"-Huh?"
He flies back from the explosion.
"Another ability! How is he using 2 skills at once, with Gallery Mirror he can use that only once without the mirror remaining and Cursed voice is only needed to speak to command, Love Sticker is different because he may need to keep it active, skills that control usually need to be the primary skill active, but that explosion, they had marks on them, skills with marks are usually skills that also need to remain active, so how is he using 2 skills that need to stay active at the same time when you can only use one skill at a time?"
The man walks out of the smoke, holding his hands out.
"This is my third skill, [Mark Plus and Minus: Combustion]: This skill allows me to mark an object with a plus or a minus sign, and if 2 objects with the opposite marks touch, then a massive explosion occurs."
As he says this, a lollipop appears in his mouth.
"Why did another appear after he explained his skill, could it be?"
The area becomes surrounded by smoke again, and he sees one clone enter the smoke while the other charges at him.
"So, he uses a clone to create more clones huh, smart."
He keeps attacking the clone, but he decides to grab one of the clone's bodies and swings it around to hit the other clones.
He pays attention to the clone's hands to make sure they don't have a plus or minus mark.
"Jeez this is getting annoying, they are surrounding me from all sides, and I can't find him, I don't know if I have an item that would help me here."
Nine is still fighting off the hoard, transforming his skill to all types of shapes like a trident, rope, blade, and more. He turns around but when he does, he is hit at the back of his head, he quickly turns around to see no one.
"The hell." He is punched again to reveal that it is the man, he tries to catch him, but then his spot is changed with another clone, "Huh!"
"This is my fourth ability." Nine destroys the clone and turns around to see the man behind him.
"[Star Style: Bright Disguise]: I can mark someone with a star, and I can transform into that person as well as switch places with the marked unless the mark is removed, transferred or the marked one is killed."
As he says this, another lollipop appears in his mouth, he now has 2 lollipops, and this confirms what Nine was thinking.
"So, this lollipop has something to do with you using more than one skill, doesn't it?"
"Correct, this skill is called [Lollipop: Taste Test], it allows me to use more than one skill by explaining my skill to the opponent, although I can only have 2 lollipops max."
"I see, so that's how you are using Mark Plus and Minus and Love Sticker at the same time."
The young man stands there for a bit before revealing a shocking twist.
"Technically I have 5 skills active, my original, my lollipop, and my other 3 but one of the skills I just mentioned doesn't require me to keep it active by myself." He says this while patting the head of another clone
"One of them isn't active, I guess that means I misinterpreted. Then! Maybe it's a passive skill that allows him to use an extra skill, there's his original, the lollipops, and the other 2 are active through the lollipop so is he swapping through them, that would make no sense since then one of the other 2 would be deactivated."
"Jump at the intruder!" The man says.
Some clones jump behind him attempting to kill him, he turns to see that they have plus signs and he uses the body to hit them, but they explode, he falls back and sees the hand of the clone he used to hit them has a minus sign.
"Dammit, he must have placed it when I wasn't looking."
He clears the smoke to see the man again.
"Have you ever heard of a Post-Mortem skill?" The man asks.
"Post-Mortem Skill, yea I have, a phenomenon where a skill persists after the user's death due to their intense emotions and becomes stronger as a result, why are you asking that?"
"Well, the previous guardian of the graveyard had a skill called [Smokescreen], but he died, however, his skill persisted after death and it's the very fog that you see, this fog traps anyone that enters it, never to return outside again."
Nine is shocked by this information, he thought that this guardian was controlling the fog.
"You suspected that I was controlling the fog by producing it and then changing to creating clones, didn't you?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
The man now revealed to be the guardian, manifests a large paper fan into his hand.
"This is another skill, [Paper Fan], it allows me to control the wind, in this case, I control the fog that surrounds the area to move around me."
"I see, so you control the smokescreen with a fan but why bother telling me this information, you could have just kept that to yourself?"
The man smiles and laughs a little, "Simple, I know you can't beat me, and besides it makes my job fun to explain my abilities and crush the intruders, like a game."
"Okay so you get sadistic glee out of driving off intruders, but I doubt that's the only reason."
