The cannibals charged. Kai drew his sword, pulling the impractically large thing from over his shoulder with an overly-choreographed ease.

  Levi charged out of the bush, racing for the cannibals. He grabbed the nearest one by the shoulder. Before they figured out what was happening, he stabbed them in the back. They gasped and fell, but Levi didn’t watch. His eyes were on the figure behind Kai. He broke out into a smile. “Reunited at long last! Slombie!”

  The slombie turned. It raised its slime-covered bony arms in excitement and ran toward Levi as quickly as it could shamble.

  The cannibals near Levi rounded on him. They crowded the road ahead, totally blocking his way forward. The Armalgam unwound from his cloak, drawing its swords menacingly. Most of them flinched back, warily watching his approach. They didn’t clear the way, but no one wanted to be the first to fight him.

  “Slombie, come to me!” Levi called. At the same time, he pushed forward, making use of the intimidation to gain ground on the masses.

  At last, one stood strong. Levi turned to him. He growled. For one moment, he hesitated, and then he rushed Levi, screaming.

  Levi pointed. The Spinal Cord shot out from under his cloak and impaled the man, piercing his belly all the way through to his mouth.

  “Jeez. I’m trying to have a reunion here. Save it for a minute, huh?” Tossing his hand to the side, he flicked the Spinal Cord. The man’s body went flying right into the nearest cannibals.

  The cannibals looked at their dead fellow, then at Levi. As one, they charged.

  “Can’t ever do this the easy way, huh?” Levi rushed to meet them.

  At his side, shadow flickered as Isa burst forth. She reappeared in the midst of the cannibals, teeth already bared. Colin fell back, staff at the ready. One of the cannibals caught sight of him and rushed forth, only for Levi to point again. Once more, the Spinal Cord flashed out and caught the cannibal in the gut.

  “Yeah, no. Not Colin,” Levi muttered.

  The other cannibals turned toward Colin. Levi dashed toward them, cutting off their charge with a slash, but the cannibals he left behind took the opening to close in on Colin. Gritting his teeth, he chased after them. As he turned, a cannibal slashed his side open. Another one hammered him in the back. He absorbed the hits. He didn’t have another option. If they reached Colin, it was all over.

  Gold light danced over him, sealing the wounds shut again, but blood still spilled down his shirt, and his bones still ached.

  “Isa!” he shouted. He couldn’t protect Colin and fight his way through a wave of cannibals.

  The vampire ignored him, too busy stalking her prey.

  “Goddamn predators. They’re always so self-obsessed. It’s the same with cats, just can’t be bothered about others,” Levi complained. He whistled, and the Armalgam hopped off his shoulders. It supported itself with two of its smaller arms, leaving Handy and the other two open to fight. The two of them fought back the cannibals, but even then, they were quickly overwhelmed. There were just too many cannibals. Cuts and bruises accumulated on Levi’s body. He cut them down, but the next cannibal would simply replace the previous. There was no end to it, all of them dead set on reaching Colin.

  A cannibal swung for his neck. He parried the blow, only for another to seize the moment and stab him in the gut with a pitchfork. Levi saw it coming, too late to dodge the blow, but with enough time to jump back. The tines pierced him, but not all the way through. He landed and staggered back a step, then slapped the pitchfork aside. Its tines cut across his stomach, but found nothing vital. Hissing in pain, he gritted his teeth and cast his gaze across the field of combat. He searched for the brownish slime of the slombie. If it was here, he could hold the road. He wouldn’t be overwhelmed, the way he was with just him and the Armalgam. “Come on!”

  The slombie waded through the cannibals. Slowly but surely, it drew closer, pushing cannibals aside as if they were nothing but branches in thick forest. They slashed at it, but their blades dissolved in the slime long before they reached its bones. One pummeled it with a sledgehammer, only for the hammer to rebound off the squishy slime and send them tumbling backward. Enraged, one cannibal jumped out in front of the slime to block its path. The slime simply walked through them, hissing and spitting as its acidic slime melted the cannibal’s body. At last, it reached Levi’s side.

  “Excellent!” Levi cheered. Battering a sword away, he pointed with his chin. “You take my left flank. Armalgam, you’ve got the right. We hold this road. No one gets past us. Understood?”

  The slombie staggered numbly in the direction he’d pointed. The Armalgam gave him a thumbs up.

