As the ogre skeletons closed the distance, Tybalt slowly backed away while pulling mana from his core. He needed to time this perfectly so that he was not caught with a non-empowered spear. A cut that would be easy with mana might be like chopping down a thick tree without it.

  He dragged the mana out of his body and poured it into his weapon—and then they were within striking range.

  With a silent roar, three of the creatures dove at him, but Tybalt was ready. He met them with a swift slash of the spear that severed all three spinal columns.

  He knew that his mana was running lower with every movement, so he didn’t slow down to verify the kills.

  He whipped his spear back to face the next ogre skeleton, then thrust his spear through its rib cage before the first trio had even hit the ground. It penetrated through to the spinal column, and that creature began to collapse too.

  Another one of the monsters swung a long, heavy limb at Tybalt’s head, and he ducked and rolled to avoid a hit that would surely have knocked him senseless. He barely managed to keep hold of his spear.

  As he tried to push off the ground, an ogre skeleton foot trampled his center of mass, and he felt one of his ribs crack.

  He let out a rough cough, then slashed wildly with the spear, cutting both legs out from under the skeleton that had just stomped him.

  Tybalt pushed himself up onto all fours successfully this time, ignoring the pain in his chest—and the last intact ogre skeleton kicked him in the backside. He felt his tailbone almost break on impact, and his body rolled away head over heels.

  Still, the soldier kept his hand on his spear and maintained the flow of power from his core into the weapon. He was almost out of mana, but if he let go of the spear, that would cut off the supply of mana to the weapon instantly. Then he would be helpless.

  Tybalt landed and then thrust himself up and to the side just as the ogre skeleton landed a punch on the patch of ground where he’d been. As his momentum carried him sideways through the air, the monster reached for Tybalt one more time. It extended its long, bony arm, hand open, apparently attempting to wrap a single massive hand around his leg. Tybalt managed to twist slightly, kick off of the skeletal arm bone, and then slashed blindly at where the center of the ogre’s body should have been.

  He felt the moment when his mana ran out. It was not the headache that always accompanied mana exhaustion. That came a few seconds later.

  No, he felt that his slash had cut through the ogre skeleton’s rib cage and struck its spine, had even begun to cut the spinal column—and then failed. It slid roughly half an inch through, but that was only half the diameter of an ogre spinal column.

  The creature flailed wildly, clearly losing some control of its body with the damage to its spine, and one of its erratic kicks struck Tybalt as he was falling. Thankfully, it was weaker than the monster’s more deliberate blows, but he still felt another rib crack under the force of the blow.

  It sent his body tumbling away, and Tybalt lacked the energy or will to stop his motion on the ground. He rolled over and over, the powdery soil thankfully only chafing him slightly as compared with sand. With the repeated motion, he finally lost his grip on the spear at some point, but it was hard to care.

  His body felt almost ready to roll over and die. He had suffered multiple broken bones, a concussion, and now the beginnings of a migraine headache from mana exhaustion over the last few hours. The mana exhaustion headache was worst of all. It hit with a throbbing, pulsating pain that forced him to clench his eyes shut and try to block the whole world out. The migraine was worse than he remembered from the previous time he had run fully out of mana, years earlier. It seemed to amplify all his existing aches and pains.

  None of the earlier injuries were fully healed, either, despite his repeated levels.

  After a moment, he heard the remaining creatures moving, and with a low groan, he forced himself to stay conscious, keep trying to win—to beat this place.

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  The next few seconds saw each of the three combatants struggling to move and do battle.

  The leg-less ogre skeleton dragged its body roughly across the ground, trying to get close enough to the human that its ally had kicked across the ground to kill him. Its coordination was still strong, albeit hampered by the loss of its legs.

  The ogre skeleton with spinal damage continued to flail and writhe on the ground, unable to coordinate its moves, occasionally inadvertently driving the spear further in or pushing it partially out of the gouge the spear head had worn in the skeleton’s spine.

  And Tybalt tried his best to focus, to put strength into his arms, and to push himself up.

  In the first moments while he attempted to do that, eyes clenched shut with the headache, his body could not even tell which way was up. Then he was clutching at the powdery pale gray soil rather than pushing up against it. Finally, he managed to get to all fours, and from there, he stood up on shaky legs.

  Tybalt heard the sound of movement nearby as he stood up, and he finally forced his eyes open, despite the additional pain that any light caused his eyes.

  He saw the leg-less skeleton, just two feet away.

  And he ran in the other direction.

  He was out of mana now, and his primary weapon was stuck in the other skeleton. Running away from the slow-moving, leg-less skeleton was the obvious choice.

  Tybalt ran until he found the giant skeleton he had defeated earlier, which had collapsed like all the other defeated skeletons. He picked up one of the heavy shin bones from the massive monster. The bone was almost as tall and heavy as Tybalt himself, thicker than the spearhead that he had used to cut the monster down. The monster had been the largest thing Tybalt had ever fought, but thankfully slow and lumbering and lacking any particular resistance to mana-fueled attacks, though living giants were famous for that.

  He would have marveled that he had defeated such a creature, if he’d had the energy.

  Instead, he ran, his body running on fumes, back to the leg-less skeleton. He circled behind it, and before it could turn to face him, he smashed the shin bone down on its spinal column. The makeshift club killed the ogre skeleton in a single hit.

  Then he walked to where the other ogre skeleton still wiggled and contorted its body, and he smashed right next to where his spear had weakened the spine.

  This ogre skeleton collapsed on impact, and Tybalt dropped the shin bone. His body collapsed next to the ogre skeleton a moment later, his energy almost all spent. He lay panting, coughing, drenched in buckets of sweat, each movement painfully jerking at his broken ribs.

  I cannot believe I survived that. How many more do I have to survive?

  Then he realized that a notification had appeared while his eyes were clenched shut.

  As soon as his eyes had read the words, a second message appeared.

  Fuck you! Tybalt thought reflexively.

  Then he paused to think about the question.

  The Tower’s governing intelligence clearly understood that he was at his physical limits.

  And he himself knew that the last creature was bound to be worse than any of the rest, since it was the last. The offer to let him quit only cemented the feeling that this final creature would be beyond anything he could handle. Another escalation in the Tower’s brutal challenge.

  This place should have killed him already. The final threat would be deadlier than everything that he had seen thus far, perhaps deadlier than everything else combined. Tybalt was sane enough to recognize there was a high chance of death here.

  But still—he had made it through the tower thus far by his sheer bloodymindedness.

  He would finish the same way.

  We all die one day. I’m no different. This place is underestimating my will to do what it takes to win. I will take the power that’s been offered or die gloriously in the attempt.

  “No,” Tybalt said aloud. The notification disappeared.

  I can do this, he told himself. I can do this…

  An ominous sensation seized his heart, and instinct told him to turn to his left.

  Tybalt turned, and standing on the horizon line, he saw the final monster.