Chapter 10: Ch. 9 – Bone Dance

Thanks to Momo’s brand new intelligence points, she very quickly realized how stupid her idea was.

Firstly, Momo gravely underestimated how many times an animal could care that you’re about to die. For cows, it maxed out at about 3. Cats, um, 1. After her first fall, Dusk pretty much stopped reacting at all, preferring to meow at bees and use the cows’ legs like scratching posts.

Secondly, while the [Companion] skill was nice when they were closeby, as soon as any of them wandered out of her sight, she went back to being Alois’s weakest, feeblest traveling salesman.

Luckily, in spite of her stupidly thought through idea, all of the walking and the flinging herself at things turned out to be an actual workout. By the time she reached Morgana’s Respite, her muscles were stretched and sore, but in the ‘gym bro’ way instead of the ‘hasn’t moved from couch in three days’ way.

She huffed out a sigh as she rested her head on a smooth boulder. Three hours of walking, and she had nearly summited the small mountain. As the adrenaline slowly left her body, she could clearly see the entire valley below, with Kalendale in the north, and the tip of Morgana’s Dawn peeking out from the south. It was quite the vista. If it wasn’t for the trek up and down, she’d love to live here.

“Just a bit more,” she said, comforting herself more than anything. She whistled for the cows, who had been grazing on the frozen-tipped grass that lined the path towards the summit. Dusk climbed up her neck again, and they hiked the remaining half-mile up the mountainside. As she rounded the last corner, long columns of obsidian jutted out of the fog.

“Oh, God,” her eyes bugged out of her head. If Kalendale was a proper fairytale village, then this was a proper castle. The obsidian columns gave way to a courtyard, lined by spike-tipped fences. In the courtyard, hundreds of bones lay dormant, arranged in small piles over dead, frostbitten grass.

Momo and her pack slowly crossed the threshold of columns, entering into the main courtyard. The moment her feet stepped into the grass, the field began to hum and vibrate. An orchestra of invisible lutes began to play, each strum echoing across the meadow. The piles of bones jumped from the ground, linking together to the beat of the music.

All at once, the reassembled skeletons began to dance. In pairs, they threaded their fingers, placing bony hands on bony waists. The grass field became a makeshift ballroom, with Momo standing at the center. The skeletons waltzed with passion, undulating in perfect patterns around the grass. The notes of the lute were accompanied by a violin, and then a shouting bass.

In the midst of the chaos, the castle door flew open. A single, red high heel stepped out. Then another. A flowing, black dress, woven out of minced bone and sinew, came out in a rush of wind.

“Visitors!”

In the blink of an eye, a woman was looming over Momo like a giant. Her fiery red hair shot in every direction, swimming through the air as if she was in water.

“H–h—hello,” Momo stuttered, the woman staring her down with an eerily large grin.

“Good afternoon!” she yelled in return, her voice projecting over the entire field. She finally backed up from Momo, walking a few steps backwards on the cobblestone path. As she walked, the dancing skeletons coalesced around her, hoisting her up on their shoulders.

“We so rarely get visitors here. And when we do, they leave so quickly,” she frowned, and Momo couldn’t help but wonder if those visitors had become the skeletons that now formed her dancing throne.

“I’m here to deliver a package,” Momo made clear before the woman got any other ideas, “from Morgana’s Dawn.”

"Ah yes, that upstart sanctuary with the fantastic discounts on spell tomes. Tell me, who is the High Necromancer there?"

"Valerica..." Momo paused, realizing she never got Valerica's last name, "just Valerica."

The woman’s eyes widened, and she slapped a hand to her face.

“Valerica! That witch,” she said with utter endearment, “I haven’t heard from her in so long, I thought she might have died. What a doubly pleasant surprise. Please, come in.”

The undulating throne approached Momo and picked her up by the shoulders. She yelped, getting thrown into the mosh pit of dancing skeletons. She bodysurfed on their hands all the way into the castle’s entrance hall, where she was promptly dropped onto the floor, the skeletons swelling around her.

“Dancers, make us tea,” the woman descended the throne of hands, ordering them to disperse. The skeletons trotted away to the kitchen, rhythm in each step.

The entrance hall was as magnificent as the castle’s exterior: obsidian walls, a giant marble staircase. In the center was a long dining table which could easily seat fifty guests. The woman led Momo to the head of the table, and then sat beside her.

“So, what is your name, delightful visitor?” the woman leaned closely to Momo; her red hair had quieted down, lying flat now on her shoulders.

“Ah, um, Momo. I am Momo.”

“Momo,” she hummed, “fabulous. Dearest Momo, my name is Devola Wraith, High [Necrodancer] of Morgana’s Respite. I am so very pleased to meet you.”

A skeleton came rushing out, a piping hot tea kettle in hand. With a flick of its bony wrist, it poured the hot tea into two mugs, and set it down in front of the pair. Momo inhaled the tea, and immediately recoiled. Wonderful, it smelled like bugs.

