“There is something I’ve been wondering about.” Rum said while they were creeping up on the stone-slab hole into the mountain that was the entrance to Jorteg’s Dungeon. “Why did you try to send me to join Ermos’ Finest Adventurers, when you boasted so much about The Mecha-Gnomes’ Revenge being good for beginners?”

The party was in a clearing, a piece of grassland situated with the forest to their backs, and the steep beginnings of a mountain ahead. Elrith stopped creeping. She swung her crossbow from her back into her combat-ready hands and peered at the dungeon entrance, which was really pointless since all that the party could see from where they were was a black nothingness on the inside. The contrast between the bright daylight of the clearing and the deep black dark of the dungeon was pretty big.

“I guess I could tell you. Now that you are one of us, and you’ve been more or less accepted into our party.” She surveyed the area with her eyes before continuing. “Ermos’ Finest Adventurers are the competitors that our guild recently outgrew. I thought you were a trash mage at your level 8 and all, and so I wanted to dump you onto the competitor rather than have you join us. Of course things turned out differently, and so now – well at least for now – I’m fine with having you on our party and in our guild.” She smiled innocently, completely at odds with the savagely disrespectful reply she’d just given.

Rum, not one to start a fight, just shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know what to say. But I think that you’ll be positively surprised about what I can do for guys in the near future. I created a really powerful and really complicated spell in a day – just for your benefit. Now, I’m not suggesting I can do that every day, but just imagine how many useful spells you’ll have in a couple of months!”

“I’m looking forward to seeing them.” Elrith replied. Her face was smiling, her words were innocent and positive, but somehow Rum couldn’t help but feel like she’d just challenged him to show his worth – and betting on his failure.

“Okay everyone.” Elrith began in a loud voice, “Let’s take a small break outside the dungeon first, as we normally do. Set up a small campfire just inside the forest and let’s go with just a small dungeon probe for today, okay? Especially since Rum is new to dungeons.” She turned to Rum. “You are new to dungeons, right?”

Rum tilted his head back and forth. “Kinda. I’ve seen them before up close. There was a vast dungeon in the Axe Mountains that the dwarves used to hunt feral beasts in. They call it the Home of the Ancient Lady. The dwarves made big camps outside the dungeon sometimes, and I visited the camps once or twice. But I’ve never been inside.”

“Well” Elrith started with the bare hint of approval on her expression, “that’s better than nothing I suppose. So yeah, Rum’s new and so the first two days we’ll just have to try and ease him into all the good routines, -safety protocols and -habits that we’ve established. Nobody becomes a real dungeoneer in a day after all!” She smiled at Rum again.

“Alright!” Darmon said with a hint of eagerness. “I’ll go find a spot inside the forest for us. You guys can just wait here.” and Darmon started walking away, not waiting for a reply.

“Hey Elrith?” Rum started asking, staring at Darmon as he walked away, “Does he always wear that armor? Doesn’t he ever get tired or hot?”

Elrith stared with Rum for a second. “You know” she started replying, “I haven’t really thought about it. I don’t think I recall him taking it off very often while we’re out dungeoneering. So I suppose the answer is no, he doesn’t.”

She and the rest of the party decided to sit down. They were all more or less sore from walking for so long. Because though Jorteg’s dungeon was one of the closest dungeons to Ermos, it’d still taken a whole five days to get there.

Rum cast Softify on the ground where he decided to sit down, his butt getting a sensation similar to sitting on a descent chair with a thin pillow. Not luxurious, but much better than the alternative. Really Rum was feeling quite okay all over, something which couldn’t be said of his party. True, his legs were a little tired because of his relatively low stamina compared to the higher level party members, but he was neither sweaty, had sore feet, nor was he feeling particularly warm like the others were. And this was a day to be warm on, the bright sun pretty much cooking everyone in the clearing. Everything except Rum of course. These facts were all thanks to Cool Body, Become Clean, Restore Body and Softify. Rum’s spells of convenience had all been very efficient at keeping Rum comfortable throughout every bit of last five days of walking, resting and sleeping.

