Name: N/A 8:39 AM Race: Undead Sub-race: Skeleton Class: N/A Sub-class: N/A Level: 1

Hp: 20/20

Mp: 5/5

Stamina: N/A

Head: Injured

Torso: Healthy

Left Arm: Healthy

Right Arm: Healthy

Left Leg: Healthy

Right Leg: Healthy

Buffs:

Debuffs:

I had been sitting down, my back against the stone wall, looking at my status for the past ten minutes, trying to glean some information from it. I had tried focusing on different areas, but got no descriptions, examples, or anything even remotely helpful. Just the same impassive blue screen. Meanwhile, the others were discussing how they would fight in the upcoming battle, or what they had done since they had been created.

I learned that the longest one of them had survived, was about four days, and that was mostly due to their own luck. They had only seen a few adventurers, who had disappeared from their sight before they could attack. It felt more like a gathering of chickens than an actual fighting force, but it would work, so long as whoever we attacked was small in number, and inexperienced. I figured since we were spawned without any real way to fight back, whoever we came up against wouldn't be too powerful.

I hope I'm not wrong. Otherwise I can kiss my bony butt goodbye.

The she-skeleton I had brought with me hadn't bothered to stay near the group, or me, for that matter. She was sitting off to the side, her arms wrapped around her legs. I wasn't going to bother with her at this point. So long as I got myself some decent weapons and armor, I was fine with ditching the lot of them, at least so long as I knew I could survive.

For now, though, I had to deal with working with them, despite the fact that altogether we were little more than an impromptu militia, poorly equipped, and even more poorly organized.

I stood up, and walked over, deciding now was as good a time as any to join the discussion. From what I had gathered, they had been trying to figure out how big a group we should attack.

"I'm telling you, we should attack a group of five or less. They're weak enough and we're numerous enough that we can overwhelm them completely! We'll have more weapons and armor, and we'll have proven ourselves capable of taking on larger forces!" A male voice, firm in their logic. It wasn't a poor argument, but the idea itself was ludicrous.

"I've already said that we can't. We don't have enough weapons for a group of five, so we should go after stragglers who we can easily overwhelm. It's a safe strategy that builds up our strength over time, without taking risks!" An equally confident male spoke against the idea of the other. I couldn't tell any of them apart at this point, so I didn't bother to identify who was speaking. I just stared slightly above the rest of them, so I wouldn't get dragged into either side.

"I still think we should go after groups of seven. Adventurers are weak, and we're strong." A third male, who held one of the bone clubs.

"No." My voice, and two others immediately stopped him from making any further argument. However, due to me speaking, everyone ended up looking at me, as if I had an idea. I shrugged, and took a step forward, trusting in my ability to speak.

"If we take on seven, we're dead, and that's that. We take on five, we have a high risk of being wiped out. We have strength, but we don't know how much yet." I spoke, looking at the three who had suggested their own ideas first. "If we attack a straggler, yes we would overwhelm them in an instant, and get their gear. However, who in their right mind would wander around a place like this all on their own? It would take us days to find even one person alone, and they might be some bored veteran looking for some fun. I'm not taking that risk." I gripped my bone basket a bit tighter.

"If we're going after a group, then we have to go after groups of three. There's the risk of them being somewhat experienced, but if we're lucky, we could run across eager newbies, and take them down. Like we've already discussed, we don't have enough weapons, so we can't take on too many. However, they would have to take down at least five of us on average in order to win. In the time that they take down one or two of us, the other three will have swarmed them and overwhelmed them. Even those without weapons can help by circling around and attempting to grab them and pull them to the ground. We can see in the dark, but I doubt all of them have that capability. If we extinquish their light, it'll be much easier."

I hadn't expected to speak that much. Most of what I had said was on the spur of the moment. None of them spoke for a moment. Out of the corner of my vision I realized even the she-skeleton sitting against the wall was looking at me. I began feeling a bit nervous.

