Skeleton.
Bones resurrected from graveyard remains with evil magic overlaid. A monster so famous it had become cliché.
It’s like that for everyone, isn’t it?
Just as orcs make you think of female knights and goblins make you think of martial artists, when it comes to undead, isn’t it skeletons?
They could almost be called the face of the undead now.
That’s why I felt utterly indifferent despite witnessing a skeleton walking on two legs.
With a two-legged lizard next to me, what’s a walking skeleton?
“Skeleton…! An evil monster that defies the principles of life and death…!”
On the other hand, Bolton’s reaction to seeing the skeleton was truly like the fit of a madman.
“Grrrr…! Blasphemous, blasphemous! How can it be so blasphemous-!”
Bolton shouted loudly with his eyes half-rolled back, trembling. I thought he was having some kind of seizure.
The blood vessels that suddenly bulged on his forehead, lower jaw, and nape turned his face into a monster more hideous than the skeleton.
I wonder which one is really the monster.
“May Elianelle’s mace be upon yoooou!”
Bolton roared and tried to lunge at them.
What mace? You’re the one who pioneered the path of spear priesthood because you found it difficult to use a mace.
“Let’s save that. We’re still just at the entrance of this floor, and there are only 4 of them.”
“Grrrr…!”
Speak human language, you fool.
I stretched my left arm back to block Bolton, preventing him from rashly charging.
The goddess church’s attack miracle, ‘Arrow of Punishment’, could probably deal with a skeleton in one hit… but Bolton could only use it four times.
So how could we waste it here?
Warriors struggle a bit to save the spells of mages and priests, and then unleash them when a strong enemy that warriors alone can’t handle appears.
This was the basic strategy for dungeons.
So-
“Mr. Kikel, please take care of the two on the right.”
“Kachak! Leave it to me!”
Kikel rushing forward like a Chihuahua facing a dog treat.
I dashed towards the skeletons on the left with my longsword resting on my pauldron.
Kigigik…!
Perhaps because they had no excess flesh, they came charging at a speed faster than expected, and immediately thrust their rusty spears – two skeletons.
Seeing the spearheads red with rust, I thought getting stabbed by those would be a direct route to tetanus.
“Haah!”
I swung my sword diagonally downwards with the momentum of my charge, cutting through the shaft of one skeleton’s spear, then rammed into it with my right shoulder, crushing it.
Crash-
Beyond the caved-in ribs. The shattered spine scattered in all directions like snowflakes, like dropped Lego pieces.
Then, as the skull fell without support, I struck it with my left hand, and with a crackling sound, a fist-shaped hole was punched through its face.
Pathetic durability.
Well, I suppose they’re just human bones after all, even if they’ve been resurrected with magic power. How could they withstand a steel fist, let alone a stone one?
“Graaah…!”
They can even speak, these things.
Perhaps enraged at the sight of its comrade reduced to just a lower body, the other one nimbly approached and thrust its spear at my lower abdomen.
A part not covered by armor. Whether it was intelligence or instinct, it was an excellent choice.
Not charging would have been the most excellent choice, though.
Clang!
An upward diagonal slash. The spear tip, deflected by the sword blade, stuck into the dungeon ceiling.
Along with the skeleton’s two forearms that couldn’t withstand the impact and were torn off.
“Grah…?”
The skeleton, now unable to do a double peace sign, let out a stupid groan and raised its head.
Looking up pathetically, like a man endlessly staring at the back of a lover who had just announced their breakup.
That gaze was so pitiful that I unconsciously kicked its shin, creating a five-limbed dissatisfaction.
With its arms and legs gone, it might get about six lovers now. Probably.
* * *
The battle ended in an instant.
Despite their threatening appearance, skeletons were monsters so weak that they could have a soul-to-soul match with a couple of goblins.
It’s a bit annoying that they keep resurrecting and attacking until the magic power in their bones is depleted, but even that was meaningless when there were two or more.
If you mix their bones well, their respective magic powers collide and they crumble without regenerating.
Until this fact was discovered, they were still considered more dangerous monsters than goblins, but after it was revealed, they were treated as pushovers just like goblins.
However, unlike goblins, if there’s a slightly troublesome problem…
“Skeletons… Is there an Abyss Priest hiding somewhere?”
The existence of skeletons meant that the caster who created them might also be hiding somewhere nearby.
“Abyss!! Priest!!!”
Bolton shouted with his eyes wide open. With holy light flowing between his bulging pupils, he looked completely insane.
Abyss Priest.
Unlike ordinary magicians who simply hone magic as knowledge and technique, they are heretical magicians who believe magic itself is a miracle of god.
They say if you reach the abyss of knowledge, you can receive the ‘God of Magic’?
Under such a pretext, they were madmen who researched and experimented with all sorts of unethical magic, and from the perspective of the Goddess Church, they were a cult that should be burned on sight.
Skeletons were one of the lowest-grade summons of these Abyss Priests.
“Those guys are a bit troublesome…”
Abyss Priests were magic fanatics who selectively learned bizarre magic like necromancy, curses, and monster summoning. They were very cumbersome opponents.
At least you can dodge a fireball, but with curses whose effects you can’t even know until you’re hit, there’s no proper way to deal with them.
It’s somewhat better if there’s a priest among the party members… but that depends on the priest.
Unfortunately, among the holy miracles Bolton could use, there were none of the purification type. Apparently because the depth of his good deeds was still too shallow?
In game terms, it meant his level was too low to use them.
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
Amy shook her head.
“The flow of magic is too crude for undead created by a magician. These are naturally occurring specimens.”
“Human, bone originally stand up?”
Kikel asked, twitching his vertically split pupils. Asking if humans normally become skeletons when they die.