Rum had up till now decided not to share his incredibly useful conveniences though. Mostly because of Elrith’s outrage at being magicked just after they’d set out from the city. That had demotivated him towards potentially being over-eager in asking his party members if they wanted magical help. They’d been told his list of spells too, and despite knowing he could do many things, none had bothered asking for his magical aid. But 5 days of watching them all suffer under the summer heat and the roughness of the ground built up his courage to ask. After all, they could all just say no if they didn’t want his help, right? He watched them all massage their feet and wipe away sweat from their foreheads. Yeah, they must be really stubborn to not want my spell. Here I am sitting, not at all miserable, whereas they all have their miserableness on full display. Rum risked an offer, starting with two people he hadn’t offended yet:

“Rulli, Gilda, you two wouldn’t mind some magical comforts, would you? I could take away some of the heat from this warm weather, and maybe help your feet if they’re sore?” the two dwarves just gave each other a brief quizzical look, then surprisingly gave two contradictory answers: “No need Rum” Rulli managed to say before Gilda followed with “I’d love some cooling thank you”. Rulli stared at his wife, maybe feeling a tiny bit betrayed, but he quickly gave in to the soundness of her reply and changed to say “You know Rum, sure, me too. A little cooling would help.”

Rum smiled like a child about to open a present as he started rubbing his hands in exhilaration. “GREAT!” he unintentionally shouted, then went on a bit quieter, “I’m just gonna use the Cool Body spell, okay? I’ve been using it on myself this entire trip so far if you haven’t noticed. It’s pretty effective. Of course I’ve never tried it on dwarves before, so I’m not sure about how to set the temperature correctly for you people. But you know, let’s just try a little bit of mana and see if you feel anything, okay?”

The dwarves, not liking being test-subjects, but finding this experiment to be within the bounds of reason, agreed. Gilda went first, and Rum got up and walked up to her, putting his hand on her shoulder while softly saying “Cool Body”.

A few seconds passed, and a tiny weak blue shimmer appeared on her shoulder. Gilda, however, looked up to Rum and just blurted out “It’s not working!”

Elrith sniggered. “And I thought you’d give us so many useful spells, Rum. Pity this one only works for you though.”

Rum just shook his head at the sarcastic tone and spoke to Gilda: “I probably just used too little mana. I was being cautious, didn’t want to risk freezing you by using a lot of mana. Let’s try again with a bit more mana. Cool Body!”

Again a few seconds passed, with a slightly more visible blue shimmer now. But Gilda just shook her head. “I don’t feel much colder Rum. It doesn’t seem to be working. I only sense a little tingle in my shoulder, but nothing more.”

Elrith burst out laughing now. Rum sighed heavily, wondering if this was how Elrith was gonna be like for the rest of the dungeon dive. He’d have to figure out how to make her change her perception of him as incompetent just because he had a low level!

“Okay, this time I’m gonna try with a lot more mana, okay? If it doesn’t work this time… well I guess we’ll just know that something is different about using this spell on a dwarf contrary to a human. Though I’m not sure why there would be a difference.”

Rum rubbed his bald head softly in worry. Then put a hand back on Gilda’s shoulder. This time, as if to clarify just how much mana he was dumping into this spell, he shouted it out loud and clear: “COOL BODY!”. A couple of seconds passed as Rum flooded Gilda with magic, a powerful shimmer appearing all across her shoulder. Then Gilda got an expression of utter horror on her face. Half a second later everyone could see a wet drop from her nose freeze over almost instantaneously. Rum quickly removed his hands. Gilda meanwhile started shaking awfully, her teeth chattering. Rulli, equally horrified, grabbed his wife, starting to rub her for warmth.

“Well” Rum said, embarrassed but sort-of feeling like he got his point across to Elrith, “at least she’s colder now. The spell works on dwarves! We just need to fine-tune the mana expenditure so that we’re somewhere safely between frozen nostrils and not feeling a thing.” Rum tried smiling a fake smile of confidence.

Rulli looked up at Rum, minor shock on his face. Rum tried to ignore the look and just said “Your turn Rulli, I think I’ve found the sweet spot now, I definitely used too much mana on Gilda!”

Rulli just sat back, his hands frantically going palm-forward back and forth while his mouth verbalized the gesture: “No no, Rum I think I’ll be fine. I’ll just cool down holding my wife Gilda over here. I think she might have received enough cooling for the both of us.”

“Okay” Rum just shrugged disappointedly, trying not to mentally think about the embarrassing possibility that he had been just seconds away from stopping Gilda’s heart with his freezing magic. Nobody after all, not even himself, needed to know that he’d almost killed one of their party members before they’d even entered the dungeon.

