92. Raid

92. Raid

“You-“

Crunch.

“You-“

Crunch.

“-“

Crunch.

After smashing the skeleton’s head dozens of times, the bone dust that was once a skull scattered on the floor and then gathered together again repeatedly, leaving the surrounding people with dumbfounded expressions.

Not only the pink-haired girl who was trapped under the skeleton, but even Claire looked disgusted.

Do they think I’m intentionally torturing an innocent skeleton?

That’s absolutely not the case. As a habit from fighting for a very long time in the North, I never held back when dealing with monsters. What I’m doing right now is my best effort at an attack.

“You bitch-“

Crunch.

“I-“

Crunch.

“would die-“

Crunch.

“from a punch-“

Crunch.

“don’t-“

Crunch.

“ya think!”

Crunch.

There was a time in the North when I was stranded without any equipment as part of a training exercise. It was a drill where I was dropped somewhere in the vast snowy plains and had to find my way back alive on my own.

The pure white snowfield with nothing but snow was incredibly boring, so I would often pass the time by playing with the bones left over from eating monsters. Like I’m doing now.

Bang!

When I forcefully punched down, the entire skeleton was driven deep into the floor. The skull and shoulder blades that took the direct impact were pulverized and gloriously incinerated, while the lower body, which received less impact, was buried about 2 meters deep in the ground like a stake.

“Hmm.”

What should I do now?

Let me think back to the old days. How did I deal with skeletons in the North?

I took a sword, and then forcefully struck down…

…Usually, the fight ended after one strike, and the shattered bones never came back together.

Hmm.

Right, what if I just keep breaking it until it can’t reassemble?

“This-“

Crunch.

After turning the skull that crawled out of the hole into dust several times, I saw the black energy gathering and drawing the wreckage together like a magnet pulling iron filings to restore it to its original form, and a thought suddenly crossed my mind.

What if I prevent the wreckage from coming together?

This skeleton was reviving because its bones were reattaching. So, if I could stop the bones from reattaching, there was a high possibility of preventing its resurrection.

I’m so smart.

I immediately smashed the skull’s solar plexus and picked up the pulverized skull fragments from the impact. Once again, a black energy shot out, trying to pull the bones together, but I used my strength to stop it.

“Oh.”

It felt like pulling two neodymium magnets apart to prevent them from sticking. It took a lot of effort to withstand the considerable attractive force, but I had more than enough strength to spare.

After a while of this tug-of-war, the black energy seemed to give up on regaining its original form and split into two streams, one heading for the skull fragment in my grasp and the other for the body lying on the ground.

The energy tightly coalesced and merged the fragments, and soon a skull was formed in my hands. A skull with only a head, its body gone.

“Do you think I’ll die just because I’m broken?! You stupid bitch… No, where did my body go?!”

The skull screamed at me, its red eyes glowing. It seemed shocked that its body was separated and lying on the floor, and it raged, yelling loudly.

“How dare you humiliate me like this…!!!! I will not forgive you!”

The skull then opened its mouth wide in my hands. As I watched to see what it was doing, a spherical black energy began to gather inside the skull’s mouth, rotating more and more violently.

A sharp whirring sound. The black light soon filled the skull’s mouth—

“Skadi!”

“Whoa!”

Claire lunged at me and pushed me away. At the same time, a huge black beam of destruction shot out from the mouth of the skull that had been thrown into the air, extending through the clouds and into the distant sky.

Claire scolded me.

“Why were you just watching that?! It was obviously an attack!”

“I was curious…”

A skull shooting a laser beam from its mouth, wasn’t that cool? Besides, with a power level that only penetrated the clouds, it probably wouldn’t have hurt much even if it hit me directly.

“W-what if you got hurt… Don’t do that, okay?”

Claire said, looking flustered. I reassured her by gently patting her head with my tail. The way she widened her eyes and looked like she was about to cry, worrying that I might be hurt, made me feel like I was with a little sister, and I liked it.

“Okay, I won’t.”

“Good… Ah, S-Skadi! Behind you!!”

Reacting to Claire’s desperate shout, I immediately turned around. The skeleton, which had regained its body, was brandishing a white sword with eyes full of rage.

