When Flint thought about leveling up, the room appeared, but this time he could see the world around him, but it looked more like it was an oil painting representing the world rather than the world itself. It seemed like everything had frozen, as if time stopped. But looking at it closely, the zombies were moving, just very slowly, especially because they were zombies, and they were already moving slowly.

  He also saw a large hourglass on the altar near the book. He guessed that was how long he had to make his decision before time would essentially return to normal. He also guessed that didn’t necessarily mean nothing would attack him while he was making the decision on how to spend points. So he decided to do this quickly.

  There weren’t a ton of options, and he only had three points, so he put two points into momentum, which brought the total points he’s spent in the warrior tree, or section of the sphere grid tree sort of area up to a total of five. That unlocked the next set of abilities. He had few options that seemed like they’d be useful right now, or maybe at all with whatever build he might be going for.

  He chose to spend his final point of the level on Warrior’s Spirit. It had a twenty five hour cooldown, but when his health reached thirty five percent, whatever that means, it heals him for fifteen percent of his maximum health, and it heals him by one percent of his maximum health each second for ten seconds. During this duration, it also increases all damage he deals by fifteen percent, and increases his accuracy by thirty percent. Whatever that means. Maybe when you’re badly injured being able to hit accurately might be more difficult, so this just helps you with that?

  He’d prefer not to find out, but it was good to have as a backup, once a day, or less actually, but that’s still pretty good. He also had three stat points. He put one into strength, dexterity, and constitution. It seemed to be going well so far, so why not keep it balanced for right now?

  With that he ended the level up and returned to reality, or what was mostly likely reality, and time returned to normal. The deep slow reverberations of the screaming returned to normal as well. The zombies had gotten a bit closer. But not close enough to attack him. He rushed forward and cut the nearest zombie’s head off. It was even easier this time. Not just because of the several stacks of momentum, but because of his stats. He really enjoyed leveling. Even more so now that he could feel it directly.

  He dashed forward and made short work of the first few zombies. But strangely, one of them got back up. Its head was pulled back to its torso with some sort of dark energy, like magic tendrils. The dark energy covering the zombie was also stitching its flesh together. Old wounds sealing themselves right in front of him. Its body was lifted by some macabre magic like a puppet being lifted up by some strings he couldn’t see.

  After it was mostly healed, or resurrected, if you can really revive something undead that continues to be undead, he promptly cut its head off, again. Then he looked around for the source of this.

  There was a skeleton mage, or a necromancer actually, hiding behind a bunch of zombies further down the sort of beaten path near the forest. Or going through it rather. He knew what the skeleton was because of its tattered robes, and the dark energy coming from its hands, very similar to the effect of the zombie being healed. Or raised, or whatever you want to call it.

  Flint dashed toward the zombies, literally in this case, by activating the dash ability, which he called a dodge, though you didn't roll necessarily. You just moved forward very quickly, almost like a sort of jump, but you stayed near the ground. It was almost supernatural actually, but it didn’t use energy, just a good amount of stamina. There was a five second cooldown.

  He got close and cut the first few zombies’ heads off, then he ran in and swung at the skeleton necromancer. He hit the neck bone, and felt he did some damage, but he didn’t cut its head off. He swung again in nearly the same spot, the thing wasn’t exactly dodging, and he killed it. Or at least, it was no longer animated by whatever sort of magic made it undead in the first place.

  Then Flint noticed a fireball coming at him from the left. He raised his shield and blocked it, but unfortunately it was a bit of a crude wooden shield, so it was on fire now. He unbuckled the straps and dropped it on the ground. The fire had been snuffed out in the dirt, but he didn’t really want to try strapping the shield on while he was fighting a guy throwing fireballs.

  He looked for the source of the fireball, and found a skeleton mage, this time a fire mage, wearing tattered robes, in the process of casting another fireball. This time Flint dodged it and ran forward, killing two more zombies on the way to it. He dashed to avoid a fireball at point blank range and swung his sword twice, killing the skeleton mage before he could cast another fireball.

