The first thing I noticed heading into the cavern was that while it wasn't bigger than expected, it was a MUCH longer trip than I'd thought, because we had to work our way slowly down from the entrance. We might have been able to jump...some of us anyway, but the undead would have noticed and swarmed us do we ended up having to take a series of winding tunnels to get to the base of the wall we'd been standing on. Luckily I had access to Seek Hidden so we didn't have to wander around down there for hours.

Since we'd learned out lesson about me not being a front line fighter after the Dullahan fight, Callie and I did NOT go first. We let Cark lead the way so he could tank any big hits from stuff that noticed us early. He wasn't actually any tougher than we were but he could cloak himself in toiling flames which tended to be a good deterrent for undead. Still, we did out best to make sure it never came up, watching carefully for any sort of issues. Because we were so careful of course, we noticed the first patrol a good amount of time before we ran across them, and had plenty of time to prepare.

The first bunch of enemies we ran into was an in a pretty large subchamber, but there weren't any G rankers among them. Despite that, there was about a hundred of the damn things. We made our way into the chamber slowly, grouping up to make sure we were all in the best positions to take advantage of the fights. Each of the H rankers was paired up with a G ranker just in case. Not to interfere but just to keep an eye on them. Benny was with Celine, Cark was with Martin, and Jessie was with Sarah.

Callie and I were free to go into stealth and sneak around the edges of the cavern to attack from the opposite side in an effort to draw their attention, and then we both waded in from opposite sides. The entire place was wall to wall skeletons, and when I slipped out from cover, they immediately spotted me and tried to rush me. I didn't use my weapons or my DS mastery this time, I reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out my Minor Boxing Mastery. I had the Balam style to learn from Callie when we had some free time, but until then, I figured this was a solid place to practice my combat skills without much danger.

I pulled my guard up as they all came in at me and tried my best to focus on what was in front of me. I threw a punch, and the skeleton I hit basically exploded. I jerked the fist back in to guard myself again and rethought my strategy. I felt the pretty much pointless attacks from all the skeletons landing on my armor, my damage absorb combined with my Impact making it pretty much impossible for them to hurt me, and I considered what I should do here. This wasn't training. A single punch would kill any of these, and while I could train one punch at a time it wouldn't do much good.

I considered my options, and decided that I should make use of my stats to try to do some actual training. My Boxing Skill wasn't the be all end all but it came with the basics. The person I traded it from had pretty decent fundamentals, so I knew that the most important part of boxing was footwork. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and when I opened them I changed my perspective. My enemies weren't one skeleton and then another. This entire army was a single foe. One enemy swinging at me a thousand times a second.

I waited for a single swing to come in and I ducked out of the way. Then another. I shuffled my feet, drifting between blows. I didn't dodge them all. There wasn't enough space. But for every ten swings one or so connected. I started to get into it, learning the rhythm until I could finally create an opening where I could actually move safely. I knew when they would attack, and by throwing punches and breaking a specific skeleton I could open up a space to move into where there would be no attack. Once I got the hang of that my goal became making sure I didn't get touched at all.

I weaved around the blows, opening up safe spots with my fists. While my stats were much higher than the skeletons they were much more numerous, and even with my Might and Vitality dodging a whole army was tough. Despite that I loved it. I felt like I was a machine, constantly moving, constantly shifting. My blows became more precise. I learned to use my weight better, leverage my power and reach, and I started taking out two or three of them in a single hit.

With my stats as they were I was more than able to understand positioning and leverage for a normal mortal martial art, and the massive amount of trial and error was a gods send for my skill. I wasn't mastering it instantly or anything, but I could feel myself getting better at it, and it was fun. My footwork became more and more fluid, my weaving more seamless, and between my Perception and my improving skills I was moving among them like a ghost, laying two or three of them out with every blow.

I could have gone faster, done more, but this wasn't an exercise in skeleton smashing, it was training. I only broke what I needed to open up enough space to give me room to move in. I didn't want this to end too soon. I threw a punch every minute or two, the majoring of my time and effort going into footwork and dodges as I slowly improved my Boxing Skill, basically brute forcing my progress with stats that were way too high for the level of complexity my minor skill was at. I knew once I hit lesser this would become a whole new beast as I had to create my style from scratch, but for now I enjoyed the progress.

