Pristine lawn, well-kept by the landscapers of the Guan family, met swampy loam at the boundary of the Sasen forest. Usually the roars from within keep people away, but not today. The forest seemed to swell with anticipation, the wood of the trees creaking it’s appreciation for the blood that would be spilled. The thought wasn’t too far-fetched.

Centuries ago, a battle had been fought here. The Jaioduo was young, then, it’s heavy stone doors not yet carved because the scenes etched onto them had not yet occurred. Attacked by a mostly forgotten family, this was where the Guan family consolidated its power, a strength the land would not forget in the coming centuries. At the time, it had been a field like any other, but as the blood-soaked years passed, the gnarled canopy rose towards the sky. Beneath the blanket of dark leaves, the shadows fester with resentment towards the Guan, and so the Sasin forest was born.

According to some scholars in the empty church, it is only darkness that is required for a mana stone to appear. They would say that the history of the place holds no bearing on its ability to create monsters. How then, would they explain the grudge-like violence these shades and ghasts that form within the Sasin forest apply to those carrying the name Guan? Or the forest’s proclivity for creating and cultivating those creatures they call “undead”?

Likely, they wouldn’t. “A coincidence,” they might say.

It didn’t feel like a coincidence to Dan, but he was doing his best to take advantage of the bloodlust aimed towards himself and Xiaomei. Hyun Soon was still under threat, but when given the choice between him and the two Guan children beside him, it was as though he were invisible.

“Maybe you taste better than I do?” The huge boy asked. He was actually a year younger than Dan, it had been revealed, while Xiaomei was, despite her size, a year older at fifteen.

“I doubt it. I’ve been cooked for far too long.” Dan’s inside joke comforted him and confused his two allies. It was overwhelming in the forest, the heavy cling of mana around Dan made his own harder to spread. It was claustrophobic, like the trees were intentionally obscuring his vision with not just shadows but magical intent too.

“I’m definitely the sweetest.” Guan Xiaomei was quiet, but Dan was finding her company very enjoyable. Not least of all due to her capabilities. Even though Dan had proven to be fairly adept with his dagger, it had been left within the sheath at his belt for the last half an hour, unneeded. Guan Xiaomei was entirely too well equipped for Dan to get involved. When you added in Hyun Soon, Dan quickly became the eyes of their group and focused on that.

The two boys gave vague agreement. The trio had stopped at Dan’s request, partially to catch a breath but Dan also felt that they were missing something important. It had been around three hours since the three of them had entered the forest. While they had seen other students, everyone seemed to be having the same problems.

Every monster holds a mana stone. It’s how they are formed. Yet the skeletons that had been attacking them left, right and from underground contained none. Sometimes a mana stone was destroyed during battle, but no one that studied at the Jaioduo was ignorant of that either. “We’ve been holding back, but I think we can just smash the skeletons at this point.”

“We definitely won’t get stones if we do that.” Hyun Soon was getting frustrated in his own way. Nursing a nasty looking cut, more of a stab, on his forearm, Dan saw him grimace and could feel the blood still flowing as the other boy tensed his arm. It was not life threatening, but it had only happened because Hyun Soon had basically tried to tear the skeleton apart with his bare hands. The fox-shaped pile of bones had whipped its sharp tail at his face, his arm protecting it. Dan had been the one to kick it to pieces at that point.

“I don’t think the skeletons are monsters.” The other two looked at Dan like he was insane, but it took him another few moments to pry his attention away from the blood. That attack could have taken his eye, and it worried Dan. There were techniques that could fix blindness, but they were costly. Even if there were teachers in the dark tree branches, silently watching, the dangers were real. “They’re not monsters in the normal sense, I mean. I think they’re an ability.”

Dan had more insight into the subject than the others, but he had no doubt they would come to that conclusion soon too. The task should have been simple, realistically. Find a monster - any monster - defeat it, take it’s mana stone and leave. Three days had felt like a lot, but Dan suspected this was not a surprise to their fierce teacher.

“An ability? What does that mean? One of the teachers?” Xiaomei was quiet, but Hyun Soon seemed almost energised by the idea. He had been downcast because he felt like he had been breaking the mana stones, Dan knew. That would always be a worry with his fighting style, but Dan was over the moon at how he had fared with partners for this task.