“It’s usually rare… probably due to magic leaking from the grimoire.”
Of course, how could that be? If every dead body unconditionally resurrected as a skeleton, there probably wouldn’t be any burial culture in this world.
They would have ground all corpses into powder and thrown them into rivers or something.
“No gain here.”
Amy grumbled with a sigh. When I asked her the reason, she let out a light fake cough before explaining the detailed circumstances.
The existence of naturally occurring undead was clear evidence that there was a grimoire in the deepest part of this dungeon, but this was by no means a welcome thing, she said.
A grimoire that raises corpses as undead just from the effects of leaked magic.
It meant that the magic contained in that grimoire was of the necromancy type.
While Abyss Priests might cheer with three hurrahs, for an ordinary magician like Amy, it was nothing but a troublesome item she couldn’t use even if given.
Necromancy was one of the heretical magics designated as taboo by the Goddess Church.
Unless you were an Abyss Priest, an ordinary magician using necromancy was similar to snorting cocaine naked in the middle of a busy intersection.
In that public authorities would arrive and arrest you within 5 minutes.
No, considering the aggressiveness of religious people in this world, they might not even arrest you but burn you alive on the spot.
So she couldn’t help but be disappointed. The grimoire she had finally discovered was no different from a blowfish dish with burst internal organs.
“Then should we just go back?”
I asked if we should return now. If it was a grimoire we couldn’t use even if found, I thought there might be no point in finding it.
However, Amy shook her head.
“No, that’s not it. Even if I can’t use it directly, I need to bring it back as proof that I completed the investigation.”
Well, that makes sense.
“What are you saying! Such an evil grimoire should be burned as soon as it’s discovered!”
Bolton shouted, thrusting his face forward.
His religious sense of mission was bulging out like tendons. It was creepy, like a tapeworm.
“Then you won’t get the request reward? We’ll burn it right after reporting to the Magic Tower, so be patient. Unless you want to work for free.”
“Ah. If that’s the case, I suppose it can’t be helped.”
Bolton immediately changed his attitude at the mention of not getting paid. It was a faster attitude change than blinking.
If we brought him to Korea, he might have become a master of Udyr.
“Even if I don’t, the other two should receive payment for their work.”
I thought he might be unexpectedly money-oriented, but hearing his reason, it was surprisingly normal.
He changed his attitude to be considerate of me and Kikel.
…I feel a bit sorry for mocking him as an Udyr master.
“If you can just confirm that it’s burned, there’s no problem. So, may I be present to witness this?”
So he just needs to confirm it later?
I thought he was a stubborn zealot priest with no compromise on religious matters, but he was unexpectedly quite flexible.
“If you want.”
Amy nodded readily.
* * *
After finishing our discussion, we continued exploring the second floor of the dungeon, crushing all the skeletons we saw.
They really kept popping up endlessly, as if this had actually been a cemetery.
Even Amy and Bolton, who had been just watching the vanguard’s fight, had to occasionally participate in combat.
“Invisíbĭlis Marcus!”
“You blasphemous things!”
Amy smashed skeletons with the 『Invisible Hammer』 magic, while Bolton swung his spear shaft like a blunt weapon, crushing their skulls.
Judging by his form, it wasn’t the skill of someone who had cracked open just one or two heads.
While those two dealt with three or four skeletons, Kikel and I rampaged all over, dealing with the remaining dozen or so.
“Kakakak! Now, it’s a bit warm!”
Kikel strapped his shield to his back and drew his axe, gripping it in his left hand, then swung his harpoon and axe in all directions, rampaging like a drug-crazed genius.
The two short weapons in his hands shattered human bones into pieces, enthusiastically playing isekai-style death metal.
It was truly a cheerful rhythm.
I twisted my body and stepped as if dancing, avoiding and deflecting rusty spears and swords.
Crack!
And then aiming for the openings of the enemies that appeared, surely taking them out one by one.
“Haah!”
Wrapping the approaching spear blade with my sword blade and shaking it off, then extending the sword to penetrate a skull, using that head as a blunt weapon to smash another skeleton.
Crack!
Then, picking up a rusty mace rolling among the shattered remains and vertically smashing it down on the nearest enemy.
Crunch!
A sensation like breaking a bunch of reeds. The skeleton, completely shattered from crown to pelvis, collapsed, scattering bone fragments.
It was a bit awkward to handle as the usage was completely different from a longsword, but against skeletons, blunt weapons were several times more useful than longswords.
Anyway, we broke through this floor in that manner.
The skeletons, whose numbers kept increasing, also started to diversify in composition, and later there were even ones with shields, ones wearing armor, and ones with bows mixed in.
Apparently warriors buried with grave goods.
They rampaged much more fiercely than those with just rusty spears, wearing the equipment they had in life.
“Graaah!”
Among them, there were even some wielding weapons that were still not rusted and had sharp blue edges, made of who knows what material.
Should I say there was a wealth gap even among the undead? Those who had money in life were superior to others even in death.
“That sword! Good!”
“It would fetch a good price if sold.”
Of course, now they were just our prey.
What’s the point of having a good weapon if the wielder is weak?
The skeleton warriors were quick in movement but terrible in strength, and their durability was even worse.
To the extent that they couldn’t withstand even my punches, let alone Kikel’s.
“Kak…!”
Perhaps because there were so many enemies, Kikel occasionally allowed blind spear or sword blades to hit him…
“It tickles!”
But it wasn’t really at a level that could be called an injury.
His fur cloak and quilted armor were torn, but the scales underneath weren’t pierced.
As expected of a lizardman, I suppose.
Except for the weakness to cold places, it would be hard to find a race more excellent as a warrior.