As the first monsters came out of the newly dead forest, they all got a good look at the next 12 hours of their lives. Skeletons as far as they could see to the left and to the right. They couldn't see how deep they went because of the haze but there didn't seem to be an end to them. They didn't move fast, moving towards the group at a slow and steady walk, but their numbers seemed endless. More and more just kept walking out of the trees making the haze thicker and making it move around in unpredictable ways.
They backed up, but as the haze got close they realized that it wouldn't reach them, something about Eli's crater stopped it cold and it sank into the ground. Once noticing this they backed into the crater a bit more. The skeletons just kept walking but when they got to the edge of the crater and lost the haze, they got weaker, slower and more disorganized. It would seem that there is a magical scar from this crater and it didn't like sharing the space with other magic. The monsters were almost to them and to test the waters, Eli conjured a throwing cudgel and threw it side-armed at a skeleton in a hard straight line.
His weapon reacted violently with the monsters and every single one's magic left its bones. The throw was hard enough and the cudgel heavy enough that in a straight line, every monster was dead for over a hundred feet. Since Eli was going to work on skills, he decided to work on getting smash to level 10 first, something about it seemed like it would be useful. Stabbing a skeleton didn't seem very productive, but crushing one with blunt damage did seem like it would work. He started with the weakest use of smash that he could manage, using the smallest drop of magic, just enough to get the skill to activate. This would allow him more uses and let him observe the skill on a smaller scale.
Eli jumped over his friends and landed deep in the skeletons and just started swinging with abandon. The others saw this and attacked but stayed close to his crater and out of the haze. All of them seemed to instinctively understand to attack the skulls with weapons while Stevens was casting as big of area of effect spells as he could. For the first five minutes everything seemed to be going ok, Eli was working on skills and clearing out massive amounts of them. The others were afraid of getting overrun and not being as controlled with their magic usage.
Audrey noticed this and had them start to rotate usage, everyone would use as little as possible except one of them would burn their magic to clear vast amounts. The next 10 minutes went by frantically while they tried to keep the skeletons at bay while they used almost no magic, their physical bodies were taking the strain and they were starting to slow down. Eli screamed for everyone to get back, then he disappeared and reappeared behind them waving for them to get further back. When they reached him an explosion hit behind them where Eli had been standing, knocking them over and obliterating a massive number of skeletons.
When they all got up and looked there was now another smaller crater next to his original one. This one didn't have any magic, but it did have Eli's bone cudgel in the middle of it, only it was taller than he was. With the little breather he just gave them , he explained that he had conjured a massively dense and large version of his weapon, then blinked high in the air and threw it down. He then blinked back to the ground since he was freefalling at that point. His death magic that he used to conjure it was like a life sucking poison to these monsters and a large portion of it travelled out with the impact killing hundreds of skeletons outright.
The downside to this plan was that he had used a large amount of magic, specifically the magic from his death and chaos nodes. He would need a few minutes before he could use them again. The others were drinking water and checking their weapons since they had a minute until the skeletons regrouped and came after them again. Stevens, Cody, Bethany, and Tara were chatting and joking about the fighting, but Audrey was quiet and contemplative. Eli thought that she knew something or rather maybe was on the edge of figuring something out and he interrupted her because he wanted her focused.
"Hey, "Eli said in a light tone, "what's on your mind?"
"I think you are stronger than we know, stronger than even you want to know. I can't tell if you are holding back on purpose for our sake, or if you don't even realize it yourself, but I think…" she trailed off when Eli interrupted her.
"So, what do you think about this haze, it seems like some kind of magical gas."
Audrey narrowed her eyes at him and let the subject change. "Yeah, it's heavier than air so it stays low and these monsters seem to be able to absorb tiny amounts to make themselves stronger and smarter."
"Do you think it's tied to an aspect of magic, because it feels to me like something synthetic, something opposite of death magic. I bet we get some stronger and smarter undead soon, zombies, vampires, etc."
"I see," Audrey said, "It does seem to feed on life, but death magic doesn't feed on life magic, they react violently unless they come from the same person."
"This will be interesting, let me know if that stuff gets on you and I'll cleanse it with my light spell."
Audrey nodded and walked over to the others, what she couldn't see was Eli's sad expression under his mask. Being powerful seemed great, but he was having doubts, add on that he wasn't human and he felt pretty isolated. Audrey helped every time she showed off how smart she was, it made him feel better about how odd he was compared to others. There seemed to be an understanding growing between them, they were both odd in any crowd of people and would stand out. Having someone to be odd with felt nice, and feeling nice was becoming a rare thing for him.
