CHAPTER 72 - Nasty brawl
I keep carrying the orb qi in my left hand as I run at the necromancer, who is already fast in his legs, running from me. Both of his bodyguards get back to their feet and chase after him, ready to protect him from my next attack as the other two skeletons of the same type come from behind me.
The rest of my foes try to give chase, but all of them bite the dust as I tail their owner. I boost my legs with qi just to not fall behind and barely have enough speed to not fall behind.
The necromancer is using mana to propel himself forward, mana surrounds and reinforce his legs, but it seems that he isn’t able to withstand so much strain as he soon opts to command one of his bodyguards to carry him as he infuses even more mana into the body of his minion, boosting even more its speed.
The strengthened pile of bones soon takes the lead, using its advantage in height to take bigger steps. In fact, both of them do so as their legs are infused with even more manna from their owner, using their undead nature to not feel the pain or strain that any other living being would feel after being infused with such a quantity of mana at once.
With both of them widening the gap, I am forced to act.
‘Thankfully, I still have my qi reserves filled nearly to the brim, having used only about 2 thirds of the qi stored inside the orb. Having a bit of leverage, I infuse some more qi into my legs and grit my teeth as the pain grows.
Once I see I am as fast as my prey, I stop infusing more qi and maintain a constant supply to keep up with them as I send some more qi into the orb to refill it, aiming for another shot at the price.
My enemy this time is not as easy to kill or fool as the ones I have been fighting so far. His strength is no joke, but even though he should be around the upper rank of the Skilled Warriors as the bandits said, that’s his overall fighting ability for sure.
He’s got a lot of manna, that's for sure, he definitely has triple my qi at the very minimum, yet controlling all those skeletons and giving them enough power to fend my attacks must be taxing. He doesn’t have that much strength in regards to physical defenses, so I just need to land a hit on one of his vitals and he will be done.
‘That’s why I should need no more than one shot to end it all.’
The concentration of energy in the orb keeps growing as I start dodging the things that the skeleton that isn't carrying the guy starts throwing at me, one at a time. Trunks, rocks, and even chunks of dirt are thrown at me as I give chase. The throwing does slow the first one of the two giant guys, as it has to stop at times to grab the things he throws, but the other is gaining terrain little by little. By the time we cross a small creek in the middle of nowhere I am about to lose sight of the first guy. Having to rely on Bruma’s lighting to strike down some of the things being thrown down at me.
Not knowing what kind of tricks he’s got under his sleeve yet, I choose to take care of the first one, gathering some mana as I jump ahead with all my strength and get rid of all the qi running through my legs.
I then create the crude shape of a mace mid air out of qi. I would have loved to create a whip or something similar, but my control over qi is not enough to create anything half as good so I choose the simpler version.
Wielding my makeshift mace, I use the momentum of the jump to position myself ahead of the big guy for the first time in the chase and deliver a strong blow to his face which it blocks with both arms. The hit however connects at a perfect angle to accomplish my goal of making it fall facing upwards.
Once I land on the floor I use all the mana I’ve gathered so far and bind its four bony legs with a big wave of the surrounding rocks and dirt. It shouldn't last for long, but just enough to stall a bit and forget about the guy, just like the other two big ones that were already left behind at the beginning.
Looking ahead I can barely see the fleeing silhouette of the last bodyguard of my enemy and so I infuse some more qi on my legs again, this time even more than before, going for one last sprint to get the job done.
At first, I get some speed and shorten the distance a lot, but once I am near the guy I start feeling my legs breaking down, about to fail me. My muscles scream in pain as I ask them for a bit more.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
With only a couple dozen meters to reach the necromancer, I finally choose to make my move. I didn’t want to depend on it again, but I am forced to use the explosive mixture yet again due to my weakness and actions. Transforming the qi orb into the shaft of a hollowed spear, I leap one last time into the branch of a tree, soon jumping again even higher up into the air to gain some more seconds.
There, high up in the sky I once again get rid of all the energy coursing through my body to gather a bit of mana, gathering as much as I can in such a small amount of time and infusing it all inside the spear.
The movement of the mana as it enters the hollowed shaft of the spear nearly makes it blow up in my face, but thankfully the high concentration of qi stabilizes it just enough to let go of it before it does explode.
It pierces through the night in complete silence before landing about a hundred meters up ahead, where I predicted that the necromancer should be about now.
“...”
*BOOM*
The explosion isn’t as big as I would have liked it to be, yet it's decent enough in comparison to the time that I had. The high density of the qi probably helped with that though.
With my qi orb now nowhere to be seen and my internal reserves nearly void of it, I barely reinforcing my body a little to cushion the fall from the sky, crashing through a few branches and meeting the floor soon after.
With my legs telling me to stop, I stumble to the place where the explosion occurred.
‘I need to be carefull, that guy was strong.’ I approach the small crater with caution, dragging my body slowly. I get to the place and there’s nothing but a small mound in the middle of the crater.
There, the body of the strongest of the skeletons is half melted. Its shield, the one that wasn’t broken through with my first attack, is but a pile of broken bones and metal on the floor around the bone pile.
Knowing that if there was any chance of survival at all he needed to use everything to protect himself, the necromancer probably gave everything he had to strengthen the bones of the skeletons and use them as a barrier to fend off the explosion.
‘Scary. That kind of reflex… If he was any other type of fighter I would surely be forced to flee. I could only win because he specializes in the control of weaker versions of himself, if not…’ Thinking about that just makes me realize how lacking I am in overall information yet again.
However, I do not take his death as granted, his hastily made barrier is nearly melted, but it’s still standing, so I need to closely check it out to make sure.
I can walk too much so I instead let myself slide down the crater and then gather some mana to control the dirt below the bone bulwark, I create a void below one of its sides to flip it to the side.
The bone cocoon flips to the side and lets me see what’s inside.
‘That’s some control over mana and bones.’ The necromancer is dead, but his body is all covered in bone armor too. He must have created it as a last means of defense all around his body, blocking most of the explosion, but the heat generated with the explosions passed through it and roasted him alive inside his own creation.
Just in case, I ask Bruma to burn the whole thing to a crisp just to make sure it's done.
‘I guess it works for me.’ I look around his body for anything to salvage, but everything that he carried must have been burned or lost in the explosion, so I leave as fast as I can before anyone comes to the explosion site.
With as fast as I can I mean literally walking at a snail pace. At least before I leave the place, once I get far enough I wait a bit to regain some qi while I rest.
My legs will need more than the whole night to be in perfect shape again, so I will need to stay still for a long while if I want them to go back to its peak before going back. In the end I wasn’t able to get anything out of this fight as I would have liked too, I don't plan on going back to retrieve the metal cage with the other undead, and all the other ones should have died once their master did. At least that’s what would make sense, seeing that the other strong skeletons have yet to show up here.
It doesn’t make sense to think about that right now, I have a lot of things after my fight with the necromancer, and for once, I am not really keen going back to “base”, as I would like to call the small room in the inn that I have reserved for me and the child. I am not keen at all.
That’s when Bruma starts licking one of my cheeks as if encouraging me.
‘Yeah, it's something that I will have to face sooner or later. Even more now that I have made quite the ruckus. The sooner I get it done the better.’ And just like that I get up and slowly make my way back to the city. I have only sustained some scratches here and there, but I have a lot of piled up damage on my legs, so I take my time, using the way back to heal and regain some strength.
A couple of hours of struggling later, I am finally back at the entrance of the city.
‘My clothes are still mostly intact so I should be in the clear for now. Let’s see how it goes then.’ I think so as I enter the city under the cover of darkness, making my way back to the inn.