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Over the next several hours, I helped Myrina and her family’s forces take down ghost after ghost. More than once, I cursed the System for barring me from gaining experience from killing monsters. I likely would have gained several levels with the great level differential between us, given how much stronger these things were than me.

As it was, the guard we were with leveled up several times, while Myrina gained a level of her own.

“Finally! About time something good happened because of these ghosts!” the guard laughed in excitement at her new levels.

I got hit a few times during the fighting, and with the level difference, each blow was incredibly painful. But Myrina and the guard took many more blows than me and shrugged them off . How could I do any less?

I was fortunate the healer had given me so many mana potions, and that the Samhain Clan had so many mana potions to give. The number of spells I was casting would have drained my mana pool dry many times over if not for the fact that I was chugging down one of those little blue potions just about every ten minutes or so.

They gave me a pounding headache, and I was afflicted with something called Potion Sickness after the third one. But now was not the time to pull my punches. Potion sickness dealt me a little damage over time, but it was nothing I couldn’t heal using life steal. The amount of damage I was dealing kept my health constantly topped up.

The longer we fought, the more guards joined up with us. Soon, our party wasn’t three, but six. Myrina had a special title as a War Chief that let her form a party of her own within my existing party. Some of the higher-ranking guards had that skill as well, meaning we all grouped up like a small army. I imagined the larger armies of the Arcadia Multiverse relied heavily on these kinds of networked parties to organize their forces for large-scale battles.

A few times, we got lucky, and a guard swinging their weapon blindly through the ghosts ended up hitting the core floating around inside it.

“I think I got it. Yes!” a guard shouted excitedly as the ghost we were fighting collapsed before I had to fire off a single spell.

That must have been how the Samhain Clan had been dealing with these foes with no magic. They just kept swinging until they got lucky, hit the core, and destroyed the specter the hard way.

My mind went back to what Myrina had told me. The System always leaves a path. Well, this seemed like a damn narrow path for the Samhain Clan. While it did exist, it required an overwhelming advantage in manpower to utilize with any effectiveness.

The Samhain Clan had ten guards of higher level throwing themselves at the ghosts attacking their city. And even then, they barely were able to keep the threat contained.

A bad matchup, like what the Samhain Clan faced, was truly a major disadvantage. If this was how all their fights went, I wasn’t terribly surprised to discover that the Shadefall Clan was winning, despite being the smaller clan.

Even if they had a hundredth the warriors, if each of their spellcasters could throw the forces of an entire city into disarray with a few summoned monsters, that would be more than enough.

Apparently the Samhain Clan had ensured the one responsible for this mess didn’t get away. After we finished off the spectral stragglers causing chaos in the city, Myrina led our band toward the densest group of the Samhain Clan’s forces.

The ones fighting here were the strongest guards they had, as well as the full-fledged members of the Samhain family. I spotted Cyra, standing with a spear in one hand and a shield in the other as she threw a few probing jabs at an enormous wolf.

Unlike Myrina’s blade or those of the guards, Cyra’s weapon glowed with a distinct red hue. It left small wounds on the wolf’s hide with each blow, proving that—unlike mundane weapons—her spear was magical enough to deal real damage to the specters.

“There’s mother up ahead!” Myrina pointed with her sword.

In the distance, I spotted a woman who looked more like Myrina’s big sister than her mother. She had the same fiery red hair as both her daughters. I had expected her to be even bigger than Cyra, but the opposite was true.

Myrina’s mother’s build was perhaps a bit more muscular than her daughters’, but not by much. In fact, she quite closely resembled Myrina, except for the bandage that stretched from shoulder to hip. She must have been heavily wounded recently, though that was no surprise, considering her clan was at war.

Despite her wounds, she moved well. And her power! She soared overhead with a glittering blue sword. Unlike Cyra’s spear, which must contain some low-level enchantment, that sword blazed with blue flame. Each slash cut deep gouges in the monsters before her.

Still, despite the damage she was dealing, I couldn’t help but see a look of frustration on her face. She moved so fast and gracefully that the weapon in her hands couldn’t keep up. Its flames guttered out after a few solid blows, and she was left dodging and weaving between spectral attacks until they lit once more.

was[QS1] vastly over-leveled for the weapon in her hands. But this was apparently the most magical weapon the Samhain Clan had in their arsenal, so she was stuck with it.

