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Griffin roared, his spear briefly twirling in his hands before he stabbed a skeleton through its skull. The wispy light in the undead's eyes faded as it crumbled into a sack of bones.
However, just outside of his peripheral, another skeleton lunged.
Soren seemingly stepped out of Griffin's shadow and swiftly intercepted it with his daggers. He was not as proficient as Griffin or Leandro were with their respective weapon of choice, but he was a fast learner.
He plunged the dagger deep into the undead's eye socket. "You owe me one, Griffin!"
A skeleton sneaked behind Soren, but Griffin's response was immediate. His spear swished through the air, cleaving the skeleton and sending a barrage of bone chips in all directions. "I don't owe you shit."
Behind them, the rest of the group were engaged with their own opponents, though it was obvious that they were outnumbered. The ground split and caved in. Rusty, bony hands burrowed out of the infertile soil.
The numbers continued increasing.
Leandro flashed forward. Droves of skeletons lunged for him. Having his Aura already unlocked almost felt like a cheat, and it probably was, in the lower floors. But he was painfully aware of the unreachable existences residing at the top.
He would not lose to mere skeletons.
He held his sword aloft, his stance relaxed, but his muscles were tout.
The cacophony of the fight didn't faze him. The skeletons in front of Leandro, as uncoordinated as they were, didn't feel pain or fatigue. A broken arm or femur didn't deter them.
The wispy light in their eyes flickered—as did Leandro's wrist. His foot drew a light circle on the ground before drawing back, his body torquing for momentum. Sharp, bony fingers clawed at his face, body, and arms. Or at least, they attempted to do so.
Leandro's sword flashed like a stray sunbeam reflecting off of a window. Three beams of light sliced through the air. And three skulls went flying, joining the small hill of bone splinters that formed around them.
It didn't end there.
His Aura detected movement around his feet.
He immediately moved a step back and a skeleton jumped up right under him.
Leandro thrust his foot forward, shoving the undead right back where it came from.
It crumbled uselessly, bones shattering into more pieces. Another one escaped Soren's clumsy dagger-wielding and dived for Leandro. He sliced upwards, cleaving it diagonally, destroying it.
Then, his sword arm flickered. A sneaky skeleton met its premature end. The bone chips turned into powder the moment they touched his blade.
Leandro tilted his head to the right as a skeletal fist aimed for his face. The momentum carried its rusty ass to the side. He struck it in the neck area and obliterated its head.
Another skeleton lunged right after. This one was armed with a sword.
He twisted his shoulder, narrowly avoiding it. "What a drag." Honestly, if Leandro could freely exercise his sword style, this wave of undead would have been annihilated within a second. That's why he had to recover his Aura levels as soon as possible.
He exhaled, moving right, jumping left, and decimating more skeletons on his way.
〔Agility +1〕
〔Strength +1〕
Everyone was engaged in battle, surrounded by the enemy. Soren, Griffin, and the rest struggled valiantly against the dead, but the skeletons just kept coming. More and more bones burrowed out of the barren earth.
Griffin skewered a skeleton with ease before a decayed arm managed to grip his ankle. In his haste to free his limb, more hands encroached towards his form. His expression went ugly, eyes frantically looking around for the others—
It was useless.
One skeleton swung its weapon at the back of his neck and—
A slash swept past Griffin's field of view and a cloud of bone fragments replaced his would-be executioner.
Griffin quickly took a glance to the side and he saw Leandro smiling, his sword flashing brightly as it was unsheathed from its skeleton-made sheath of dust. "If this is the best you can do, you should have stayed on the 1st floor."
"S-Shut up! I got distracted!"
The battle continued for another ten minutes before the horde of skeletons dwindled, until they completely stopped crawling out. The brief moment of reprieve was welcomed.
Leandro looked back at the group. Everyone slumped on the ground, panting.
Specks of blood smeared the terrain. Just some light injuries, as far as Leandro could see. 'They're in no condition to continue like this.'
"Alright, everyone, rest for a few minutes."
"A-A few minutes?!"
An older man, likely in his forties, spoke up in indignation. He was already feeling quite upset that it was a 20-something-year old upstart that was supposedly 'leading' them.
