“STOP RUNNING AWAY, HUMAN!” roared the skeleton with a humanoid body and the cranium of a crocodile, destroying the building that stood before it. Despite being human-sized, its strength was impressive.
“How stubborn... I don’t like being chased like this,” Rozbeth complained with a fed up sigh.
“JUST LET ME SMASH YOU ALREADY!”
“You’re very...annoying!” Rozbeth dodged the powerful arm of the skeleton, then aimed at its neck with her knife. However, instead of severing it as usual, her weapon only managed to leave a scratch on the spine. “Oh?”
“IT’S USELESS! DIE!” The crocodile-headed skeleton counterattacked with a punch.
Rozbeth hurriedly avoided it by ducking, then tried to stab its trunk this time. However, once again it was too hard and her knife was repelled. “You’re tough... I suppose there’s more to you than meets the eye.”
Rozbeth killed her targets by severing their heads, but it wasn’t an easy thing to do. Cutting all the way through the neck was very difficult without using a tool like a guillotine. Some countries in the east and west used katanas or axes for executions, but even those often required multiple blows. It spoke to Rozbeth’s incredible skill that she was able to do it with only a knife.
“If I can’t cut them, your bones must be pretty special.”
“AAAH!” The skeleton stomped powerfully on the ground and swung its left arm. Naturally, Rozbeth dodged the attack, so the wall behind her was smashed to pieces instead.
“And your strength... Could it be that your bone density is very high?” Rozbeth casually muttered to herself.
She was right. Thanks to the necromantic spell used on it, the crocodile-headed skeleton’s bones were more than ten times as dense as normal. By compressing countless human bones, the skeleton had gained incredible strength and toughness.
“OOOOH!”
“Hmm... I don’t think I can sever your head the way I usually do...” Rozbeth shrugged, ignoring the shouting skeleton. Looks like I can’t tackle this problem head-on, huh? Rozbeth stifled a laugh at her own joke.
“JUST LET ME SMASH YOU ALREADY!”
“This is a pain, but I really can’t waste too much time here. Let’s get this done.” Rozbeth avoided the incoming blow with minimal movement, then swung the knife in her right hand, slashing through the skeleton’s right elbow.
“WHAT?! HOW?!”
“As I thought, your joints aren’t as tough as the rest. Dismantling you should be simple,” Rozbeth said in a detached tone. Generally, joints were connected by muscles, ligaments, or tendons. Naturally, a skeleton didn’t have any of those, so the bones were instead bound by the caster’s mana. “If you’re using mana to connect your bones, then I can just cover my knives with mana to sever that connection.”
No matter how tough the bones were, if the joints were only made of mana, they were easy to cut even without using Mana Compression like Caim.
“MYYY AAARM!”
“Not just your arm, actually.”
“AAAAH!”
Rozbeth circled behind the skeleton and stabbed her knife into its left knee. When she rotated the tip of her blade, a metallic popping sound rang out as its leg came off.
“DAMN YOUUU!”
“Having a high bone density means that you’re pretty heavy, right? Can you support yourself with only one leg?”
“GAH!” The answer was instantaneous as the crocodile-headed skeleton collapsed face down onto the ground. “DON’T MOCK ME, HUMAN!”
“Why not? I mean, you’re so pathetic and unsightly.”
“YOU BIIIITCH!”
“Yes, yes, whatever. Let’s get on with it,” Rozbeth scoffed and took care of the skeleton’s remaining limbs.
“NOOOO!”
“And now, it should be easy to sever your head. You weren’t too bad—sixty-five points.” The skeleton was down to only its trunk and crocodile cranium now. Rozbeth held its head down and laid her knife against the back of its neck. “I’ll go nice and slow. It’s good to take your time once in a while, don’t you think?”
“STOOOOP!”
Rozbeth did in fact take her sweet time slowly sawing through the crocodile-headed skeleton’s neck as it cried in agony. Eventually, the screaming ceased.