"That's just what I came up with, of course." I spoke hastily, not certain if anyone would accept my words. I couldn't force them, after all. There was no way I could beat them all into submission, that was for sure.

"I see the sense in that plan. Alright, fine. Not five, three. We should be able to handle that, right?" One skeleton looked to another.

"Yeah, I don't like it, but it still makes sense. Three, it is. I just hope we don't all die in the attempt." The other spoke, a slight sigh in their voice at not going with their original idea.

"I still think we should go for seven." The third voice spoke out, as a skeleton hefted a bone club to their shoulder.

"You're outvoted." The first said, making certain there was no room for argument.

"Now then, we should talk about how we're going to take them down." The second spoke, turning to me. "What do you think? You seem to be coming up with all the bright ideas."

I thought for a moment, placing my hand on my chin. "We don't quite know how big this place is, nor do we know our way around. I think we should plan an ambush, so we can use the territory we do know. Lure a group of adventuers right to us, where we can come out and take them down quickly." I looked back towards the entrance. "We can't use this place, since we're already using it as our gathering point. Maybe somewhere a bit further out."

Looking back at the group, I found three who were unarmed. "You three can pretend to be a normal group, get just close enough that they can see you, and lure them back to where we'll be waiting. We'll jump right out to take them down." I clapped one of them on the shoulder, a gesture I didn't feel that I would normally do, although I knew it would have the desired effect, as the three of them looked at each other, and then slowly nodded to me. "So long as we don't die, right?" One of them said, his voice a little shaky. I was a little surprised that it was another guy. I still had a hard time finding the difference. Bones were bones, right?

Either there's more male skeletons than women overall in this place, or we just got the weird placements.

I nodded in response to his question. "Death is our birthright. By surviving this, we all choose something different. You three will be the first." I wasn't sure if that was actually true. Hell, I wasn't sure if any of us would be alive by the end of the day to worry about our futures like we were doing. However, it wasn't like any of us had much of a choice. It was either this, or wait until someone comes along and ends it permanently.

In the end we decided we would use one of the closer areas to the chamber, in case we needed to fall back to a more defensible location. I felt like I had become the de facto leader, something I wasn't really looking forward to, considering the leader normally had to be up front, in order to keep everyone else from falling to pieces in the middle of the battle, no pun intended.

I approached the whole thing with what I hoped was a fair amount of detachment. After all, you can't be a leader of a fighting force without knowing that you'd lose some of them. I still expected there to be heavy casualties, even though I'd told the three who were acting as bait to only lure those who were armed with bladed weapons, or those that were used for stabbing more than slashing or bashing. I wouldn't be surprised though, if none of them came back alive, and we had to rethink our plans.

However, without them, we'd be down three pairs of hands we really needed, in order to be able to handle what we were up against.

We set up to jump out from two hallways, close by. Hopefully we wouldn't get ambushed ourselves, but I didn't trust my luck, so I had someone from each group look out for lights coming our way. if all went well, we would soon be in the thick of battle, and I'd probably be watching a few of the bony men and women around me die. It was a necessary sacrifice. That's what I told myself. That's what I had to keep telling myself. I couldn't form any sort of attachment. It would only serve to get me killed when it really counted.

After waiting for thirty eight minutes according to the system clock, and being fortunate enough to not get ambushed ourselves, I could hear bony footsteps coming down the hall toward us. Hopefully our luck had held.

"Why the heck do they keep running!? Shouldn't this have been easier?" A man was shouting, and I could hear his voice was a bit labored. They must have been running for awhile, now. That served my needs just fine.

"They're just skeletons! We can handle them, no problem!" A woman's voice, now. She seemed to not be in as bad a shape as the man. Her confidence made me a little nervous. Was it ignorance, or experience?

Two of the three skeletons ran past us. I could see the bobbing of light and could hear the footsteps ringing out against the stone like explosions.

Here we go. Moment of truth.