  Unfortunately, he hadn’t paid much attention to the rest of his surroundings, being more focussed on the direction of the first fireball, and took a fireball directly to his back. He dropped and rolled in the dirt until the fire was out, then stood and faced the source of the fireball.

  There were two more skeleton mages, and two skeletal warriors. Or at the very least, two skeletons in someone padded cloth, that was mostly torn apart, each carrying what looked like a rusty iron longsword. Near them were several zombies, and of course several were still coming toward from down the path after he’d run past them. They didn’t seem to be going toward Mary, they were all coming toward him. That was good, though the numbers were getting a bit overwhelming now that they’ve added magic to all of this nonsense.

  Flint killed a few zombies and made sure to pay attention to the skeleton mages, dodging their fireballs as he wove through the zombies and killed them. The skeleton warriors were staying near the mages, clearly slightly smarter than the zombies, or perhaps just made to guard them.

  He dashed between the remaining zombies and killed all of them before the more difficult fight. None of the remaining skeletons were moving from where they stood, so he came to them.

  He dashed around them and struck at one of the skeleton mages, but one of the skeleton warriors blocked the attack with his own iron longsword. The skeleton warrior was moving nearly as fast as Flint. The other warrior dashed towards them and one of the skeleton mages cast a spell, summoning forth a large wall of fire around them, trapping Flint inside with them. The other skeleton mage cast a wall of fire in front of the two of them, trapping Flint in a half circle with the skeleton warriors.

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  He wasn’t going to play this kind of game, so Flint dashed through the wall of fire, taking some damage in the process. As he started burning he swung at the skeleton mage, hitting them both repeatedly in a few seconds and killing them quickly. However, the skeleton warriors both struck him.

  One blade cut into the right side of his torso and created a small burst of flames. The other cut into his left and created large shards of ice where they’d cut him. Flint stumbled forward and fell onto the ring of fire, burning his clothes and his left hand in the process. He rolled out of the ring of fire and tried to put the fire out. The process was painful due to his injuries, but he managed to put the fire out.

  His shirt was in tatters, so he ripped it off with his left hand. It was more of a liability at this point, moreso kindling for fire rather than any real sort of protection. If it ever was of course. At least now he knew armor could be destroyed.

  Flint had no idea how much hp he had left, but considering he hadn’t felt Warrior’s Spirit activate, he figured he was still above thirty five percent, but maybe only just barely.

  The skeleton warriors stood inside the ring of fire, apparently they weren’t immune to the magic, and they were waiting for the ability’s duration to finally end.

  Flint looked and found the other skeleton warrior he’d killed and approached it, taking its rusty iron longsword in his left hand. He had considered getting his burnt shield, but one of the skeleton warriors seemed to have either a fire ability, or an enchanted sword, so it didn’t seem like the best choice. Dual wielding should work well enough with momentum, if he had the skill for it.

  The firewall finally ended, and the skeleton warriors approached him. Flint walked toward them wielding his two iron longswords. He had to strike them to build up some of the momentum he’d lost, so he struck the first blow. One skeleton blocked it with their own sword, and the other swung at him with its own sword. He parried the ice skeleton’s sword with his left hand, though it was difficult, then he dashed around behind the other skeleton, both to avoid the skeleton’s attack, and to start his own.

  He started swinging wildly with momentum. No longer try to hit specific points, he was only trying to deal damage and build stacks of momentum. He found that he could swing faster with two swords. The made enough sense, but as he rained blows onto the skeleton, the other attacked him with a freezing cut. His back had a large cut, and was partially frozen now.

  It was painful, but he kept on swinging and finished off the first skeleton warrior, its bones finally shattering to pieces when it had taken enough damage from his unrelenting blows.

  Flint turned around and took another strike to his torso, this time cutting from his chest down to his stomach, and freezing the bloody wound. And now, he felt his ability activate.