Now that he had experienced a life-threatening situation, plus the bleeding gash on his back, he expected them to beat a hasty retreat to treat the wounded, not to merely rest for 'a few minutes'.
"We still have to figure out what happened to the previous expedition team. Whatever piece of information we can gather about this floor is of extreme importance." Leandro replied calmly; only a light sheen of sweat denoted that he had engaged in a fight. "And we don't know if staying here is any safer. Those skeletons could come back anytime."
"We should go back! This is foolishness!" The man yelled. He'd have gotten right in Leandro's face if not for the throbbing gash on his back. Certainly not because he had seen what the younger man could with a sword and was afraid of stirring the pot. "We almost died! You'll get us killed, you damn brat!"
Leandro's eyes narrowed.
The man instantly averted his gaze, looking around at the rest of the group instead, hoping to instill unrest and convince them to go with his idea. It was not that hard, considering how many suffered injuries. Light or not, it still hurt. A moment of carelessness could have seen them joining the very same skeletons strewn around them.
"Do you all agree with him?" Leandro's jade eyes drifted to the rest of the Challengers.
"..."
A momentarily bout of silence ensued. Hesitation. Determination. Everyone's reaction was split.
"... No."
Came a determined reply.
Leandro tilted his head, shifting his slightly more curious gaze towards a young girl draped in a cloak. A pale face set in a determined expression, and, the moment she pulled the hood down, a mop of bright green hair styled into a ponytail with two bangs framing her face.
"Hah, brat... you're out of your damn mind! I followed you all because I thought we could do it with our numbers, but this is crazy! And we didn't even get to the castle yet!"
She frowned. "What are you going back for, to twiddle your thumbs and wait for the next group of Challengers to come and carry your ass? We all know what we signed up for when we came here, what about you? It's dangerous, I know, but I'm not a quitter."
Her words received an approving smile from Leandro.
She smiled back.
Discussion ensued.
"What do you think, Leandro? Is it really that much of a bad idea to go back for a bit?"
It was Christopher who posed the question, as quietly as possible.
Leandro glanced at him. "It is a bad idea. We'll lose momentum. But this is good for the team. The weak ones will be filtered out, leaving only those who are actually capable of carrying out an order without chickening out. Why, you feel like joining them, Christopher?"
"Uh-uh? No! I was just wondering." Christopher stuck his chest out. "I mean… I am a bit scared, but well… I feel like you'll be the game-changer. Yes, game-changer! That's an apt description!"
"..."
The man's words had rallied a few of the injured ones in his favor, while the combination of Leandro, Griffin, and Soren looked reliable enough that even tackling the enigmatic and no doubt dangerous castle seemed possible.
"We should go back..."
Someone said, in a low voice.
"We've done enough, haven't we?"
Another one chimed in.
"I'd like to continue..."
"I have a family to feed, I can sell information about the Monolith."
"Me too. We can make money if we clear this floor, can't we?"
"I don't know, but I got a point in Strength earlier."
The man leveraged his axe as a crutch to stand up. "We're unable to continue the journey."
Leandro stared at him lazily, almost as if he couldn't be bothered to waste any more words on him. "One of the rewards for clearing the floor is a healing potion, but I can see that you have already made up your mind." He turned around. "Guys, let's go."
"You're goddamn right, I did! If you think that you can simply—"
Griffin clicked his tongue as he walked over with a wide, purposeful stride. "Shut your trap! You've been bitching since the 1st floor, and it has gotten on my fuckin' nerves. Your absence won't change the outcome. Now get out of here!"
Soren ran up to quickly defuse the situation, but Griffin's brash, unfiltered attitude had already done damage.
"You'll regret this." The injured man knew it wouldn't be wise to further antagonize either of them. Just like Leandro, he turned around, but in the opposite direction. "Let's head down... these idiots are going to get themselves killed."
Fortunately, only two others decided to heed the man's words. Numbers were important to successfully clear the 2nd floor, but Leandro figured he could make up for the missing members by himself.
Soon, their silhouettes disappeared from sight.
7 Challengers remained, among which 2 were slightly injured.
As such, the team resumed their trek towards the castle.
...
A startled gasp broke the silence.
