“Grrraw!”
“Cut! Slash!” The modified skeleton with six arms charged at Tea, a saber in each hand. “Slice you. Into pieces! I love. Woman flesh!”
“So skeletons can talk...” Tea said, baffled, as she dodged the incoming swords. Magic wasn’t her thing, so there was no way she could have known this, but a skilled enough necromancer could indeed create undead with personalities. There were multiple possibilities—giving it the soul of a dead person, copying the personality of the spellcaster, or even creating a whole new one from scratch—and the fact that these skeletons could speak proved how impressive their creator’s skills were.
“Let me! Cut you!” It swung its six blades in all directions, forming a barrier of sharp edges. If Tea carelessly drew too close, she would be torn to shreds.
“Sorry, but I’m going to smash you!” Tea dropped down on all fours, then swung her three-section staff parallel to the ground with her right hand. The crescent strike hit the skeleton’s shin, spreading large cracks along its tibia.
“Hurts!”
“So you can even feel pain, huh? That’s pretty creepy! You look and sound revolting too!”
“Kill! You! Cut! You! Revenge. For leg!” it yelled madly, charging at Tea with its six sabers.
However, Tea backstepped before the blades could reach her. While the modified skeleton was faster than the normal ones, she was still far more nimble. Once again, she lowered herself to the ground and struck the skeleton’s shin. Its left tibia shattered with a resounding crack.
“Grrraaaw! I got your left leg!”
“Hurts!”
“You’re wide open. Despite your eerie appearance, you’re still just small fry.”
“It hurts! Cheater! Let me. Get close. To cut you!”
“Says the one with six arms and swords. If you had six legs too, you could have easily kept fighting, but now it’s all over for you.”
With no left leg, the skeleton could barely move. It would be unable to hurt Tea, and that meant she’d already won.
“Take. This!” The modified skeleton fell to its knees and walked forward while swinging its six blades, slowly approaching Tea. “Now. Can’t smash. Other shin! Ha ha ha! I win!”
“You think that’s the key to victory? You truly are brainless,” Tea said in exasperation as she looked down at the skeleton slowly making its way toward her on its knees. However, it was true that she couldn’t hit its shin anymore—and because of its swords, she couldn’t get near to strike it with her three-section staff. “In that case, I’ll use this!”
Tea glanced to the side, where an old stone statue stood. It was clearly a statue of a person, but due to wear from the rain and all the moss growing on it, it was impossible to figure out who it was. Not that Tea cared, of course. She struck the pedestal with her weapon, making large cracks in it.
“What. Are you. Doing?! Don’t. Ignore me!”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about you. I’ll definitely kill you this time.” Tea jumped and delivered a flying kick to the pedestal. It broke with a loud crack, and the three-meter-tall stone statue collapsed. “Take that!”
“Gaaaah?!”
The stone statue fell directly onto the six-armed skeleton. It tried to defend itself by swinging its swords around frantically, but it was a pointless effort. The statue crushed it. A crunching sound echoed and bones scattered everywhere, one of them even rolling to Tea’s feet.
While Tea was defeating the six-armed skeleton, Lenka was fighting the one with long legs and arms.
“Hiiiyaaaa!” The skeleton used its arms like whips to attack Lenka. Its main body and skull were normal human bones, but its arms and legs were around two meters long and looked like distorted wireworks. “I’m going to. Kill youuu! Obliterate youuu!”
“Ugh... What an annoying way to fight.” Lenka frowned in irritation as she lowered herself to avoid the long arms. Because of the length of the skeleton’s limbs, she couldn’t get close to it without being struck.
“Ha ha ha ha! Just let me. Kill you alreadyyy!”
“Your voice is very grating... Also, who’d just let themselves get killed because somebody asked?!” Lenka dodged a downward swing and used the opportunity to slash at the monster with her sword, hoping to sever an arm. However, her blade was repelled. “It’s hard...!”
“Useleeess!” The skeleton mocked her with a sneer and swung its other arm at Lenka, who quickly backstepped to avoid the blow. “My arms. And legs. Are coated with mithriiil! You won’t be able. To cut them. With a dull blade like thaaat!” With a jarring cackle, it continued to swing its arms at Lenka, throwing in the occasional kick.
“Mithril, you say...? No wonder it’s so tough!”
Observing more carefully, Lenka noticed that, indeed, the skeleton’s limbs had a silvery-blue sheen, proving they were plated with mithril. It looked thin, but mithril was very resistant to both physical and magical attacks, so she wouldn’t be able to break it with her ordinary sword.
“There’s no coating on the rest of its body, so that’s where I should aim, but...” But it was too far away. Because of its long arms, Lenka couldn’t get closer than two meters. Even if she did manage to get close to it, the skeleton’s trunk and skull were too high to reach because of its long legs. “I could reach them if I jumped, but I would be defenseless in the air... I guess there’s only one thing to do.”
Lenka readied her sword and took a deep breath. She sharpened her mind, focusing on her sword from its hilt to the tip of the blade.
“Have you given uuup? Fine. Then I’ll kill youuu!” The skeleton laughed cheerfully as it raised its right arm and swung it down like a guillotine.
“Dragonfly Cutter!”
But before it could reach her, Lenka swung her sword. There were more than two meters between her and the skeleton, so it should have been a meaningless attack. And yet...
“Huh...?” The skeleton’s body slanted and its arm missed its aim, striking the roof of a nearby house instead. “How...?”
The modified skeleton’s body had been bisected diagonally from its left shoulder to its right hip. Its spine had been cleanly severed, and its upper body slid to the ground, its lower half following an instant later with a thump.
“It seems my imitation of Sir Caim was quite successful.” Lenka nodded to herself, satisfied. Her brow was sweating profusely from the massive loss of mana.
Lenka had copied Caim’s Kirin—a technique launching condensed mana at the enemy.
During their journey, Lenka had been troubled by her weakness on several occasions. Beginning with the time when she and Millicia had been captured by bandits, she’d failed as a knight far too many times. Determined not to let it stay that way, she had asked Caim to train together during their free time. Caim had told her that it wouldn’t help her much to train with someone like him who fought bare-handed, but in the end, he granted her wish and practiced with her.
Finally, after a long training period filled with trial and error, Lenka had created the technique she had just used—the Dragonfly Cutter. She had come up with it while trying to imitate Caim’s Mana Compression. However, while she had managed to launch a flying slash of condensed mana, it was far weaker and had less range than Caim’s Kirin. It was an incomplete technique that used a lot of mana, but it had been sufficient to defeat the skeleton before her.
Incidentally, the origin of the name Dragonfly Cutter was pretty straightforward—the first time Lenka had used the technique, she had cut down a flying dragonfly.
“That’s...impossiiible...” Even bisected, the skeleton still moved, flapping its long arms like a dying insect.
“It was a close match, but I won. Just accept it,” Lenka said coldly.
“N-Nooo! Stooop! Don’t kill meee!” The skeleton repeatedly struck the ground in fear. “Waiiit! Let’s talk fiiir—”
“No.” Lenka stomped on the skeleton’s skull.
Now, nobody would hear its jarring manner of speaking ever again.
As Tea and Lenka faced their own enemies, Rozbeth was fleeing from the modified skeleton she was fighting.