Fuu～. I've petrified all the skeleton archers along the wall into stone statues.
A large crowd of Skeleton Archers with each and every one of them facing toward us. It was somewhat a strange sight to behold.
[You did good, Fate. Come, let's go inside]
I followed Aaron through the wrecked castle gate. The inside of the city was eerily quiet.
I thought that the skeleton knight would appear out of nowhere like before, but there was nothing so far.
Aaron soon called me out due to my overt wariness.
[They won't be able to sense our presence for a while since we have decimate all of the gate guardians. But we better hurry before large amounts of skeleton knights appear to make trouble with us. With Fate here, we can go straight to the castle through the main street without having to worry about Skeleton Archers. Can I entrust this task to you once more?]
[Yeah, of course you can]
[If that so, shall we?]
[Roger]
Hausen city's size was about half of the Royal Capital. How many skeleton knights and archers could fit into such a vast place? Just thinking about that sent chills running down my spine. Even with a proper party, it will take more than a week just to clean them all up.
As Aaron said, it would be harder for us to hurry to the castle if the skeletons swarmed us like ants clustering on sugar. We had killed over 100 skeletons, incurring huge amount of aggro in the process. Merely entering their field of vision would incite them to attack us as if we had murdered their parents.
[I will go ahead at full speed. Are you ready?]
[I'll watch the surrounding buildings]
[Cut down everything that blocks our way. Then, let's go!]
Me and Aaron sprinted to the utmost limit of our stats, down the main street.
Around 40 skeleton knights appeared up ahead, trying to block us out. Meanwhile, I could also hear noises of clanking bones from behind, making it clear that there were also several skeleton knights chasing after us.
The enemy was trying to flank us. Other than that, I could see skeleton archers above the marketplace along the main street. I see now. Once our movement stop, they will rain arrows upon us. Although they are only bones and no brain, they are still crafty nonetheless. Or at least more tactical than either goblins or kobolds.
Well, those tactics will only effective against normal warriors. Aaron bore the title of Sword Saint and was of the highest class among the Holy Knights. And I, am his disciple. There was no way something of this level will hinder us.
[Fate, don't get left behind. While I'm breaking through, focus on your own task. Don't even think about stopping]
Exactly what I thought. Alright then, I'll just do what I should do.
Raising the black bow, I released the petrifying arrow. They were already aiming at us, and could release their arrows at any moment. I don't think I could defeat them all by aiming at them one by one. So I simply aimed at one skeleton archer and released spraying shots.
"Gluttony Skill activated"
"Durability+12900,Strength+14400,Magic+11100,Spirit+12300,Agility+7700 will be applied to your stats"
While the inorganic voice rang in my head, I called out to Aaron.
[Aaron, before it's too late]
[Yes, leave it to me]
As Aaron sprinted, he activated "Grand Cross" technique from the Holy Sword Mastery. And then, when the holy sword begun to emit pale light, he canceled out the technique activation.
[Fate, listen. Earlier, I said that infusing magic spell attribute into magic arrow is really difficult. But there is another way to infuse attribute into weapon attack. For example, by cancelling the activation of a holy attribute technique like Grand Cross, it will infuse the holy attribute into my sword slashes. It's fairly easy to do, so remember it well.]
As expected from a Sword Saint. Even when taking his time to teach and give me pointers, he still continued to slash away at the incoming skeleton knights without doing any unnecessary moves.
I see. So by cancelling the art activation, the attribute will remain on the weapon, making it possible to imbue attribute effect to normal attacks? This is a very useful trick. Especially since attribute based skills require a lot of magic power.
Especially technique like "Grand Cross". It was a powerful one shot of attribute attack. However the cooldown period between each use is long. Aaron's trick actually compensates for this drawback.
What left is whether I can do it too or not. What is easy for a Sword Saint like Aaron, doesn't always mean that it will also be easy for me.
That is what I can tell from the 3 days of training with him. In short, Aaron was a genius. So I understood that there was a clear margin between where he and I stood.
What's particularly amazing, is that he can still attack properly with his eyes closed. And it seemed so natural when Aaron did it. He told me while giving me a serious look, that I could also do it, so I stared back seriously…..and said [I don't have that kind of mind's eye].
Well, perhaps if I go into full starvation state, the physical boost will allow me to do so, but the risk was too high.
Passing the gaps of the broken through skeleton soldiers, the castle finally came into view, so we continued on.
It was said that a crown-tier Harbinger of Death Lich Lord lived there, within that towering castle. Anyways, if we kept fighting outside, there was no way that it wouldn't notice.
The skeletons kept attacking us single-mindedly. Taking a short delay, I killed one skeleton knight so that I could obtain its Agility Strengthening (Small) skill. With this, there is no more skill that I can obtain from the enemies around here.
Looking at the city from so far, I had the impression that everything had been kept frozen in time at some point. It's because there wasn't much, if any, damage on the buildings. Such a large city should also house several warriors. But when I looked at the city's condition, there seemed to be not much resistance happening.
Either they were overwhelmed by something else, or by the citizen-turned-undead and they had no sufficient skill to deal with it.
I looked up toward the castle, where the Lich Lord resided.
The gate was wrecked much like the city gate. I could tell that the Lich Lord had humanlike intelligence to be reasonable enough to not cause unnecessary damages.
[Aaron, can I ask you about something?]
[What is the matter?]
[Is the Lich Lord as intelligent as a human?]
[That's one possibility. It did take over the city during my absence… Fate, all those things I have taught you, I think it will come in handy here.]
As Aaron told, not only that the Lich Lord was a Crown tier monster, it also has human-like guile. It wouldn't directly use immense power to pound me into dust, but instead the Lich Lord was the kind of crown tier monster which will use traps and psychological tactic against its opponent. It's the perfect kind of opponent for me who greatly needed more combat experience before going to Gallia.
The Gluttony skill hadn't been appeased yet. It's because the wretched skill was excited about the exquisite soul wandering about inside the castle. Quickly eat it, quickly eat it, it kept urging from within me.
This was the first time it got excited to this extent. If I relax myself even for a bit, it will most likely enter full starvation state immediately.
When Aaron and I finally passed the castle gate, the skeleton knights behind us ceased their pursuit. They stood there seemingly frustrated, but could only watch us.
Aaron noticed this and told me.
[It appears that beyond the gate is the territory of the Lich Lord. Other monsters are too afraid to get inside.]
[I see. So that's why there seems to be no skeletons inside the castle]
[The situation is different from when I here last time. Keep your guard up.]
Running through the courtyard, we scanned the surroundings for entry point into the castle.
More than anything, it was far too quiet that it's scary.