On the up side I was pulling plenty of attention from the skeletal army. The waves of enemies crashed over me like surf breaking against rocks as they recognized a clear threat. I don't know how long I was there, moving between blows and smashing bone constructs. The longer the fight dragged on the more I started to see the patterns. Timing and force became easier to gauge as I saw the same basic form from a hundred different enemies. I started working my understanding of the skeletal attackers into my form and just lost myself in the press of battle.

Finally, I threw a punch and there was nothing on the other side. I looked around, shocked to see all the skeletons had been dealt with. Not just by me mind you, everyone had done their part taking apart the army, but my sparring partners were gone nonetheless. Still, I felt energized. My heart was pounding, and while I wasn't tired by any means I was definitely breathing a bit heavier after the exertion.

I turned to check on my friends. "Everyone ok? That was pretty crazy right? Honestly I've never been in a fight that nuts." I knew my grin was obvious from my voice despite my face being covered. I got an eye roll from Benny and a fond smile from Callie as everyone sounded off that they were ok. "Man, I really hope there's some kind of recording of that I can study. They stream this right?" I'd actually been wondering about that during the Heartripper siege too. I knew this thing was recorded, but I hadn't seen any sign of that.

Celine shook her head. "No. While the scavenger hunt is televised, they mostly focus on the parts that will gather the most interest. The first few days there's no way to tell how well someone will do or who is impressive. Once the teams start getting further into their lists they can see who is the most impressive and focus on them. Besides they air it all at the end of the hunt so they can cut out the useless parts. The preliminary recordings should be starting within a day or two however."

That made sense actually. I imagined it took power to send out recording devices. Waiting until people had a chance to settle in was reasonable. Most teams would probably still be building their bases. It also explained why Aiden had rushed his assault. He'd clearly been trying to avoid being noticed by the local leadership. It was a smart call given how out of his depth he would be against an E or even F ranker, not that it had mattered.

Still, it was a shame I couldn't see my training directly. I'd have loved to study how I was moving to try to improve. I thanked Celine and headed over to Callie. She seemed excited by my fight. "That looked like a blast, I could tell you were really improving. Maybe next time we can make sure there are no G rankers and then take them on together, use it as a chance for me to teach you some of the Balam Mastery skill. Still that was an amazing amount of progress. What skill was it? Boxing?"

I wasn't surprised she'd noticed that, boxing was a pretty distinctive way of fighting. "Yeah, I picked it up ages ago but haven't put much time into it. It's still at Minor even after all that, but I bet a few more fights at that level would let me rank it up. Even if I don't usually do fist fighting, the footwork is going to help in my normal combat, and hey, I punch sometimes, so getting some practice in won't hurt. I hadn't considered tag teaming a mob of weaker enemies for training though, you think we can find another army like this?"

She giggled at that. "Obviously, this is a necropolis. I bet there's at least ten of those hordes down here, mixed in with a hundred different parties of other monsters for us to get through. Necropoli are infamous for being more quantity than quality, which is part of the reason we were even able to bring the H rankers. We'll hit another grouping like this soon enough, and we can get started on those lessons. I used some of that Skill training during the fight and it was...amazing. I can't wait to show you."

Having a girlfriend who was as into combat and cultivation in general as I was definitely made this more fun, and once again I felt the adrenaline and excitement shove aside the worry and regret I'd been feeling. In the moment it was much easier not to focus on all the bad stuff, especially when I was with Callie. I pulled up my mask and stepped forward to pull her into a kiss, one she happily responded to, but unfortunately we were cut off almost as soon as we started by a cleared throat.

I pulled away, and we both turned as I replaced my mask to glare at Benny, who ignored the unhappy looks. "As cute as you two are together, and by cute I mean sickening, we're in the middle of a giant chamber full of crushed up skeletons, so now might not really be the time. We need to search this room for anything valuable, some of these things were carrying gear and pouches." I huffed a bit but he wasn't wrong and Callie nodded grudgingly, showing that she agreed. I squeezed her hand once, her soft smile promising we'd spend more time together later, and then we got to work. We had loot to find.