149. The Catacombs (III)

They forged farther up the dreary hill.

More Skeletons came crawling. They had fist Skills blazing with the Laws of Darkness. They had passive Skills that made their bones hard as tempered steel.

But not as hard as Zane.

His bare fist got the job done. No Skills. Just normal punches and they exploded in splinters and white dust. You could see the force rippling violently up their bodies, a wave that made the hard brittle stuff warble and shift like troubled water.

They might've wiped a few dozen on the way to the first boss' lair. In the process—

𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!

𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕀𝕍 -> 𝕍

Unarmed Striking, surprisingly, became his next high-Level Skill—it crossed that Level 5 threshold. And it just kept going.

𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!

𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕍 -> 𝕍𝕀

He wondered why. Maybe because it was a low rarity-grade Skill, it gained experience quite easily.

Soon they started coming across bigger graves, graves fit for giants. And the monsters that came out were giant too—the same Giant Skeleton they'd met at the dungeon entrance.

Reina warded them off with flying colors. And Zane kept one-tapping them.

His Skill just kept going up…

𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!

𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕍𝕀 -> 𝕍𝕀𝕀

𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!

𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕍𝕀𝕀 -> 𝕍𝕀𝕀𝕀

𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!

𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕍𝕀𝕀𝕀 -> 𝕀𝕏

Reina got her first Skill up too—for her shielding Skill. She was still a little tense, but she went into each fight feeling quite confident now.

Zane found it amusing. On the one hand, she was quite a proud person. She never sneered or acted pretentious or anything—she was too kind to be that sort of proud. But she showed it subtly; she took a lot of pride in everything about herself. Everything she did, from her Skills to how she presented herself. Even her boyfriend—Zane often caught her looking at him and just feeling proud out of nowhere. Of him, but also of herself for getting him.

But she was somehow also prone to worrying a lot. Zane wasn't sure how someone could be so confident and so worried at the same time, but she managed it.

Still the more they went, the less she worried. Peak worry for her happened just before things went down. Once they got going she was untouchable. She kept up her perfect streak.

Finally, they made it near the top of the hill. To the biggest gravestone yet. A pure white headstone that seemed to be made of bleached bone. The script there was red and twisted, as though written out of dried blood in some grotesque language.

The first Boss Lair.

When they got close, it started to glow. The mists on the ground started shifting, swirling uneasily. The air started frosting over. They could see their own breaths steering.

The dirt plot started to shiver, and a crane-like hand broke loose, reaching for the dusky sky. It looked like a tree shooting out of the ground. Soon they saw it was just a forearm. The rest of its rickety body followed suit.

Until a skyscraper-tall Giant Skeleton stood in front of them. It wielded a pillar-sized silver scepter with a nasty ball bearing welded onto the end. It wore a gnarly silver crown. Its crater-like eye sockets seethed deep black.

It let out a soundless roar. And turned its sight on them.

𝕊𝕜𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕥𝕠𝕟 𝕂𝕚𝕟𝕘 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣)

𝔼𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟙𝟙𝟡

The Skeleton King raised its scepter—and the ground before it started trembling. Skeleton hands started shooting out, raining dirt. Soon an angry mob of skeletons was shaking off the dirt. Coming straight at them.

Zane nodded. A pretty good test, he figured. This could be fun. At his side, Reina paled, gritted her teeth. Readied herself.

He figured this was a good chance for her to throw off her Skills so they went in raw again. No Stormfire.

Here he discovered the first kink in their teamwork.

Reina was really good from the jump with the technical stuff. But it turned out she had a mental hurdle.

Nothing to do with the actual fighting. She didn't get scared or freeze up or panic at all. She kept a firm grip over herself. She was everything Zane could ask for there.

She just really, really didn't like seeing him get hurt. She got upset if he even took a grunt Skeleton whack. Which wasn't a bad thing on its own. She took it a bit far, though.

He waded into the fray expecting to get hit. There were dozens of skeletons swarming him all at once, smashing him from all kinds of odd angles—and he felt her frantically throwing up shields. Blocking every shot, almost wrapping him in them. It was pretty impressive actually. He could tell she was stretching herself. But she was still keeping everything together

Then came the Boss.