  With Warrior’s Spirit, he felt some immediate relief as the wounds healed a bit, but he only had ten seconds of the increase to his damage and accuracy, and it turned out that being injured made it a bit harder to hit as hard as you can, and as accurately as you can.

  He used these ten seconds to rain blows down onto the skeleton, with an increased fury the other hadn’t been subjected to. He took another strike in the process. It was weaker, as the skeleton was being attacked and had been damaged itself, but the ice effect was still very much unpleasant.

  The skeleton blocked and parried a few blows, but the other sword would find its mark just after he blocked the other. Nine seconds into the fight, he destroyed the skeleton. As it lay shattered at his feet, he examined the blades they wielded.

  Something had felt strange about them, and when picked up the first skeleton’s sword, he could see some sort of information in his mind, or at least, if he focused on it. The first sword was called B Burning Remorse. It dealt extra fire damage, sort of obvious really. He grabbed the sheathe and replaced his own sword on his belt. He placed his other swords down on the ground, and then he went over to pick up the other magic sword. It was called Frozen Remorse. He added the sheath to the other side of his belt and sheathed the sword. He didn’t just want to leave the other swords laying here though.

  He tried using his inventory, and managed to summon a large three dimensional cube in front of him. He placed his sword into the large cube, and felt it was inside the cube, then he let go of the sword. It stayed in the cube. He dismissed the cube.

  Flint walked over to the other skeleton and retrieved the sheath for the other sword and placed it in the cube. He didn’t see any other items worth taking, there were no rings or necklaces, so he just continued on to his shield and put it into his inventory.

  The whole process was painful, and his wounds were taking a while to heal. He guessed that whatever life regeneration he had was less than one percent per second. He remembered the potion he had been given, and decided to try it. He took one small drink from the bottle and closed it. The taste wasn’t really amazing, but he soon felt the effects of his greatly enhanced healing.

  Over the course of just a few seconds it seemed to have healed most of his injuries. But he knew he shouldn’t take another drink for at least another hour, maybe a few hours to be safer, he didn’t know how potion toxicity worked.

  Mary was still standing at the start of the path near town, though thankfully she stopped screaming quite some time ago. Clearly if anyone else could hear her, they weren’t coming to help them. Which was fine with him, he didn’t want someone taking the experience.

  Aside from the nearly unbearable pain, this whole thing was pretty fun, but Flint thought he should probably go back and get a new shirt. He also wouldn’t mind something to eat, even if his status screen didn’t say he was really hungry. But first, he wanted to level up before something else came out of the forest or from down the pathway and attacked him.

  He entered his inner sanctum, or mental palace, or whatever you want to call it, and found the hourglass was on the altar again, and it was full. He might as well use the slow down so he doesn’t have to worry about something attacking him while he’s levelling up.

  He put two points into dexterity, to help him with dual wielding, and one point into energy. He’d gotten somewhat low on energy earlier, and it increases your maximum energy, as well as slightly increasing your energy regeneration.

  Unfortunately there were no dual wielding specific talents or passives on the soldier’s tree. Though Momentum worked well with dual wielding. He’d have to go over to the rogue tree if he wanted some passive ability specifically for dual wielding.

  The soldier had passive abilities for using shields, the rogue had passive abilities for dual wielding, and the barbarian and passive abilities for using a two handed weapon.

  Flint wasn’t really sure if he wanted to commit to any sort of fighting style yet, considering he’d barely even fought anything with any sort of weapons, so he didn’t worry about going to the rogue tree, not yet at least.

  He spent his three points on upgrading Momentum, considering that would work with any type of weapon. Now he’d spent nine points in the tree, and he would be unlocking a few new skills on his next level.

  He left the room and walked back to Mary, walking past all of the corpses of corpses, scanning for anything useful. He didn’t find anything that stood out, and walked back into town with Mary, who sounded a bit hoarse from all the screaming.