Chapter 111: Chapter One Hundred Eleven

Cark got to fight two of them. He was the strongest of us stat wise,  though I didn't know exactly how many points he had, so he decided to  take the initiative and hit one of the two duos himself. I personally  was annoyed by the fact, but it made sense so I backed down in the end.  Benny and I each took one of the other death knights, as Sarah informed  us they were called, while the H rankers mopped up the basic skeletons.

Callie  was sadly unable to fight with us, being exhausted from keeping up the  shroud around us for literal hours, and Jessie was pumping life energy  into my girlfriend with her ability so she was out of this too, which  left us with just the three G rankers on our side. Still, Cark, Benny,  and I were more than upto the task of taking on some undead knights, so I  wasn't worried and was able to just focus on having fun.

First  thing I did obviously was light up my tonfas with poison fire, and the  second was activate Leaf in the Wind to allow me to jump around a bit  more and compensate for the fucking horse the skeletal knight was  sitting astride. I wasn't too familiar with fighting someone on  horseback, but I figured not being ground bound would be a benefit, not  to mention that horse was probably G ranked as well, so I wanted to be  free to dodge it easily. Getting trampled by a nightmarish bone horse  was pretty low on my list of preferred ways to die, not that there were  any ways to die that I'd like better.

With the strength in  my legs jumping around was easy enough to manage, and with Leaf on the  Wind and Cloud Step I could manage my directions pretty easily, so I  wasted no time sending myself streaking toward the skeleton knight in a  shallow arc, my tonfas flashing out to slam into the thing. As I came in  at it, the ghostly blue flame in its eyes, a twin in color to the Omen  Star, flickered steadily, and it lashed out at me with black metal sword  on it's back, a weapon that matched its spiked and jagged armor.

One  thing I appreciated about the skeletons were that they didn't talk.  There was no monologue or boasting, much like the sleepers they didn't  say a word getting straight to the fight. Unlike the sleepers though the  skeletons weren't actual living thinking beings, they were piles of  bone animated by dark magic, so I didn't have to feel bad about crushing  the damn things without mercy.

My tonfas seemed to be  pretty well suited to normal skeletons, as I actually ended up smashing  two of the H ranked bone constructs when they got in the way of my  attack. They didn't even slow me down, sadly the knights were wearing  armor however, and it was much less susceptible to blunt force trauma  than the bone of the skeletons. Still, I got in close fast and start  lashing out at joints with my weapons, doing my best to take the things  apart even through the armor.

The downside to fighting  bone constructs in armor became apparent, as even while the poison fire  spread through the bones, burning away at them, the skeleton not only  didn't react, but wasn't actively slowed either. No flesh meant no  muscles to wear down or burn away. Whatever the hell moved this thing,  presumably stat points and a skill even the slow destruction of the  materials didn't seem to do much to stop it.

Still, aside  from the bones I landed several blows on the armor as I closed too, and  the force enchantments dented and cracked the black plate even as the  poison fire seared away at the stuff. My attack unfortunately had to end  early as I dodged that big ass sword, using Cloud Step to bounce myself  over it and activating my gymnastics skill to maneuver more freely in  the air and reposition myself for my next attack. A smashing blow to the  helmet didn't do much sadly, since the skeletons didn't use their eyes  as we'd already figured out.

I juked hard to the side as  the second one's sword came in at what it probably thought was my blind  spot, and turned to glare at Benny who was looking a bit irritated that  his tranquilizer punch wasn't working. He shrugged apologetically and I  stepped forward hard, skating through the air in an incredibly short  forward arc that let me travel just above the surface of the ground to  land next to him. He grinned at me as I landed. "Hey, sorry about that  these bastards are fast. How about we take team the two of them?"

I  blew out a breath. 'Probably not a bad idea. You have any ideas for  dealing with them? We can just crush them through brute force but I feel  like that might take too long. You notice any special weaknesses?" It  would have been useful to ask Sarah, but the cleric was among the H rank  skeletons with Martin and Celine, so we would have to rely on our own  observations here, as unhelpful as they might be. All I'd been able to  grasp was the obvious 'break bones so they can't move' strategy, so  hopefully Benny had more.

Sadly I had no such luck. "Nope.  They're skeletons. Blunt force breaks bones, so that's probably our  best bet. My punch and probably my density shifting are my most  effective weapon from what I can tell. You seem to be doing ok though."  He pointed over at the second skeleton I'd just been fighting. "That  poison fire will probably melt them if we leave it to work long enough,  looks like it's having an effect already." He pointed out a specific  spot where the skeleton's limb seemed to be barely attached. Sadly that  limb was a leg and it didn't seem to effect him given the horse he was  sitting on. Still, he wasn't wrong.