Dan didn’t think one of the faculty were behind the skeletons. “No, for one, they’re too vicious. I’m not sure whether we would be exiled for failing one way or the other, but these bone creatures are out to kill. A death sentence for being weaker than one of our teachers is a little much.” Dan closed his eyes and tried to remember the exact feel of the bones in his mana web. Primarily, they were physical. Real bones. Within them was something more… thin. Less substance than the bone, but not mana exactly. More like… “Threads.”

Dan looked at Xiaomei and Hyun Soon wide eyed. That was what it had felt like.

“Threads?” Xiaomei nudged questioningly when Dan didn’t speak further.

“Threads of some strange mana are controlling the bones,” he said with certainty. Dan had never seen or felt anything like it, but once the idea came into his head he was sure of it. Like a wooden puppet, the bones were being made marionettes by something in the forest. Dan had explained his shortcoming - that he had no offensive magic - during their tactics discussion before entering the forest but had been detailed in how he made up for it. When he explained the feel of the magic, the two agreed that it seemed plausible.

“So do we look for the puppetmaster?” Hyun Soon was definitely happier now, the heavy mace he had brought with him rotating in his hand excitedly.

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“We do,” Dan nodded, “but I doubt that the skeleton puppeteer is the only true monster in the forest so we need to keep being careful.” The other two looked to Dan and nodded. With a start, he realised that he was acting as their leader when he had no place to do so. “Do either of you have any thoughts?”

Hyun Soon shrugged, probably not having put as much thought in as Dan himself. Xiaomei however, started biting her index finger. A simple nibble on the tip, but she was clearly deep in thought. The two boys waited as she started pacing, the same finger on her left hand planted between her teeth.

“It’s probably weak. The puppeteer itself, I mean.” Xiaomei looked at Dan intensely for a second, inspecting him in a way that felt somewhat similar to how Park Man-Shik may have done in the past. “You can feel the threads? You’re sure?”

“I can, yes.” Dan nodded for her to go on.

“Could you follow them?”

Dan blinked. He had only just noticed the threads, but seeing them for what they were it was obvious. There were slicing lines through Dan’s own mana, connected to the skeletons they had fought. Those were the strings. Could he follow them? He couldn’t pinpoint location in the heat of battle, no. However, he could if-

“Yes, I think so… but we might need to catch a skeleton.”

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When watched from a distance, it was almost obvious that the bones were being manipulated from afar. Dan reminded himself that it was only obvious because he knew, not because it would actually be easy to tell. Dan was the one with his “eyes” on the creature, able to pierce the treeline with his mana better than they could with their eyes. The trio sat silent about fifty metres away from the skeleton puppet.

“Should we look for another one?” Dan couldn’t help wanting to move away from this gruesome sight. The skeletons that they had seen up to now had been all animal bones, and while some still had skin clinging to them, they didn’t send a shiver through him like this one did.

“Why? The rest we’ve seen have been in packs.” Hyun Soon replied to Dan at the same volume, the tiniest whisper possible. Dan’s perception ability could work both ways, though only through him. Dan could hear when something was said under a breath, and could make someone else hear his words regardless of the sound level. If Xiaomei needed to speak to Hyun Soon, Dan could relay the information as the middle man.

“It’s a human skeleton.”

For a while after Dan’s words, silence was heavy. Well, silence would be a strong word. The forest was full of death, but it was also vibrant with life. Birds chirped happily on the shoulders of revenants. Insects crawled through open graves. It might have been distracting once, but Dan had long overcome tiny things like that when maintaining concentration.

“It’s just bones.” Xiaomei’s whisper was even quieter than normal, betraying her reluctance. She was right, but at the same time, it wasn’t the same. Looking to Hyun Soon however, Dan saw that there was another emotion worth feeling. One which would overpower fear.

“It is the remains of a warrior.” Gritted teeth sharpened the words to spittle as Hyun Soon said them. His knuckles were white on the handle of his mace. “Catch it or not, we can’t ignore it.”

Dan and Xiaomei looked at each other before the small girl shrugged. “Like I said, they’re just bones. Don’t be such a scaredy fox, Ah Dan.”

He realised that was just it. The other two weren’t bothered, but Dan was. Pushing down his revulsion, which had brought bile to his throat, Dan joined his group members as they placed the puppet in their sights. Their mettle was tested as their eyes locked on their target. It held, and the three jumped into motion.

They had planned their attack beforehand, and each of their moving pieces did as it was supposed to.

