her shield crashed into them with a thunderous impact. The force rippled outward, ribs collapsing beneath divine bronze with the sound of dry kindling snapping. Two undead were hurled backward, bone splintering as they hit the ground.
Her spear struck in the same breath. A thrust—clean, precise. The tip drove through an eye socket, shattered the skull from within, and withdrew in a spray of blackened matter. She didn't fumble. She didn't panic. She was a machine of death.
She turned. A shield bash folded another corpse over a root with a brittle crack. She stepped inside the reach of grasping claws and kicked her foot upward. A femur snapped audibly.
The undead clawed at her armor. Their fingers scraped uselessly against the bronze.
Athena moved through them like flowing water. She thrust, pivot, striked. The shaft of her spear cracked across a jaw, scattering rotten teeth across the dirt. The rim of her shield sliced through a throat. One corpse grabbed her arm, and she seized its wrist, turning and hurling the body into a tree hard enough to blast bark outward.
Even with her power sealed to only a fraction of what she had, she was devastation made flesh.
Within moments, half the undead lay broken. Eight bodies sprawled across the clearing. Dark clotted blood soaked into the soil. The scent carried on the wind.
At the edge of the forest, Aleric braced himself against a tree. His knuckles were white against the bark. His arms trembled. Four undead had nearly killed him. He could still feel their weight crushing him into the ground. The snapping teeth inches from his face. The suffocating panic when he thought he wouldn't get back up.
And Athena… She was dismantling sixteen without breaking a sweat.
His stomach twisted with a bitter cocktail of awe and inadequacy. He forced himself to stand upright. Watch. Learn. Do not freeze.
Athena sensed him. Shaken—but still watching.
"Aleric!" she called without turning. "Watch carefully." Her voice sharpened. "And whatever you do, only look at the enemy for what you shall witness is only a fraction of my strength."
A brief pause. "If you fail to heed my warning… You will die."
Aleric swallowed hard, the warning rang in his ears like a bell. He nodded anyway.
Eight undead remained.
Athena inhaled slowly. Her irises shifted from blue to molten gold. Golden sigils coiled around her arms tightened, then strained as she forced more power through the seal than it was meant to allow. The air around her began to hum, a low-frequency vibration that Aleric felt in his teeth.
The air pressure changed. At first, it was subtle. Then it became heavy and oppressive. It felt like the atmosphere was being sucked out of the clearing.
The serpentine engravings on her shield began to move. Carved scales rippled along the metal. The etched woman's eyes began to glow gray.
The forest went still.
"Aegis," Athena said softly. "Petrify."
A beam of ashen radiance erupted across the clearing. Aleric covered his eyes from flash, but even through his hands, the world turned a blinding, ghostly white.
The undead froze mid-step. Trees hardened into stone where the beam touched them. The leaves calcified and fell apart like brittle glass. Even insects caught in the air turned gray and dropped lifelessly to the ground.
Silence fell. Stone statues filled the clearing.
Athena lowered her shield. The glow faded. Her breath hitched—it was barely noticeable, but it was there. She looked smaller for a second, the strain etched into the lines of her face. Fine fractures of golden light crawled along the sealing sigils on her arms before slowly receding.
Then—A roar tore through the forest. It was deep and predatory. It came from the east. The presence Sofia had warned about.
The petrified trees at the clearing's edge exploded outward. A massive creature stepped through the falling stone. It stood more than four meters tall. Charred hide stretched across heavy muscle. Horns curved backward like scythes. Molten light pulsed through cracks in its obsidian flesh. It looked like a mountain that had learned how to bleed fire.
Its eyes burned. It inhaled deeply. Steam vented from its jaws. It had followed the scent of blood. It had endured the petrifying wave. Not untouched—but not destroyed either. Stone clung to its hide where the radiance had struck, only to crack and fall away under the heat pulsing through its body.
The pressure it released alone nearly forced Aleric to his knees. Not again, he thought, his mind screaming at him to run.
The creature lunged.
Athena raised her shield. The collision detonated the ground beneath her feet. She was driven backward several meters before digging in, her sandals carving deep furrows in the earth.
The creature swung. Stone corpses shattered as its claws tore through them. Athena ducked beneath the arc, sparks spraying as its claws scraped across her shield.
It was strong. Very strong.
"Athena!" Aleric shouted despite himself, the sound of his own voice surprising him.
"Do not interfere!"
He swallowed. Think. The creature avoided the thickest petrified terrain when it arrived. It remembered the beam. Piercing attacks alone will do little. Its veins glow brighter when it exerts force. Its body heat increases the more it attacks.
Focus. Use the patterns.
"Athena!" he called again. "Force it to attack recklessly! Make it burn hotter!"
She adjusted immediately. She started to evade more. Provoking it as she moved. She became a taunting shadow, dancing just out of reach.
The creature roared and slammed both fists into the ground. Shock waves blasted outward, shattering stone and throwing debris into the air.
"More!" Aleric shouted, his fear transforming into a sharp, cold adrenaline. "Push it!"
Athena hurled her spear. The weapon was buried deep into its shoulder. The creature roared and ripped it free. Molten veins flared brighter. Cracks widened across its body. Steam hissed violently from the spreading fissures.
"There!" Aleric yelled. "It's skin started cracking!"
The creature charged. Athena planted her feet in the ground and raised her shield. At the last moment, she pivoted, redirecting its momentum.
"Athena! Now!"
She raised the Aegis again. The sigils along her arms flared violently. Several lines of light snapped outward before tightening again as chains pulled too far. Aleric saw the pain flash across her features, but she didn't retreat.
This time, the radiance did not spread. It condensed. A single lance of ashen brilliance shot forward, piercing the creature's widening fissures.
Stone surged through the molten channels. The creature roared—And froze.
Its body became half stone while its body heat began melting it from within. Then it shattered. Fragments of burning rock and gray stone scattered across the clearing.
Silence returned.
Athena dropped to one knee. The golden sigils along her arms pulsed faintly, tightening like chains pulling inward.
"That," she said calmly, though her breathing had slowed, "required more strength than I thought."
Aleric approached carefully, still shaking, his legs feeling like jelly. "Are you okay?"
"I am okay."
He hesitated. "Thank you....for trusting me."
"I gave you a chance to prove your resourcefulness and thinking."
"I was mostly guessing though." He admitted.
Athena rose slowly. "That," she said, a faint, ghost of a smile touching her lips, "is often what mortals call strategy."
Aleric let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Even if he didn't fight that monster himself, he felt just as exhausted as if he had. It really wasn't like the games he played on earth. There were no rewards like after boss fights. Here there is only blood, exhaustion and consequences.
Athena's gaze shifted toward the eastern forest. "The fighting will not go unnoticed."
As if answering her words—Something stirred far beyond the clearing.
Deep within the ancient forest where sunlight barely touched the ground, a presence had felt the release of energy. It didn't care for the lesser undead nor for the brute of molten flesh. Those were expendable.
But the seal straining… That had been interesting.
Within a hollow chamber of fused bone, a skeletal figure sat upon a throne built from calcified remains. Inside empty eye sockets, pale green fire burned.
A Lich.
Its withered fingers tightened slowly on the armrest of its throne. The power it felt from the fighting. It was not mana, it felt divine and now that power was here in the mortal plane.
The lesser dead had failed. The brute had been shattered. All that was Irrelevant.
This was no longer a hunt. This was now an acquisition.
Slowly, deliberately, the Lich rose. Its necrotic will spread outward through the forest like a silent tide. It would not rush. It would not roar. It would track.
And when the one possessing that divine power weakened, it would claim what remained. And the forest itself seemed to shiver at the thought.