They were going to lose.
The screaming horde pushed in from every side. A wall of crude clubs and snarling faces.
Eric's shield arm was bleeding badly. Each block sent new pain through his body.
Jin's injured leg slowed him down. His precise strikes became clumsy, desperate swings.
Erica's breath came in short gasps. Her mana was almost gone.
For every goblin they killed, two more took its place. They couldn't win through attrition.
But Dante had never planned to fight fair.
A cold thought cut through the chaos.
'I can't fight them myself. But I don't need to. I have an army ready to make. I just need the bodies.'
From the start, he had wanted to use his skill. But he couldn't try it. No bodies close enough to experiment on.
There were plenty of corpses ahead, but the fight kept pushing them back. The distance was too great.
But now there was no other choice. He needed to step up.
"Erica! Masha!" he yelled over the fighting. "Focus your fire right in front of Jin! Don't spread it! Give me a pile of bodies!"
They stared at him. Eyes wide with shock.
He was telling them to leave their flanks open. It was insane.
"Are you crazy?" Masha shouted back, dodging a swinging club. "They'll overrun us!"
"Jin! Eric! Hold that line for ten seconds, no matter what!" Dante ignored her. "Talia, cover any gaps!"
They obeyed immediately. Their trust in him was the only thing keeping them alive.
Jin and Eric braced themselves. A wall of steel and will.
Erica used her last power and sent out a massive wave of flame. It washed over the goblins charging the center.
WHOOSH!
At the same time, Masha slammed her palms down. A bunch of sharp ice spikes erupted in the same spot. They impaled the ones who survived the fire.
For a few terrible seconds, their flanks collapsed. Goblins poured through the gaps.
A club whistled past Talia's head. She felt the wind. She became a blur, her rapier darting out to meet the threats.
But the plan worked.
In front of Jin and Eric was a burning, frozen pile of at least twelve goblin corpses.
That was all he needed.
"Now!" Dante shouted.
He stepped forward. For the first time, he wasn't just watching the battle. He was in it.
He reached for his power. Not with his head, but with his gut.
A cold, black energy stirred inside him. Foreign and wrong. He let it flow out.
A shadowy thread came out from his palm. Only he could see it. Black and scary. At the end was a four fingered hand made of shadow.
He guided it toward the nearest corpse.
It stopped midway.
Dante was confused. He took a step forward. The distance closed.
'It has a range.'
He moved closer. The shadow hand reached the goblin's body.
The dead body shook.
Drip. Drip.
A purple, ink-like thing started to leak from the body. The shadow hand gripped it and pulled.
Like pulling a soul from a cage.
The goblin stood.
Not the corpse. A shadow version. Its hand was cut clean, maybe from its previous injury. But the rest was the same. Same appearance, same body. Except it had turned to shadow type.
Dante touched it. Hard. Harder than the goblin itself had been.
On the ground lay the real goblin body. Empty. And this clone felt better than that.
But from the distance, he saw his team struggling. He needed to finish this fast.
He started the same process. Made more army.
The air got very cold. The ground under the bodies got dark like spilled ink.
Snap. Crack.
The dead goblins started to move. Dozens of them.
Their heads came up fast. Their broken arms and legs pulled them to stand.
Their eyes, once black and small, now had a dead purple light. They weren't goblins anymore.
They were his tools.
The living goblins stopped. Their screams went away. Small cries of fear came instead.
They watched as their dead friends, now moved by his dark power, turned to face them.
"Kill them," Dante said.
The words had a strong echo.
His undead army ran forward. They felt no hurt, no fear.
A goblin hit with its club. Crack! It broke the arm of one tool. But the dead one kept coming. It tore at its old friend with the hand it had left.
The fight changed fast.
It was no longer ten of them against a horde. It was chaos. Living versus dead. His team became the cleanup crew.
"Now we push back!" Dante yelled. "Use the opening!"
They got new energy. The team started a strong attack back.
Jin fought next to one of the undead. He used the mindless tool as a block for a hit. Then he turned to cut open another goblin.
Erica laughed with dark happiness. She could now send her fire in a wild way. She hit parts of the field without worry of hurting friends. His tools could be thrown away.
Masha froze a group of goblins hard. One of the undead just ran forward. It broke their frozen bodies like glass with hard, breaking hits.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Talia moved through the mess like a dancer. Her blade found the throat of every goblin that looked away at the horrible sight of their brought-back dead.
The goblins broke from the fear of this dark magic. The full attack was too much. They lost their will to fight. They dropped their weapons and ran in all directions, screaming.
"No one escapes," Dante said. His voice was cold. "Hunt them down."
What came next was a slaughter.
His undead felt no tiredness. They chased the running goblins. His team killed any that stayed.
In minutes, the area was quiet. Only the sound of dying fires and the team's hard breathing.
The ground had bodies all over.
It was only a couple of minutes of slaughter, but it took a lot of toll on Dante.
He felt dizzy. His chest felt heavy. Maybe it was from using all of them at once. Maybe his mana was exhausted.
And instinctively, something happened that broke the link between his shadow army. Their shadows vanished. It was a mistake.
But he smiled because he now had good knowledge of his skill. He noticed many things.
When the fight was going and one of his goblins was crushed, like it was dead again, it didn't just vanish. It got absorbed back into Dante's soul. As if it was still there.
And something similar was happening when Dante was feeling the dizziness and severe headache. Maybe due to mana deficiency. The goblins left after crushing their comrade stood there as if to accept his next command. They were fading and then coming back to him.
But in the heat of the moment, when he was in pain, he mistakenly let that thread break. He thought it was giving him more pain.
He then focused on the energy. The soul of the goblin residing in him. He called it.
It materialized and stood in front. Utterly in bad shape. No neck and a hole in the back from a club.
Dante had a devilish smile.
He knew many things now. How to make an undead. How to call back the summon. And he knew one more thing. As the goblin stayed in his soul, it didn't consume any of his mana.
Then he knew the most important thing for him. His survival depended upon his growth. His mana reserve. And of course, strong opponent or even allies bodies.
He tried to cut the one remaining goblin from his soul. It was useless and he wanted to try cutting the bond with control this time.
He did. The goblin was gone.
He went to the corpse of the same goblin he summoned at the start. It was starting to leak energy. But he was there for his analysis.
He brought his thread and tried to summon it again.
It didn't work.
The hand went past its body as if it didn't exist.
Dante now knew one more thing. The dead can be summoned once. They have one soul. And once it gets destroyed, there is no other way to call that back.
Then he looked at the team in the distance.
They stood among the dead. They had wounds and were very tired, but they won.
From every dead goblin, wisps of clean energy started to come up. It filled the air with a soft, shining mist.
Almost forty of them.
"The Goddess said how to get strong," Dante said. His voice went through the quiet area. "This is our prize. Absorb it. All of it."
One by one, they focused. They pulled in the energy of the dead.
The feeling was incredible.
It was a warm, strong flow that went through their bodies. It filled their lost energy and closed their small cuts and wounds.
It felt like drinking from a spring of pure life after walking in a dry place.
They stood there for a long time. They let the power settle in them.
They had met their first real test and came out not just alive, but stronger.
This was their first harvest.
And Dante knew it would not be the last.