Hyun Soon was in charge of phase one. When the skeletons had caught sight or scent of them, they had attacked with reckless abandon. This time was no different, save for the grasping hands instead of sharp claws. The skeleton practically pounced at the tall boy, it’s movements as unnatural as the undeath it portrayed. With it’s motions all wrong, the skeleton was especially bizarre to Dan’s senses.

He spent nearly all of his time following his own movements and the movements of other people. When the skeleton simply dropped, like it’s strings were cut, Dan flinched. Then, it sprang like it was tossed by those same strings. The collection of bones, connected by the strange mana thread, flew at Hyun Soon with impressive speed. Dan focused on watching the mana strings and left Hyun Soon to do what he does.

That thing, Dan had been very glad to find out, was being ridiculously strong. Dan was no weakling but Hyun Soon could probably kill an ox with a single punch, smashing it through a stone wall at the same time. In the current scenario, it meant that as the creature jumped it was met with an immovable object. One that was connected to two unstoppable forces. Dan could sense Hyun Soon’s mana move from his core, a thorny ripple of energy that stored itself in his arms. To Dan’s mana sense, it seemed as though Hyun Soon’s arms were now covered in armour.

Armour which he brought down hard onto the exposed shoulder blades of the skeleton. Destroying the head or spine had severed whatever connection the controller had to it’s puppets, but damage to the other parts just made them attack in different ways. Despite his eagerness to attack the skeleton, Hyun Soon yelped and barely managed to get his arm under the jaw of the creature as it started trying to bite him. Despite the truly staggering blow Hyun Soon had delivered, the skeleton itself was still intact enough to be an issue.

Grunting with surprised exertion, the boy buried his feet into the marshy soil and threw the skeleton backwards with all of his considerable might. The bones were light, and didn’t travel very far before landing and blasting into another attack. The force of it’s leap was enough to throw dirt into the air, and as it collided with Hyun Soon’s blocking arms, the connection sounded like a hammer blow. He was ready for it this time though, and as the skeleton bombed into him, Hyun Soon used the creature’s own momentum. He shifted and turned the block, slamming the skeletal attacker into the ground.

“Xiaomei!” Hyun Soon no longer had to whisper, and it felt as though the forest shook from his shout. Phase two started when Hyun Soon had the creature incapacitated. He had done perfectly. Now, it was the small girl’s turn in the order. From her position behind Hyun Soon she began sprinting. Timed to perfection by skill, not practice, the tall boy leant forward and Xiaomei sprang off his back. She hung in the air curiously, her mana spreading from her. It didn’t move like Dan’s own, and in his senses she lost focus. She became less there, whether it be to Dan’s sense, gravity or anything else.

When she had first shown her ability, she had winced, apparently waiting for some beration that would never have come from Dan or Hyun Soon. To Hyun Soon, it was a “cool trick that would probably be useful”. However, Dan had told her that it was one of the most dazzling things he had ever seen. It was true, and it had brought tears to the Xiaomei’s eyes for reasons far too personal for Dan’s insight to pierce.

From her vantage point, Xiaomei used her technique in full. Still suspended by gravity’s lack of awareness, Xiaomei leapt from hanging branch to hanging branch. The stealth was an unneeded side effect of her ability at the moment, the mobility was what they needed. On and around each branch she flitted to, Xiaomei traced a thin ribbon. She tied a huge pattern of fabric, all of it touched by her mana to make it strong, to make it stay where she wanted it and even to make the fabric longer.

“Ready!”

Xiaomei removed herself from the web she had created and dropped back down to the floor, exhausted. Using any ability was a large drain, Dan knew, so she was down for the rest of the fight. They’d planned for that, and it was now Dan’s turn to get involved and help Hyun Soon. Sidling up next to him, the stocky boy struggling to grappled the skeleton, Dan shuddered as he got behind the skeleton and grabbed it’s arms.

With heaves, both boys moved one after the other. Dan first, dropping his own weight and, pressing with both feet into the back of the revenant, tore the arms from the sockets. At the same time, Hyun Soon grabbed the skeleton around the neck with one hand, grabbed the groin with another and threw the thing high. Right into Xiaomei’s perfect tangle of thread.

After the rush of noise, physicality and adrenaline, the eerie quiet of the forest seemed deafening. Trapped in the soft yet unbreakable cords, the skeleton was surprisingly quiet too. Aside from the slight clack of it’s bones hitting each other, it made no noise. With no lungs to breath, it simply couldn’t. It made them very stealthy. Without Dan’s awareness to scout the Sasin forest for them, things may have gone very differently.