Putting the near-accidental-kill aside, Rum laid down and spent the next minutes cloud watching at his softened spot, while Elrith was reading a small dungeon manual from her bag, and Rulli trying to save Gilda from her unhealthily low body temperature with hugs, clasped hands and back rubs.

Darmon returned after a while, at which point Gilda was back to a healthy temperature, and the couple were lying down together, cloud watching like Rum.

“I’ve found a spot” Darmon said, his noisy armor announcing him before his words did.

Following Darmon’s announcement the party quickly put up a camp, ate a light lunch of buttered biscuits and salty mini-sausages, then got ready to enter the dungeon.

The party formed in reverse order to how they’d walked here. Now it was Darmon in front, serving as the party’s shield, or tank, as the role was commonly called. Rulli and Gilda meanwhile took up melee support positions right behind him. Rum didn’t have much of an idea what he should be doing but chose to stand behind the dwarves. At last was Elrith, her crossbow friend Martin in a raised, ready-to-fire fashion.

It was really dark, and as they approached the opening Rum recalled that he was really missing a good light spell in his mental spellbook. He must admit he’d never been entirely motivated enough to try and make one. But right now, as he was purposefully walking into hidden danger, and with his eyes going to need some time to adjust to the darkness and even then he’d barely see anything – now he regretted not making that spell. But before they got inside Elrith poked Rum from behind with Martin, a commanding whisper forming on her lips: “Get a torch from my backpack and light it.” She followed that sentence with a quiet hiss: “DON’T EVER DROP IT OR LET THE LIGHT GO OUT. Access to torchlight could really make a mortal difference in this place. It’s my first time here, but I’ve heard this place is full of skeletons. Some of which we might not see before we’re practically kissing them.”

Rum did as she asked. He roamed around in the bag and fished out a torch. He then cast “Channel Bio-Energy”, creating a tiny ball of green energy which he put against the torch, willing the ball to make a small puff! of an explosion, instantly lighting it up. Gilda also fished out a torch from her backpack and hinted for Rum to light up hers as well, and Rum repeated his magic.

“Thanks mage” Gilda smiled at Rum, and for the first time Rum felt like he was useful. It was a good feeling to be useful, even if it was just for something as simple as lighting up a torch.

The party moved onwards into the dungeon. The initial inside turned out very boring though, as it was all just one long but not very wide corridor of stone slabs, mountain rock and dirt. For 5, maybe 10 minutes, they walked, before encountering their first change of scenery. It was a large double-door, made out of iron and wood, with ornately carved pictograms of what must’ve been dancing skeletons if Rum wasn’t half-blind. Or, perhaps, are the pictured skeletons fighting? Rum thought it difficult to tell really, as the one who’d made the carvings was a little rough on his or her artistic skills. Whoever had made it, they were no Amazing Amez for sure.

“A door?” Darmon just said, a question hidden in his tone.

“I don’t remember there being a mention of any door?” The Heart-Piercer asked the air.

“Well there is a door there now. What should we expect on the other side, Elrith?” Rulli asked.

Elrith looked thoughtfully at the door for a second, spacing out a bit. “Behind this door should just be a small guard post I think. Expect 5, maybe 7 skeletons, with swords, shields and 1 archer. If the reports are still useful, of course. Never know what these dungeon lords get up to.”

Darmon walked up to the door, grabbing an available handle, and tried pushing the door. It didn’t budge, not even when Darmon tried giving it an extra push with most of his body.

“Let me help you there human” Rulli said while walking up to Darmon and doing just as he’d said, the both of them together pushing against the door with the handle down.

For a couple of minutes the two males just tried in vain to open the door, no amount of muscle seeming to make it budge.

“Aaah!” Rulli gasped for air, sounding defeated. “This door must be locked!”

“You want me to try opening it?” Rum asked the two males.

“You got a spell for locked doors? I can’t recall you mentioning anything about that.” Rulli quizzed.

“No. But if it’s a matter of strength I might be able to do something.”