  “Let’s get to it.” The three of them turned their attention back to the fray. Levi raised his sword. The Armalgam hefted its swords high. The slombie raised its arm, pooling a lump of slime in its palm.

  The cannibals charged. Shouting, Levi charged back, his two silent companions rushing with him. The three of them hacked their way into the front lines, or in the slombie’s case, burned its way forward through the sheer bulk of its acid. It lobbed chunks of slime into the cannibals, raining death down on the rear ranks. Levi and the Armalgam slashed left and right. Fighting shoulder to shoulder, they walked forward into the cannibals. Bodies piled up around them, but more cannibals charged to take the place of their fallen comrades.

  Across the field, Kai cleaved into the cannibals. A dozen cannibals fell all at once, cut in half. He stepped forward, drawing his sword back again.

  “Fuck! He’s stealing all our EXP! Guys, come on!” Levi stepped back, gaining himself a moment. He lifted his fingers to his mouth and whistled.

  Zombie cannibals charged the mob from the far sides of the circle. They hopped over the barriers and raced at the cannibals. The cannibals startled and turned, then stared as they found their former friends rushing at them with hunger in their eyes. The zombie cannibals reached the crowd and tore into it. They bit chunks off the non-zombie cannibals. The non-zombie cannibals shoved them away, shouting angrily at them, but didn’t immediately attack or panic.

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  Levi frowned. “That didn’t have the effect I wanted. I was hoping for way more shock value. Is it because they’re cannibals? Do they sometimes attack each other for food? That shows me. I should always consider the local culture when I launch attacks.”

  At last, the cannibals turned toward the zombies in anger. They hacked the zombies back, but the zombies, dead and numb to their attacks, kept coming. Two, three cannibals went down before one of the stronger cannibals finally swung his axe and beheaded the lead zombie. He turned, stomping toward the rest of the zombies.

  “Not so fast.” Levi snapped his fingers. The cannibals downed by the zombies jerked, and their eyes glowed green. One of them reached out and grabbed onto the strong cannibal’s ankle. The strong cannibal glanced down just in time to watch the zombie sink their teeth into his flesh.

  Levi winced even as he rushed back into the fray, chopping open a cannibal’s chest, then kicking them backwards. “Those teeth are sharp. That’s gotta—ow!”

  He looked down. A cannibal he’d thought was dead grabbed onto his leg and chewed on his calf, digging their jaws deeper with every passing moment.

  “What the fuck? Are you the zombie, or are they?” Levi stabbed downward, severing the cannibal’s spinal cord. He kicked them loose in disgust, then tested out his leg. It hurt when he stood on it, but it held his weight. He twisted his nose, annoyed.

  Seeing him distracted, another cannibal rushed him. Levi caught the motion in his peripherals and snapped his fingers. Once more, the Spinal Cord leaped forth.

  The cannibal was ready. He hopped to the side and grinned at Levi, shaking his finger at him.

  “Haha, you got me. Get stabbed, motherfucker,” Levi deadpanned, flicking his finger. A blur of pale, dead flesh cartwheeled toward him on almost half-a-dozen arms, and the Armalgam stabbed him in the side. Levi hauled back and beheaded him for good measure. The cannibal’s head soared over the masses and struck another cannibal in the ear.

  On the other side of the battle, Kai carved his way through the cannibals one giant sweep after another. Bodies laid strewn on the streets behind him, outnumbering the bodies piling up near Levi. As he advanced, the cannibals fled before him, putting pressure on the cannibals facing Levi. They pressed up into a tight, compressed knot of people, and Kai advanced, his eyes glittering with brutal glee.

  “Hey! Hey! Don’t group up. Space out! You’re helping Kai like this! You want to spread out, so I can kill you one by one and get your EXP—ah, dammit. Zombies, go nuts! Armalgam, slombie, full offense! I’ll heal you afterward!” Levi charged the cannibals himself. Ignoring his own physical state, he simply cut into them, striking down as many as he could all at once. Two cannibals stumbled toward him, pushed into each other by the press of the crowd, and he took both their heads at once.

  As he did, another cannibal ran him through the side. Levi twisted with the blade, turning away from it to minimize the damage, but pain poured into him all the same. The Armalgam spun around and slashed out with both its swords, scissoring the cannibal’s head off with the dual-blade sweep. The cannibal’s sword slipped out of Levi’s side as the cannibal fell, dead. Levi grunted, biting his cheeks against the pain. Gold light immediately poured into the wound, but it wasn’t enough. He was accumulating wounds faster than Colin could heal them.

