A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 174: Chapter 174: The First Disciple I

”Oh,” Alice said. ”My sweet toy James.”

The words hung in the room longer than they should have.

James didn’t look at her face for long. His eyes moved instead — the throne, white-gold and raised above wide marble steps; the drained men lying and kneeling around its base; the doors sealed shut behind the raid; Maeve’s hands already lifting; Marcus’s grip already tightening on his sword.

Then, once, to Alice’s wings.

The room was beautiful the way rot could be beautiful before the smell reached you. White-gold pillars ran the length of the hall. Red silk hung from the ceiling in long unbroken sheets. Carved angels lined the walls, every halo above them cracked or broken clean off. Roses bled color across the floor in a pattern too deliberate to be decoration.

Maeve had already stabilized what she could before they’d reached this door. Finn’s curse was gone. Marcus’s chest wound had closed under her light. Saoirse’s bleeding had stopped. Their bodies weren’t falling apart anymore.

Their faces still carried every name from the Outer Court.

Alice rose from the throne, slow, unbothered, the way a woman stands when she has already decided the room belongs to her and is only now getting around to using it.

Her wings opened fully behind her, dark and enormous, filling the space above the dais.

Her eyes went over Marcus. Over Finn. Over Saoirse. Over Declan.

None of it held her.

She looked at James, and stayed there.

[MAIN STORY BOSS DETECTED]

[ALICE — FALLEN ANGEL OF LUST]

[LEVEL: ???]

[HP: 102,000/102,000]

[STATUS: FIRST DISCIPLE]

[AUTHORITY TYPE: DESIRE / LUST / FALLEN DIVINITY]

Marcus didn’t let her keep talking.

”Advance.”

He moved first, sword raised, and Finn fell in at his shoulder without a word. Saoirse cut left, angling to close off Alice’s flank before she could reach the doors. Declan set his shield forward, planting himself between the throne and Maeve’s support line.

James didn’t fall in behind anyone.

He stepped into the middle of the formation with the Dark Knight on one side, the Python low across the floor on the other, and sent the wolf forward first to check the nearest threat before it became one.

Alice didn’t block Marcus directly.

She turned her eyes toward the men lying around her throne instead, and they rose all at once — not like undead, jerking upright on command, but like living bodies whose limbs had started moving before their minds caught up to it.

Arms loose. Confused. Then violent.

One threw himself bodily at Marcus’s sword arm. Another clawed for Finn’s face with bare fingers. Two more came at Declan’s shield from opposite sides at once.

James checked the status the instant they moved.

[THRALL — LIVING]

[STATUS: DESIRE DRAIN]

[HOSTILE CONTROL: ACTIVE]

Living. Not corpses. Not fair game for anything he had.

He adjusted before his hand finished lifting.

No Corpse Explosion. No order to Camillia to cut them down.

[GRAVE COMMAND ACTIVATED]

[COMMAND: BIND]

[ABYSSAL VENOM PYTHON — BINDING COIL]

[THRALL MOVEMENT RESTRICTED]

The Python coiled around one man’s legs and held instead of crushed. James sent skeletons in low, not for throats, but for arms and ankles, letting them get torn apart as blockers instead of weapons.

Alice watched the Python hold rather than kill, and her smile widened at what that told her.

”How did you get that power, James?”

The fight didn’t stop for it. Marcus was already cutting a blade out of a living man’s grip without opening his arm. Finn was taking hits he could’ve avoided if he’d let himself swing back full force. Saoirse knocked bodies aside with the flat of her blade instead of the edge.

James didn’t answer.

He pointed at a thrall breaking toward Maeve, and the Dark Knight stepped into its path, sword turned flat, and slammed the man down without cutting him open.

Alice’s eyes flicked to Camillia. Something old and amused passed behind them.

Her voice dropped, and red script bled across the surface of her skin, faint and glowing.

[AUTHORITY ATTEMPTED]

[TARGET: DARK KNIGHT — CAMILLIA]

The command wasn’t loud. Everyone in the room felt it anyway, low in the teeth, a pressure that had nothing to do with sound.

Camillia didn’t kneel. Didn’t turn. Didn’t lower the blade.

[AUTHORITY FAILED]

[CURRENT CONTRACT: JAMES GANNER]

Alice’s smile didn’t sharpen into anger.

It settled into something quieter. Interested.

The room grew warmer.

The perfume in the air thickened, sweet enough to taste at the back of the throat. One veteran’s weapon dipped without him seeming to notice it had. Finn’s grip loosened around the axe for one full breath before he snarled at himself and closed his hand tight again. Marcus kept his jaw set forward, refusing to look at Alice’s face at all.

Maeve felt the aura pushing into the raid’s focus and answered it.

She didn’t reach for any borrowed artifact. She pressed two fingers to her own circlet and forced her Radiant Field outward past its normal range, holy light rolling through the room like a tide going the wrong direction.

[MAEVE CALLAHAN — RADIANT FIELD: PURIFY PULSE]

[LUST AUTHORITY RESISTANCE STABILIZED]

[MENTAL INTERFERENCE RESISTANCE STABILIZED]

[PARTY AURA: +15% MAX HP ACTIVE]

Alice’s eyes moved to Maeve’s forehead, then back to James, and she laughed once, soft and delighted, as if the raid had brought her two interesting things in the same visit by accident.

The living thralls kept coming, and the raid kept holding back.

Marcus used the pommel and the flat of his blade instead of the edge. Finn took a claw across the shoulder rather than split the man open. Saoirse cut wrists and knees instead of throats, precise enough to disable without killing. Declan used his shield as a wall that pushed rather than crushed.

Alice watched the restraint and leaned into it.

[DESIRE DRAIN DEEPENED]

The thralls began to change.

Veins darkened under their skin. Jaws stretched a fraction too wide. Nails split into claws down to the second knuckle. Half-formed wings, black-red and wet, tore through the skin of some backs. Their eyes went from glassy to a burning red-gold.

[INCUBUS THRALL — LEVEL 54]

[STATUS: DESIRE-DRAINED HOST]

The System marked them hostile the moment the change finished.

James’s whole approach shifted with it.