Lizzy and the skeleton dragons had a stare down for a good few seconds before she abruptly made the first move...and made a run for it.
“There’s no way in hell I’m fighting those things!”
She dashed past the skeleton dragons which, to her surprise, didn’t react at all as she flew past them. Lizzy thought that it was because they had just awoken from their slumber so they were still a bit sluggish but when she got to the border between the zone she was currently in and the perilous 2000-meter zone, she was suddenly flung backward without any warning.
*DING*
You are currently not able to leave the area!
“What?!”
She exclaimed in shock when she saw the notification and noticed that a wind barrier had appeared in front of her, preventing her from leaving.
“You have got to be joking with me!”
Lizzy heard a roar behind and suddenly turned around to see the skeleton dragons that she had tried to leave behind all gathered behind her, surrounding her in a semi-circle formation.
“H-Hello boys...y-you wouldn’t hurt this fine young lady, would you?”
The response she received was an angry bellow, followed up by a large [Dark Dragon Breath] aimed straight at her face.
“Woah!”
Lizzy quickly dodged to the side and avoided the dragon’s breath. Seeing as these skeletal monsters weren’t going to let her go, Lizzy readied herself for battle.
“Even though you’re all much stronger than your levels suggest, it doesn’t mean I’m a pushover and I’ll keel over and die!”
She activated all of her buffs before immediately rushing towards one of the level 110 Skeleton Dragons that was closest to her. The monster’s STR stat was a little lower than hers so she was able to push it back with a single sweep of her greatswords. She focused all of her attacks on this dragon but didn’t forget about the other dragons. She avoided all of their attacks as best she could. Taking them out one by one was the only way she could survive so she naturally had to start from the weakest one.
Since she was at a higher level than the monster, Lizzy’s [Appraisal] skill was able to display all of her opponent’s stats to her. The only ones that would pose a problem for her would be the level 120 Skeleton Dragon and the level 125 Skeleton Dragon while the others were still manageable for her. Since they were such big targets while she was a small one, Lizzy was able to nimbly avoid all of the dragons’ attacks as she continued pressuring her target until it finally died.
Naturally, it took much longer than expected because these monsters were Elite-ranked ones except for the Level 125 Skeleton Dragon which was actually a boss monster. The dragons were stupid and didn’t coordinate their attacks and just flung at her randomly. Well, they were skeletons without brains so their intelligence was extremely low despite their INT stat being high. This made the battle easier for Lizzy but it was still quite daunting since their HP values were so high and she had to be extra careful in not getting hit by too many of their attacks or else she wouldn’t last very long.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Even though the [Dragon Claw] skill was a pretty powerful AOE skill, Lizzy had no way of using it because she didn’t have the necessary resource, Dragon Force, to use it. It was a shame because if she could use such a powerful skill, it would probably make her life so much easier. It was a battle of attrition and Lizzy came out on top as she eliminated all of the skeleton dragons except for the Level 120 and 125 ones. These two had HP and defensive stats much higher than the others but at least there were only 2 left now.
This exhausting battle which had already been ongoing for an hour or so was finally about to come to an end. No matter how much of a gamer she was, Lizzy’s concentration was already beginning to wane as the battle had taken much too long for her so she was glad that it was almost over. However, to her dismay, the battle wasn't going to stop there. After the remaining 2 skeleton dragons saw that their comrades had been picked off by the fly that had awoken them, they did something outside of expectations and began disassembling their bodies...before merging together right after.
“Are you freaking serious right now?”
Lizzy tried to stop them from doing what they were trying to do but to her dismay, some kind of barrier appeared around the two undead dragons that were trying to combine together. Since she couldn’t do anything, Lizzy quickly landed and began eating food to restore her SP as she rested on the ground.
“Crap, it took me an hour or so just to defeat the underlings...now this happens!”
Twin-Headed Skeleton Dragon Lv. 130
“Go figure…”
Lizzy stood up and flew up after seeing the transformation complete and the new boss monster emerged from its protective shell. She quickly appraised the monster and sighed tiredly.
“...What the hell’s with these absurd stats? It’s like the system just added the two stats of the monsters together!”
She really wanted to curse out in anguish after seeing the stats of the new monster. All of its previous values had nearly doubled and a few of them completely surpassed her stats even with the buffs she applied to herself.
“...At least my AGI is still higher. I can still dodge its─!”
Lizzy dove down abruptly when she saw something white suddenly lash out at her. She barely dodged whatever came at her and noticed that it was the skeleton dragon’s tail. If she had dodged a split second too late, she would have been sent flying and received immense damage from being struck defenselessly by the attack.
“Are you trying to sucker-punch me?!”
Lizzy didn’t take the attack lying down as she rushed straight at the monster and raised her greatswords high up in the air before cleaving down. The end result wasn’t what she expected. Her two swords bounced off the white bone after making a loud clanging noise as if it had struck reinforced steel. The rebound from her attack nearly caused Lizzy to drop her two swords but she tightly gripped them to prevent that.
“Dammit, I forgot that their DEF stat had also doubled!”
The damage she dealt was practically negligible, but at least she still did some damage. Unlike normal creatures, undead beings didn’t have any natural recovery so they couldn’t regenerate health while in combat. It was thanks to this flaw of the undead that Lizzy had been able to kill 3 of the 5 Skeleton Dragons after she had chipped away at their health for the past hour or so.
19,999,240/20,000,000
“Ahhh…”
When she looked at the HP bar of the monster and saw how little damage she had done, Lizzy was dismayed but at least she did some damage. Now all she needed to do was grind all of that HP down to 0. Other than doubling its stats, nothing else had changed all too much from the skeleton dragon.
“It was stupid before and thankfully, that hasn’t changed but since it has two heads now then it’s become doubly stupid?”
The Twin-headed Skeleton Dragon roared at Lizzy and unleashed a dragon breath from both its heads but she easily dodged it.
“Yup, still stupid and it’s larger so it’s a bit slower than before...I can definitely grind this monster into dust! Let me show you the perseverance I cultivated from all my years of hardship from studying for my exams just so I could play!”
To be completely objective, this match-up was extremely favorable for Lizzy. It was a monster that was powerful but extremely slow and lacked intelligence. She could just stick close to the monster and flail her weapons around without being worried about getting hit as long as she paid attention. As long as she perseveres, eventually, the monster will fall just like the previous 3 she had already killed so she just needed to suck it up and start attacking. Also, since there was only one monster left, Lizzy wouldn’t have to split her attention anywhere else so maybe it was easier for her this way.
“Let the grinding begin!”