Kahli watched as the three skeletal monsters lumbered forward towards her from the beam of light about a block away. They looked absolutely gruesome, and not at all tauman. One looked almost like a sort of dog, except it was three times as big as big as a dog ought to be, and it was drooling blood. A second was shaped kind of like an enormous snake, and it had at least ten legs, if not more. The third was some sort of lumbering, lanky beast with long, boney claws. And, of course, they all looked like they were dying to disembowel everyone.
"This looks like it's going to get messy," said Gehaffrey. He looked at Sahdi and Kahli. "Good thing I've got a system. I'll protect you girls."
Kahli made a plaster-cracking expression on her face like Gehaffrey had just told her that he was going to eat her whole family alive, because he might as well have. "Protect us? Gehaff, last time you tried to fight one of these things it knocked you into the air like a bug or something! If anything, you probably need protecting."
"Nonsense," said Gehaffrey. "I am a strong man. I lift, like, three times a week. Plus, how long have you had your system? I guarantee you haven't had it as long as I have, I've had a system since birth."
"Yea, Gehaff's had a system since birth," added Brahdley.
"Brahd, unless you're going to stop laying there on the cobblestone and help us win this fight, I don't want to hear anything from you," said Kahli.
"Why are you being so mean to everyone?" asked Sahdi with a whine.
"Because none of you are doing anything other than wasting my time!" Kahli felt exasperated. "I did all of the fighting last time, and I'll probably do all of the fighting this time, so what is the use in humoring all of your... Your ridiculousness?"
"Um, I did use my lasso [skill] on the monster for a second," said Brahd.
"Yea, and then you promptly fell over and did absolutely nothing while I actually completed the fight, because you're a fucking loser, Brahd."
Everyone just kind of stood (or laid) there and blinked at Kahli in silence.
Froufrou squelched threateningly, to add insult to injury.
"Yea, that's what I thought, you bitches." Kahli smirked, then she felt guilty for her verbal transgressions. It sure had been easier not to speak out of turn when Omar did it every five second on her behalf. "Er, hail Theseosus and her mighty pincers. Forgive me my linguistic tresspasses."
Nobody said anything.
But nobody needed to, because the beasts had arrived, and the fight was on!
The doglike skeleton beast lunged towards Gehaffrey and bit him in the right leg. He started squealing at the top of his lungs.
"Hit it back, Gehaff!" said Brahd.
"Why don't you use your lasso, Brahd?" cried Gehaffrey hoarsely as the huge, skeletal snake had started wrapping around his neck as if to asphyxiate him. "Somebody help me!"
Obviously, Gehaffrey volunteering to head up the battle hadn't been the wisest choice, as it seemed the monsters were immediately targeting him with all their malice. The lanky, towering thing hadn't done much yet, but Kahli wasn't too upset about that - the less undead monstrosities attacking everyone, the better, she figured. Still, now that the beasts were distracted, it seemed like the best time for Kahli to start fighting.
Of course, she was dying to try out her new [skill] - but if she could get away with it, it made sense to use her ranged attacks first. So, Kahli summoned up a rock with her big left foot, and focused her energy in order to make the rock larger and stronger as she'd recently learned. Then, Kahli kicked the rock away from the beasts. As it zoomed away, she ran around the ground in a circular fashion - figuring it would be easier to force her rock to return to herself by hitting some of the skeletal beasts, instead of having to duck at the last minute in order to send the rock zooming off and away from her.
As her rock zoomed off into the distance, Kahli realized with regret that her maneuvering had brought with it the attention of the aforementioned lumbering skeletal cretin that had not yet attacked anyone. It thudded with strong steps towards her and smiled a wide, toothy grin that was as wide as three tauman heads. It was unsettlingly to look at, and made Kahli very uncomfortable. But she couldn't shrink in fear at this thing - she would face it head on, and she would use her new [skill] to do it!
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Sure, the lanky monster had huge claws, but it was moving at a glacial pace - and so Kahli felt confident that this was the right time to put [Barrage of Blows] to the test. She walked right up the beast, and before it could land even a slow swipe at her, she raised her big, left foot and with a flurry that was too blurry to rightly see, landed kick after nasty kick on the thing. Immediately she watched with glee as bits and bones flew off the monster.
[Combo]
[Critical hit]
Nice. Kahli had landed a combo of different blows thanks to her [skill], and had managed to hit the monster with a crit in the process. How satisfying! She was so glad she'd managed to scalp this [skill], and was excited to glean what else she could about how to best put it to use for combat.