The monsters had regrouped and were coming at them again, just an endless number of them, they weren't getting stronger and the density of their numbers was still the same. Eli's best guess was that they would keep coming until the wave was over, and the next wave would be worse, probably stronger skeletons or maybe some mixed in that were stronger or with better weapons and abilities. The only way to find out was to push through and keep going. He conjured a new basic and magically cheap cudgel and ran into the fight with his friends, this time staying closer to them to thin the numbers in front of different people so each got a bit of a breather every so often.
With this new strategy, they were able to continue for the remainder of the wave mowing them down over and over. It wasn't until they had been fighting for almost an hour did new ones stop coming. The group seemed nervous, because they thought the next wave would start right away, but it turned out that that wasn't the case. After 20 minutes or so with nothing new, Audrey and Eli came to the conclusion that they would be 6 hour long waves with an hour of rest in between.
The greenish-purple haze did not stop however, but all of it locally was pulled into the ground around the crater they were in giving them some decent rest. Audrey went to check on the family staying in their little walled-in fort, she spent a lot of time talking with Greyson on top of the wall. It seemed that they were enjoying each other's company so Eli didn't call her over for a talk about strategy and just spoke with everyone else about next steps and tactics they could improve on.
The consensus after the initial information sharing was that the head was the only weakness besides Eli's death magic that worked at efficiently killing them. The others had said Audrey was struggling due to her short reach with daggers and her small stature. Audrey had upgraded her body level but she was still the smallest of the group. They collectively decided that they would do their best to cover more of the monsters that headed her way with Eli spending more time clearing them out in front of her.
With only a few minutes left, or at least their best guess at time passing, Audrey returned and told them that the family was fine. No skeletons made it to the wall. Despite the jokes from Tara and Bethany on how long it took her to find out that they were ok, Audrey looked ready to continue fighting. This next wave was probably going to be harder, they just didn't know in what form that difficulty would take. The guys thought it would be the same number but with stronger skeletons mixed in, and the girls agreed amongst themselves that there would be fewer and all of them would be stronger.
When the time came for the next wave, and they heard the clattering of bones in the distance beyond the haze they all did their best to prepare themselves for a rough fight. Before they could even see anything Eli threw two throwing cudgels as hard as he could in a straight line, one after the other. He definitely hit something as they heard trees falling in the distance and what sounded like bones cracking and clattering around. As Eli expanded his magic sense he noticed something right away and it wasn't coming from the monsters, Tara was completely inundated with his chaos magic.
He looked over to her in shock and saw that she had a serious expression on her face, a mix of determination and pain. She met his gaze and with small movements moved her head side to side, telling him to back off. Eli almost ignored her and rushed to her side, but the time she had called him an authoritarian came to the front of his mind and he decided to let her make this choice on her own. It was dangerous and foolish but he wasn't the boss of everyone and he needed to let people decide on their own and make their own mistakes.
This didn't sit right with him and he began to get upset, he didn't know what she was doing with the magic she had inside her from when he lost control, but he knew it could kill her. Responding childishly wouldn't help anyone but he needed a vent for these emotions so he cast his light spell on himself, told the others he wanted to check something and ran off into the haze in the direction of the loudest monster noises. His run carried him through the haze, then through an uncountable amount of skeletons that just fell apart and he blasted through them.
Eli took a left turn and just kept running, crushing skeletons and what looked like really tall zombies with ruthless looking weapons like spiked clubs and jagged swords. The more he crushed the angrier he got and the rush of obliterating things grew inside him. Using his power on such a level was intoxicating and he could feel himself slowly losing control so he stopped dead and sat doing his best to fall into meditation. He used his light skill for the fourth time and focused on keeping himself calm and gaining control of his state of mind.
This didn't stop the monsters from grouping around him and attacking, the skeletons with their clawed hands and the tall zombies with their weapons. His resistance and body upgrades were enough that all they could do was scratch him so he let them as his focus on the outer world faded and the focus on his inner magic rose to the front of his mind. First he controlled his breathing and relaxed his body, then he exerted his will on his magic and calmed it.
With everything calmed he let his thoughts drift around in his head, anger at Tara, confusion with Bethany, and something resembling parental pride with Audrey were his strongest thoughts. He was grateful to Stevens and Cody and felt bad for them since he knew they had feelings for Tara and Bethany respectively, but he respected them for sticking around. Then he pushed away feelings and let his mind bounce around on his magic and what it was doing, to him and because of him.
Eli's biggest fear in all of this was that his power and lack of being human, which he still was having trouble with, would lead him down a path where he wouldn't care about his group. Right now though, he did care, he cared a lot, he was in love with Tara, there were no doubts about that, but they seemed to yo-yo back and forth between being so close they almost felt like the same person, to being so distant he didn't know how to talk to her. That might be why he is angry at her risk taking, because he blamed himself for making her feel like she had to take these risks. She didn't want to be left behind so she was desperate for power. But just how far would she go? Would she do something that made his feelings for her change? He was going to need to keep an eye on her emotional state so she did not go too far.