A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 170: Chapter 170: The Weight of Want II

`[VALERIA — HP: 28,000 / 56,000 → 10,700 / 56,000]`

Valeria staggered back against the split remains of her own table, one wing hanging lower than the other now, blood running freely down her arm and dripping off her fingers onto the wreckage of a plate.

Brendan’s hands shook around his staff, the holy light thinning at the edges from the strain of holding it this long, but he kept it lit.

Tadhg forced himself forward again despite the ribs, back into the same lane that had put him on the floor first.

They closed in from three sides, weapons glowing, and for one long breath, it looked like the room was about to end in their favor.

---

Valeria stopped smiling.

Blood ran down the maul’s haft where her own hand gripped it, and the weapon drank it — the black-red core flaring, brighter than it had been all fight, the light spreading down through the wood like something feeding.

`[VALERIA — SECOND PHASE TRIGGERED]`

`[WANTBREAKER MAUL: DESIRE LOAD EXPANDED]`

She no longer needed to read one person at a time. The weight came from all of them now, pulled at once from every want in the room.

The first swing after that was not fast or dramatic. It was simply too heavy.

Aoife raised her bow to block on instinct. The maul went through the guard like it wasn’t there, and she hit the floor and did not get back up.

`[RAID NOTICE]`

`[CHALLENGER AOIFE HAS RETURNED TO GOD]`

---

Nobody spoke for a second.

Brendan looked at Aoife’s body on the carpet.

Then he tightened both hands around his cracked staff and forced the holy light brighter instead of letting it fade.

Tadhg and Padraig didn’t need him to say anything. They stepped past the body and back into range.

---

The final rush was messier than the first two.

They were bleeding, exhausted, down a person, and they were no longer fighting to survive the room. They were fighting to open one last gap before it closed on all of them.

Valeria’s maul swept for Brendan directly, aimed at the source of the light keeping their blades sharp, and Padraig threw himself into its path with his shield raised one last time.

The impact folded the shield and threw him back into the ruined table hard enough to break what was left of it.

`[RAID NOTICE]`

`[CHALLENGER PADRAIG HAS RETURNED TO GOD]`

He had bought Brendan three more seconds.

Three seconds mattered.

---

Cathal drove a blade into the same shoulder Tadhg had cut open at the start, deep, and the maul buried into the floor beside him from her recovering swing.

Before Valeria could tear it free, Tadhg grabbed the shaft with both hands, bleeding ribs and all, and locked his whole body around it.

She could have thrown him off in a second. She spent that second trying, and it was long enough.

`[WANTBREAKER MAUL — RECOVERY DELAYED]`

The maul, heavier than ever now, was slower to reset than she was.

---

Brendan poured everything he had left into the blades still standing.

His staff cracked audibly under his own grip. Blood ran from his nose, dripping onto the wood, and the holy light around him didn’t just glow this time — it burned, unstable and rushing, wrapping around Tadhg’s sword and Cathal’s blade like something about to come apart.

`[PRIEST SKILL OVERLOAD: HOLY ARMAMENT]`

`[FINAL REINFORCEMENT APPLIED]`

Valeria understood a half-second too late what she was looking at.

They weren’t trying to live through this exchange anymore.

They were trying to make it count.

---

She tore the maul free and swung wide, catching Tadhg across the chest before he could let go of the shaft.

He didn’t let go anyway.

The blow threw him back but his blade was already moving, driven with both hands into her side, deep, before the impact finished carrying him away.

Cathal drove his own blade into her wing joint a heartbeat later, and Valeria’s counter caught him across the throat before he could pull back.

`[VALERIA — HP: 10,700 / 56,000 → 3,200 / 56,000]`

`[RAID NOTICE]`

`[CHALLENGER CATHAL HAS RETURNED TO GOD]`

`[RAID NOTICE]`

`[CHALLENGER TADHG HAS RETURNED TO GOD]`

Tadhg hit the floor near the chair he’d been thrown from at the start of the fight, sword still buried in her side, his hand slipping off the hilt only once he’d stopped moving.

---

Brendan was alone at the edge of the wreckage, the overloaded light still burning in the wound Tadhg’s blade had opened, spreading through it like fire finding dry wood.

Valeria looked down at the glow eating into her own side.

The crack ran up through her chest, through the armor she hadn’t needed until now, and the Wantbreaker Maul slipped from her fingers for the first time in the whole fight and hit the floor with a sound too heavy for the room.

`[VALERIA — HP: 3,200 / 56,000 → 0 / 56,000]`

`[VALERIA — BRIDE OF COVETING SLAIN]`

`[OUTER COURT SEAL: THREE OF FOUR BROKEN]`

`[REMAINING BRIDES: 1]`

She fell across the ruin of her own table.

Brendan did not see it happen. His legs had already given out, the last of the overload burning through him with nothing left to spend it on, and he was on his knees beside his broken staff when the light in the room finally went still.

---

The candles burned lower.

The maul lay on the floor where it had fallen, quiet now, the core inside it dark. Aoife lay near the table’s foot. Padraig lay in the wreckage of the chairs he’d been thrown through. Tadhg lay with his hand still curled where the sword hilt had slipped from it. Cathal lay closer to the door than any of them, as if he’d been trying to reach it. Brendan sat against a fallen chair with his head down, not moving, the staff broken across his knees.

The System spoke once into the empty room, and there was no one left to read it.

`[BANQUET HALL GROUP — ANNIHILATED]`

Somewhere else in the ruined city, in a different court entirely, the notice reached the ones still standing.

James read it. Marcus read it.

Three Brides were dead now.

Only one group had bought that third kill with everything they had.