The creature was bowed over and shaking.
[Bone Treader is stunned]
Bone treader, huh? Well, that was certainly a name. Regardless, it was stunned, and Kahli was happy to take advantage of that situation. She kicked and kicked with all her might, landing blow after blow in an amazing succession - noting that she was using the aspect of this [skill] that allowed for a large number of attacks while stunning one foe. Sure, her system had recommended that for one on one fights, and this wasn't necessarily a one on one - however, with Gehaffrey distracting everything else, this seemed the appropriate action to take. That felt especially so considering that Kahli hadn't, to her knowledge, recovered any [HP] sine fighting the skeletal berserker, and the last thing she wanted was to start racking up a bunch of damage. Kahli didn't want to know what happened when she ran out of [HP] in her system - though, it was easy enough to make an educated guess that it would kill her and send her soul to the spirit world. Then again, were any souls actually ending up in the spirit world these days? Even Kahli's dad had gotten into the land of the living, although his visit had been more benevolent. Still, this whole perforation thing was making Kahli quite uncomfortable.
Clearly the beam of light that was about a block away was some sort of a perforation between worlds, that's where all these foul skeletal attackers had come from, but the question still remained as to why it was happening. What was the cause? There had to be some reason that this was occurring, right? Kahli wondered for a brief moment if it had anything to do with the prophetic scroll that Omar had activated. The scroll that summoned Froufrou. Everything like this had only happened after the scroll was activated, so it wasn't outside the realm of possibility... However, it seemed unlikely at best. There had been nothing in the prophecy about the spirit world or about perforations, and to her knowledge Froufrou hadn't done anything to spur this stuff along. In fact, Froufrou seemed as offput by the skeletal beasts as she herself was, if not moreso. All in all, it seemed unlikely at best that this was in any way her fault, which served to make Kahli feel better about the whole situation.
And then, with an amazing smack, and a smack, and a slam, bones scattered in the air!
[Combo]
[Critical hit x3]
Kahli felt dazzled as she watched her big rock zoom back to greet her big, left foot. It had zoomed perfectly back to her, hitting every single skeletal beast on its way for a crit on each one! Now that was not only unexpected, but it was awesome. Gehaffrey had finally been released from the grasp of the snakelike beast that Kahli could see on focusing was called a skeletal snake, and the skeletal hound was wimpering, its boney tail between its legs. So Kahli hadn't dispatched any of these foes yet - but she'd landed some serious hits! She was feeling great about this fight, all things considered - she just needed to make sure that afgter these foes were vanquished, she got the hell out of there and took Unit 5a23 with her before any other awful thing crawled out of the perforation looking for blood.
But Kahli couldn't spend every moment lost in her thoughts. She had to take at least one of these awful things out, and fast, before all three recovered! Kahli decided to tackle the stunned bone treader, it was dropping bones left and right and didn't look up to much more of a fight. She gave it more than a few brilliant kicks, this time leveraging both her [skills] in tandem as she'd kick her rock a distance away in one blow, land a few quick kicks, step out of her rock's way in order to allow it to zoom back and slam into the bone treader, and then start the cycle over again. This worked quite well, and it was not long before the bone treader was blasted to smithereens.
"Whew! One down, two to go!" said Kahli with a smile.
"Ah, more like none to go!" said Gehaffrey with a smile. "Brahd and I were able to take out those other two skeletal beasts after your awesome boulder rocked their world. That was very impressive."
"Thank you," said Kahli with a proud smirk as she noted that Sahdi once again hadn't done anything at all.
But their celebration did not last for but a moment. The scattered bones of their enemies started to jostle and shuffle around as they laid across the cobblestone ground.
"What's happening?" asked Kahli with apprehension. She was starting to wonder why her system hadn't let her know that the bone treader, or indeed any of the other foes, were dead.
"Ah fuck," said Gehaffrey. "It's one of those fucking things."
"One of what now?" Kahli grimaced as the bones lept into the air and started swirling into some sort of awful, boney tornado.
"That awfully friendly skeleton in the study talked about them before," said Gehaffrey. "They live as three separate bone entities, but when threatened, they combine themselves into one awful entity that's three times as powerful as the sum of its parts. They call them... Boners."
Froufrou squelched with a stinky nervousness as the boney tornado swirled faster and faster, as some awful, towering form took shape inside.
Gehaffrey cleared his throat. "Which, of course, is short for Bonereapers."