"It's simple, one of the skills I'm using...belongs to a dead woman."
"What, how, those kinds of skills only belong to the user, how could one of his skills be a Post-Mortem skill."
Nine thinks to himself, wondering just how this is possible.
"Master, I found the bowling ball item you can use."
"Alright, give it to me."
Cyn opens Nine's inventory and gives him the bowling ball that has a mouth contraction.
"Oh, I remember this, I bought this at a sketch shop."
"To answer your other question that you were probably thinking, I have a dead man's skill because all these skills I have are just a by-product of one skill that I am currently using, the original skill I mentioned."
"Only one skill? What level are you?"
"I'm level 20, not high, I know, but as they say, even low-level people can beat the strong if they are smart enough."
Nine is hit in the back by a sword a copy has:
[1000/1000] → [998/1000]
He falls forward and destroys the clone with the ball, "Well damn, it's not a lot of damage but it's enough to show he means business."
A drone appears to be on top of their battle, the guardian nor Nine notices it, and it is revealed to be Ms. Glem who is watching through the drone by watching the tablet.
"An interesting fight, I wonder how you'll beat this guardian. And if you do, I can't wait to reward you with my virgin body, I know you'll love it."
Nine continues using the ball to attack the clones, the ball eats the heads or other body parts when it comes into contact with the clones.
"Destroy the Intruder!"
He turns to see a stampede of clones' rush at him with rocks & sticks.
He sees explosions occur as they run, and he realizes that even more of the clones are marked with the plus and minus.
"Seems this is gonna take a while."
"So, if he is marking them while controlling the gas and creating then the order goes as follows:
[Paper Fan] to hide and hide his process then deactivate → [Gallery Mirror: Twins] to create clones then stop cloning since the clones will remain → Place [Love Sticker: My Friend] to be able to command them to "Destroyer the Intruder" → Use [Mark Plus and Minus: Combustion] to mark some of the clones with a plus or minus mark → Commands them to "Destroy the Intruder" → last, [Star Style: Bright Disguise] to disguise himself as the clones or swap places with the clones to be able to get closer.
But he said he can only have 2 skills active with [Lollipop: Taste Test] and he isn't using a passive skill since passive skills don't activate skills so then what if he's controlling the Post-Mortem skill to his advantage in a similar way to using his fan to control the fog."
Nine keeps using the ball and hitting the clones but soon enough the clones start becoming a bit much for him.
"Dammit, they're overwhelming me, I need to get to high ground."
He uses his skill and has it grab the wall to pick himself up but the clones are relentless, and they start crawling on top of each other, reaching out for him, explosions do go off as a result and some clones fly towards him, so he kicks them away.
"Post-mortem skills always have a distinguishable trait from regular skills and it's that they don't obey anyone else, but I heard that a cheat to bypass it is using the user's voice. From what I observe, he's just blowing the fog around to his advantage, it's not really obeying him or anything. But for some reason, when he uses [Cursed Voice: Loud Wave], his voice changes to that of a woman's, could that be another skill or-."
He comes to a conclusion after some thinking.
"Of course,
"[Love Sticker: My Friend]"
"Is the Post-mortem Skill!"
"He's using a woman's voice because he's using the cheat to make the skill obey him, of course."
"Hey, would you like another fact?" Nine turns around to see the guardian on his shoulder, he uses his skill to swing at him, but he dodges. "[Love Sticker: My Friend] is parasitic, it multiplies when a marked person touches someone that isn't marked, of course you are unaffected since they cannot attach to the same person twice and your clones count as being you and all the double count as being one person."
"Parasitic?" he notices a weird white paper he is holding, he uses his skill to grab the guardian's leg and he successfully grabs him and he pulls him closer, he grabs the arm and sees that it's a sticker sheet, with the Love Sticker stickers, the guardian kicks him but he uses his skill to block the kick, he, unfortunately, let's go and the guardian uses his Paper fan to bring the fog towards him, hiding him again as well as the clones, after the fog dissipates, he is no longer to be seen, having hidden among the clones.
"Sign, this is gonna take a while."
"Hm, I should see how Tool is doing her job," she uses her back section arms to change the POV to the situation with D49 and Tool as well as play with her fluffy ponytails.
