Chapter 39: Slaughter
100 exp per kill, and there were 20 of these skeleton bastards. Hide wanted the exp for leveling up, and he was closer to level 5 which would grant him access to this so called system shop.
The skeleton that he had just killed did not provide him with any kind of life mana, he was a bit disappointed about that.
But he set the thought aside, the skeletons were not fazed by the death of one of their own, even in the slightest. Hide went ahead and drove his burning feast into the ribs of two more skeletons and burned their anchors.
[Calamity Beast (OssianThrall) — Eliminated]
Experience points gained: 100
[Calamity Beast (OssianThrall) — Eliminated]
Experience points gained: 100
The third came at him with a spear, the shaft made of a material that was not bone but had been down here long enough to look like it. He caught the shaft with his left hand, broke it at the midpoint, and drove his right hand through the ribcage while it was still processing the loss of its weapon.
Fuu was working beside him now, having understood the method, applying it without fail. His technique was different from Hide’s — where Hide went in controlled and targeted, Fuu drove his fist through the ribcage at full speed and detonated on the anchor itself, the contained blast burning the core from the inside out.
The skeleton’s entire upper body vented outward each time, the bones scattered wide, and nothing among the scattered pieces moved afterward.
It was genuinely impressive, if not extremely loud. And he was out of mana soon, unlike Hide who didn’t need mana to use his skill.
After the fourth kill, Hide was moving faster, the rhythm of it established. The sequence had become a pattern and the pattern was becoming fluid. He burned their cores pretty easily now.
One you get the gist of how to deal with the armed ones, it was not too hard... and these skeletons were even worse than the mindless beasts, they didn’t have a shred of instinct.
He reached the seventh one.
A large skeleton, taller than the others, carrying two short blades... one in each hand. It moved differently too, the two-blade style coordinated in a way that the single-weapon ones hadn’t been, the blades working in offset rhythms.
Hide ducked the right blade. The left caught him across the shoulder — the Carapace took it, the scales leaving a gouge along the forearm. He used the contact to close the distance, getting inside the double-weapon range where neither blade had room to swing properly.
He drove his right hand through the ribcage.
Found the anchor and burned it.
[Calamity Beast (OssianThrall) — Eliminated]
Experience points gained: 100
[Level Up]
Level: 4 → 5
Exp: 60 / 1300
Level Up reward has been added to inventory.
[You have gained access to system Shop]
Hide didn’t pay much attention to the system window and continued fighting. He killed seven of these skeletons already, that means 700 exp.
According to the level up requirements he had observed, he would need 1300 more exp to level up to 6.
’500 from the daily quests, that means I need to kill 8 more of these for now.’
With that goal in mind... he killed six more in the next four minutes. The skeletons were thinning. Fuu’s had cleared four of his own, the evidence spread across the courtyard flagstones in wide radii of inert bone fragments.
The last five skeletons were the knife-fingered ones with no weapons, the claw-hand design that relied on reach and speed rather than blade technique.
They came together in a loose cluster. Hide took two at the same time, one hand in each ribcage simultaneously, burning both anchors in the same push of flame. The two piles of bones dropped in the same second.
Then kicked the third one hard enough to send his skull flying, and tried a new technique by sending flames to his legs and burning the whole skeleton to nothing.
Fuu caught the remaining two with consecutive detonations — in, through, burst, out — the sequence so practiced by now that it had lost most of its obvious disgust factor and become simply the method. The last skeleton’s bones were still falling when Fuu straightened and exhaled, then rotated his right shoulder with a wince.
He suddenly flinched and remembered that he was with Hide, he forced a smile and crouched down, looking for something the beasts must have dropped.
"There were no Core drops," Fuu said, after searching through the pile of bones. Though, he did keep all the swords, axes and intact spears in his storage device.
They could be sold back in the real world for some value.
"They’re minions," Hide stated after thinking a while. "Thralls. Something else is generating them."
"That would be the Dungeon Master."
"Yes."
Fuu pressed his hand against the gashes on his left side and winced again. It was shallow. He needed something for that, but the citadel was the only option in this courtyard and the citadel was the direction they had to go anyway.
Hide looked at the nineteen piles of bone and then looked at the central castle tower, its peak hidden above the cloud layer, the silent lightning moving through the dark above.
Somewhere up there, or deep inside that stone body — something had made these. Something was controlling them, and it had sent them out into the courtyard with blades.
He was going to find it.
Now that the skeletons were done with, both of them moved up the road, towards the citadel in the right.
The Abyssal Flame still hovering above Hide’s palm, casting its black-orange light across the dark stone. The cold air of the dungeon moving in from all sides, indifferent.
Hide looked at the bones and felt, somewhere underneath the combat focus, the faint stirring of something that could only be called disappointment.
There was not a trace of life mana. Well, it didn’t helped him increase his class rank, but it give him Evolution points he could use to buy stuff in the system shop.
On that note, he had to take a look at the shop as well.