  At the same time, he could all but feel his level go up. He killed cannibals wholesale, one after another, stepping over their bodies as he advanced. It was like fish in a barrel. They were so tightly wound there was no escape and no room to dodge, no room to maneuver. The cannibals in the front line struck at Levi, but they never landed a killing blow, too off-balance from the force of the crowd to be able to empower their strikes. He stepped into the haphazard blows and let them bounce off his back and shoulders. Colin stepped forward as well, his face screwed up in concentration. He poured all his magic into Levi, healing him with every scrap of his being.

  Kai strode forward evenly. His expression was blank, his eyes unmoved. He slashed once, twice, three times, slowly advancing. There was no rush in his body. Not an ounce of hurry in his demeanor. He was inevitable death, and he knew it. He didn’t need technique. He didn’t need to protect himself. The cannibals were so far below his level that they might as well have been sheep, walking to the slaughter.

  One cannibal stood her ground. She drew back a bow and aimed her arrow at Kai’s eye. He readied his sword. Before he struck, she loosed her arrow.

  “Go! Get him!” Levi cheered.

  Kai’s offhand flickered. It moved so fast Levi couldn’t follow it. One second, he held his sword. In the next, he held the cannibal’s arrow, plucked out of midair. Maintaining eye contact with the girl, he tossed the arrow around in his hand and threw it back at the girl. It whirled through the air and pierced through the girl’s head and out the back of her skull. She stumbled back and fell to the ground, dead.

  “Holy shit,” Levi muttered under his breath, even as he cut through another few cannibals. He shook his head. “Thank you for your sacrifice. You will be forgotten.”

  He would forget her, but not the lesson she’d taught him. Kai was strong. He was fast. Levi held the advantage in no way in open combat. Drawing the man’s aggro in face-to-face battle could already be considered a loss condition. He didn’t like the man. Wanted him dead, in fact. But right now, he couldn’t afford to risk a fight.

  Relief flooded through him. I didn’t know how much I was arguing for, when I negotiated for my life back there in the early dungeon with that whole speech about how he shouldn’t kill me until after the apocalypse. If I’d known how powerful he was, I would’ve been brown-nosing so hard. I wouldn’t even have thought about sassing him—

  Okay, no. I would have sassed him either way. But I would’ve thought about it first.

  “Hey, friend! Kai! Good to see you!” Levi said, beaming.

  “I’m not your friend,” Kai grumbled.

  “Aww, it’s okay. I know you’re shy, standing out here, surrounded by new friends—” Levi paused to jump back, away from a wild slash, then thrust out with the Spinal Cord, piercing the man through his ribcage. “—but I know you’re happy to see me, somewhere deep under that cold, edgy exterior.”

  Kai grimaced. “Shut up, and I won’t try to kill you.”

  “That’s a deal.” Levi closed his mouth and focused on taking down as many cannibals as he could before Kai’s slashes cut them down.

  Between Levi and his undead forces and Kai’s slow, sweeping advance, the cannibals quickly diminished. Before long, only a few remained, pinned between a chaotic mess of limbs on Levi’s side and Kai’s greatsword on the other. Levi fought more vigorously than before, desperate for EXP. Kai advanced the same as ever, inevitably killing all those who drew too close.

  “Stop.”

  A voice boomed across the square, echoing out of the oven.

  Both Levi and Kai ignored it, focusing on cleaning up the last of the cannibals.

  “I said, stop!”

  Levi darted out, slicing down two cannibals with one slash after another. In the next instant, he swayed back as Kai’s sword swept inches past his gut. “Hey! Watch it, big boy!”

  “STOP!”

  Kai snorted. “If you don’t want to be cut, don’t stand in front of my sword.”

  “I’m not going to repeat myself again.”

  “If you don’t want to commit manslaughter, don’t slice in my direction!” Levi bit back.

  Isa materialized beside Levi. Colin hurried closer, casting a wary glance oven-ward. “Er, guys…”

  “Yeah, we know. We just don’t care.” One of the cannibals ran by. Levi jumped forth, already striking to kill.

  “That’s it,” the voice snapped. Dark energy rushed out of the oven, rolling over the square.

  Startled, Levi flinched back, but too slow. The energy struck him. He, and everyone else on the battlefield, froze where they stood.

  The voice sighed. “Finally. Now then. Where was I?”