The Flesh Titan (Level 8), as it said above its head, towered over me, Valda, and Glogmore. Glogmore began the assault on the beast by chomping onto its foot. It wasn't wearing any shoes, for obvious reasons. No one makes shoes that big, or for individuals whose feet are made out of people.

  Then something really gross started happening. A hole opened up in Glogmore's back and blood started shooting out of it. I couldn't make sense of what he was doing until he started consuming the big toe.

  More and more of it went into his mouth until it was gone and he kept going. He also grew bigger the further he went. I guessed he was shredding the flesh of the zombies, but eating the bones and adding them to his body.

  That was one way for him to recover his size. Then he glowed purple, and a pulse went out of his body. I wasn't sure what that was, but every time it happened, he got bigger.

  I guess Glogmore wasn't going to be a tag-a-long sidekick like I thought. He was actually going to be a team player. Good for him. That genuinely made me happy.

  Valda winced at Glogmore. "Keep doing that thing that you're doing Glogmore! Good job!"

  Valda averted her gaze and attacked the other foot. She brought her mace down on it and burned through its flesh. She started making headway in cutting the foot in half as she continued further in.

  Now it was my turn. I guessed I should go up the middle since they took the sides. I wouldn't attack the low hanging fruit though. I'd go for the head. I took aim with my arbalest and fired.

  The bolt hit it in the cheek and burned away some of its flesh, but it wasn't enough. And I would run out of bolts fairly quickly. I decided to do some quick crafting. This would be quick, though. No wasting time.

  There were huge chunks of broken stone where the giant had climbed out of the ground. Tossing my remaining eleven half silver half steel bolts on the ground near a chunk of stone, I activated Manufacture.

  I made about 200 silver-plated bolts with a stone middle layer and a steel core. I didn't want to have to go with plating, but this was my only option. Without any silver content, the bolts would do practically nothing.

  With a pile of bolts on the ground, I was basically rooted to the spot. I activated Manufacture again to reload the arbalest, aimed at the giant's head and fired. More of its flesh burned away.

  I kept reloading and firing in the same spot. The giant ignored me in favor of Glogmore and Valda, who were destroying its feet. It either didn't realize, when I hit the brain, it would die, or it just wouldn't. I was assuming it had a traditionally placed brain in the head. Either way, I'd find out.

  The giant grabbed at Glogmore and tried to rip him free of his foot, but Glogmore was too big and strong at this point. He was half the size of the giant's foot now. Then the giant tried to grab at Valda, but she was too deep in a crevice she had created in its foot that he couldn't get his fat fingers into the hole.

  Eventually, he realized I was the only viable target, but by that time, I was almost to the brain. He lifted his fists to smash me, but right at the last second, his eyes went blank and he fell over. Apparently, he did have a brain.

  The necromancer tumbled to the ground and cursed.

  "Damn it!" he said. "I'm not done yet!"

  He put his hand to the ground and out of the hole made by the giant, three more enemies appeared. They appeared to be knights clad in bronze armor with weird V-shaped visors. The label above their heads read "Revenant King (Level 9)."

  Before I could even aim my arbalest, one of the revenants appeared in front of me, grabbed my arbalest out of my hands and bent it in half. I could easily fix that, but then he threw it hundreds of feet down the hall. He was too fast for me to outrun him and get it back.

  He backhanded me across the chest and sent me flying into the wall. My health went down significantly and I coughed up blood. Another revenant knocked the mace out of Valda's hand and hit her into the wall. She coughed up blood as well.

  Two revenants started beating us into the wall, while the third one engaged Glogmore. He didn't seem to be doing much a Glogmore though. It was like he was holding back. I saw the level 7 elite death knight turned Glogmore into a bunch of spread out bones on the ground and this level 9 guy couldn't do that?

  That was preposterous. More likely was that the necromancer didn't want to hurt Glogmore and was going easy on him. He had greeted Glogmore with a lot of love for such a hateful man.

  He even hugged him. On top of that, Glogmore was only level 6. There was no way a level 6 could compete with a level 9 straight up. Regardless of the fact that Glogmore had a name, and the revenant didn't.

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  Thankfully, due to the fact that the third revenant was using kid gloves on Glogmore, Glogmore was able to save us. He rammed into the revenants that were beating us up.

  "Get inside Glogmore!" he said.

  Before I could ask what he meant, a doorway opened in his back and stairs made of bones extended down to the ground. There was a hollow room inside Glogmore that he had made for us to hide. I grabbed Valda and pulled her along. Glogmore was roughly the size of a tank at that point after all the mass he had gobbled up from the flesh titan.

  We ran up the stairs and into Glogmore's internal room. The doorway closed behind us and two long basketball sized holes opened in front of us. I realized that these were viewing ports that just looked like dark eye sockets to our enemies.