The perspective switches to D49 who is currently looking up towards Tool.
"Hmmmmm, so which one is D49!"
They both remain silent until she speaks up. "Me, I'm D49, what do you want!"
"Ha." Tool mumps towards D49 and punches her with her robotic arm, D49 just barely blocks the blow and is sent flying.
[20/20] → [15/20]
"D-damn!"
She hits the ground but quickly recovers and charges in, Tool attempts to hit her again but D49 dodges and uses her punch skill to hit her in the face.
"Well shit, you know how to punch, GOOD!"
Tool goes in for another swing but this time D49 cannot block it this time and takes immense damage from the attack:
[15/20] → [9/20]
D49 struggles to get up and her passive skill activates, increasing her damage by 20%, she gets up and she is bleeding a lot, Tool tries striking again but D49 dodges and is filled with fury, she starts delivering a combo of attacks, hitting her face repeatedly
Tool is now bleeding from her face and head, still getting punched, but her health isn't going down because D49 is still far too weak. She grabs D49's arm and punches her to the ground.
"Damn it, she's strong but not strong enough to deplete my health, she really caught me off guard there."
"She told me to put this weird glitchy purple flower in her mouth, I'll need to knock her out."
Mama grabs Tool in her monster form and punches her repeatedly:
[650/650] → [641/650] → [629/650] → [600/650]
Tool breaks out and punches her in the arm, which tears it off but Mama quickly regenerates her arm and smacks Tool away, this causes her to drop the flower, which fortunately lands right in D49's mouth. The flower dissolves in her mouth and she is surrounded by purple electricity, she opens her eyes which are now purple with white pupils.
Mama and Tool are fighting with each other in the forest, Tool seems to be struggling against Mama, she uses her skill [Energy Punch], her robotic arm glows bright orange energy, and she punches Mama, which causes her to be hit back and stunned.
"Damn it, who the hell is this? How did she bypass the barrier I set up."
"Damn, bitch, I'll kill you first since you are actually a threat."
As Tool goes to punch her, her arm is grabbed by someone, Tool turns around and it turns out to be D49 who is now smiling sinisterly and her eyes are different, Tool is thrown away back into the flower field and D49 is following suit.
"The hell, how did she do that, huh, HER HEALTH!"
[3000/20] → [2999/20] → [2998/20]
Tool sees that her health is somehow exceeding her current max and is slowly going down, the larger number being a bright pink.
Tool lands and tries to punch D49 but she is punched in the face this time damage is actually done:
[600/650] → [529/650]
"The hell, how did she do so much damage, is it her passive skill, no it can be, passive skill doesn't give that much of an ATK increase."
She tries attacking D49 again but when she lands the attack, her attack does not affect and D49 keeps moving forwards, punching her again:
[529/650] → [312/650]
"N-no way, a whole one hundred points of health gone, I need to use it."
She backs up and she starts using another skill, this causes the seemingly possessed D49 to pause.
She releases an enormous amount of energy which causes the entire area to be blown away through the sheer pressure of her transformation, her hair flares up and she loses her ponytail, her skin becomes slightly light red and her hair also becomes light red, her robotic arm is surrounded in orange energy and glowing, her eyes also turn black and her irises turn a fluorescent red with them showing a bit of glitching.
"TIME TO MURDERIZE YOU!"
Tool charges at D49 and with one punch, she is sent flying back and the area in front of Tool is destroyed, the possessed D49 starts laughing maniacally and rushes at Tool, preparing a punch her, Tool also revs up her own punch towards D49 and the 2 clash their fists, a shockwave releases around the area, causing the flowers to be blown all over the place.
Mama, having recovered from the attack from Tool, stares in awe and confusion at D49's power.
"When did she have this kind of power, she never displayed this power in our training, and why is she acting like that?"
These thoughts go through her mind as she witnesses the clash.
"I'll need to finish this fight quickly, I only have 8 more minutes left until my transformation ends."
"But at the same time, I don't want this fight to end!"
"OI, GET YO ASS READY, I'M GONNA BEAT YOU UNTIL YOU'RE BEGGING FOR MERCY!"