Magical Girl? I’m not sure about this.

POV: A Certain Skeleton

Time: A few days ago, when Alex gave a doll to a skeleton who was down on his luck.

The odd thing about being a revenant is that everything revolves around fulfilling a grudge. Someone can be killed, and hold a grudge that transcends death. But death is still death. It might not be final, but it can’t be ignored.

A skeletal revenant, starting again at level 1 after being completely deleveled and sealed, cleaved through a pack of imps with whatever weapons he could get his hands on.

Once a paladin, he was now a dark knight, his original identity lost after countless defeats. Though his name escaped him, the memory of wielding a sword remained, as did the instinct to parry and block. Yet, what he remembered most vividly were those who had bested him.

On this continent it was the tier 4 demon in the capital. His grudge always drew him back to the capital. He could remember that original defeat, dying full of regret. The hero challenged the tier 4 mountain of a demon to one on one combat. However, their commander countered by sending a succubus to give a counter offer. The hero was wary from the years of campaign. Every time they liberated a city, another one that they had freed fell. A hero is the most powerful class. They had defeated enemy generals and sent them back to hell, but there were always more. No matter how much success they had on the battlefield, the demon queen’s forces never reached a breaking point where they would call their armies defeated.

There were always more imps. The only thing that limited the demon forces was the logistics of bringing them to where the fighting was. The closer to the demon queen’s castle they got, the more endless the waves would become. The hero-led army would push forward, only to be cut off from the rear. So they had to retreat and carve their way through endless waves of imps and other demons to put enough distance to give them time to lick their wounds, bury their dead, bring in reinforcements and try again.

It wasn’t until after the shock settled that the Hero wanted to give up that the former-paladin actually had come to terms that the teenage boy would forsake his quest.

“I’m not even from this world.” He justified his betrayal. “I just want to spend time with love and live a normal life.”

The hero and the healer were an item. She was a prodigy priestess of Catalina. The fact that someone whose class is based on channeling the divine power of the goddess could forsake a quest given to her by the goddess felt anathema to the knight. It should never happen.

Abandoned by the hero and priestess, who fled by boat to an unknown destination, the remaining forces attempted to confront the relentless horde. However, the hero's absence crippled the army's morale, leading to a swift collapse and retreat after a single disastrous day of combat. This marked his first death.

His spirit hovered above his lifeless body, a victim of countless wounds. All healing provisions were depleted, and his cooldowns exhausted in a desperate attempt to maintain the line for an orderly withdrawal. A deep regret gnawed at him for failing to protect his soldiers. His sword had claimed thousands of lives, and his shield had deflected tens of thousands of blows intended for his comrades. Yet, it was insufficient because the demons' numbers seemed infinite.

Amidst the dissipating demonic hordes, the grey blob emerged, presenting an undeniable offer of immortality. The decision was simple: even in death, the fight against the demons would persist.

It didn’t go well at first, dying reset his level back to zero. As a human he was above the level 20 cap. But then he came back as level one. But true to his world, the revenant was no longer killable. He could be smashed to bits and each of those bits could attack it in its own small way. A severed hand could grasp. A severed head could bite. A severed leg could trip.

The thing about the [dark knight] class is that it doesn’t generate magic. If he is not taking damage, then he can’t cast anything once his pool goes empty. Being damaged gave him the power to use his skills. Of note was that his skill [syphon strike] was particularly effective on demons. It left them injured from the sword blow as well and seeming diminished in his [spirit sight].

Despite the human army's retreat, the dark knight continued his relentless fight, slaughtering thousands and leveling up. The tactic of "death by a thousand cuts" would not succeed against him a second time. Days bled into weeks, then months, and he was unsure if the army had managed a safe withdrawal. He fought day and night, unburdened by the need for sleep due to his undead state. He found himself more adept at this form of combat than he had been as a human, even with a lower level. Eventually, his shield shattered, and he armed himself with a greatsword salvaged from a tier 3 demon, making it his primary weapon. Blocking was no longer necessary. Damage replenished his magic. A single syphon strike on a big enough group of imps could instantly heal him from near defeat to full strength. However, not all demons were foolish.