Rulli just smiled and shook his face. “Nah, I think the door’s locked. And that–” he turned towards the door and grabbed his big two-handed axe with both hands, lifting it above his head, “–was its mistake. This door is now going down by force!” As Rulli ended the sentence he roared “AAAR!” and slammed the axe blade down against the wood of the door. What happened next, however, was the most unimpressive attempt to cut open a door that Rum had ever seen, as the axe just created a small crack in the wood and got stuck. Determination subsequently filled Rulli’s face, and he tried retrieving his axe. He pulled, with all his muscle. He tried pushing it sideways, attempting to pry out the blade. But it seemed no amount of pulling or pushing could give him his axe back.

“Oh well” Rulli finally said, when his embarrassment started to spread around the room. “It seems we got two problems now.”

“Let me try!” Elrith suddenly exclaimed, and everyone around looked towards the rear of the party where she’d been passively observing. “I’ve been meaning to try out your brother’s new enchantment, Rum. It’s been 5 days now, and he said I’d get one full charge’s worth about every 3 days. So that means I have enough to fire off my first magically explosive bolt!” As Elrith finished off her little explanation, she raised Martin, and a big happy girl smile spread across her face, aiming the crossbow a little to the left of where the axe was stuck on the middle-right. Violent blue magical colors flung themselves off The Heart-Piercer’s back, slinging themselves up over and under the shoulders, whirling across her arms before gathering at the tip of the bolt in a densely blue elongated shape of pure light.

Clasp! came the sound, as Elrith pressed the trigger for the crossbow, setting off its mechanism and accelerating in the blink of an eye the crossbow bolt, now more like bolt of pure magic; straight at the door.

Boom! the door went. Splinters flew everywhere, some hitting Rulli, Gilda and Rum who all received small cuts at their exposed body parts, Rulli also having one or two tiny splinters stuck to his hands which were shielding his face from the blast. Darmon, being almost fully clad in armor and with his shield raised to cover his face, just gave off a few pling! sounds as the splinters struck his armor.

As they all recovered from the relatively small blast, they all saw a large hole in the left-most of the two doors, with smaller portions of the right door also damaged. Rulli, quick to think, walked up to his axe and tried to pull it free. After a few good pulls it came loose this time.

What they saw on the other side though was little more than darkness. Gilda, still wielding her torch, went up and tried to shed some light through, but not much could be seen. The area inside was indeed bigger, but otherwise from what they could see there was just more stone slabs, mountain rock and a little bit of dirt.

Rulli decided to start chopping at the hole in the left door, attacking the weakened damaged spots of what turned out to be a very thick set of doors now that they could see its full horizontal depth. After a few minutes of cutting bits and pieces Darmon and Rulli were together able to break off a large enough piece of the door’s middle that they were simply able to push open a dwarf-sized hole in the doors. Rulli, the first one to try to hole, went through.

“Aye” he commented, “this door was indeed locked. But the lock’s only accessible on the inside. This dungeon lord obviously wants some privacy. But trying to keep us bothersome adventurers out by something as mundane as a locked door? Hah! What a ludicrous idea!”

To his credit though, Rum thought, the door was pretty thick, so the job of opening it could’ve been quite hard if Elrith hadn’t recently acquired the exploding bolt body enchantment.

The dwarf walked back in again, pointing at Darmon: “Tank first!” Darmon took the hint, and the party formed its newly established dungeon line of Darmon first, the two dwarves second, then Rum, then lastly Elrith. Darmon started by walking through first.

CLANG! Rum suddenly heard from the front. Rum side-stepped to try and see what’d happened on the other side. But he couldn’t properly see it all through the relatively small hole in the door, and was only able to spot a massive claymore pushing down on Darmon’s shield. But as if to illuminate him Darmon yelled: “SKELETON! TWO–NO THREE SKELETONS! MELEE!” Rulli quickly rushed through after Darmon and from the sound of it started tackling another skeleton to Darmon’s side. The claymore that’d been pressing down on Darmon now went up again and hit down again with another massive CLANG!, the strike apparently so forceful it forced Darmon down to his knees, his shield raised above his head for protection. Now Gilda rushed through the door after her husband, and as the room on the other side got lit up from Gilda’s torch Rum could see skeleton shadows as well as parts of actual skeletons lunging and slamming their swords against the trio. It appeared to be more than three though, as Rum saw many more soundlessly approach through the shadowy areas of the room on the other side.

“Step aside mage!” Elrith suddenly barked at Rum from behind, and Rum jumped to the side as Elrith started sniping at the various skeletons fighting their warriors inside the room.