I wasn’t sure what she was doing, jumping nimbly between monsters like she was. Her foes surrounded her, and for a moment, I was worried. Myrina only looked proud, though, as she pointed toward her mother.

Then, something unexpected happened, and I realized what Myrina’s mother had been doing. She’d been grouping the specters together for a special attack.

“Throw the Mana Bombs!” Myrina’s mother shouted as her sword ran out of power.

Two guards in back pulled back their hands and threw familiar-looking balls of copper wire.

They exploded in a familiar burst of raw mana. While the burst of power was far too little to wipe out such high-level specters in a single pair of explosions, they did something I didn’t expect. The explosion swept away their ghostly forms, just as they had for the specter I’d designed them to fight back home.

And in that moment, the locations of each of their cores was revealed.

Myrina’s mother moved as fast as lightning. With the locations of the cores revealed, she could finally unleash her true speed. In the blink of an eye, she shattered each revealed core leaving them to drift to the ground as little more than dust.

“See this, Shadowfall?” Myrina’s mother shouted to a figure standing at the top of a burning windmill. “Your pets will not save you. Surrender, and we will be merciful.”

“That would be a first for you, Kyrina Samhain! Your reputation proceeds you,” the woman up on the windmill shouted back. I recognized that voice. It was the woman who stabbed me.

“Wow! You see that? I’ve never seen that weapon before!” Myrina gushed. “Mother must have pulled her special toys out of the vault or something.”

I knew better. Those were no secret weapon, they were the very Mana Bombs I'd sold at the auction earlier today. I figured they'd reach the hands of Myrina's family, but I hadn't thought they'd end up with her clan quite this soon.

But it seemed that Myrina's mother wasn't shy about using them. Nor had it taken her too long to figure out they were the perfect weapon to combat these phantoms. Hopefully she'd see the value in them. And if and when I revealed I was the one who’d made them, she'd see the value in me, too.

“We should go help Cyra!” I said.

Myrina nodded. Our entire group rushed to reinforce Cyra, who was struggling as she fought alone against her foe. Several broken cores lay on the ground around her. She’d clearly been battling for quite a while.

Myrina and the guards swarmed the specter, an enormous lizard resembling a wingless dragon. It was a higher level than anything we’d fought so far, but it was already wounded.

I fired my spells at it, but soon realized it was weak enough that I could finish it.

“Disassemble!” I shouted, and the giant lizard specter came apart at the seams. Mana streamed out of it, dispersing into the air, as the core flew out and into my hand. I stared at it in surprise. “Huh… suppose I should have tried that trick sooner.”

While it didn’t work every time, it worked much more often than expected. None of the ghost monsters we were fighting had much in the way of mana reserves, so they had a hard time resisting my Disassemble spell—even though they were a far higher level than me. Just dealing a little damage to them was enough to make the attack land home.

Tearing through monster after monster while Myrina and Cyra guarded my flanks and an entire contingent of guards cheered me on was exhilarating. For the first time, I felt less like a former office worker turned amateur wizard and more like a powerful spellcaster who could wreak havoc across battlefields.

“Go Carter! Crush our enemies! See them driven before us! Hear the lamentations of their house cats! Heavens know that’s all these treacherous witches have waiting for them back home!” Myrina mocked, eyes locked on the Shadefall Clan assassin hiding at the top of the windmill.

The fire the Samhain guards had set was spreading; it wouldn’t be long before it reached her. The guards at the base of the windmill kept splashing buckets of oil as high on the windmill’s walls as they could to accelerate the process. It was clear they intended to burn her out.

What was she doing up there? Surely, she had to know the end was near. Her enemies surrounded her, and while her summoned pets were intangible, she was not. Once the Samhain Clan had her, they wouldn’t let her go.

With Cyra’s ghost dealt with, our entire group ran to the windmill and the foes Myrina’s mother was dealing with.

“More Mana Bombs!” Myrina’s mother yelled.

