Fighting

Leo

I shook my head at Alek before walking past him and further on into the hunting ground, pocketing the core as I went, which meant my Skin would absorb it until I needed it later. It worked as a sort of Inventory compared to other games, where it was bigger on the inside but I wasn't affected by the weight.

This whole area was purely for Alek to train, and the corpses around here were unsuitable for raising as undead. So while I was happy that Alek had leveled up the Dark Knight skill and gained a new skill to boot, I was also pissed as the new skill had decimated his health, dropping it by 70%, past the 50% percent mark so his injuries were visible, hence why his arm had blown off. He was my only protection out here, my spells didn't work on the Slimes, all my old Undead had died when I did and I'd run out of shotgun shells and I'd lost the shotgun. All I had left was my fire glove which dealt measly damage and Alek who had made me lose trust in him by wrecking more than half his health.

On the plus side, now that the Dark Knight Skill had leveled up, Alek gained back a portion of his old stats, approximately 20% which was added onto his new stats gained from becoming a Dark Knight. Overall this resulted in an increase in Alek's stats by 40%, discarding all Intelligence and Wisdom values. He also gained a Dark Dagger, which was bound to his soul and would grow along with him. Unfortunately, discarding his Dark Slash and Burst, his actual combat ability was still less than that of an average level one warrior.

We advanced forward leaping on anything that we saw, with Alek leaping on anything slightly blue, which in one case turned out to be a rather unfortunate pebble. Thankfully now that Alek had his Dark Dagger, made of the same essence as his body and therefore able to constantly paralyze someone, the going was easier, unfortunately, because the dagger was so small and he wasn't using Dark Slash as I'd forbidden him from using it, due to his overuse of the skill against the warrior he once called friend, the going was slower than I would have liked, with us missing out on many potential battles, letting the SLimes roll off into the distance.

His dagger was much more effective than his fist, however, and I was glad he'd leveled up at such a timely moment allowing him to make full use of it.

Alek got into a rhythm, he would leap at the slime, preventing it from jumping around and pinning it to the ground. He would then hastily carve off small bits of its body off the Slime, making them so small the Slime was unable to reabsorb them. This would continue on until the slime just gave up and the essence surrounding the Core fell away, leaving it alone and naked to the world and my wallet. After we'd collected 30 cores using such methods, I signaled to Alek, using a shooing motion with my hands.

"Go on, let loose, from now on I don't care what condition the cores are in, we've collected enough. The main purpose of this trip was to make you stronger anyway."

Alek seemed to grin, it was hard to tell given his unique facial features made of smoke. He immediately dashed forward, seeming to imitate a Warrior Skill, Rush. It was possible that Alek could regain some of his old Warrior Skills if he worked hard enough at imitating his old movements, so I encouraged him mentally. I chased after him, collecting the shattered remnants of Cores he left behind in his wake, as he focused on killing each enemy with precision. Landing on top of the slime and thrusting his dagger straight in, before twisting it, causing the Slime to fall apart.

I followed closely behind Alek for several hours, having to skip over picking up the remnants in some cases as his speed was just too fast, his agility stat and mine both grew. Eventually, I could feel him stop up ahead of me somewhere and I jogged up to stand next to him. He and I stood side by side staring at a large ravine in the ground, large enough for 4 people to jump in side by side. Most of the cracks in the ground that we'd seen so far had been just that, cracks. The largest one was probably big enough that I could barely fit my head in, but that was the limit.

This, this was clearly a Dungeon.

Dungeons did exist in this world, which I'd found out from the Knowledge wave I received after I gained my class. They were naturally occurring areas of dense mana, like an eddy or trench in a river. They contained tougher monsters than the ones found roaming around naturally. They would also collapse after a couple of days, sometimes still with monsters and hunters still inside, battling it out. This one appeared relatively stable, however, with none of the telltale signs that it was Breaking, no glowing blue cracks anyway.

This giant split in the ground didn't have the blue liquid at the bottom which all the other cracks I'd seen up to this point had had, instead, only darkness stared back at me instead of a blue river.

I didn't look for any sort of direction from Alek, he was ready, and as a worst, worst-case scenario, he could use his new Dark Burst skill to get us out of danger.