"No way!"
Everyone huddled around a spot on the ground, their reactions varying from horrified to deeply concerned. Leandro joined them at a sedate pace. A corpse lay in a puddle of gore, as broken as a doll in a mischievous kid's hands. From the snippets of comments he overheard, the body belonged to a man from the other expedition team.
"He was a good man." Soren said with a downcast expression.
Leandro found it hard to empathize with him, not because he lacked emotions, but he had seen such a sight one too many times. Let alone a single body, he watched as a veritable hill of mangled flesh and disemboweled corpses were burnt down.
"Should we bury him? I think it would be a nice gesture to do so." Christopher asked in a surprising bout of kindness. "I mean, if I die here, I'd appreciate it if someone buried me and wrote something nice on a slab of granite."
The question lingered for barely a second before Leandro shot it down. "No time. We'll most likely find more as we proceed forward. We can't bury them all."
Soren frowned. Not so much at Leandro's words, because he could see the logic behind them, but at his uncharacteristic lack of reaction. Heck, even Griffin didn't spare one of his hot-blooded comments.
"If you want to honor the dead, or get revenge, stay alive long enough to see the end of it." With those words, Leandro patted Soren and Griffin on the shoulder and walked off, but not before sparing a long, hard look at Christopher, who scuttled after Leandro like a chicken.
It took the others a bit to come to terms with it.
And the only silver lining was that they had enough piece of mind to mourn someone's death without interruptions.
As they got closer and closer to the castle, it turned out that Leandro was right. More corpses emerged, all of them bearing the same cause of death—mauled by skeletons.
Not a pretty sight. Many had to look away as they walked by. Watching flesh and skin barely hanging off a bone could even make a grown man queasy.
Fortunately, those very same skeletons were neutralized in some way. A fierce fight had ensued, but no one survived. Carmelo, a Challenger everyone had put their faith to, had likewise met a gruesome end, though he had valiantly brought down with him a not small number of skeletons.
Leandro inwardly tipped his hat at Carmelo. It was regrettable. If he were still alive, he'd make a valuable ally.
Someone threw up, but that was the only hiccup throughout their journey.
A few more armed skeletons tried to intercept them, but the combination of Griffin and Soren swiftly destroyed them. Leandro didn't even have to lift a finger.
Soon, they were at their destination.
The Undead Castle was a lapidated relic of a long abandoned world. The entirety of the 2nd floor was a broken plane of its own. In simple terms, an actual planet in the habitable zone of its solar system, bolstering the perfect conditions for life to blossom.
Taking a look around, one could clearly tell that it used to be like that.
Now it was filled with the scourge of the dead.
A massive gate stood in front of the group.
Leandro calmly walked up to it. A vein of lightning cracked in the clouds, right behind the highest point of the castle. 'How dramatic.'
"So this is the boss room?" Griffin grunted, a trace of wariness in his eyes, though Leandro was quite glad he didn't look fearful.
Soren chuckled. "Looks sketchy." Unlike Griffin, the intricate, ominous patterns on the gate did actually scare him. Perhaps if leading them were anyone other than Leandro, he'd have stopped there.
However, there was hardly any fluctuation in Leandro's expression.
For the life of him, Soren couldn't understand him.
Even during the earlier fights, Leandro completely dominated the battlefield, going the extra mile and making it look stupidly easy as well. That was one of the reasons there were no casualties in their ranks.
Soren was sure Griffin had come to the same conclusion, which was why his gruff attitude was toned down a bit when dealing with Leandro.
Dressed in casual clothes. No armor. Only a sword in his hand.
Leandro turned around, briefly, his eyes sweeping over everyone who followed him up to that point.
Sensing his gaze, they tensed up, ready to challenge the last and most dangerous hurdle in their path.
Soren and Griffin stood at Leandro's side.
In the rear, Eileen, the green-haired woman, tugged at the bowstring of her bow.
Around her, poised in a protective formation, were Benjamin, an American sword wielder; Christopher, the French spearman; and lastly, Wei Chen, holding a Jian, looking like he had received professional training.
"Don't die."
Leandro's words rang out in the eerie silence of the castle's grounds, then, he pushed the gates open.