The revenant's weakness became clear to them before it did to the revenant itself. Eventually, the tier 4 general commanded the lower-level demons to cease their assault, forcing the dark knight into a one-on-one battle. He faced a colossal demon, a true mountain of an opponent, whose blows were as devastating as one might expect from a mountain. It was in this moment that the dark knight realized his true strength lay in combating groups, not single adversaries. Though striking the giant demon's leg offered some healing, it was insufficient to counter the immense damage inflicted by such a formidable foe. He was soundly defeated.

He always knew the location of the demon's spirit, a unique trait of a revenant. His racial skill revealed the direction of anyone with whom he had unfinished business, confirming the giant's presence. It was no coincidence that he was unsealed in the same kingdom as the general. Demons are known for their cunning and treachery.

Anyway, it wasn’t as easy as before. He guessed that his skills were spread widely amongst demonkind. He raided several villages, exterminated the demons and moved on. The people he freed would have to take care of himself. He learned his lesson last time. That woman who he warned betrayed him. No, they were on their own. Besides, he couldn’t protect his men in the final battle. They were groups of combat classers and these new people looked like mostly farmers and ranchers.

Eventually, he had some bad luck when a sect of fire demons started hunting him down. His skull sunk into the river and was washed away by the waters that were luckily very swift right there. If the demons planned to seal him, then they had failed, in a day he’d be back and try to strike from a different, unexpected point.

That was when a strange group found him. A pair of magical girls and a slime decided to clean off all the blackness on his burnt helmet.

Excuse me! (The skeleton didn’t have enough of a lower jaw to talk, so he only thought in his head)

Dark knight here! Blackness is only fitting. Don’t wipe off the soot from a battle with terrible creatures from hell. To embrace darkness, you have to be black.

Hmph.

Realizing her offense, the black-haired girl gifted him a doll. The doll had an aura similar to his own. Maybe they could brood together?

With not much fanfare, the group left.

After regenerating, the revenant continued towards the nearest source of demons. He cleared out another, bigger town down river. But they were getting close to the capital–not the one with the demon queen in it, but the one with the giant demon. He figured out the doll could be activated by pulling the string. It would start playing some music and help him rip and tear.

The music was very fitting to the situation. Demon heads flew. He cut imps in half with a broken plow he had found in the field.

With the dark music playing he might have guessed that he got some kind of boost. But he wasn’t sure. What kind of music was this? It definitely had an edge.

But there was a problem. When he finally had reached level 10, he realized that the doll did not regenerate like he did. Its armor was broken in spots and the stuffing was falling out. Having exposed stuffing was not good for fighting demons that spat fire.

But that low thrumming of the soundtrack drove him on. They cleared out thousands of mostly imps and at level 10 he could go head to head with most of the tier 2s so long as it wasn’t a 1v1 battle. He could tank their hits, and if there was a group of imps he could syphon he wasn’t going to go down unless they could one shot him.

Luck wasn’t on his side that day. A spear-with-chain demon kept trying to pull him away from the water. When all the fodder had been killed, he unleashed a devastating breath attack. It left him dust. He looked for a cooldown to mitigate the damage of the tank-busting attack but apparently the opponent had been keeping track of when he had been using his skills. This opponent came prepared to fight the revenant. It was likely a demon on the cusp of becoming tier 3.

But the demon hadn’t planned for the doll, let alone the magical girl that apparently had an ability that made her virtually impossible to hit, even if it made her look like she was doing ballroom dancing while using it.

The doll, likely on his last legs, didn't give up. That felt important. The revenant didn’t understand why, but somehow, it mattered.

After being shoveled into a bucket, the skeleton felt the world freeze. This is what happened when he was sealed. He didn’t feel anything when sealed. One second he was one place, then the next another. Time just….skipped. He came too in a cave, but was too injured to do much, so he just slowly reformed, a racial skill rather than a class one. A skeleton won’t come back when crushed to dust, a revenant will.

Another time skip, and this time in a town. But there were no demons anywhere near. This was both good and bad. He needed to regenerate, but a being of hatred for demons. If there were no demons then he’d enter a state of torpor, just barely aware of what is going on, waiting for the object of his hatred to show up and drive him into battle.

But what was this….

Was he being dressed up? Like a doll?

The doll had been repaired. Good, but he was a being of death and darkness. He should be clothed in the blood of his enemies, not dressed up like some gallant prince. The blacker and grittering the better. Hmph.

But to the onlooker he was as still as a corpse.

They tossed him in the closet and left.