I told Alek to go first before sliding down one of the walls once he confirmed it was safe. Once I was down there, I was astounded how bright everything was. In contrast to the inky blackness I'd seen when looking down from above, once, inside the cavern, I could see there were tiny cracks in the solid rock ceiling overhead, allowing light to fall in. Ahead of us lay a long cave, punctuated with random mounds of white rock dotting the landscape towering above me and obscuring my vision. We set off, the white rock underfoot crunching under our heels.

We rounded the rock spired ahead of us forming a strange curving path as we walked between them. In front sat a Slime, facing away from us, the only senses they had were touch and sight, meaning as long Alek stayed out of sight he was invisible to the Slime. Alek stepped forward walking up to the Slime as it sat there using its mildly corrosive body to dissolve something, increasing its mass and therefore its combat power.

As Alek approached, I realized its height was approaching his chin, I hurriedly sent him a mental message, allowing him to use his Dark Slash skill, but only sparingly, I didn't want a repeat of his last duel.

He nodded his head slowly to signify he'd received the message, before stepping forward and raising his dagger high above his head and bringing it down towards the Core in front of him while activating Dark Slash, letting his dagger leave a trail in the air as it moved. Idiot, he relied on that skill too much.

As it pierced the outer layer of the blue Slime with little effort, the Core inside the monster, which was somewhere near the base of the monster before this, quickly swiveled up and locked onto Aleks' head, looking straight at him. To his benefit, Dark Knights didn't feel fear and with a rock the size of his head an inch away from him Alek didn't hesitate and plunged his dagger deep into the Slime. He withdrew his dagger and leaped back before the Slime made any sort of attack.

Before my eyes, the deep cut Alek had just made into the Slime, closed up with a soft 'plop', with barely a movement in its health bar. There was no pop up in this game telling you how much damage you'd done, you just had to measure it off the opponent's health bar, although you got notifications about how much you received. The Slime had its Core perfectly fixed on us now, and started to roll its body forward with its Core maintaining a constant position in the center of its body. The essence that Alek had released into its body with his Dark Slash, dissipated into the Slimes body, darkening its color, from light blue to blue.

I didn't call out, Alek already knew what to do. He would need his own level of autonomy in the future, and he needed to be able to make his own decisions while considering my wishes. This was another type of training, one which was less obvious but still vitally important.

Alek started running forward to meet the Slime mid-roll. He took a glancing slash, running past it but leaving me unprotected. It was a smart decision, the Slime only had two senses and it could only keep track of one of us at a time. Forcing it to choose between the two of us who was more dangerous. I also approved of the fact that he was relying on his Dark Knight skills less. I equipped my fire glove, which I'd gained from the Institute and threw very weak fireballs in an effort to distract it and switch its attention.

After the fourth fireball hit, its Core swiveled back over to me and it began to roll over towards me. Alek seized the opportunity, following up with a downward slash. As it hit the Slime, the dark trail left in the air was sucked in towards the Slime, making it darker in color. Once the blade hit the slime, Alek stopped and thrust his blade into the Slime, burying his hand up to the elbow. He raised his other hand, positioning it over the hilt. His dark dagger, composed of nothing but inky blackness, exploded using a form of Dark Burst I assumed, sending a large wave of darkness into the Slime. Its color changed to dark blue, before stopping right before black. It was probably heavily paralyzed, unable to move but I was sure it was still alive as its body had yet to breakdown and melt away.

Alek would have just extracted the core by pulling it out if he could, and true, that would kill it instantly while guaranteeing a successful core extraction. I'd had a similar thought earlier on a previous Slime and ordered him to do so, however, Alek had told me that he'd tried to do a similar thing once when he was alive. It was apparently incredibly difficult and Alek estimated he'd need at least 10x his current strength in order to rip what was essentially a vital organ out of an Lv 1 monster. Of course, by then it would be irrelevant as he'd be at level 2 and be fighting greater and more powerful things.

Alek began slicing off parts of the Slime, throwing them over his shoulder. The Dark Slash would cause more damage, but it was not worth the trouble. We were here for the long haul, after all, we still had the rest of this dungeon to complete after this monster.

