Backlebutt was doing an admirable job of staving off the fleshhungry roos. He could dodge and deflect unbelievably well, and his coat, along with the chain mesh underneath, meant that their slashes did little to him as long as he kept his more vulnerable areas out of harm’s way. However, no matter how skilled he was at evading, he was forced to endure kick after kick as the trio of skeletons took turns bashing into him with their powerful feet. His legs and midsection had to be a mass of bruises.

Milo finally caught up with the group when they were just a few meters from Backlebutt’s goal, the pile of stones. Now, it was Milo’s turn to draw aggro.

With a yell, he struck at the nearest roo in the center, whose back was to him. Its head was out of reach in this position, but he got a good whack at the thing’s spine. He thought he heard a crack of bone, but the hit didn’t take it out of the fight. He got one more solid hit on the creature’s shoulder, breaking it, as it turned to face him. At that point he started attacking the one on the right, trying to make sure he pulled as much attention as possible from Backlebutt to himself.

He was able to get a glancing blow on the second roo before he was forced to retreat, as the first one was now in a position to attack him. To his surprise, the one on the left, noticing what was going on, turned its attention on Milo along with the second roo he'd attacked. That meant his plan was working extremely well. Great, Milo thought, now facing three monsters that wanted to murder him.

Fighting the urge to run away screaming, Milo moved right, swinging his hammer to ward off the nearest roo. It practically ignored him, already bringing the upper half of its body back in order to bring its feet to bear, kicking at Milo. Fortunately, Milo had already moved out of the way, backing into the side of the tunnel.

Come on, Backlebutt, he thought, sweating. The creatures were closing in, and he only had so much room left before he was trapped against the wall. He’d purposely moved this way to give the man a clean throwing lane, but he’d better start throwing fast or Milo was going to have serious problems.

He swiped a few more times in order to buy more time, not scoring any meaningful hits and receiving bruises for his trouble as the roos kicked him with impunity. Come the hell on man!

Finally, blessedly, a stone careened out of Milo’s peripheral vision straight into the skull of the roo furthest to his right just as it was about to kick him again, dropping it. It was a fantastic throw even by Backlebutt's ridiculous standards. It didn’t seem like the roo had deanimated, unfortunately, but it was at least out of the picture for the moment.

The remaining two, for some reason, took this as their cue to take things up a notch. After kicking him a final time each, they both sprang forward simultaneously, slashing viciously with their arms. Luckily, one of the remaining roos was the one whose shoulder he’d broken, leaving the arm dangling uselessly, but that still left three sharp-clawed limbs seeking to spill Milo's blood all over the tunnel floor.

Completely out of room to back up at this point, Milo did the only thing he could think of and dropped to the ground, impacting hard on his right side. He successfully evaded the strikes, but the move drew an involuntary gasp of pain as he landed on the same spot he’d been slashed earlier. And now, he was helpless.

It was Backlebutt to the rescue again, however. If this guy ever somehow makes it to Earth, he's going to take the world of baseball by storm. Or I guess dodgeball. Whatever. Stone after stone pelted into the monsters, driving them back and giving Milo the time he needed to scramble away and regain his feet.

Assessing the battlefield, he saw the downed skeleroo Backlebutt had hit starting to get to its feet and knew he had to act fast to kill it if he wanted to avoid a three-on-one situation again. He sprinted toward it.

And that’s when disaster struck.

Evidently, Backlebutt hadn’t counted on Milo moving back into the fray quite so soon, because, as Milo darted forward, his next throw caught Milo in the upper arm. Hard. Hard enough that he heard as much as felt the sickening crack when his humerus split into two separate pieces. Motherf—!!

He cried out in pain but didn’t stop, his momentum carrying him forward. Miraculously, he’d maintained his grip on the hammer. He couldn’t lift it, however, and it hurt like hell just holding it.

Change of plan, I guess. Damn it! Milo had been so close to taking another one of them out, but there was no way now. Also, it hurt. A lot.

And how the crap was he going to finish the dungeon with two useless arms?

No use worrying about it now. That’s future Milo’s problem.

Swerving from his originally intended course, he instead headed toward Backlebutt, who wore a stricken look on his face. The look turned to apprehension as he saw Milo making a beeline for his location. What, does he think I’m going to try and hit him?

Milo was pretty much out of the fight at this point, he knew. The best he could hope to do was maybe distract the skeletons to keep them from ganging up on Backlebutt. That was why, as he approached his friendly-firing ally, Milo used his momentum and a painful, lurching movement in his shoulder to toss the hammer to him in the hopes that Backlebutt would be able to use it to better effect than he himself had. The man clearly had far more combat experience.

Understanding dawned on Backlebutt’s face as he deftly snatched the weapon from the air. Hefting the hammer and giving it a few experimental swipes to get a feel for it, he gave Milo a nod and squared off against their remaining foes, who were fast closing in.

