This time, the skeletons moved slightly better but still fell apart just as fast. I only had to kick out the sternum or rip out the spine for them to hit the ground and shatter. However, once again, they reformed.

As they were reforming, I took a look around the room. The shelves had books on them, but I could not remove any of them. I tried, but they were all just stuck there. Same with the beds, I couldn’t move them. Not even the blankets would shift.

Then the skeletons were back. This time, however, they moved as fast as I did. Which wasn’t a good sign. My skill was better, and Blink was still able to one hit them. However, the rapid improvement didn’t bode well for me.

At the rate things were going, they would end up beating me. Not because right now they were better but because they would just get faster to better soon. As they were reforming for the third time, I found that the dresser had drawers that opened.

Inside the drawers, I found a pair of rough cotton pants and two copper coins. The only other thing that I was able to get to move was the paper on the table between the two skeletons. There was something written on it, yet I didn’t have a clue what it said.

I grabbed it and rolled it up, stuffing it in my belt. I might need it later as a way to start a fire. I didn’t know what was going on in this place, but I was going to try to loot everything as I knew that was the rule.

The problem was I didn’t have an inventory system. I should have asked Lannah if there was such a thing. I didn’t think there would be since she had basically nothing. Yet, this lack of inventory or even a backpack caused problems for me in this place. I wanted to take all the loot, but I would end up carrying too much.

The skeletons rose again and came at me. I backed out of the room to see if they would follow, and they did. Blink took out Mr. Sword from behind as he passed the door, and I got to engage with Mr. Mace.

It wouldn’t have been a problem if he was just a bit faster than me. The problem was he was much quicker. I would say he was about 15% faster than I was. This meant that when I blocked his mace with my sword, he still hit me.

The good thing was I was wearing armor, so it didn’t break my skin. The problem was a mace was one of the better weapons against someone with chainmail on. The whole thing weighed around 3 pounds, but it was the speed and the leverage that caused most of the problem for me.

I went down on my left knee trying to absorb the hit and caught a glancing blow off my shoulder. I saw that I had lost a point of health and felt my left arm go numb.

I came back up from my knee as he was readying the mace over his head, and I checked him with my right shoulder. The skeleton went staggering back where it tripped over the downed one.

It was kind of funny because the sword was already sliding back across the ground and got stuck in Mr. Mace’s ribcage. The tip was poking between the second and the third rib. So when Mr. Mace stood and started to come at me, the sword pulled back.

He was stuck in place, pulling against the sword. Of course, being stuck didn’t mean he wasn’t trying to get at me, only that he couldn’t move his whole left side. Which worked for me as I stepped around and hacked off his right arm.

Now Mr. Mace was divorced from his mace, and so was the one-armed bandit. However, even though I removed his right to bear one arm, he was still coming at me. Right up until he lunged and the sword countered. The whole left half of his rib cage ripped out and went flying back into the room.

“Blink stay out here. I want to see if they will come after us out here. If they will I am going to try to lay them to rest. If that doesn’t work then I am not sure what we will need to do.”

I saw Blink appear; she had found herself a way to take her whole body and hold on to the stone wall above the door. She looked like she was ready to pounce on anything coming through the doorway.

We didn’t have to wait for long. Each time we had put the skeletons down, they had gotten faster, and they reformed more quickly. So I wasn’t excited about the prospect of fighting them for the rest of this delve.

They came back out. Mr. Sword was first followed by his brother, who needed to eat more as we could see his ribs. I backed up and around the corner, causing Mr. Sword to have to come around at me. As he did, I stepped into his swing arc and grabbed his skull with my left hand. I slid my fingers into where his eyes should go, and my thumb found his nose like a bowling ball.

I stepped back and yanked as hard as I could. Happily, I ripped the skull right off the rest of the body. However, Mr. Sword ended up not needing his head to keep going. My guess was he was upper management and so being headless was the norm for him.

I stepped back as his rusty sword passed through where I had just been. I stepped to my left and brought my sword down across his now extended right arm. Once again, the headless one proved that he couldn’t learn new tricks.

I, however, wanted to prove how great it was to have a head and so I twisted toward my right and brought my left hand across his back. Unfortunately for him, my left hand was still holding a bowling skull, so that went crashing into his back, sending him into a pile of bones.

I quickly moved into the bedroom and started to dance. It would take me thirty seconds to cast a small lay to rest, which would be enough for one of the two. Then I would spend the mana to launch the second one. I hoped that this would end them and I wouldn’t need to keep fighting, but I had no idea at this point.

The room was cramped, and I knew that they would reform faster this go than they did last and so I was worried that I wouldn’t get it done in time. The confined space made getting the dance done more fun than I would have liked.

I didn’t have time to do the dance twice, and I knew it had to be correct, so I triggered the skill for a small lay to rest on the mace guy as he was the close one. Well, the dance wasn’t done in the usual way because the beds were there.

So I ended up doing part of the dance on the ground, and then where a jump typically took me just a few feet away, I went up to the bed. Then came the circle of jumping, which is what I called it, where I jumped up and down while spinning in a circle.

That part was unique to Lay To Rest. I think it had something to do with the soul returning to where it should be and being sped along in the cycle. However, I wasn’t entirely sure. What I did know was this time, I did that on the bed and felt like I was a toddler jumping to some crazy song.

Both of the skeletons started to get upright when I finished with my first lay to rest. It slammed into Mr. Mace, and all the bones fell apart. In the past, they had been clean and white, almost like a skeleton from the Spirit of Halloween. Now the bones turned a yellow-gray, and many of them developed cracks.

Mr. Sword covered the distance between the table and the bed in about the amount of time it took me to see that, yes, Mr. Mace was down for the count. He was swinging his sword before I could unsheathe mine.

So I did what every kid who was told to stop jumping on the bed would do. I leapt to the other bed, where I then drew my sword.

In the first couple of fights, Mr. Sword would have staggered around and might would have fallen on the bed with me jumping away. However, this time he smoothly flowed around the end of the bed and came for me.

Now the great thing I did was I dodged that first swing. The bad thing was I put myself in the corner, and I had to get past his sword if I wanted more room to play in. While he was weak, he was also now going about twice as fast as me.

This meant that I was going to have to either be very lucky or I would take a hit to get in on him. As I was prepping my mind to get hit, Blink nailed the skeleton from behind.

It didn’t much matter how fast you moved if Blink landed on you. She was now about 175 lbs of solid sassy, angry killer lizard. So when she hit the back, she made sure he went down.

I prepped my spell, which took all of three seconds, and blasted him with the lay to rest. Then we got into the fun part of looting.

Mr. Sword, who was closer, turned into a pile of bone meal and a feather. Mr. Mace, well, he was a fine pile of bones which didn’t even give me a pile of bone meal. Nope, all that good for nothing gave me was a pair of bone hairpins.

“Blink did you have to fight these guys before?” I asked as I sat down on the bed.

“Door closed.” Blink sent to me with a slight shrug.