Slowly the Slime lost some of the darkness, changing its color back to blue. With no warning, it suddenly rolled over onto Alek, leaving him trapped, unmoving inside it. The Slime tried using its acid that its body was made of, to start breaking down his body. Dark essence broke off from his body, quickly being absorbed by the Slime as his body had such low density, what with being made of smoke.

Just as its body's texture started to lighten once again, it quickly grew dark and heavy as its body took too much from him, it could probably absorb the poison slowly over time, maybe even evolving, but it was currently shoving it into itself. The Slime had gone past the dark blue it had reached before, and was approaching the color black. It couldn't stop either, its body was paralyzed and rooted to place, unable to move.

I was curious, who would die first? Alek was already in pretty bad shape, losing 60% of his HP in that Dark Surge earlier which destroyed his arm and dagger. However, the Slime had taken that full hit from Alek, along with the high damage he'd inflicted onto it afterward, ripping chunks off and slicing into it like sashimi.

I wasn't worried, there was a corpse which the Slime had been dissolving/feasting on as we walked in, even if Alek was banished by the loss of his hp, I still had ways of defending myself. Hopefully, this would help Alek see his error. Since his resurrection, he'd been focusing on his Dark Knight skills, most of which seemed to consume hp in order to activate. He needed to hone his basics, work on the low-level basic skills like Slash, Block, Parry and Engage, before training up his new ones.

I acknowledged that this was partly my fault, I had told him to practice Dark Slash and he'd leveled the skill up to level 3, but unfortunately, we'd gone up against opponents with massive health pools which gave them a capacity to ignore low-level damage and paralysis, Slimes, the natural enemy of his Dark Slash. He'd tried to counter that by creating the skill Dark Burst, unloading massive amounts of his essence into the enemy and overpowering their resistance, but it was a one-time-use skill, he hadn't reached high enough proficiency to be able to use it repeatedly.

I thought about helping but sat down instead and raised the corpse lying around as well as another one I saw. They were even less useful than monster corpses, as their souls had either been extracted by Revive.co or had passed on already, which meant they would rely purely on muscle memory to fight, enough to buy me 30s to run away at least. Blue light flickered in their eyes as they groaned. Their eyes, deep as they were, seemed to look straight into me, to my soul.

I stood up and brushed myself off, I'd changed my mind. I pointed at the Slime and struggling Alek still pinned underneath.

"Ram it." The two undead turned and charged at the Slime in complete unison and silence. Just before they reached the halfway mark between me and the fight raging, I waved my hand.

"Bone Structure: Battering Ram." This skill was like a godsend to all Necromancers everywhere, it was both one of the ultimate defensive and support skills at the same time. The leading undead's back twisted, his clothes flying everywhere, the front half of his body flattened out and formed a pointed shield, while his legs joined onto the undead behind, doubling his pushing power. They hit the Slime, falling into it partially while also managing to lift it up from Alek, allowing him to roll out from under it. He ran back over to stand next to me as I sent him a mental message.

Without warning, I slapped him in the face doing negligible damage to him and decreasing my health by 10%. I ignored the small pain and just stared at him until he bowed his head.

"You get one more try."

"Yes, Master."

Without further words, he turned around and ran back to the Slime with two 'people' struggling inside. He'd probably not been aware but I could tell, every time he used one of his Dark Knight Skills he drew upon the essence which made up his body, sending his body into chaos, reducing his physical abilities and lowering his reaction speed.

Alek was now aware of this, he should have been able to dodge that attack which sent him to the floor, trapped under the Slime.

I wanted him to learn at his own pace, without me spoonfeeding him constantly, so I hadn't told him. The Dark Knight Skills just had so many disadvantages, it was easy to see why this was an unpopular skill, even among high-levels, which I'd been told when I chose it, but I stuck with it anyway.

Alek rushed forward, sacrificing two fingers on his recently regenerated left hand, to summon another dagger. He didn't leave a dark trail when he moved, so I knew he hadn't activated Dark Slash. The Slime rose up to meet him, discarding the two undead to the side, their bodies crushed by its insides, rolling towards him and picking up speed as it went. Just before they collided, Alek used a similar strategy as before by slicing it as he ran past, but unlike before where he stopped and turned to face it, this time he kept running. He ran past the Slime, forcing it to stop and readjust its core and body before taking off rolling after him.

