Chapter 117: Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

The first thing I noticed heading into the cavern was that while it  wasn't bigger than expected, it was a MUCH longer trip than I'd thought,  because we had to work our way slowly down from the entrance. We might  have been able to jump...some of us anyway, but the undead would have  noticed and swarmed us do we ended up having to take a series of winding  tunnels to get to the base of the wall we'd been standing on. Luckily I  had access to Seek Hidden so we didn't have to wander around down there  for hours.

Since we'd learned out lesson about me not  being a front line fighter after the Dullahan fight, Callie and I did  NOT go first. We let Cark lead the way so he could tank any big hits  from stuff that noticed us early. He wasn't actually any tougher than we  were but he could cloak himself in toiling flames which tended to be a  good deterrent for the undead. Still, we did out best to make sure it  never came up, watching carefully for any sort of issues. Because we  were so careful of course, we noticed the first patrol a good amount of  time before be ran across them, and had plenty of time to prepare.

The  first bunch of enemies we ran into was an in a pretty large subchamber,  but there weren't any G rankers among them. Despite that, there was  about a hundred of the damn things. We made our way into the chamber  slowly, grouping up to make sure we were all in the best positions to  take advantage of the fights. Each of the H rankers was paired up with a  G ranker just in case. Not to interfere but just to keep an eye on  them. Benny was with Celine, Cark was with Martin, and Jessie was with  Sarah.

Callie and I were free to go into stealth and sneak  around the edges of the cavern to attack from the opposite side in an  effort to draw their attention, and then we both waded in from opposite  sides. The entire place was wall to wall skeletons, and when I slipped  out from cover, they immediately spotted me and tried to rush me. I  didn't use my weapons or my DS mastery this time, I reached into my bag  of tricks and pulled out my Minor Boxing Mastery. I had the Balam style  to learn from Callie when we had some free time, but until then, I  figured this was a solid place to practice my combat skills without much  danger.

I pulled my guard up as they all came in at me  and tried my best to focus on what was in front of me. I threw a punch,  and the skeleton I hit basically exploded. I jerked the fist back in to  guard myself again and rethought my strategy. I felt the pretty much  pointless attacks from all the skeletons landing on my armor, my damage  absorb combined with my Impact making it pretty much impossible for them  to hurt me, and I considered what I should do here. This wasn't  training. A single punch would kill any of these, and while I could  train one punch at a time it wouldn't do much good.

I  considered my options, and decided that I should make use of my stats to  try to do some actual training. My Boxing Skill wasn't the be all end  all but it came with the basics. The person I traded it from had pretty  decent fundamentals, so I knew that the most important part of boxing  was footwork. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and when I opened  them I changed my perspective. My enemies weren't one skeleton and then  another. This entire army was a single foe. One enemy swinging at me a  thousand times a second.

I waited for a single swing to  come in and I ducked out of the way. Then another. I shuffled my feet,  drifting between blows. I didn't dodge them all. There wasn't enough  space. But for every ten swings one or so connected. I started to get  into it, learning the rhythm until I could finally create an opening  where I could actually move safely. I knew when they would attack, and  by throwing punches and breaking a specific skeleton I could open up a  space to move into where there would be no attack. Once I got the hang  of that my goal became making sure I didn't get touched at all.

I  weaved around the blows, opening up safe spots with my fists. While my  stats were much higher than the skeletons they were much more numerous,  and even with my Might and Vitality dodging a whole army was tough.  Despite that I loved it. I felt like I was a machine, constantly moving,  constantly shifting. My blows became more precise. I learned to use my  weight better, leverage my power and reach, and I started taking out two  or three of them in a single hit.

With my stats as they  were I was more than able to understand positioning and leverage for a  normal mortal martial art, and the massive amount of trial and error was  a gods send for my skill. I wasn't mastering it instantly or anything,  but I could feel myself getting better at it, and it was fun. My  footwork became more and more fluid, my weaving more seamless, and  between my Perception and my improving skills I was moving among them  like a ghost, laying two or three of them out with every blow.

I  could have gone faster, done more, but this wasn't an exercise in  skeleton smashing, it was training. I only broke what I needed to open  up enough space to give me room to move in. I didn't want this to end  too soon. I threw a punch every minute or two, the majoring of my time  and effort going into footwork and dodges as I slowly improved my Boxing  Skill, basically brute forcing my progress with stats that were way too  high for the level of complexity my minor skill was at. I knew once I  hit lesser this would become a whole new beast as I had to create my  style from scratch, but for now I enjoyed the progress.

