Chapter 236 : Chapter 236
Chapter 236. Sneak Attack?
Fulan’s habit of charging ahead without discussing anything with Anna first left Anna irritated.
She was afraid something might happen to Fulan and ruin her plans, so she could only stay close behind her.
Then the next moment, something happened that left her dumbfounded.
Fulan crouched low and advanced until she reached the rear of those skeletons.
And those seven skeletons still had not noticed. Their attention remained fixed on the interior of the passage, completely unaware that Fulan was approaching them.
Then, under Anna’s shocked gaze, Fulan rose without a word and struck at once. Without even leaping, she directly swept her sword horizontally at the two nearest skeletons.
As she swung, white light burst from the longsword and illuminated the entire cavern, instantly blinding Anna behind her so badly that she could no longer see the scene before her.
Fulan activated the runes on the longsword, causing the light on it to blaze even more fiercely. That radiance immediately drew the attention of the skeletons blocking the passage.
The skeletons abruptly turned around, but before they could react, white light had already poured over their entire bodies, filling the air with the sound of burning.
The searing force of that light made their movements falter. Under its assault, they could do nothing but stare helplessly.
An even more dazzling streak of radiance slashed through the bodies of two skeletons, shattering their silver-white bone frames apart.
Fulan could see clearly that, the moment the light on her sword touched these undead skeletons, it was as though it dissolved them.
Wherever the radiance passed, the silver-white bony layer melted almost like liquid, spreading open over the rod-like bones, its blinding reflections briefly visible upon the surface.
But that dazzling light lasted for only an instant before dispersing into an insignificant trace within the air, leaving the entire passage filled with the smell of scorching.
Two skeletal frames fell from the air. Their broken edges were jagged and uneven, with splintered burrs still visible.
Before the sound of the bones striking the ground and bouncing back could even finish, Fulan stepped in the direction of her swing and used that landing point as a pivot.
She spun around, keeping the light on her sword in motion, and attacked the nearest skeleton, the one holding a greatsword.
That greatsword seemed to have been well maintained. Only the hilt bore a little dust that had just settled on it, as though it had only recently come into the skeleton’s possession.
That skeleton reacted almost instinctively and raised the greatsword before itself, trying to block Fulan’s attack.
But the light was only delayed for a moment before passing straight through its body, making that skeleton yet another addition to the pile of bones about to hit the ground.
Although Fulan was extremely fast, by the time she killed the third skeleton, the skeletons behind them had not even fully turned around. They had only just begun to twist their heads.
But the passage was too narrow. After three skeletons had already fallen, the way ahead was blocked, preventing Fulan from continuing her attack.
She had to use her other hand to shove aside the fragments of bone before she could advance again.
By the time Anna blinked and barely managed to recover her vision, she saw Fulan thrust her longsword into a skeleton’s body.
Blue soulfire and white radiance reacted violently inside that skeleton, causing it to explode on the spot and scatter bone fragments everywhere.
Then Fulan continued her assault. Another skeleton turned around, gripped two short blades, and slashed at Fulan.
Fulan neither dodged nor retreated. She allowed the twin blades to strike her body with the sound of steel colliding against steel, then pressed forward and slashed upward from a low angle straight through the skeleton.
When Anna blinked again, she saw that Fulan had already cut one skeleton into two halves. At that point, only two skeletons remained on the battlefield.
One carried a shield, the other a spear, and both weapons were so cumbersome that their wielders had not yet managed to turn around.
“There are only two left now? Then where did the other five skeletons go?”
Her mind was in a daze. She had only blinked once, trying to recover from Fulan’s “flash bomb,” and somehow the battle had already become this.
She had never heard of skeletons fighting by sight in the first place, so how was it that she had only been blinded for a moment, while all of them had ended up on the ground?
At that moment, she swallowed hard and remembered the part Fulan had deliberately emphasized during her introduction:
“A battle mage of the Alliance.”
Only now did she truly recall just how famous the Alliance’s battle mages were across the continent, and how much stronger they were in combat than ordinary First-Tier Professionals.
She had heard before that the Alliance’s battle mages were powerful, but only now did she truly understand what, exactly, made them so overwhelming in battle compared to other professionals.
She could not help patting her own cheeks, regretting how she had overlooked such important information and focused all her attention instead on the fact that this Alliance mage was her “fellow elf.”
“Then the plan has to change too.” Anna rubbed her strained eyes. That burst of light just now had left them difficult to open, and they still throbbed faintly with pain.
Originally, her plan had been to come here, persuade Fulan to call for Alliance reinforcements, and let the Alliance take the thing they had “stolen.” That would have been the best outcome.
But she had never imagined that this “fellow elf” she knew would be this fierce.
From the look of it, the skeletons that had given First-Tier Professionals trouble were no different from wooden posts that could only stand there and take a beating in front of this battle mage.
She watched as Fulan faced the last two skeletons. One sweep of light, and one of the skeletons split cleanly in half, turned to dust on the spot, and its soulfire was extinguished.
And as for the skeletons’ attacks, they had absolutely no effect on Fulan.
Anna watched as one skeleton deliberately stepped back, leveled its spear before itself, and then thrust at Fulan with all its force.
But not only did that thrust fail to injure Fulan, it produced a heavy, booming impact the moment it struck her, followed by the sound of something breaking.
Anna focused her eyes and saw that a crack had opened in the middle of the spear.
And after that, the skeleton never got another chance to thrust again. Light burst from Fulan’s longsword and shot out directly toward the skull burning with blue flames.
Under the crushing force of that light, the soulfire burst apart, and the skull itself shattered into fragments. Just like that, the final skeleton blocking the way was gone.
Even the way Anna looked at Fulan now carried a trace of fear. After all, when her own six-person team had faced these skeletons, they had never been able to clear them out this quickly.
They had needed to wait for Grant, their mage, to finish chanting a powerful spell before they could instantly wipe out two skeletons at once.
But Fulan, a battle mage from the Alliance, had directly killed seven skeletons in under ten seconds.
“So this is a battle mage from the Sword Chant School...?”
Anna had to admit that, in battle, Fulan was vastly stronger than she, a Ranger, could ever hope to be.
That protective spell alone, together with the unknown spell on the longsword, was enough to kill her three times over.