It raised that giant bowling-ball scepter and smashed at him. Dark Laws wreathed the end, deathly cold; the air crackled as it fell. Reina cried out, threw up a shield—but Zane frowned. He could feel she was spread pretty thin; she had a dozen shields up at once. Could she really…?

CRACK!

Elemental Darkness broke against a wall of lively swirling green. But the shield trembled. Cracked in places.

Zane blinked. "Reina—" he said, frowning. He was about to say she didn't need to take on everything—hold back a whole army of Skeletons, and the Skeleton King. It was too much for one person.

The Skeleton King glared at the shield, like it was personally offended. It raised that scepter again—

And Zane moved to greet it. He'd leap, smash it up the midsection. The cudgel would give him a braining on the way up maybe, but he didn't much care. Taking a shot to give a shot was a pretty routine thing. He hardly even thought about it.

With Reina's passive Resonance Skill, she could tell what he was going for. She got the plan.

But before he could even start on it he felt an intense surge of protective instinct coming from behind him. Reina threw up another shield, right as the cudgel was starting to fall. And took the force head-on; she gave a little cry as it shattered. He felt her little spike of pain, she got hit with the backlash.

Zane's frown deepened.

That was enough.

"Shield yourself," he rumbled to Reina. He felt that she got it.

Then he dropped a little Stormfire Smash. A very low-powered one. It was still like setting off a few hundred tons of TNT at the top of the hill. There was a flash of shocking blue-white lighting up the night, piercing through that purple haze. When it faded they saw the aftermath. It'd carved out huge chunk out of that graveyard hill, set half its face on fire. Shattered that giant tombstone, left the Skeleton King a mound of smoking, burning white chunks next to a blackened scepter. All the Skeletons were gone.

He went back to Reina, who'd collapsed on her knees, sweating and panting. And frowning too—she was disappointed in herself. Frustrated. She was already thinking over the fight, he could tell—analyzing every little thing she did. Trying to figure out what she could've done better.

He gave her a hand, helped her up. Then asked her. "What should you have done?"

"I need to train my mental powers," she said instantly. "So I can split control better—and Level up too, so I have more essence to take hard shots—"

"No," said Zane, shaking his head. He held her gently. "It's not a strength thing. You have to let me get hit sometimes. Especially by the small fry. It's okay."

Judging by her frown Reina was not a fan of this idea.

"Just focus on blocking the important shots," he said. Then paused. "Uh. I like getting hit. It wakes me up. It gets me going."

He was being serious. "If I'm not hit a few times, my body doesn't know I'm in a fight. Can't get excited for it. So… really. It's fine."

She was still frowning at him. He had to try to speak her language.

"You can't take on everything yourself," he said, quite reasonably, he thought. "It'll get us in trouble against good Bosses. Sometimes winning means taking a few hits. It's normal. We're a team. You don't need to worry, I won't break." He nodded. "I don't do that."

Reina chewed it over. Then, reluctantly, she nodded— "That makes sense," she said. "I'll… try."

***

It was pretty clear, though, she wouldn't be able to. She just felt very protective of him. She couldn't turn it off.

Zane had an idea for her. Exposure therapy.

He went up to the nearest Giant Skeleton. They made a pact she was not to shield him at all. She had to get used to it.

It just started whacking him—smashing them straight on with a tree trunk of an arm. It was still Level 109, and that was still Elemental Darkness—some sort of deathly heavy Skill too. When it whacked him, there was a huge CLANG!—his head went whipping back.

Reina gasped. She was just about to shield him on instinct—their eyes met. She clenched her fists and resisted, good.

But three shots in and she couldn't take it anymore. A shield came up, blocked it off.

They tried again with another Giant Skeleton, and this time she made it to five shots, flinching every time, before she folded.

After a few Giant Skeletons, though, they got the hang of it. She just stood there fuming. Whenever he got hit, she got madder and madder. Eight hits in, she started reddening. You could almost see the steam leaking out of her ears.

But still she managed to restrain herself, which was good progress. His head was woozy and pounding by the end of it. He was proud of her.

When he turned around and whacked that last Giant Skeleton, he got a notification.

𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!

𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕀𝕏 -> 𝕏

𝕎𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕠 𝕖𝕧𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕖:

𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕏 [ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕞𝕠𝕟]

𝕥𝕠

𝕄𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 [𝔼𝕡𝕚𝕔] 𝕀𝕀𝕀?