On  the up side I was pulling plenty of attention from the skeletal army.  The waves of enemies crashed over me like surf breaking against rocks as  they recognized a clear threat. I don't know how long I was there,  moving between blows and smashing bone constructs. The longer the fight  dragged on the more I started to see the patterns. Timing and force  became easier to gauge as I saw the same basic form from a hundred  different enemies. I started working my understanding of the skeletal  attackers into my form and just lost myself in the press of battle.

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Finally,  I threw a punch and there was nothing on the other side. I looked  around, shocked to see all the skeletons had been dealt with. Not just  by me mind you, everyone had done their part taking apart the army, but  my sparring partners were gone nonetheless. Still, I felt energized. My  heart was pounding, and while I wasn't tired by any means I was  definitely breathing a bit heavier after the exertion.

I  turned to check on my friends. "Everyone ok? That was pretty crazy  right? Honestly I've never been in a fight that nuts." I knew my grin  was obvious from my voice despite my face being covered. I got an eye  roll from Benny and a fond smile from Callie as everyone sounded off  that they were ok. "Man, I really hope there's some kind of recording of  that I can study. They stream this right?" I'd actually been wondering  about that during the Heartripper siege too. I knew this thing was  recorded, but I hadn't seen any sign of that.

Celine  shook her head. "No. While the scavenger hunt is televised, they mostly  focus on the parts that will gather the most interest. The first few  days there's no way to tell how well someone will do or who is  impressive. Once the teams start getting further into their lists they  can see who is the most impressive and focus on them. Besides they air  it all at the end of the hunt so they can cut out the useless parts. The  preliminary recordings should be starting within a day or two however."

That  made sense actually. I imagined it took power to send out recording  devices. Waiting until people had a chance to settle in was reasonable.  Most teams would probably still be building their bases. It also  explained why Aiden had rushed his assault. He'd clearly been trying to  avoid being noticed by the local leadership. It was a smart call given  how out of his depth he would be against an E or even F ranker, not that  it had mattered.

Still,  it was a shame I couldn't see my training directly. I'd have loved to  study how I was moving to try to improve. I thanked Celine and headed  over to Callie. She seemed excited by my fight. "That looked like a  blast, I could tell you were really improving. Maybe next time we can  make sure there are no G rankers and then take them on together, use it  as a chance for me to teach you some of the Balam Mastery skill. Still  that was an amazing amount of progress. What skill was it? Boxing?"

I  wasn't surprised she'd noticed that, boxing was a pretty distinctive  way of fighting. "Yeah, I picked it up ages ago but haven't put much  time into it. It's still at Minor even after all that, but I bet a few  more fights at that level would let me rank it up. Even if I don't  usually do fist fighting, the footwork is going to help in my normal  combat, and hey, I punch sometimes, so getting some practice in won't  hurt. I hadn't considered tag teaming a mob of weaker enemies for  training though, you think we can find another army like this?"

She giggled at that. "Obviously, this is a necropolis. I bet there's at  least ten of those hordes down here, mixed in with a hundred different  parties of other monsters for us to get through. Necropoli are infamous  for being more quantity than quality, which is part of the reason we  were even able to bring the H rankers. We'll hit another grouping like  this soon enough, and we can get started on those lessons. I used some  of that Skill training during the fight and it was...amazing. I can't  wait to show you."

Having  a girlfriend who was as into combat and cultivation in general as I was  definitely made this more fun, and once again I felt the adrenaline and  excitement shove aside the worry and regret I'd been feeling. In the  moment it was much easier not to focus on all the bad stuff, especially  when I was with Callie. I pulled up my mask and stepped forward to pull  her into a kiss, one she happily responded to, but unfortunately we were  cut off almost as soon as we started by a cleared throat.

I  pulled away, and we both turned as I replaced my mask to glare at  Benny, who ignored the unhappy looks. "As cute as you two are together,  and by cute I mean sickening, we're in the middle of a giant chamber  full of crushed up skeletons, so now might not really be the time. We  need to search this room for anything valuable, some of these things  were carrying gear and pouches." I huffed a bit but he wasn't wrong and  Callie nodded grudgingly, showing that she agreed. I squeezed her hand  once, her soft smile promising we'd spend more time together later, and  then we got to work. We had loot to find.

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