Dali’s party was headed south, looking for the undead they had heard about.

It didn’t take them long to stumble on some skeletons.

They drew straws, and Aesh won.

“Yes!”

He was eager to show the others what he could do.

They were all surprised when he started to dance.

He was able to dodge the first skeleton’s attack with a dance step, at which point he pulled out his sword.

Any normal party would have assumed that their mage had gone mad, dancing and swordfighting.

In the party that Dali had joined, doing things that didn’t make any sense was normal.

He dispatched one of the skeletons with a quick stab, knocking off its head, and he began to fight in earnest.

He pulled out his staff and crushed another skeleton. He used his staff to vault over the now destroyed skeleton and used his momentum to kick another skeleton.

As he kicked it, he released a blast of freezing cold through his feet, destroying it as well.

In mere moments, he attacked the skeletons unpredictably, and destroyed all the skeletons.

Dali was especially happy with Aesh.

He also, after all, had learned many different skills, and was impressed with how Aesh used them all so fluently.

They decided that Aesh would be out of the betting pool until everyone had a turn.

Aurora won next.

She drew her sword.

It was scratched, rusted, and cracked.

The rest of the party didn’t know, but it’s durability was one.

A single mistake away from destruction.

She was hoping to try a new technique.

She had thought of it for when a sword was irreparably damaged.

She swung her sword before the skeletons were even in range.

The sword snapped in half, and part of the blade shot forward, impaling a skeleton’s shoulder.

She looked at the half sword she had left and checked its stats.

She smiled.

The durability had increased.

It made sense.

A chain was only as strong as the weakest link.

If the weakest link broke, it would become stronger.

Only a member of Dali’s group would break their sword to make it stronger.

Next she used erosion.

It was a versatile technique, made to destroy enemy weapons using a large number of light blows which added up to a stronger one.

This time she used it on her broken sword.

Normally she would concentrate the damage to crack the sword quickly, but she was trying something new.

When the damage reached maximum in all places she stabbed it against one of the skeletons’ shield.

It shattered into a hundred pieces, all of which bounced off the shield and back at her.

They did not have enough force to hurt her even if they reached her.

“Armor Cyclone!”

Armor Cyclone was a technique in which winds swirled around her, damaging her armor and deflecting attacks, even magic.

However, she had a feeling that there was another application.

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The sharp pieces of metal became locked in the cyclone, forming a shimmering wall around her.

Unfortunately, it turned out they did very little damage, especially against the skeletons, who had no flesh for it to tear.

She drew another sword and dispatched the remaining skeletons without any more techniques.

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It was Aesh who came up with the combo ideas.

In Royal Road a combo was a series of particularly effective series of attacks which the user could save and use as they needed to later.

None of them liked the Royal Road combos.

Most high level users and serious gamers didn’t use combos because they weren’t very fun, and stagnated your progress.

They had another reason, because their skills were somewhat transferred to their real world bodies, which wouldn’t happen with combos.

Therefore, Aesh decided, there was no reason not to reappropriate the word “combo” for their own purposes.

The only reason they would need to think of and organise combos was for the benefit of each other.

So “Combo” would be used to describe a technique using more than one person.

He had gotten the idea from Aurora creating a pseudo-attack against herself for her Armor Cyclone.

He said that if her attack worked against magic, she could channel his spells into a similar technique.

She already knew that her technique worked against magic, and agreed that it would work.

They agreed that as the rest showed their skills, they would develop more combos.

Rell drew the next turn, and before too long, they found themselves facing off against some more skeletons.

He assumed a fighting stance as they drew nearer.

Suddenly he jumped backwards, as though startled.

The others saw why a moment later.

The skeletons cracked and shattered, falling into pieces.

“Who goes there?!” he yelled.

It was not that Rell had seen the attack which felled the skeletons.

He had not even seen them begin to fall apart before the others.

He had rather simply felt the attack.

Not just the attack, but the will behind it.

It was not Killing Intent.

It was not Fighting Spirit.

It was the determination of knowing exactly what you are going to do, and having no doubts about it.

It was not Killing Intent because he did not actually want to kill the skeletons.

Their destruction was merely a side effect of what he was doing, and he had not even thought about it.

The party watched in shock as Sun Su Seung’s butler walked out from the trees.

“Your Royal Highness.”

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