*Tremble!!*
At the moment when Greg's leg touched the ground, cracks appeared all over the place with huge shaking and a two or three meters wide crack started to spread toward the skeleton, ready to bury it alive under the ground.
However, it's reaction speed was fast. It jumped to the side into the air, avoiding Greg's attack. Seeing this, Greg smiled.
"Just like I thought."
Almost in an instant, Alice in the Soul Stone changed her appearance into the yellow snake. With that, Greg disappeared from his place and appeared below the skeleton.
Greg noticed that Alice's light element helps him accelerating his speed, however, it takes some time. This is why he chose to use the wind element, which boosts his speed in an instant, of course, it isn't as fast as the light element, but for this small distance, it's perfect.
Greg looked at the monster above him and summoned his two daggers, which were having cracks everywhere.
Alice changed into her fox form and the daggers caught on fire. Watching this, Greg smiled and slashed toward his enemy in the air.
Seeing the attack, the skeleton didn't even try to dodge, just let the fire hit it. It didn't think a weak fire like that could hurt it, so that's why it didn't dodge.
As the fire hit the monster's golden armor, as expected, it only left a scorching mark.
However as the fire disappeared from before it, Greg's smiling figure appeared before it, which surprised even the emotionless skeleton.
Their faces were a few inches away from each other and Greg not leaving this opportunity to go to waste put his hand on the armor.
"This is the end!", said Greg, while Alice turned into a blue turtle and in an instant, the skeleton started to freeze at a rapid pace, visible to naked eyes.
However, regardless of the spreading ice, the monster slashed toward Greg. But just as its hand was about to slash Greg's head off, it stopped.
It was because the hand started to get slower and slower and in a mere second, the whole body of the skeleton got frozen and its hand stopped right next to Greg's neck.
As Greg fell back down to the ground he watched as the skeleton's frozen body hit the ground too.
*Shatter!*
As the frozen body of the skeleton touched the ground, it got broken into small pieces, leaving nothing just a shining purple crystal.
"An energy crystal!", thought Greg excitedly and started to walk toward it to pick it up, but suddenly he clenched his head in pain.
"Argh!!"
Greg kneeled down and clenched his teeth in pain. It was like someone was trying to crush his brain inside his head.
As time went by, the pain dissipated and Greg stood up dizzily.
"Everything comes with a price, huh? How funny.", said Greg, walked next to the crystal and picked it up.
It was a half-transparent crystal with purple color. Just as Greg touched it, his Soul Stone appeared, and with a light, the crystal disappeared into it.
After this happened, Greg felt a piece of information in his head.
'Middle-class energy crystal consumed'
Hearing this, Greg was surprised.
"How much soul energy does this Middle-class energy crystal give I wonder? Well, whatever. I need to hurry up to rescue Joe."
As he thought about this, he turned around and looked at the floating orb not far away from him.
He walked before it and looked at it.
"Let's see.", with that said, Greg touched the orb and it disappeared into his Soul Stone.
Almost instantly pieces of information appeared in his head.
'Soul Monster: Golden Skeleton'
'Rank: Manifester'
'Shield type: Golden Shield'
Reading the information, Greg was quite surprised.
"Shield? Not an armor?", thought Greg and summoned the shield.
In an instant, a golden shield, which was made out of golden bones, appeared on his right hand.
It was around half a meter in diameter and in the middle of it, there was a small skull, which looked quite creepy.
"Strange... Well, it's a Manifester Rank shield, so it should be okay.", said Greg with a shrug.
After a few seconds as the dimensional core disappeared, the whole place started to change.
The black ground and the red sky turned back into the green field and blue sky and the burned trunk has been replaced by full-blown trees.
Greg turned around and watched as the white crack got smaller and smaller and in the end disappeared from sight.
"Huh? Where are the other members?"
He looked around, but couldn't see anyone except him. It was strange because it was a known fact that after the disappearance of the dimensional core, everyone will be automatically put back to the zone's entrance.
Not wasting any more time, Greg asked Alice, "Hey Alice. Can you help me find Joe?"
After his question, the black Soul Stone appeared before him and started to fly toward a direction.
"Thanks!"
Not wasting any more time, he started to follow Alice, while his body started to accelerate and shine brighter and brighter.
***
Two figures were flying in the sky, while Joe was hovering behind them as he was tied up with a strange black rope.
"It was quite easy. Haha! Poor bastards, they died really miserably.", said the one who was carrying Joe with the dark rope.
"Well, yeah. But death would come sooner or later to them. What matters is that we have the kid.", answered the guy without any expression.
"Yeah, that's true. Ah! Now that I think back, that guy with the hammer was quite tough. However, he died in the end too. Oh and that small kid. He was so hopeless that he died from just one hit. Hahaha!! Poor bastard!"
As the two were flying, suddenly the smaller guy looked behind and with a confused looked asked, "What's that?"
The guy with the dark rope looked back too and saw a white light in the distance, coming toward them below at a freakingly fast pace. And what's more, it's speed was getting faster as time went by.
"I don't know, but let's speed up.", answered the bigger guy and started to fly faster.
However just as they turned around, a loud sound came from behind, so they turned back again, and what they saw made their body stiffen in an instant.
"Who are you? Come closer and you will d-"
However, before he could finish his sentence, the blinding light flew by him, cut the dark rope, and took Joe away, descending toward the ground.
After realizing what happened, the smaller one shouted in an angry voice, "Follow him! He can't escape no matter what!"
With that, the two started to chase after the white light with murder in their eyes...