The white blade was heading for me. Should I block it?

No. I can’t. I can’t block that.

It looked like a simple sword strike, but my instincts told me otherwise. It said I couldn’t block it, that I had to dodge. My tensed tail stood up straight, and my ears perked forward.

So, instead of blocking the sword, I smashed the skeleton’s head.

I wiped a drop of sweat from my forehead and muttered.

“Phew, that was close.”

“…Hey, Skadi.”

“Huh?”

Claire, who had been momentarily dumbfounded, said to me.

“A Death Knight won’t die just by being beaten. You need a different method.”

“What? Why?”

Didn’t it die if you broke it enough?

I looked at Claire with wide eyes. Claire hesitated for a moment before explaining in detail.

“High-ranking undead all have a separate ‘Life Vessel’ that holds their soul, so they keep reviving no matter how many times you kill them. You don’t just have to destroy the body; you have to find and eliminate the Life Vessel. Just hitting it like this won’t make any progress.”

“So… I need to smash that ‘Life-thingy’?”

Claire’s explanation wasn’t easy, but the task was simple. To smash something that holds the undead’s soul. And smashing things was what I was best at in the world.

A moment later, the skull, which had recovered, cried out to me as if it felt wronged.

“Ugh…! I thought you had some kind of plan to break me, but it was for such a ridiculous reason! You idiot! Don’t you know the common sense that the undead’s life is separate?!”

It was common sense, huh.

Freya never taught me this, so I didn’t know. Alright, I’ll remember that the undead have an extra life.

I reflected on it in my mind and then smashed the skull with my fist.

I didn’t know what the ‘Life-thingy’ was, but I assumed it was inside its rib cage. However, the skull, which returned to its original state without fail, laughed at me and spoke with a condescending tone.

“Hah, you think I’ll die from a mere punch?! My life resides between the underworld and the mortal world, so your pathetic punches will never reach my Life Vessel-“

I smashed the blabbering skull.

“Ugh…! I am an eternal being! No matter how powerful you are, as a mortal, I will triumph-“

I smashed it again.

“Keep going! When your stamina runs out, I’ll tear you to shreds-“

I smashed it again.

“d-“

Again.

After smashing it about 327 more times, Claire, who had been watching me quietly, spoke.

“…That sword, isn’t that your magic sword? If you cut it with that, you should be able to damage the Life Vessel.”

“That?”

She was pointing to the white sword the skeleton was using.

I shook my head.

“That’s not my sword. The skeleton was holding it. It looks a bit like my sword, but it’s not mine, it’s the skeleton’s.”

“…”

And since my previous life, I was always taught not to touch things that aren’t mine. Stealing is a basic rule, so I concluded that it was wrong to take the skeleton’s sword.

“…I’ll just do it myself.”

With a strange expression, Claire approached the skeleton, radiating a golden aura. As she pulled out a dagger from her pocket, the skeleton surprisingly panicked and stepped back.

“That, that aura…!”

“What? Are you scared of this?”

“…Hah! No matter how dangerous that is, it can’t beat this magic sword! Come at me!”

The skeleton held out the white sword toward Claire.

At that moment, I smashed the skull’s arm with my fist. The sword was flung far away, and the skeleton, now missing both arms, looked dumbfounded in front of a ready-to-fight Claire.

“Ugh… Do you think I’ll be defeated so easily…! After waiting hundreds of years, I finally became the Death Knight I dreamed of!”

“Eek?!”

“I will not give up, never!”

A fierce black energy began to emanate from the skeleton’s body. The thick energy, which enveloped the entire area and made it hard to breathe, then wrapped around the white sword that was stuck in the ground.

“If this level of hierarchy is not enough, I will become more! To not just take the power of the magic sword, but to become one with it! Behold! This is ‘Divine Sword Union’!!”

A massive black storm raged. My tail hair was whipped around by the strong wind, and my hair flew. The white sword, sucked into the center of the storm, soon became a single point of light.

“UWOOOO!!”

The fierce wind that made it hard to even open my eyes subsided. As the dust settled, what was revealed in the center was—

“How’s that!! My fearsome appearance… huh?”

A cute little girl with white hair and white eyes, comparable in size to Iris.

And she was naked.