Rum didn’t know what to do at this moment. As they all knew, he didn’t have much combat spells. And against undead, he was doubly useless, as even those spells he could potentially use offensively were not well-suited for magically sustained creatures, and less so for unliving creatures. His spells were mostly useful either before or after combat, and not like right now, in the middle of combat. Also, as he considered casting Skin Toughen on Rulli and Gilda to save them from a potentially successful enemy swing of the sword, he realized he’d have to touch them to do that. And to do that he’d have to squeeze through the narrow opening, past Elrith’s sniping, then stop either Rulli and Gilda from actively fighting while he channeled his spell into them. No, that sounded silly and potentially disruptive to whatever fighting they were doings. For now, he’d just let them take care of the skeletons. He might be needed for some healing afterwards though.

The fight continued for roughly 2 minutes before there were no more visible skeletons left, no more clang or cling sounds were coming from the other side, and no more sniping from Elrith sitting on her knee in front of the hole in the door. Despite the fight having ended, Elrith was still on guard though, aiming her Martin at every piece of the shadows, as if a skeleton could hop out of it at any moment as a last bit of surprise.

Rum was feeling left out, and so as there seemed to be no more enemies he decided to walk up to the hole, careful to hint at Elrith that he was going through it, which only gave a go-on-kinda gesture in reply. On the other side the rest of the party was clearly still on guard, and like Elrith they were scanning the surrounding with their eyes. To their benefit Rum used his torch to help demystify all the dark spaces in the room, letting the party relax more when they saw no more animated skeletons. Rum still saw a ton of skeletons though, the floor littered with their broken and cracked bones and skulls. He picked up a particularly smallish, but still adult, human-like skull, sensing the now orphaned magic lingering in it, the broken remnants of some kind of reanimation spell. Before the magic of the skull could consume all his attention he once again became aware of his surroundings though, and looked around at his party.

“Anybody needs a healing spell?” Rum finally asked the group of three melee fighters, who had come to rest against the wall taking a few extra deep breaths. They probably weren’t much tired by such a short fight, but resting when possible in a dungeon is a necessity, not a luxury. So much had Rum heard from his talk with the dwarves of Axe Mountain. Elrith too was relaxing, letting her crossbow hang over her shoulder as she stepped through the hole in the doors to join her party.

“I got pierced by the tip of an arrow! Yes please, a little heal would be nice” Gilda responded. At this Rum was a little surprised she trusted him enough to cast a spell after previously almost killing her. Not that she knew that of course, and not that he knew that either. In fact nobody knew that! He was purposefully squeezing out that memory of himself to make that ignorance certain.

As Rum walked up to Gilda he could see that an arrow was indeed sticking out of her chest, but thankfully most of it had been blocked by her chest armor. Gilda herself just grabbed the arrow, nudging it out carefully. A little bit of blood was indeed visible at the very tip of the arrow, so it was clear it had penetrated her skin if only slightly. Rum didn’t bother waiting and just put his hand on her damaged chest area, which happened to be the upper part of her left boob, and said “Restore Body”. A green little misty light flew from his fingertips and into her chest. She sighed in relief.

“Thank you Rum” she smiled at him. Rum felt glad, and blushed a little bit. He was useful once again! Getting a little carried away by this nice feeling of usefulness, he decided to offer his full package of spells: “Anyone would like a cleaning spell? Get rid of your sweat? Maybe a bit of cooling? I’m sure I know how to avoid the result from last time! Also, I could cast Softify on your shoes. Maybe not on your Darmon, since that could inconvenience your armor protection, but for you Gilda and Rulli I think Softify could really make all this walking better!”

Gilda just smiled and shook her head. Rulli shook his head too, a smiling though a little weaker. Elrith just gave him a I-dare-you-to-suggest! kind of look, rapidly closing that opportunity. Darmon meanwhile just ignored the question and decided to walk past Rum, staring at the open space ahead, at end of which was two tunnels. The right tunnel had a door. It was just a single door, and much smaller than the one they’d just squeezed through. But this one was made of metal, and it looked thick, heavy, almost impenetrable.

“We have two options” Darmon started saying, “but really I think we only have one. Since this door was locked, we can presume that one is too. But this also, there’s no keyhole, though we don’t even have a key so it wouldn’t help much if there were. We probably can’t destroy it either. So what do you think?” Darmon looked at The Heart-Piercer now, “Should we take the newbie a little further still?”