  I looked through the right eye socket and Valda took the left. We watched as Glogmore engaged the revenant kings in battle. They were still taking it easy on him. Glogmore easily "processed" the revenants through his body, armor and all, and stole their bones. Then Glogmore turned to the necromancer, who looked pissed.

  "Glogmore!" he yelled. "Why are you fighting me? I created you. I love you. Do you really want to harm your creator? Your father?"

  "Glogmore make friends who don't look down on him."

  That was wrong. Well, it wasn't wrong. We didn't look down on him, but we did think he had less intelligence than us, which he did.

  "They treat Glogmore as equal."

  That was true. We did treat him as an equal and we saw him that way too. He equally risked his life for us and he was equally alive as us, so he deserved to be treated as such.

  "Does master do the same to Glogmore?"

  "Glogmore," he said.

  "No! Master, treat Glogmore as pet. As property."

  "Glogmore, you are my pet. You are my property."

  "And that is why Glogmore must fight master."

  The necromancer sighed a deep sigh, and a placid look took over his face.

  "Glogmore, you leave me no choice. I was holding back my necrotic energy because I didn't want to catch you in the crossfire, but if you insist on continuing to disobey me, then you must die."

  The necromancer who I still did not know the name of—his character label just said "Necromancer of the Delphian Catacombs"—raised both his hands and they began to glow with black necrotic energies. A blast of the energy shot out and hit Glogmore.

  Glogmore struggled to move forward against the force of the energy, but it slowed him to a crawl. He began to get smaller and smaller, until Valda and I popped out of Glogmore's body.

  "There you are!" he said.

  He continued to blast all three of us with necrotic energy. Our health bars dropped lower and lower. I didn't have a weapon. I couldn't think of what to do until I looked past the necromancer and realized Valda, Glogmore, and I were facing towards the necromancer's study.

  The necromancer's back was facing it. I knew we couldn't win in a straight up fight, but maybe we could win in a dirty one. He snapped at me when I looked through his "research." He said it was worth more than all the lives in the world.

  What would he do if I tried to destroy it? I fumbled on my armor until I found the bag that contained my test tube Molotov cocktails. I pulled three out and, using my 5 in strength, I chucked them into his study.

  It was roughly 50 feet away, which might seem far, but when you consider that a 2 is an average person's strength, I had more than enough to make the throw.

  The necromancer laughed. "I don't know what that was, but you missed. By a lot."

  "I wasn't aiming for you," I said.

  "What?"

  He turned around just in time to see the test tubes hit the ground in the study. The gasoline inside burst into flames when it came in contact with the enchanted paper, and multiple stacks of his research started to burn.

  "No. No!" he screamed. "Not my research!"

  He ran over to the fires and tried to put them out with his robe, but instead, his robe caught on fire. Valda and my life were still draining. I popped the corks on two health potions and gave her one.

  We drank them down, and it restored our health and counter acted the necrotic energy, stopping the drain. Glogmore I couldn't give a health potion too—he was undead or at least not alive in the normal sense—but his deterioration had stopped at about basketball size.

  Valda nudged me. "Clever." She laughed watching the necromancer try to put out the fires.

  He could probably easily put them out with his necrotic energy, but he'd destroy his research in the process. He was in a catch-22 scenario. Damned if he did, and damned if he didn't.

  He fell to his knees as his research turned to ash around him. He had put out the fire on his robe, but that was all he had accomplished. He began to sob.

  "My life's work. Gone. Ruined. By two brats."

  He got up off the floor and stormed over to me.

  "You will answer for what you've done!" He grabbed me by the neck and began to strangle me. He was surprisingly strong for an old man. "I will kill you with my bare hands. You don't deserve an easy death. I want to watch the life drain from your eyes as you realize struggle is futile and you are going to die."

  I watched Valda leave my peripheral vision and come back as my vision was going dark. No matter how much I struggled, I wasn't strong enough to stop him. I tried to scratch his eyes out, but his reach was longer than mine and I couldn't put my hands on his face.

  Then his head disappeared from his body as Valda smashed her silver mace into the side of his head.

  "There you go!" Valda said. "I told you I'd bash your skull in."

  The head said, "No! Stop! I beg you, let me live!"

  "I'm sorry, but I don't think I will. The world seems like it would be a better place without you." Valda brought the mace down on his disembodied head three times, then four times, then five times. I didn't interrupt her this time. He deserved it.

  After she was satisfied, we walked back into the necromancer's study. None of his research was left. Even the furniture had turned to charcoal and ash.

  With all the stacks of junk gone, I noticed something shiny in the back of the room. We walked over to it. Sitting on the floor, with no particular organization to it, was a huge pile of gold and jewels. It was probably the valuables from all the people he killed.

  With my pack being heavy already, I said, "You're carrying this one." I held up another bag and began shoveling the loot inside it.

  Words appeared in my vision. "You have defeated the necromancer and completed the dungeon! +3,000 experience points."

  Then another message said, "You have leveled up! You are now level 6!"

  I smiled. This day had turned out far better than I expected.