Divine-Class Awakening: I Can Steal From Gods!-Chapter 18: Putting the Rabid Dog Down

The scrape from below never stopped.

By the time the next wave hit, it had become part of the fight itself, a constant sound under everything else, bone dragging over buried stone while the Lich kept feeding the corridor from the dark behind its front line. Skeletons pushed in from ahead, then from a fractured side passage, then from a drop above where part of the ruin had collapsed inward. The pressure shifted too fast for a clean formation to last.

Max still held the center, but only barely. Every time he planted himself and forced the dead back, something else came from a different angle and threatened to fold the line around him. Alice kept crashing into those openings before they could widen, buying space with force more than technique. Marika burned groups when they started to bunch together, though her fire came in shorter bursts now, tighter and more careful than before. Snot moved between all of them, voice sharp as he called openings, warnings, and directions over the clash of steel.

Nep kept pace with the chaos well enough to stay alive.

Neo saw all of it while he fought.

He cut one skeleton down near Max, stepped back from another blade, then turned in time to drive his sword through the skull of something climbing up from a crack in the floor. As the body dropped, Neo tracked Nep again.

The bastard had a habit now that Neo could read once he started looking for it. Whenever Nep went in to finish an enemy, he committed a little too far. Whenever he turned back out, he did it with the assumption that someone else had the space behind him covered. It was not carelessness. It was trust in the line, trust in the group.

Neo shifted left and caught a rusted sword on his own blade before it could reach Marika’s side. He shoved the attacker off balance, cut it down, and checked the smoke spreading low across the corridor. Visibility worsened wherever Marika’s flames met old dust and rotten cloth. The press of bodies made it worse. A person could disappear in this fight. Sometimes two.

Then the next surge came harder than the last and split them into two separate fronts.

Nep ended up farther ahead than the others, close enough to support, far enough to die alone if the moment landed right.

His sword came back out of another skeleton’s ribs.

’Now.’

The opening vanished almost as soon as it appeared.

A larger skeleton pushed through the front near Nep, broader than the rest, with scraps of plated armor still hanging from its frame and a rusted axe in both hands. It came straight at him and forced him to give ground at once. Another climbed over broken stone from the side, faster, lower, its blade angling toward the space Nep had just left.

Nep killed the first one that reached him.

He stepped in, cut across its neck, then had to twist right away when the armored skeleton’s axe came down with enough force to crack stone where he had been standing a heartbeat earlier.

That was when the line around him failed.

Smoke drifted low across the corridor. Marika’s fire had blackened part of the wall and filled that side of the ruin with heat and dust. Max was locked a few steps back with two skeletons at once. Alice had broken away to stop another group from folding in on the left. Snot was somewhere behind the smoke, shouting something Neo did not bother to catch.

Nep was ahead.

Alone enough.

The armored skeleton pressed him from the front. A second came in from his blind side. A third was dragging itself up through a crack behind him.

Neo moved.

From the outside, it would look simple. A teammate closing the gap, a late cover, a chance taken in a bad position because there was no better one.

He cut down the skeleton rising from the floor first and stepped through the falling bones without slowing. Nep saw him then, and something in his face shifted.

"Cover me, Neo." He thought Neo had come to help.

The armored skeleton swung again. Nep caught part of the blow on his blade, but the impact knocked his stance open and forced him half a step back, exactly where the second skeleton was already coming in from the side.

Neo reached them at the same time.

His sword came up. He could have cleared the angle and help Nep.

Instead, he hit the side skeleton just enough to throw its line off and drove his shoulder into Nep as if trying to shove him out of the way.

Nep stumbled into the wrong space. The armored skeleton’s axe missed his neck by very little and tore deep through his upper chest instead, smashing through cloth, flesh, and bone with a wet crack that vanished under the rest of the fight.

Nep’s body jerked hard.

The blow did not kill him.

He staggered back half a step, breath breaking in his throat, one hand flying to his chest as blood forced itself through his fingers. His mouth opened, but whatever tried to come out collapsed into a broken sound.

His eyes locked onto Neo’s.

Understanding came at the end.

He knew.

Neo did not hesitate.

The skeleton that had struck him was still moving, its axe dragging back up for another blow. Neo stepped in at once and split its skull before anyone could get a clean look, the body collapsing sideways into Nep and knocking him down into the heap of broken stone and bone.

Perfect.

Neo dropped into a crouch as if to wrench his blade free from the corpse pile.

Nep was still alive.

His eyes were open, wide with shock, one hand still pressed uselessly against his chest as blood kept pushing through his fingers. He tried to move. Tried to say something. Nothing came out right.

Neo seized the front of his clothes and yanked him closer.

Then he buried the sword under the jaw and drove it through the skull.

Nep’s body gave one last ugly twitch.

Then it went slack.

[You have slain Nep - Ember]

Neo kept his hand there a fraction longer, low behind the fallen skeleton, making sure there was nothing left in him at all.

Only then did he let go.

Under the blood and the broken fold of his clothes, Neo saw it.

The Soul Core had already surfaced.

A small yellowed sphere, like cloudy glass with faint light moving inside it, half-hidden against Nep’s chest where the life had just left him. Anyone looking straight at it would have noticed. In the middle of the fight, with bodies falling over each other and bone crashing around them, no one did.

Neo grabbed it in one motion, making it look like he was steadying himself over the corpse pile.

Then he consumed it.

The sphere vanished the instant it touched his hand, breaking into a cold current that rushed into him without leaving anything behind.

[Soul-Window]

[You have absorbed the Soul Core of Nep - Ember]

[+107 Souls]

[249/1000 Ember]

[You have obtained a new class. Do you wish to use it?]

’Yes.’

[New Secondary Class acquired: Soul Reader]

[Soul Reader - Legendary]

Abilities:

[Read Touch: Through physical contact, you can view the Soul Window of an individual.] - Unlocked

[Mental Read: You can view the Soul Window of an individual without physical contact.] - More mastery required.

[True Reader: You can read the thoughts and emotions of an individual that is weaker than you.] - More mastery required.

Neo read the window in a single glance.

"Nep’s down!" Snot’s voice cut through the corridor from somewhere behind the smoke.

Marika glanced over, saw the bodies, saw the blood, and had no room to do anything with it because three more skeletons were already pushing into her side. Max turned as well, but only for a glance before another strike slammed into his shield.

There was no time to question it.

Exactly as Neo had wanted.

He stepped away from the corpse pile and cut into the next skeleton that reached him, his blade driving through old bone with full force. Another came from the side, and he turned, killed it, and kept moving as if nothing had changed.

But it had.

Nep was dead.

His class was gone.

And now it belonged to Neo.