He didn't know Skills could do that. What happened if he said no? It'd just go past ten?

There was some sort of experience curve with Skills too. The higher Level you went, the harder it was to Level. But the more each Skill Level gave. It was true the higher you went in rarity tiers too.

Over just the past hour, Zane had noticed a sharp increase in all kinds of little things—how fluidly he moved, how crisp his punches were, how efficient his footwork was.

He upgraded it.

𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕖𝕧𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕖𝕕!

𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 [ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕞𝕠𝕟] -> 𝕄𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 [𝔼𝕡𝕚𝕔]

𝕄𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝕌𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 (ℙ𝕒𝕤𝕤𝕚𝕧𝕖) [𝔼𝕡𝕚𝕔]

𝔹𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝕓𝕖𝕝𝕥-𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕦𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘.

He'd seen this Skill before, hadn't he? That one boxer Monster in the Titansteel Tree had it. He bounced around. His balance felt perfect. He threw a punch—just a normal one. It made an even louder sound than usual. A kind of whiplike CRACK! His whole body moved like a well-oiled machine.

Nice.

***

They came across a Treasure Area next. A small garden bathed in moonlight at the foot of a dead white tree, hemmed in by a bone fence. Their first A-rank Treasure Area.

𝔾𝕒𝕣𝕕𝕖𝕟 𝕠𝕗 ℝ𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕞𝕓𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖 (𝔸)

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕗𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕒𝕣𝕕𝕖𝕟 𝕠𝕗 ℝ𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕞𝕓𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕗𝕖𝕖𝕕 𝕠𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕒𝕕. 𝕀𝕥𝕤 𝕤𝕠𝕚𝕝𝕤 𝕔𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕔𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕃𝕒𝕨𝕤 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕒 𝕘𝕣𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕪𝕒𝕣𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕤𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕡𝕒𝕤𝕥 𝕔𝕦𝕝𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕒𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕤, 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕗𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕓𝕝𝕠𝕠𝕞 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕚𝕥𝕤 𝕗𝕣𝕦𝕚𝕥. 𝔼𝕒𝕔𝕙 𝕗𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕤 𝕒𝕟 𝔸-𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕜 𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕖.

The soil was light purple, bursting with so much essence it could have been a treasure unto itself. But the real treasure was what grew on it.

A bunch of strange flowers with odd-numbered petals.

𝕊𝕚𝕝𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝔾𝕒𝕝𝕖 ℙ𝕖𝕠𝕟𝕪 (𝔸)

𝔸𝕟 𝔸-𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕜 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝔽𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣, 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕡𝕠𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕎𝕚𝕟𝕕 𝕃𝕒𝕨𝕤 𝕕𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕟 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕙𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕣𝕖𝕕𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕕𝕖𝕔𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕎𝕚𝕟𝕕 ℂ𝕦𝕝𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕒𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕤.

A flower with big pale petals so thin they seemed translucent, fluttering despite the lack of wind. Or—

𝔼𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕟𝕒𝕝 𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕗𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣 (𝔸)

𝔸𝕟 𝔸-𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕜 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝔽𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣, 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕡𝕠𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕃𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝕃𝕒𝕨𝕤 𝕕𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕟 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕙𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕣𝕖𝕕𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕕𝕖𝕔𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕃𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 ℂ𝕦𝕝𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕒𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕤.

It was its own little sun, giving off the only radiant yellows to be seen for miles around.

There are more. They weren't just Law Treasures.

Several were A-grade Alchemy ingredients. This root or that stem, all A-rank—all would sell for quite a sum, he imagined.

He gave them all to Reina. She said he'd find some uses for them. Some of the Law Treasures she'd sell, some could help the Faction's most promising young stars. As for the Alchemy Ingredients—one of her many side projects was trying to spin up an in-house Alchemy department. It'd be quite useful if only to manufacture common elixirs and to upgrade elixirs they found in the wild.

She just needed more Alchemy inheritances. They only had bits and fragments right now despite lots of searching on her part. She hoped to get some at the Auction.

A few of the treasures were edible. They both ate an A-rank Treasure 'Full Moon Ginseng,' a strange milky-white plant just gushing with essence. It set off an explosion inside of them; When it finished—

𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!

𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟙𝟙𝟟 -> 𝟙𝟙𝟠