He turned and sprinted at the Slime again, this time leaping over it, slicing it lightly down the middle and rolling before continuing to run as he got past it. This strategy continued, with Alek using the terrain to his advantage, spinning off of walls, using the spires to catch the Slime off guard.

The size of the Slime slowly decreased as Alek exceeded its high natural regeneration rate, and then some. Its Hp bar slowly decreased to under 30%, so I stood up, judging that I could finally make a difference in this combat.

"Alek!" He finished his slash, before kicking off of one of the rock spire walls and continuing to slash at the Slime as it tried to constantly adjust to his quickly changing position. Alek finished his full rotation around the Slime, leaving it briefly disorientated, knowing that in a straight line its speed was faster than his. He ran over before standing in front of me, dagger at the ready in a one-handed stance.

"Get ready, I'm going to try something new Alek."

"Would you allow me to do the same, Master?" I considered briefly before nodding, Alek was now fully aware of the risks associated with his class and wouldn't do anything to damage this attack.

"Just be aware that your dagger might get a little heavier than usual Alek."

"Just be aware my dagger might be a little bigger than usual Master." Was that a joke? From Alek?

The Slime had fully readjusted and had started rolling towards us, a blinking health bar over its head identifying it as an enemy while also showing that it had 25% health remaining. Alek stood there with his eyes closed before moving with a sudden motion and ripping off his arm and pressing it against his dagger, it lengthened and broadened quickly, drinking in the essence like it was honey.

'Death Knight Skill leveled up to Level 3.'

Alek stood there holding a short-sword, 50cm long, with a slight sharp-point. I was also aware that as the Death Knight Skill had leveled up, Alek would gain an increase in stats, so he could probably take care of this on his own with the superior reach he'd gained. But I wanted to test something out.

"Go." he was there and then he wasn't, simply a slight blur in front of me, it seemed our physical stats had such a large difference that I was no longer able to properly follow him with my eyes. I raised my hand, picturing what I wanted to happen in my mind and so according to the game's rules, used Intent and fulfilled the requirements for casting a spell at my level.

"Bone Structure: Bone Sheathe." I hadn't just been watching as Alek had his fight against the Slime, I'd been going around, finding corpses of Soldiers who had wandered in here thinking that the monsters in here would be the same level of laughable difficulty as outside. Seeing as I'd found their corpses, I was sure that had gone wonderfully. I'd managed to collect 12 human corpses, exceeding my requirements.

Bones seemed to slip out of corpses I had collected, forming a mass above my head as I kept the image of what I wanted in my mind as I pumped mana to my soul, allowing me to control these bones. I waited until Alek inevitably leaped into the air for his attack (he was a warrior at heart, they loved a good final finisher attack) and raised his sword above his head.

I waved my hands like a graceful conductor, and the bones formed around the sword like a cocoon. They had turned what was originally a beautifully black and slightly sharp sword, into what was a huge white club. Alek seemed to realize what I'd done, the sword was now more than three times the size of him and gravity quickly took hold of him as he started to fall.

Ahead of him, the Slime had arrived below him and with a lurch of its Core, it bounced off the ground, rising to meet him quickly. Alek was falling and barely managing to hold the sword upright. With a colossal effort, and with liquid essence dripping off him like sweat, he heaved the sword over his shoulder and brought it down before him, smashing the Slime into the ground and cracking it as it did so. The Slime seemed to resist momentarily as its Hp bar rapidly drained, pushing back against the white sword, turning the ground around it to dust and whipping up a large storm. The Slime reached around the club, seeming to form hands out of its substance.

Alek landed on the ground, the other end of the club being held by the vastly stronger Slime. I quickly collapsed that end of the club, even though I'd depleted my mana from making the sword, it didn't cost anything to collapse a spell I'd created. The Slime ended up being covered in bone fragments, while Alek took a couple of steps back with his shorter club which was now twice his size and so took him great effort to lift it. He brought it up high and smashed it down on the Slime with a force that both shook and scared me. He took his club back to reveal a Slime with its Core rolling around confused inside, and with a blinking, less than 10% health left.

He brought his Club down again and again on the Monster, until it finally collapsed, the substance that made up its body melting away into the ground, leaving its Core rolling around on the floor. It rolled past my foot as I stared at the notification that had popped up in my vision in shock.

"Level … 2?"