The guards threw another wave of Mana Bombs, and fast as the blink of an eye Myrina’s mother shattered every core she saw, pretty much the instant they were revealed. Another wave of ghosts died as quickly as they appeared.

“You’re finished! Surrender!” Myrina’s mother shouted at the spy at the top of the burning windmill.

“All done with those? Here, have some more playmates!” The spy from the Shadefall Clan shouted. She tossed a handful of glittering cores down. In moments, they would spawn more ghosts.

But I wasn’t about to let that happen. Using Exploit Weakness, I targeted the cloud of falling cores. Mana Bolts sprang from my hands one after another, striking cores before they could form into summons. I hit three of them, shattering them outright before they could become a threat.

The remaining two took a little more work, but I discovered that if I hit them with Disassemble just as they formed, I could cancel the process right as it began. My timing was good, and only a single ghost out of the entire batch formed.

Instead of a host of ghosts, there was only a single ghostly rat the size of a horse.

I blasted it with every spell I had as I strode toward the mill with a small army behind me. After battering the thing into submission, I clenched my hand and used Disassemble, crushing its limited mana and taking its core in my hand.

I tucked the core away in my pocket and smiled at Myrina’s and Cyra’s mother. “A pleasure to finally meet, Ma’am. You must be Myrina’s mother.” I bowed my head to her.

Kyrina Samhain looked me up and down. And much to my delight, she seemed impressed. I’d been hoping to make a good impression, and apparently, I’d made the cut.

“I welcome all the help we can get,” she replied. “Your spells are more potent than your level would suggest.”

I shrugged. “I have a few tricks up my sleeves.”

“Any tricks that can help us capture a rogue spellcaster hiding in a burning windmill?” Kyrina asked.

I glanced up at the figure above us. She was busy stomping out flames as she fiddled with a monster core. I was pretty sure I had a good idea of what she was doing. She was making one of those monster summons—likely one that could get her out of this mess.

“Maybe. But I have a question for you. Can you fly?”

“Not unless you have a spell that’ll give me wings,” Kyrina replied.

“Then grab a bow. I suggest you try tying one of those Mana Bombs to an arrow.”

Kyrina searched her guards for one wielding a bow, then quickly commandeered it. She shoved a Mana Bomb over the arrowhead and knocked it, waiting with the bow half drawn.

“Be ready to fire. She’ll try to make her getaway any moment now.” I turned to Cyra and Myrina. “Somebody ought to catch her when she tumbles out of the sky.”

Just as I’d suspected she would, the Shadefall Clan spy tossed out one final monster core. This one formed way up at the top of the mill, taking the shape of an enormous raven with a wingspan large enough to stretch thirty feet in either direction.

It flapped twice as it took form, then grabbed the spy in its talons before taking off from the Windmill.

“Too slow, Samhain!” the spy shouted down from overhead.

“Now!” I yelled.

Kyrina let her arrow fly, and it struck the raven dead-center. I cast Disassemble on the Mana Bomb right as it struck, causing it to detonate while passing through the raven. The ghostly bird vanished, and the spy it carried fell from its claws.

Myrina and Cyra were there to catch her. Between the two of them, they restrained the spy and quickly had her tied up. Kyrina flashed her daughters an approving smile before turning her attention to me.

Kyrina Samhain placed a hand on my head, combing through my hair affectionately.

Though her grip was gentle, I could tell she could have bent steel with one hand, if she wanted to. For a spell caster like me, letting a warrior this powerful get this up close and personal was terrifying, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end at the sense of danger this woman exuded.

This woman was truly dangerous. I didn’t dare use Examine on her, but I was pretty sure she was not D-Grade like me of[QS2] Myrina. She was more likely C-Grade, and a strong one, at that.

“Well, aren’t you something?” she said as she pulled me up beside her, one arm wrapped tight as steel around me.

<Note>
I debated back and forth about making Kyrina the matriarch or just another one of Myrina's older sisters.

Eventually I decided to have her be the matriarch, since I don't want too many older sisters and I did need her mother to play a part.

However I shifted some stuff around in the background worldbuilding. While powerful and influential, Kyrina does not run the clan. That would be the Elders and the Ancestors.

So while winning her over is a big win for Carter, it won't get him the full support of the Samhain Clan.