The old power substation sat at the northeastern edge of the city where the urban sprawl gave way to open ground. There, a squat concrete structure stood surrounded by rusted fencing, its equipment long since stripped or destroyed, its walls tagged with the particular graffiti of a world that no longer existed.

The ground around it was flat and open in every direction, which was either a tactical disadvantage or an invitation depending on who was standing in it.

Damon was leaning against the outer wall when they arrived.

Not crouched behind cover. Not positioned for ambush. Just standing there with his arms crossed and his sword at his hip, watching them come across the open ground with the unhurried expression of someone who had been waiting and found the wait rather amusing.

The necromancer slowed his approach slightly when he saw him, just a fraction of a second slower than before.

"You knew we were coming," he said, stopping twenty meters out. His three lieutenants fanned out instinctively on either side of him, covering the angles.

"Yes," Damon said.

"Victor," the man said, slowly realising what had happened.

"Victor," Damon confirmed.

The necromancer absorbed that with the composure of someone recalculating without showing the calculation. His pleasant expression remained intact, which told Damon he was quite good at managing information that contradicted his expectations.

"And yet you’re here anyway," the necromancer said.

"Where else would I be?" Damon asked.

A brief silence settled over the open ground between them. The morning light was flat and grey, the kind that made everything look slightly more stark than it was.

"Interesting," the necromancer said after taking a long look at Damon. "A little overconfident, aren’t we?"

Damon didn’t reply, at least not at first and instead he unsheathed his weapon, taking a step toward them.

The three lieutenants moved almost immediately.

The first came fast from the left, a heavyset fighter with a war hammer that he swung in a wide opening arc designed to force a response rather than land.

Damon stepped into the shadows.

He came out behind the second lieutenant, the one on the right, and put his blade through him before the hammer had finished its arc.

The man dropped without a sound. Damon ignored the notification ringing in his head and moved his focus onto the next target.

The third lieutenant, the one who had asked about killing Victor on the warehouse roof, had anticipated the shadow step better than the others. He was already turning when Damon reappeared, a long knife in each hand, moving with the compact efficiency of someone who had trained specifically against faster opponents. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

He was good, but far from being good enough.

Damon let him commit to a strike, deflected it with the flat part of his blade, and drove his elbow into the man’s jaw with enough force to put him down before following through with the sword.

The hammer carrier had recovered from his opening swing and was charging now, the relic shimmer of the weapon brightening as he built momentum.

Damon watched him come, waiting for the last possible moment before stepping aside and letting the hammer’s momentum carry its owner past him before putting his blade between the man’s shoulder blades.

Three lieutenants, the strongest fighters the enemy citadel had to offer, and they were dead in less than twelve seconds.

He turned toward the necromancer.

The green smoke was already moving.

Not the slow curls from the warehouse roof, this was something different, faster and more deliberate, spreading outward from the necromancer’s arms in thick streams that moved against the wind.

Two shapes rose from the ground on either side of him.

Not risen corpses, there were no bodies here to work with.

These were something else, constructs built from the smoke itself, vaguely humanoid in outline but wrong in the details, their edges shifting and reforming continuously, their movements carrying the fluid unpredictability of something that didn’t have bones to constrain it.

They moved toward Damon from both sides simultaneously.

He sent shards of black ice into the one to his left, shredding the summon into pieces before striking the second one with lightning, leaving nothing behind as the ability subsided.

The necromancer frowned slightly before his usual smirk flashed across his face. "It seems I underestimated you."

Suddenly, the entire area was engulfed by green smoke, and from it, two dozen summons rose, each one different in size, indicating they came from completely different sources.

Damon looked around with a rather unimpressed look.

Beside him, Dark Knight materialised and dashed immediately into action, cutting through nearby summons while Damon began to do the same.

His abilities all came to life, black ice tearing nearby enemies while lightning struck those at the back. Those whose abilities couldn’t reach, Damon cut down with the sword.

In the end, it took no more than it did to cut down the three lieutenants to dispose of everyone of his summons and reach the necromancer.

It was only then that he saw the man use a weapon, a double-edged sword materialised in his hand just in time.

CLANG!

Surprisingly, as their weapons met, the necromancer held on, at least for the first strike. Damon pivoted, his movements too fast for the man to follow.

With a quick vertical cut, he severed his arm completely, and with a quick sidekick, he dropped him to the ground.

The necromancer’s expression shifted, the first genuine change since the fight began, something between surprise and terror.

The green smoke collapsed immediately. The necromancer tried to get up, but his body refused to move, the blood spraying from his arm already creating a small pool of crimson underneath.

"Interesting..." he murmured to himself, before his dark green eyes moved toward Damon. "With this type of strength, you might even stand a chance against him." He smiled to himself at the idea, as if facing his leader was a fairytale and not something that could be done.

Damon, however, ignored the remark.

He watched as the Dark Knight moved beside him, its sword raised high, waiting for a command, which came only a second later, and the sword came down with a devastating force.

[You have slain a Level 67 Human: Atlas]

[New Monster Index bonus: +8 Strength, +11 Dexterity, +15 Mana]

[You have reached Level 74. You have received 1 Stat Point.]