Once the girls ended their respective fights against the modified skeletons, they all reunited in front of the guardhouse.
“Is everyone all right?” Tea asked.
“Somehow...”
“No problems.”
Lenka and Rozbeth both answered. While the three were a little exhausted, they hadn’t been harmed. The modified skeletons made by the Bone-Eating General had been elite soldiers, as strong as Count-class monsters—or to put another way, they were only Count class.
“Before meeting Sir Caim, I would have lost...”
“Well, Master Caim is just that amazing. He’s the greatest man ever.”
Lenka and Tea nodded at each other.
Rozbeth frowned at them. “Say... I have a question.”
“Yes?” Tea asked back.
“I feel like my mana pool has increased ever since I’ve slept with him. Am I imagining things?” she inquired, caressing the hilt of her knife with her palm. Normally, Rozbeth didn’t have much mana, so she’d always had to compensate for that by improving her skills. However, during her fight earlier, she had been forced to use her mana, and that had made her notice that her mana pool had almost doubled. “Maybe I only noticed because I have so little mana, but... Could it be that his bodily fluids increase the mana of the people who ingest them?”
Caim’s bodily fluids were like an aphrodisiac for women compatible with him. However, perhaps it also had other effects. For example, because his bodily fluids were dense with mana, they might enlarge the mana pool of the women who received them.
“Tea doesn’t know. Never really cared about that.”
“Me neither. I’m too busy enjoying the pain every time...”
“Okay, I get it. You two are completely clueless. End of discussion.” Rozbeth lightly clapped her hands and closed the topic. “Anyway, we need to rescue the hostages.”
“Yeah, let’s hurry!”
“We must save them, quickly!”
Lenka and Tea agreed, and the latter used her three-section staff to break the lock of the guardhouse door. Nobody could be seen inside, but by straining their ears, they could hear sobs from the back.
“That way!” Lenka took the lead and arrived in the prison area of the building, where criminals were usually detained. The sight that greeted her left her speechless—more than twenty naked women were crammed together inside the small prison cell, sobbing. Their ages varied, but they were all bruised from being beaten or bitten. Lenka’s expression twisted in rage as she observed their pitiful state. “That scum... How could he do such a thing...?!”
“This is horrible...” Tea commented with a grimace, while Rozbeth frowned slightly in displeasure.
“That damn Bone-Eating General... How could he do something so cruel?! Even to children!”
“Save your anger for later, Lenka!” Tea warned her.
“Yeah, we need to rescue them first. The key is... Here, found it.” Rozbeth fetched the key to the prison and unlocked the door. They gave the women blankets and curtains they’d found so they could cover themselves.
“Everyone, we’re getting out of here! Follow us!” Lenka shouted.
“You... You’re saving us?”
“Yes. Please hurry—we need to act fast.”
“...Got it.”
Still weeping, the women nodded and followed after Lenka, Tea, and Rozbeth.
“Where is my son?”
“The bones...”
“Ugh... It hurts...”
With the women slowly dragging their battered bodies along, they exited the guardhouse. Tea and Lenka checked that the streets were clear of enemies.
“All clear. Let’s leave the town!”
“Yeah, we need to hurry!”
Fortunately, there wasn’t a single skeleton in sight. Caim and Millicia’s diversion must have been working.
“Huh?” Rozbeth, who was in the rear of the group, stopped suddenly and glanced behind her with suspicion.
“Is there a problem, Rozbeth?” Tea asked.
“No... I just saw a few silhouettes, but they’re not skeletons.” She had seen people dressed in black. She had only gotten a glimpse before they’d vanished, but she was certain she had seen them somewhere. “Were they...?”
“I don’t know what you saw, but if there’s no danger, we should get out of here quickly!” Tea urged her.
“Yes... You’re right.” The black-clad figures still bothered her, but they weren’t in any position to dawdle. Rozbeth turned back, and along with Tea and Lenka, they rushed outside of the town while protecting the hostages.