There was a battlefield. Two fronts, men against beasts, clashed together with sword, axe, and claw. Living lightning and roaring flame devastated ranks.

  Blood, dust, and ash.

  Hacking, slashing, screaming. Blood seeping from wounds, torn flesh and a suffocating air filled with particles of once-living beings. Brothers in arms and enemies mixing together as ash, swirling in the air.

  He couldn't breathe. It was his blood.

  Seeping into dusty ground. Ash that was once his friends.

  His lungs burned.

  Blood, dust, and ash.

  Screaming faded, pure agony of his torn flesh was slowly replaced by soothing coldness, and eventually, pure white fog.

  In the white, there wasn't anything. No pain, no dust, no ash.

  He didn't have a name anymore.

  He was a hollow awareness drifting nowhere.

  And then there was the pull. A force plucked him away, and he was inside a body again. Slowly rotting, decayed body. That didn't seem right.

  A blood-soaked, pale, dead mage stared at him with a vicious scowl. Hell of a face to die with, he must've been thinking about something repulsive in his last thoughts. He seemed familiar somehow, and pompous.

  Maybe it was the silken robes.

  A scream cut short echoed through the hallway, and like well oiled machine the group started to advance again, leaving the mage on the floor.

  Whoa hey now, the undead thought. I don't want to go that way. Hey, stop it! Legs? Stop? Please? Are you even listening to me? Hello? I need some help!

  A translucent blue box of text appeared in front of him.

  Um, hi? I think I'm dreaming or something. There's something wrong, I can't move my body.

  What the... what's input? Where I can get it? Can you get that to me, please?

  Nonononono, wait! Wait! Just do something! Anything! Stay open! the undead screamed inside his head, pleading to the box.

  In a cascade of blue light, the undead's mind was filled with blue light, burning his eyes and twisting his mind.

  CLOSE!

  Wow, not even remotely what I needed. Could you close these blue boxes? Hello? Help?

  The undead's mind stayed occupied by the blue, but the mysterious Helpdesk didn't reappear. To make things worse, there were sounds of battle. Wet thunks of iron meeting flesh, and metallic clinks of parries.

  That... isn't good. I need to see. Go away! Shoo! The mind raged to the windows, trying to wave his hand like trying to get a misbehaving cat to go away. To his surprise, the boxes moved away with a mental wave of the hand.

  The mind stood still for a moment, astonished.

  Just to make sure, he motioned his mental hand to the left. Blue boxes, agony, blindness. Mental hand wave to the right, the boxes disappeared.

  Okay, so that is a thing, the undead thought while being carried away in autopilot. Doesn't seem awfully useful.

  Minutes passed in silence.

  Okay, it's not much, but at least it's something I can do.

  And with a mental nudge, the undead's vision was full of blue again.

  No, not completely full of blue.

  While getting over the initial fear and sliding into shock, the undead noticed that there were blurry blobs at the borders of his vision. Concentrating on the biggest blob at his lower left corner, it got larger and clearer, the blue boxes became more translucent, almost invisible.

  It was titled LOG and it was filled with all sorts of messages.

  Now that the blue boxes were translucent enough to gaze outside, he could see the horde moving forward. Most of them had that painfully slow shuffling gait, but a handful seemed to handle themselves better. They stood straighter, held their weapons steadier and moved with purpose.

  Hold on, am I one of those competent undead? I do have a spear and shield, the voice wondered out loud. Inside his head. Since he couldn't speak.

  Focusing on something else than the claustrophobic realm of his existence, the mind started to organize his vision. Boxes with garbled language, numbers and math went to the side where they didn't bother too much. The others were stacked into a neat pile and picked the one on top. Organizing everything dimmed the blinding blue light and the mind could see again.

  I have a name? Seventh thought. And two classes already!

  Dissonance scratched skull from the inside. A feeling, something was very wrong.

  What is it? Is it my classes? My attributes? He made a slightly panicked double check. No, all is correct. I have a class like everybody has. No advanced attributes. The condition?

  Oh, my summoner is dead. That complicates things. A lot.

  Seventh didn't know much about necromancy. Only the generic stuff about them wielding dark magic, raising undead armies and having constant legal troubles with the kingdoms all around the continents.

  The scratching amplified, starting to feel like there was a burning squirrel trying to break free from Seventh's skull.

  Kingdoms? Continents? What...what are those? Undead, no that isn't right. I AM A MAN! A HUMAN!

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  NO! THAT IS INCORRECT! NOT TRUE!

  Seventh swatted the status screen away and tried to breathe. Nothing happened. He didn't control his lungs, throat or mouth.

  He controlled nothing.

  He started to scream.

  Incomprehensible blabbering of a madman. String of curses to everything between Heavens and the deepest reaches of the Hells. Gods and the System itself was mentally abolished and denounced.

  Every single word deepened the feeling, the itch, the burn. Seventh knew them, all of them, but nothing of them.

  Seventh's wails to the void would have continued to eternity, but for a tiny speck of blue at the end of the tunnel.

  Seventh whimpered.

  The burning was gone, but it had left his mind raw. He was aware of his surroundings. He thought in language, in concepts. He had feelings.

  He was alive. He was a living being.

  But he didn't know how. He didn't know who he was. The name was just a name, an identification to the System. The all-seeing and arbitrating System. Unwavering rules of the universe.

  He wanted to sleep. To close his eyes and drift into peaceful slumber to wash away his existence for just a few moments. But there was a problem, his body.

  It was under the control of this Elijah, whoever that was, and he hadn't given it an order to sleep or rest. It was tirelessly roaming around in a dungeon, waiting to stab anything left on the floor by the vanguard.

