Who was that?!

“Show yourself!” – Shin

At the end of the room is a large staircase; a hooded figure holding a staff suddenly appears at the top.

“Looks like there are finally some brave hunters who were willing to take on this dungeon…” – Hooded figure

“Who are you?!” – Alex

“Oh, me? That’s not important. Right now, your priority should be to survive.” – Hooded figure

As he says that, he raises his staff up, and swings it forward.

The staff glows yellow, and the bones start linking together.

The bone piles turn into skeletons, just like the ones we fought earlier.

This time however, there aren’t just a couple of them.

There are at least 100 of them!

They don’t have any stone clubs, but they do have weapons made of bones.

“There may be a lot of them, but this should still be easy!” – Shin

Shin runs in and just like he did earlier, he destroys the skeletons with a single punch.

Me and Lett are just watching, if they’re as weak as the other ones, he can do it himself.

Shin dashes around quickly and destroys them one by one.

Some of them go flying into other skeletons, destroying them both on impact.

They swing their weapons, but they’re not nearly fast enough to hit him.

It didn’t take more than a few seconds before he destroyed them all.

“Impressive! Let’s turn up the difficulty a little.” – Hooded figure

He swings his staff again, and all the bits and pieces of the destroyed skeletons come back together.

“Heh. You think that just putting them back together again will change anything?” – Shin

All the skeletons start charging towards Shin.

Instead of running towards them and destroying them one by one like he did earlier, he starts charging up an attack instead.

Just when the skeletons get in range to attack him, he releases his attack, creating a huge shockwave that destroys every skeleton instantly.

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Just moments later, without the hooded figure waving his staff, the skeletons regenerate back again.

Shin sighs.

“Didn’t I tell you putting them back together again is pointless?” – Shin

“Oh? Is that so?” – Hooded figure

It’s annoying that they keep going back together, but they’re weak, so we should be fine.

I guess it’s time for us to help as well.

If we can stop that guy, then the skeletons will probably stop regenerating too.

“Shin, let’s destroy these skeletons then go beat that guy up.” – Alex

“Aye, aye, captain.” – Shin

“I’ll help too!” – Lett

The hooded figure starts laughing.

“Well, if you’re all going to fight, then I guess I should stop holding back.” -Hooded figure

He swings his staff again; it glows even more intensely than it did before.

The bones of all the skeletons suddenly grow thicker.

“Ooh! Are they stronger now? Let’s test them out!” – Shin

Shin rushes towards them.

One of them swings their bone weapon and Shin dodges.

That attack was much faster than before, but still not fast enough to hit him.

Shin counter attacks, and yet again breaks the skeleton in a single hit.

“Heh, it may be stronger and faster, but it’s still far below me.” – Shin

But there is one more thing that is different; the speed at which they regenerate.

Before the bones even hit the floor they reassemble into another skeleton.

The guy on the staircase didn’t even have to do anything.

That’s quite troublesome…

The skeletons still outnumber us by a lot, and they start surrounding us.

Each time one of them gets close, me or Shin destroy them with a single punch, but every time we do, they just regenerate again.

It’s a stalemate…

They can’t harm us because they die the moment they get close, but we can’t keep them down either…

“We’re not going anywhere if we keep this up. Alex, take Lett with you and go chase down that weirdo. I’ll stay here and deal with the skeletons. It’s good endurance training too!” – Shin

“Alright!” – Alex

“Shin, create an opening for me and Alex to leave. The moment they get destroyed we run up those stairs before the can regenerate.” – Lett

Shin nods.

He charges up an attack, just like earlier.

When the skeletons get close, he releases, and all the skeletons are destroyed.

“Now!” – Lett

Me and Lett both start sprinting towards the stairs.

I get to the stairs right before the skeletons can regenerate, but Lett wasn’t quite fast enough.

Some of the bones landed on the bottom of the stairs and they reformed before she was able to go up.

“Don’t worry about me, Alex. Just go! I’ll join you in a moment.” – Lett

“Okay!” – Alex

The other skeletons grow back and run towards Shin.

Lett just has to deal with that one skeleton; she should be able to do that.

--- [Lett’s perspective]

The skeleton swings its bone weapon and I jump back.

Damn, it’s so fast.

I was barely even able to dodge it…

Yet, Shin and Alex didn’t seem to have any problem doing the same…

Are they monsters, or what…?

The skeleton runs towards me.

He swings, and I dodge to the side.

I counterattack it by punching it in the jaw.

It gets knocked back a little, but it doesn’t even fall over.

It dashes towards me again, even faster than before.

Is it mad?

It swings its weapon so fast that I’m not able to dodge it in time.

I have no other choice; I block the attack with both my arms, and a loud cracking noise follows…

“OUCH!” – Lett

It just broke my left arm!

“Are you fine over there, Lett?!” – Shin

“Yes, don’t worry!” – Lett

I’ve been in worse situations before.

My arm breaking is nothing compared to my arm literally exploding!

The skeleton lifts its weapon up and swings yet again.

This time I was able to roll away before it hit me.

The swing hits the metal floor and the weapon breaks.

But just like the skeletons themselves, the broken pieces just fly back, repairing itself almost instantly.

It’s embarrassing that I’m having this much trouble with just one of them…

Even though we haven’t known each other for long, we’ve already become friends.

I want to continue working with them, but to do that, I’ll have to get much stronger than I am now…