Divine-Class Awakening: I Can Steal From Gods!-Chapter 17: A Necessary Death

"If you want your secret to stay hidden, do what I say from now on."

Neo did not answer. His expression didn’t change either, although inside she was screaming one thing. ’How do you know?’

Neo was nervous, someone knew his secret, but he took it calmly; for now, Nep didn’t seem like he was going to tell anyone.

The path ahead kept sinking into the Breach, deeper under the ruins where the streets had long since stopped feeling like streets. Stone pressed closer on both sides. Broken arches rose from the floor only to vanish into collapsed ceilings above, and the gaps between them looked less like passages and more like mouths left open in the dark. The air itself felt heavier there, dense with dust and something older that had settled into the stone.

Then the silence broke.

A sharp crack ran through the chamber.

Bone scraped over rock.

Shapes began to rise from the openings ahead and from the fractured sides of the passage, first a few, then more, then enough that the space in front of them started filling faster than the eye could settle. Skeletons dragged themselves over rubble and broken masonry with rusted blades in hand, empty sockets fixed on the group as they poured out in numbers that made the corridor feel suddenly small.

"Shit," Snot muttered. "That’s a lot."

Max moved first. He stepped into the front and caught the first strike on his shield with a heavy clang that echoed through the stone. Alice followed a heartbeat later, smashing one skeleton aside hard enough to knock two more off balance. Marika’s fire flashed across the front line and lit the chamber in orange, burning through dry bone and old cloth, yet more kept coming from behind the first wave.

Neo drew his sword and went in too.

A skeleton lunged at Marika from the side. He cut through its neck, turned, and drove his blade into another before it could reach him. The second body fell, but a third was already climbing over it.

And there, in the middle of all of it, the answer clicked into place.

Nep had touched his shoulder.

Something had happened in that instant.

After that, his expression changed.

Then came the threat.

Your secret.

Neo’s eyes flicked toward him while Nep fought a few steps away.

Contact.

That had to be it.

Some ability. Some class effect. Something that let him see what he should never have seen.

The Soul Window.

Neo felt the conclusion settle with complete clarity.

’He has to die.’

Nep was a threat that could not be left alive.

Worse, his class was useful. More than useful. A class that could read another person’s Soul-Window was the kind of thing people killed for. The kind of thing Neo would need.

Another wave flooded into the corridor before the first had even been cleared. Bone crashed against steel from three sides now, and farther back in the dark, beyond the swarm, Neo caught the faint outline of something standing still while the dead kept coming.

The fight had only started.

And somewhere inside the chaos, the chance would come.

The outline in the dark did not stay an outline for long.

As the front line shifted and the next wave forced the group back a few steps, Neo finally saw the thing standing behind the swarm.

It was tall, wrapped in robes that had long since rotted into strips, with bone showing through wherever the cloth had fallen away. A staff rested in one hand, black and thin, crowned by a pale light that did not flicker like fire. It stood several layers behind the skeletons, protected by the press of bodies and broken stone, its empty gaze fixed on them while more dead began pulling themselves from the rubble around it.

"A lich," Nep said from somewhere to Neo’s right, his voice tight for the first time since the fight began. "That has to be the core of it."

Neo did not answer, but he had already reached the same conclusion.

The thing itself was dangerous. Everything around it made it worse.

Each time the group carved space out of the front, more skeletons crawled up from the dark gaps in the floor or dropped from fractured ledges above. The pressure never broke. It only shifted. Steel rang again and again through the buried corridor, mixed with the dry crack of shattered bone and the hiss of Marika’s flames every time she forced another cluster back.

Max held the front as long as a man could hold against something that did not tire. His shield took strike after strike while his sword chopped down whatever came too close. Alice stayed near him when the line threatened to fold, stepping in with raw force whenever a gap opened and smashing skeletons apart hard enough to buy them a breath. Marika kept burning groups when they began bunching up, but Neo could already see the difference in how she cast. Less waste now. Shorter bursts. More control. Snot moved where he always moved, darting through spaces that barely existed, shouting warnings, kicking enemies off balance, finishing whatever the others left broken.

And through all of it, Nep stayed alive.

Close enough for Neo to keep track of him even while cutting through the next attacker.

A cluster of skeletons broke from the side passage and started folding in toward Marika before the others could turn. Neo saw it half a breath before it closed. He lunged in, sword rising into the first rusted blade that came down at her shoulder. Bone shuddered under the impact. He twisted, forced the weapon aside, and cut across the skeleton’s ribs.

The strike hit harder than he expected.

The blade punched through old bone hard enough to tear the thing apart and send the upper half spinning into the attacker behind it.

A cold pulse moved through him then, quick and clear, like something inside his body had finally aligned under pressure.

[Duskmane Beast - Ascendant, Mastery increased to medium.]

[Beast Strength is usable now.]

There was no time to think about it.

Another skeleton rushed him from the left. He turned and met it head-on. This time, when his sword smashed into its guard, the resistance felt different. The bones in its arm cracked at the impact point, the defense broke open, and Neo’s second strike took the head clean off before the body had even finished stumbling back.

His arm felt heavier in the best possible way. Each motion carried more force behind it now, enough to matter in the small gaps that decided whether someone lived or died in a fight like this.

One of the dead lunged for his legs. Neo kicked it away hard enough to send it skidding into broken stone, then stepped through the opening it left and buried his sword into another skull. He ripped the blade free and kept moving. The difference showed itself fast. When he shoved, bodies shifted. When he cut through a weak defense, it broke sooner. When he found an exposed angle, the kill came faster.

A blade grazed across his side before he could fully turn, scraping armor and drawing just enough force from him to sting. Neo twisted away, killed the attacker with a thrust through the jaw, and immediately looked past the collapsing body toward the rear.

The Lich had barely moved.

It stood where the ruin narrowed and the corridor bent around a half-buried structure, with broken stone and its own summons doing most of the work of protecting it. Pale light gathered around the staff again. A second later, more movement stirred in the dark behind it.

"Damn it," Snot snapped. "It’s raising more."

"I can see that," Marika shot back, flames flashing from her hand as she caught three skeletons climbing over a collapsed wall to their left.

Neo cut one down beside Max, then another, then another. The fight turned ugly and relentless. Hold. Kill. Shift. Cover. Breathe. Move again.

Through all of it, his attention kept returning to two positions.

The Lich.

Nep.

Nep ducked under a strike, stabbed upward into a skeleton’s throat, then drove his shoulder into the body to tear the blade free. Harder to kill by chance than Neo would have preferred.

’Not yet, I need good timing.’

The thought flashed through him while he stepped into another exchange. He broke a skeleton’s guard with a heavy cut, slammed the pommel into its face, then finished it before it could recover.

’Too soon and they turn on me.’

Another body came from the side. Neo shoved it off its line, cut through its spine, and advanced a pace with Max before the next wave forced them back again.

Marika cursed as two more skeletons slipped around the burning front and pushed toward her from opposite sides. Neo moved before she had to retreat, reached the first, and hacked through its raised weapon with enough force to send broken metal and bone scattering across the floor. He pivoted straight into the second and drove it back with a shoulder check that rattled up his own frame. Marika’s flame took it in the next instant and turned the remaining bones black.

She glanced at him once. "Thanks."

Neo was already looking past her.

The Lich lifted its staff again.

This time the response came from deeper in the ruin, from cracks and buried chambers below. Bone scraped against stone in such numbers that the sound became continuous. The next wave had not even reached them yet, and Neo already knew there would be another after it.

Max heard it too. "This won’t stop," he said, breath roughening between strikes. "Not unless we break that thing."