Having made it to the edge of the desert area and to the tunnel that connects to next area, Marcus and his group decided to sleep for the night and head into the river area fully rested.


    Of course, Marcus took the one and only watch owing to hisck of need for sleep.


    However, halfway through the night Marcus suddenly felt something enter his life sense skill''s radius, yet their was nothing to be seen anywhere around him.


    The presence then quickly disappeared when Marcus looked in its direction exiting out of his skill''s area.


    ''I wonder what that was. It had a decently strong reaction, so it was not weak, and it was even able to render itself invisible.''


    After having his area invaded by some unknown entity, Marcus brought his vignce up higher and began spreading out iron threads in multiple directions hoping to snag whatever had approached him and hispanions.


    Unfortunately, whatever it was had moved far off already, or was incredibly tiny and lithe to evade his probing threads.


    ''Well, it is not within a hundred feet most likely. I suppose it could be an ethereal creature even as unlikely as that could be.''


    Marcus quickly reverted to his ghost form in order to check since only while he was ethereal could he see other ethereal beings.


    Nevertheless, Marcus still found nothing within his vicinity and decided that whatever it was, was not worth pursuing further.


    ''If ites back, ites back.''


    With the midnight interruption seemingly over, Marcus went back to trying to fire off a pure st of mana.


    He had been trying to get this ability down for a while now and he had been making a bit of progress recently.


    While he had been unable to separate the mana from himself, he was able to extend it a bit, though only when he was really concentrating.


    The night soon continued on without further incident and when the zing simted sun began to light up the desert, Marcus andpany entered into the tunnel that would lead them to the next area.


    Along the way a group of cave goblins ambushed them, but none of them were very strong so Marcus let Lilia and her new beastpanions handle it and the lion cubs both gained a level after the fight.


    Continuing down the tunnel after their brief encounter with the goblins, it was not long until Marcus andpany could hear the roar of the river that went through the next area.


    Walking through the end of the tunnel they came into a massive expanse that went on for miles and in the center was a river that was easily ten thousand feet wide traveling through the entire area.


    Unfortunately, the amount of light in this area was incredibly low, and everyone but Marcus was having trouble seeing more than a couple feet in front of them.


    That was, until Marcus cast his floatingntern spell and lit up the area around them, allowing everyone else to see clearly within around two hundred feet.


    With visibility now much better, everyone began moving forward, following the flow of the river that would take them to the next area.


    However, as they continued moving, the sound of hundreds of sloshing foot falls could be heard, and soon an army of over five hundred zombies and counting had surrounded them.


    Except unlike normal zombies these were heavily bloated, and it was obvious they had crawled out of the nearby river.


    ''None of them are very strong, most being between level twelve and fifteen, but the sheer mass of all of these river zombies is going to make this difficult.''


    As the army of shambling and in all honesty putrid zombies got closer and closer, Marcus cast his iron golem and sent it straight into the middle of the hoard.


    He had experience fighting undead before and knew that they had a hard time dealing with opponents they could not sink their teeth or ws into.


    Nevertheless, even though his iron golem was tearing the zombies apart and killed dozens of them each second, they seemed unending and began to tightly encircle Marcus'' group.


    ''Roxenee on out, we need your assistance.''


    Answering the call, Roxene jumped out of Marcus''panion storage and immediately regrated it when she smelled the overpowering stench of the zombies.


    ''Ugh you could not have called me out against better smelling enemies. I am just telling you now, I will let all of you die before I bite one of them.''


    After getting herining out of the way, Roxene waited for Marcus'' directions, and quicklying up with a simple n, everyone with ranged attacks began bombarding the enclosing zombies.


    Blitz fired off bolt of lightning after bolt of lightning sting tens of zombies with each attack, while at the same time Lilia was chanting her force canon spell as fast as she could, killing two or three zombies with each attack.


    Marcus for his part had cast his tier five iron magic spell and was mowing down the zombies by the hundreds with flying iron wings, while Roxene made sure no zombie got too close firing off a barrage of different spells.


    Their group was doing a good job at keeping the zombies at bay, but even after killing thousands of them the horde showed no sign of stopping.


    And then the worst happened when a massive form began lumbering over towards them, and what looked to be hundreds of corpse that had fused together into a giant wriggling mass of flesh was making it towards them.


    Appraising it Marcus found the new undead to be level thirty-nine, far stronger than any of the other zombies.


    ''Take this.''


    Firing off aser spell Marcus carved the wriggling mass of bodies in half and watched as it began to disintegrate into nothing.


    Unfortunately, more of these massive bodies of undead began approaching and the longsting fight was beginning to wear everyone down.


    Lilia was the first to give out, running out of mana and hitting her limit with mana restoration potions.


    Blitz followed a few minutester leaving just Marcus and Roxene to hold down the defenses.


    ''Fuck this is not going to end well if things keep going the way they are. Jarek said he had no trouble passing through this area, not even being attacked once, what the hell is difference this time.''


    Marcus began racking his brain, there must have been an exnation for why Jarek had managed to get through this area without any trouble.


    It took Marcus nearly a dozen seconds toe up with the answer but when he did, he wanted to kick himself because of how simple it was.


    ''The light! They are being attracted by the light from my floatingntern spell.''


    However, at this point Marcus knew that just turning off the spell would not help them much now. They were currently surrounded and without the light Roxene would be unable to see and assist as well as she was.


    But their was a way that Marcus could get them out, he just needed to be a brighter light.


    With a n forming in his head, Marcus began telepathically sending over the details to Roxene as they held the undead at bay.


    ''Now.''


    At the same time both Roxene and Marcus turned in the direction opposite the river and fired off two darkness drill spells to create a path out of the surrounding undead.


    With a path to escape now open Marcus ushered everyone to run away while he jumped towards the undead, bringing his floatingntern with him and bing the center of attention.


    ''Embodiment of Light.''


    And for good measure he activated his unique skill and light began to burst around his body making him a shinning beacon for every undead within miles.


    In fact, his n may have worked a bit too well, as he soon heard a massive ssh and a creature that looked like a spinosaurus came out of the river and riding on its head was a zombie in full armor wielding a massive ck great sword.


    ''Shit! Level forty-three and level forty-seven.''


    After appraising the two new opponents, Marcus was beginning to feel that the pressure was on. Normally he would have just used his ghost form to vanish, but he was not certain if Lilia and his beastpanions had made it far enough away, and he did not need these monstrosities going after then.


    shing around the battlefield Marcus cut apart the zombies between him and the zombie knight riding a spinosaurus, nning to deal with the biggest threat first.


    Yet when he was just a dozen of feet away, unexpectedly the spinosaurus like zombie opened its mouth and a ze of ck mes came out.


    Stopping for a moment, Marcus quickly went ethereal to avoid the dark mes but found that they still slightly damaged him as he felt a burning sensation over his soul.


    That was when Marcus saw the zombie knight leap off its mounts'' head ande at him with its sword causing his danger sense to go crazy.


    Realizing that these two undead had a way to attack his soul even if it was ethereal, Marcus became solid again and parried the knight''s sword with his scythe.


    However, the zombie knightpletely overpowered Marcus and pushed him back tens of feet before he crashed into one of the undead that was arge mass of bodies fused together.


    The creature then began coiling around Marcus trying to absorb him, but in retaliation he infused his scythe with arge amount of mana and light energy and shed the undead monster into pieces before turning back towards the greatest threat, the zombie knight and its mount.