Though  that did give me an idea. Unlike Benny's punch my Mercy Kill ability  let me apply a flat increase to any attacks I used. It didn't matter  what weapon or skill was involved, as long as I was making an attack  Mercy Kill would work on it. I put my hands together and turned to  Benny. Here, I have an idea. I'm going to launch you up, then you use  the density shifting in your leg to come down hard and slam your fist  into the one that's already damaged. Just concentrate on the triple  punch."

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He  seemed unsure about the instruction, but in the end he was the one who  wanted to team up, so he did what I'd told him to do. As I launched him  up into the air I triggered Mercy Kill, designating Benny himself as my  attack in this case, at least in my head. My friend went sailing up into  the air, his arc actually improved by the skill, and as he came back  down I saw him slam his fist into the chest of the skeleton knight. The  triple punching force amplified by the hundred and fifty percent boost  of Mercy Kill and his increased speed and momentum crashed down on the  death knight with a deafening roar of shattering metal, driving the  skeletal being right off it's bony mount.

I  was already in motion before it hit the ground, sailing in with Leaf on  the Wind to rain down as many blows as I could on the thing. Given it's  missing leg and position on the ground, my blows had the added effect  of not just slowly corroding it with acidic poison flame, but driving  the thing into the ground it was now lying on. Despite not having seen  any actual rain lately the earth hear was loose and easily disturbed. I  smashed the bastard as hard into the dirt as I could, letting the ground  restrain him as best I could as I tried to deal maximum damage.

Bone  cracked and plate fractured as the increased force of the blows and the  poison flame effects compounded to degrade the death knight as best I  could manage. Of course, it wasn't just the one knight, but Benny was  more than up to blocking the second skeletal charge with his hyper dense  leg, kicking out hard at the head of the horse to turn the knight off  course and prevent me from being trampled.

Of  course I had to dodge the horse of the knight I had downed, but without  a rider it seemed jerky and easily frightened. It shied away from the  loud noises and bright lights of the smashing attacks as I pummeled its  former rider. It only took a minute of constant wailing before I managed  to get the thing broken up enough that I was pretty sure it couldn't  move and turn to help Benny with the other one. The poison fire should  finish the job on the one I'd downed, which left us dealing with the  last two on one.

Benny  was using his legs weightless mode to make himself for mobile, and  combined with his Might stat was managing to stay ahead of the skeleton.  I suspected his high speed perception was coming into play as well,  because he was barely dodging the thing, clearly trying to stay in close  to prevent it from building up too much momentum. It was a solid way to  deal with the knight, and I slipped in close as it wheeled yet again to  deliver a Mercy Kill empowered blow to the leg of knights horse.

The  big thing that people rarely note about horses is how absurdly delicate  their legs are. The sheer amount of weight focused on such a small area  combined with the delicate artistry of equine legs means that they're  actually one of the most vulnerable parts of the animal. My blow didn't  manage to actually shatter the leg, but it did fracture it and the  poison fire started to degrade the limb pretty soon after.

The  horse itself didn't really seem to notice, given the bone was still  holding together, but it did give him an active debuff that would drop  him eventually. Despite not being a flesh and blood horse it was still  pretty heavy, and the more it used that leg the worse it got. As it spun  on me though Benny dipped in with a triple strength punch aimed at  unseating the knight, and though it had learned from its companion and  wouldn't come off its horse so easily it DID get the things attention.

We  played it like that for a while. Whittling away at the death knight  from either side, me hitting its horse's legs and him attacking the main  body as we did our best to take the second knight down as thoroughly as  the first. The initial skeleton was gone at this point, the poison fire  having been stacked enough to completely consume the bone, though there  were still some pieces of armor left.

Finally  it was done, the horse collapsed, its leg dissolving too much to be  usable as it toppled over, and we fell on it the same as the last one,  pounding it into the dirt and making sure not to let up until it wasn't  functional anymore. It was one of the more satisfying fights I could  remember because it was just pure combat. No worry about humanity or  motivations or even sentience like with animals. It was just raw force  against dead bone, and it put me in a great mood.

Once  we finished I turned to check on the others and had to chuckle at my  own worrying. They hardly needed it. The skeletons were demolished,  bones and weapons littering the ground, and everyone was waiting for us  to finish. Cark was just polishing off his second with his blue flames,  and I turned to Callie as I finished, grinning behind my mask. "Now  that's what I'm talking about. So, what do we do next boss?" I couldn't  wait to get into the necropolis, I wondered what new monsters would be  waiting.

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