She was nostalgic for that stupid wizard. At least his tea came from plants.

“The pleasure is mine,” Momo said shakily as she sipped the tea. It was surprisingly good.

“So, Momo, I trust you have brought my things?”

“The spell tomes? Yeah, my cows are carrying them.”

Devola snapped her fingers, and a skeleton did a ballerina leap to her side.

“Please acquire the book-bearing cattle,” she commanded, and then added, “gently.”

The dancing skeleton nodded, and Momo watched in awe as a group of the skeletons hoisted her cows over their backs and carried them into the entrance hall. These skeletons were spectacularly strong. The power of one’s undead seemed to scale with your own level, just as in the [Beast Tamer] class, Momo mused.

You are reading story Momo The Ripper (A Shy Necromancer LitRPG) at novel35.com

Dropping the cows to the ground gently, Devola clapped her hands together and grinned. Momo couldn’t help but notice glaring similarities between her and Valerica. They were both obviously insane, sure, but it seemed to go deeper than that. The way they carried themselves, the way they spoke so nobly while doing very un-noble things.

“Ah, yes, yes,” Devola feverishly grabbed the books from the cows’ leather sack. She flew through the pages of [Limb Tornado], “aha! That’s what I was missing.”

She whisked her hand in the air and a plume of white smoke erupted from it. The smoke branched off into hundreds of smaller tornados, with each tornado targeting a different skeletal minion in the room. The smoke completely enveloped them, twisting around them and sending them round-and-round in a flurry.

“Right, so that part was straightforward, but then…” she flipped to another page in the book. Momo looked over her shoulder. The pages of the book were not written in text, but in pictures. It looked like a common children’s book.

Following the depiction on the page, she assumed fourth position, posing like a proper ballerina. She had such presence, as if a spotlight was drawn on top of her, everything else in the room sitting in wait for her next move.

“[Limb Tornado]!”

The tornados wound tighter and tighter around their victims until there was no space at all, their limbs compressed so tightly that the pressure reached a crescendo. All at once, the pressure became too much, and it inverted, bones exploding outwards like bullets. Devola laughed maniacally as the limbs soared over her head, cratering through walls.

Momo ducked out of the way, protectively covering Dusk as bones skyrocketed overhead. Eventually, after punching holes in nearly every surface, the bones clamored to the floor. What was once an army of dancing bones was once again a sea of dust.

Devola clapped her hands together, “divine.”

She shook the bone fragments off of her shoes and sat again next to Momo.

“Now, wasn’t that fun?” she grinned.

Momo could think of funner things than watching a million bodies get compressed to death, their limbs fired across the room like shotgun ammo. But hey, to each their own.

“I’ve been trying to get that spell right for ages. When you get to my level, you must resort to dusty tomes to teach yourself new things. You can’t simply dance the King’s men to death anymore.”

This piqued Momo’s interest, “you can learn spells just by reading books?”

Ugh, books. Then again, moving. She wasn’t sure which was the lesser evil.

“Of course. But the speed in which you retain the spells depends on your skills, and the level of the spell you’re attempting to learn,” she dragged her finger across the tome, which shined with a fuzzy white light, “I’ve always been an avid reader, so I’ve acquired the [Instant Learner] skill, which allows me to instantly retain any spell book at or below my level.”

So Momo would have to read in order to get good at reading? Hard pass.

“There are other ways to learn skills, of course.”

Devola had a mischievous glint in her eye. Momo became very afraid.

“Take my hand,” she reached her hand out to Momo, who stared at it awkwardly, sweat dripping into her brow.

After a few moments, she reluctantly took it. Momo was instantly dragged out of her seat, chest to chest with Devola. Devola wrapped an arm around her waist, and took her hand in her own.

“[Bone Dance].”

Momo’s bones began to sway, but not out of her own volition. Devola pressed a hand to her back and began to spin them like a cyclone. Momo’s body followed without a thought; every joint had a mind of its own, moving in asynchronous synchrony. It was as terrifying as it was euphoric—with no body to control, her mind dissolved into a singularity.

For the first time in her life, Momo could completely let go.

The two spun and spun until Momo’s vision went hazy. In the far back of her mind, the part with a small remaining tether to her physical form, she could feel something amiss. A creaking sensation, as if her bones were near splintering.

Oh. Oh no.

“Feel it yet?” Devola laughed, throwing her head back.

The moment she tuned back into her body, the feeling was overwhelming. The building tension was nearing a crescendo; her bones were about to split in half. Momo tried to get away, but she found herself tethered to the other woman.

“Yes,” Momo squeaked, hoping that was the answer she was looking for.

Thankfully, it was, and Devola pulled away. Unable to stop spinning, Momo crashed face-first into a wall.

“Ouch.”

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