Unwilling to stand idly by, Milo did his best to ignore the pain in his arm (and everywhere else, really) and analyzed the situation. Alright, how can I be useful here? he wondered.

His right arm dangled uselessly, in a great deal of pain. He could already feel it beginning to swell. The other arm was in much better shape, with the minor caveat that it was missing a hand.

Legs it is.

As the skeleroos closed in, Milo boldly approached the one nearest him and did his best to harass it while the other two engaged Backlebutt.

“Hey...you,” he yelled at it, unable to think of a creative insult off the cuff. Wit wasn’t his highest priority at the moment; he was pretty sure the monster lacked the intelligence to appreciate a good put-down, either in its capacity as a kangaroo or a skeleton.

He feebly tried kicking at it before darting back out of range, which did far more than the yelling. The thing’s attention switched to him for a brief moment before reconsidering and turning back to help its fellow undead roos against the only real remaining threat.

Milo had the distinct sense that things were going pretty well for Backlebutt, judging by the large number of steel-on-bone noises he’d heard in the short time he’d been fighting, and he’d be damned if he let the third skeleroo crash in and screw that up. Doing the only thing he could think of, Milo darted forward and jumped on top of the thing’s tail before it could hop away, hobbling it.

This move was actually way more effective than Milo had anticipated. At first the skeleton tried to simply pull away, but it just didn’t have the mass, lacking in flesh and blood as it was, to make that happen. Milo was too heavy for it. When it tried to turn around to deal with the nuisance holding it back, it didn’t quite have the range of motion to do any serious damage to Milo. It huffed and growled at him in apparent frustration, an oddly unsettling thing to hear from a skeleton with no vocal chords.

“Not so tough now, are you, you big...stupid jerk," he said, clearly having leveled his taunt skill.

...okay maybe not.

Meanwhile, Backlebutt had managed to down one of the two skeleroos assaulting him. Milo wearily cheered him on until, about ten seconds later, the man found another opening and took out the second one. Then, wiping sweat from his brow and sparing an appreciative chuckle for Milo and his feat, Backlebutt dealt the killing blow to the final incapacitated roo, ending the fight.

-

Rank Up! You are now a Level 4 (Elite) Scholar. You have been granted an additional skill slot.

-

Oh good, he thought tiredly.

Milo was dead.

Correction, Milo wished he were dead.

After coming down from his battle high, he quickly found that his entire being was one big lump of pain, with roughly the equivalent vigor of a squished slug. He currently lay face down, eyes closed, on the cool, comforting tunnel floor, where he anticipated he would spend the rest of his days.

Backlebutt nudged him, saying something, but Milo had found it best so far just to ignore this. The man usually went away after a while.

Unfortunately, his ally had decided it was time to start being more forceful, nudging harder. Milo moaned his disapproval, but the guy just wouldn’t stop. Finally, he opened his eyes and glared up. “What?”

Then, his eyes widened. Backlebutt was holding a small stoppered vial.

A small, red stoppered vial.

That’s...a health potion!? It looked similar but not identical to the one he'd used on Backlebutt earlier. Where the heck did he get that? Was it in a pocket this whole time? How did it not get smashed in the fight? He wanted badly to snatch the little bottle from the man’s hands and guzzle it down, but he currently lacked any limbs that were up to the task. Instead, he nodded enthusiastically, eyes still wide.

However, Backlebutt wouldn’t give it to him straight away. There seemed to be something he thought was important to communicate beforehand, but Milo was struggling with the man’s improvised sign language.

After a minute or so, after Backlebutt held his arms protectively over a sucked-in gut and affected a weak, doddering gait, Milo began to grasp that there was some catch with this particular potion, like it might have some unpleasant side effects. That was all he could get before Backlebutt finally quit and walked away, taking the potion with him.

No, I want it anyway! I don’t care if it’s cursed or something. Come back…

After a bit the man did come back, so apparently the potion was still on the menu. However, so was a lot else.

First placing the potion on the ground some two meters away, Backlebutt lined up four bottles of Soylent, the satchel of pellet probably-food provided by the system, and Milo’s half-full bag of dried apricots he’d been saving, munching on one of the latter himself.

“Hey!” Milo protested. The man had unabashedly gone through Milo’s stuff. Not cool, guy.

Ignoring Milo’s outburst, Backlebutt pointed to each item in turn leading up to the potion while speaking slowly. When he got to the potion, he drew out a word before finally pointing to it.

The message was clear. Milo, for some reason, was required to consume all of the food next to him before Backlebutt would allow him to take the potion.

Milo eyed the food. He was a bit hungry, actually, but he didn’t think he’d ever been that hungry in his entire life. Still, he’d stuff himself fuller than a Thanksgiving turkey if it would un-break his arm.

“You do know you’re going to have to feed me, right?”