  Outside, Seventh could hear another fight. Or was it still the same? How long was he out? Time has no meaning when you are screaming from your whole soul. For his sanity's sake, Seventh decided it was the same fight.

  Nobody argued so he was right.

  The fight was far away, down the corridor behind vanguard where Seventh could barely see. He was probably alright. There was a company's worth of undead between him and the fight. Yeah, he was certainly alright. Unless the vanguard were ground down by never-ending skirmish of minor fights. The undead never rested, never stopped and would fight to annihilation.

  All undead, like Seventh's body.

  A skill list you say! I wonder what I can do! Seventh thought in a chipper tone underlying with rising panic. I hope there is Dispel or something else I can do.

  No Dispel and his magical skills seemed to lean more into an evil wizard than Disenchanter, but he checked them anyway just in case.

  These are useless! Seventh complained loudly. Or they could be useful if I could move my arms. Raising undead and shooting bolts of darkness sounds pretty good.

  An idea popped into his head. He had a perception skill, Death Sense. It didn't require moving arms or aiming with wand or staff. He activated it with a thought.

  Seventh's vision filled with ethereal glow around all the dead around him. Every single moving corpse in the vanguard shone with flickering grey color. Weak and old corpses, just like the skill said.

  The group around Seventh emitted a strong, almost burning aura of black and gold around them. It looked like a pyre of mana leaking into the dungeon. They were more powerful, way more powerful than the others.

  Seventh had an irresistible urge to lift his arm and check his own glow, but his arms didn't listen to him and were happy to hold his shield and spear hiding from his sight. Some day Seventh would make those rebellious appendages listen to him.

  Maybe tomorrow, yeah definitely tomorrow.

  Vanguard chopping whatever their group had found, Seventh continued his reading and checked his Soldier skills and Meditate.

  Meditate looks like a winner! A skill to recover health and mana? Seventh had to try that one out. Only if he was not in an unstopping mockery of a body. The skill refused to activate and he was left with one skill that he could use. An ability to see dead people.

  The group marched onward, cleaning the dungeon one ratkin at a time, occasionally losing one of the vanguard to a plucky ratkin stabbing everything he could or to just from simple attrition. Undead had a fixed amount of health and couldn't heal themselves.

  Every single one of the fallen vanguard and ratkin were promptly stabbed, hacked, slashed and smashed by the former bodyguards of Elijah, carrying his commands to the end. The fallen were replaced by the undead walking behind Seventh. Inevitably, there were no more replacement troops and the vanguard shrunk. One after another, the undead group was decimated to the last seven undead.

  Seventh used much of his time checking his menus and interacting with his UI, short for User Interface. He found his health and mana bars upper left corner of his vision and conditions lower right. He didn't actually need to look at them to feel them, but when you are bored out of your mind, every little distraction helps.

  The UI started to feel like an extension of his mind. He could easily navigate the menus and tinker with his LOG settings and filters. Boxes shifted from bright distractions to barely noticeable substance in the back of his consciousness. In his own way, Seventh missed the distraction of boxes. If he had a stack of them right now, he could fill his sight with them and not see the group of ratkin snarling at him, raising weapons.

  The undead didn't react and walked slowly forward.

  The battle began with an arrow flying high and landing on an axe wielding man on Seventh's left.

  The ratkin charged, bellowing their war cries, blades and spears ready to tear flesh and bone. The charge met the undead with a sickening crunch and only then undead acted.

  Sword and axes chopped the small humanoids off their shields, but this was their tactic: tack on the shields, drive them down, unbalancing their prey and bring them down stabbing to vital areas. Heart, lung, eyes and joints would be stabbed repeatedly.

  But they hadn't met this kind of foe.

  Tireless wall of might not bending to small weight on their shields. Ratkin hanging on shields didn't see panicked looks of mortal men. They saw empty eyes of undead horde before they were hacked off and stomped to death.

  The second wave sprinted to hop on their preys backs and were showered with viscera of their friends and companions.

  Smart ones ran, stupid jumped on shields, and brave dashed beneath the shields to stab meaty, unarmored backs of legs.

  They met an undead wielding a spear and were promptly skewered on the spot. Lucky ones died at the first attack.

  Truly unlucky were stuck on the spearhead, howling in pain. They met their end in a blunt edge of a shield, smashing skulls open and spreading their brains everywhere.

  Seventh didn't want to look. His vision was full of blood and bodies. Death Sense highlighted them all. He switched it off.

  Blood splattered on his face.

  The ratkin bellowed defiantly, stuck on spear. The shaft was slick with blood. He lifted his shield for another skull-crushing blow.

  An arrow embedded itself into his shoulder, disrupting the motion.

  If the System was merciful, it would separate the feeling of Seventh's body from his mind. After all, he didn't control it, so it was a little unfair that he could feel the pain. The body didn't, and it smashed heads. Arrow in his shoulder, digging in deeper with every movement.

  Seventh wasn't quite sure what he yelled to his body, but he was sure it wasn't anything nice.

  They had an arrow in their shoulder and the idiot of a body didn't care about it. Mercifully, it finished the grim task and pulled out his spear from the mincemeat.

  Skittering footsteps and high-pitched yelps signaled the battle to be over.

  The ratkin retreated.

  This was but one of the battles Seventh had witnessed and his worry had risen with every one. He had been stabbed, shot at, scratched, and bitten. With every new wound, his health went down and it wasn't regenerating.

  HEALTH: 81%

  If he didn't figure something out, he was going to die.