A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 175: Chapter 175: The First Disciple II

[NECRO BLAST ACTIVATED]

[MANA: 1,740/1,740 → 1,730/1,740]

[INCUBUS THRALL — HP: 8,400/8,400 → 7,980/8,400]

The bolt caught one reaching for Maeve and staggered it. The Dark Knight was already moving in behind it, blade this time, no restraint left to spend on something the System had confirmed was fair game.

Marcus tore through the first of the transformed wave — cutting one arm off at the elbow, pivoting through the opening, driving the sword straight through its chest.

Finn caught another with the axe haft first, checking the System window before he committed, then buried the blade into its neck once the confirmation held.

Saoirse cut down the one trying to circle behind Declan before it finished the turn.

James moved with the Python instead of standing behind it.

The snake coiled low around an Incubus Thrall’s legs and dragged it off balance, and James stepped in on the opening, cutting into the exposed knee joint with the sword before firing a second Necro Blast at close range.

[SWORDSMANSHIP (E) EFFECT ACTIVE]

[WEAK POINT STRIKE]

The joint gave. The hit didn’t kill it, but it slowed the thing enough for Camillia to finish what he’d started.

He wasn’t matching the S-ranks. He was making their next second easier, one opening at a time.

Alice kept talking through all of it, her voice cutting clean through steel and wingbeats and shouting without ever sounding strained.

”Father must be truly wicked,” she said, ”to give that power to someone like you.”

James heard it. An Incubus Thrall broke through the skeleton line at the same moment, closing fast on Maeve’s back, and he didn’t answer with words.

He turned his hand toward the wolf instead.

It was already moving before the command finished forming, ears back, low to the ground, and it hit the Thrall’s side and dragged it clear of Maeve’s aura before the claws reached her.

Maeve’s field flickered at the edges.

Alice pressed harder, testing what the light could actually hold, and the weaker veteran breathed faster and faster until his eyes finally lifted to Alice’s face despite every warning shouted at him.

He froze.

Alice raised one hand.

The veteran’s weapon began turning, slow, toward Marcus’s unguarded back.

Maeve caught it before it finished. She pulsed the field again, hard, and the man’s arm dropped back down under the light before the swing could start.

[APOSTLE’S RADIANT — PURIFY PULSE]

[HOSTILE COMMAND INTERRUPTED]

[MAEVE CALLAHAN — MANA REDUCED]

The color drained out of her face doing it. She stayed on her feet anyway.

Alice finally moved for herself.

Her wings opened fully and she crossed the space from the throne steps to the frontline faster than any of the lower-leveled fighters could track.

Marcus reacted first and blocked, and the impact still drove him back three full strides across the marble. Finn swung in from the side and she twisted away with a wing sweep that threw him off-balance without opening a single wound. Saoirse tried to cut from the left and Alice’s tail caught her sword arm mid-swing, forcing the strike wide.

James took the opening she left behind.

[ABYSSAL VENOM PYTHON — BINDING COIL ATTEMPTED]

The Python surged for her ankles from below.

Alice stepped onto the coil before it could close and pinned it flat under one bare foot, looking at James over the snake’s raised hood like she was waiting to see what he’d do next.

[TARGET RESISTED]

[ABYSSAL VENOM PYTHON — HP: 9,500/9,500 → 8,840/9,500]

James felt the damage arrive through the bond, a dull weight behind his ribs, and didn’t pull the Python back.

He used the half-second she’d spent standing on it.

[NECRO BLAST ACTIVATED]

[MANA: 1,730/1,740 → 1,720/1,740]

[ALICE — HP: 102,000/102,000 → 101,420/102,000]

The blast caught her wing joint clean.

Alice looked down at the number, then at James, and her expression didn’t shift into pain. It softened, almost fond.

His strongest clean hit of the fight had barely moved the bar.

That landed on him harder than any wound would have.

”Still not going to answer me?” she asked.

He pulled the Python back before she could crush it further, sent Camillia in to shield Maeve’s flank, and raised his hand toward two fresh Incubus Thrall bodies now cooling on the marble.

[SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETON ACTIVATED]

[MANA COST: 45]

[MAX SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETONS: 20]

The skeletons wouldn’t hurt her. They weren’t for her. They stood between Alice’s remaining thralls and the people he needed alive, and they bought seconds one broken bone at a time.

Alice’s eyes found him again through all of it, and she gave him the line she’d clearly been saving.

”Even when his own son held it,” she said, ”he feared him.”

James’s hand paused on the next command, half a breath, no more.

It was enough. The Python’s head turned toward him, the contract catching the hesitation before he’d finished it himself. Maeve’s eyes flicked to him even mid-cast. Finn saw the gap open and drove harder into the line beside him to cover it without asking why.

Alice used the break.

One more command went out through what remained of the living thralls, and the untransformed men lunged again, right as the Incubus Thralls pressed in from behind them.

Living in front. Killable monsters behind. Alice standing untouched past both.

Marcus couldn’t cleave through the front line. James couldn’t touch it with anything that mattered. Maeve couldn’t hold every angle at once forever.

The room sealed around them.

The doors behind the raid ground shut with no sound at all. The red silk along the walls curled and blackened into drifting feathers. The throne steps widened, spreading out into something closer to an altar than a dais. The last living men knelt in a broken ring around Alice’s feet, and the Incubus Thralls spread wide into fresh attack positions.

[INNER COURT SEALED]

[MAIN STORY BOSS ENCOUNTER INITIATED]

[OBJECTIVE: DEFEAT THE FIRST DISCIPLE]

”Forward,” Marcus said. ”All of it. Now.”

James stepped up beside him instead of behind him, the wounded Python coiled low at his side, Camillia silent at his shoulder, a loose ring of skeletons already forming around Maeve, Necro Blast building again in his raised hand.

Alice watched him do it like the rest of the room was only noise around the one thing she’d actually come to see.

”Even when his own son held it,” she said again, quieter this time, almost gentle, ”he feared him.”