Chapter 128. Skelly Boy
Trash Intent took form around the two bones, forming into a solid shape. It swirled, whirling around the bones, then firmed all at once, and a figure stood before Rhys. He stared, slightly confused. “Huh?”
A skeleton in armor stood before him, head down, shoulders folded in. At his mental prodding, it began to walk, keeping pace with him and Lira.
Lira raised her brows. “You did ask for a skelly boy. That’s a skeleton boy if I’ve ever seen one.”
“I… it was just a figure of speech…” Rhys stared at the figure a little longer, gobsmacked, then shook his head. He wasn’t a bone identifier or a master of bone shapes. He’d thought these were small horse bones, its… knuckles, or knee bones, or something. Apparently they were the rider’s bones, instead? He frowned. That wasn’t what he needed at all! He needed a movement technique, a horse!
“What? What did you want?”
“A horse. I wanted something to move me faster around the area,” Rhys explained.
Lira looked at the skeleton, then at Rhys. “Yeah? What’s the problem?”
“I… wait, you think I should ride him?” Rhys asked, gobsmacked for a second time.
“Why not? He’s a projection. He’d held to the same exact limitations that a horse would be—in other words, the strength of your projection technique and mana. In fact, in a certain way of looking at it, he’s better than a horse. He’s smaller, so he’ll require less mana to maintain,” Lira explained, as if this were all very reasonable.
Rhys ran a hand through his hair, looking at the skeleton. It didn’t look very human… or, at least, he wouldn’t feel like he was riding a person. He was riding a monster, a skeleton monster. And riding skeleton monsters… that was trashy and cool, right? A skeletal horse, skeleton tiger, skeleton wolf… adding skeleton just made them even cooler and more intimidating. It was like the headless horseman riding a horse skeleton, but… But I’m riding the horseman, Rhys thought, still a bit taken aback. He looked the skeleton up and down one last time, then frowned. Then again, any port in a storm, right? If this was the solution to his problems and the only thing holding him back was social mores, then wasn’t he depriving hundreds of mages from freedom because he was afraid he’d look stupid? He couldn’t imagine anything crueler than that.