Elrith considered for a second, but it was just a second. She smiled and with a hint of enthusiasm responded “Yes! We’ve barely started, he can take another fight. He barely even got to see this one, literally holed up on the other side.” Rulli sniggered at that, while the other two just grinned.

“Okay then” Darmon said, starting to walk down the left tunnel, the rest of the party following swiftly in their now established order. Rum considered that the joke at his expense might’ve just been a small joke, but he also thought to himself that it probably wouldn’t hurt his self-esteem or image within the party if he managed to get just a little bit more involved next time.

As they walked, Rum still carrying his looted skull, he voiced a thought out loud:

“Hey, Elrith?”

“Yes mage?”

“When do we get any loot in this dungeon? I mean, you guys didn’t pick up anything after that fight we just had. Why not?”

“Not everyone finds skulls valuable enough to take as loot, mage.” At that joke Rum could hear Rulli and Gilda snigger in front of him.

“I’m just keeping this for research!” Rum defended himself, then added: “But why didn’t you take the swords, and the shields? That metal got to be worth something, right?”

“Oh we will” Elrith responded, “but no point dragging it all the way with us here. Highly valuable loot we might take right away, so that it’s not relocated by intelligent enemies while we are doing other parts of the dungeon. But less valuable loot, and especially heavy loot like the claymore and shields, those we wait to pick up until we’re finished.”

Rum nodded along. And the rest of the walk continued in silence. It took about 5 minutes before they saw anything more than stone slabs, mountain rock and dirt, but when they finally did stop they had entered a natural cavern the size of maybe one or two large urban houses, it was difficult to tell with all the darkness and the limited reach of the torches. It took nearly no time before a short wooden bridge crossing a shallow river became visible though, and what looked like the continuation of the tunnel on the other side.

“I’m a little suspicious.” said Darmon, and stopped, the others stopping behind him forming a half-circle of curious faces. “If this dungeon lord is any smart – and by the rumors of it Jorteg certainly qualifies as smart – then I think this spot might be an ambush. We’re gonna try and cross the bridge, but be prepared that skeletons might come rushing for us. Somebody should try to keep the mage safe if that’s the case.”

The other 3 party members outside of Rum glanced at each other. After a short pause from everyone Gilda announced that she would stick close to Rum to protect him if necessary. As such the party advanced, everyone except Rum armed and ready for whatever might be coming. As Rum was still carrying the skull he considered he might have to throw the skull if necessary, not that he was a good thrower though.

Rather predictably, but to everyone’s deep discomfort, there was indeed an ambush. As Darmon set his first foot on the short bridge one could hear the first little sound of metal being scraped against rock, and the quiet shuffling of dozens of bony feet. In a matter of seconds, as Darmon was close to the other end of the bridge, and the rest of the party were all on or about to go on the bridge, the sound of shuffling turned into the sound of running skeletal feet. Soon, from behind; Rum spotted half a dozen skeletons, all running for him, Gilda and Elrith. Taking a quick look at the other side Rum saw the fainter outline of at least as many skeletons swarming Darmon and Rulli. This was it: a battle had started, and Rum wouldn’t even be able to stand on the sidelines now, even if he’d wanted to, he was sure of it. Gilda positioned herself in front of the bridge, while Elrith ran behind. Once in position, Elrith quickly fired a shot straight into the skull of the closest skeleton, felling it in one hit.

Rum, trying to make a quick decision as to how he were to participate, just ran up Gilda, grabbing her shoulder and yelling “Skin Toughen!”, pouring so much mana into her that the complexity of her entire skin smoothened out a little, removing some wrinkles. As a side-effect Gilda’s fingers also became just a slight bit fatter, slightly inconveniencing the dexterous grip she had on her one-handed axe. Only Gilda noticed this though, but she was too concerned about the battle ahead to waste words complaining about it.

Rum ran back onto the bridge to position himself a bit closer to Rulli and Darmon who were now fighting in way too much darkness due to both torches being at the party’s rear. What Rum saw as he came closer, and what suddenly became clear to both Rulli and Darmon, was that they were surrounded by way more than skeletons that they should be forced to handle. As many as four tall claymore wielding skeletons, with breastplates no less, were either hammering- or about to hammer down upon Darmon’s armor and shield, turning him into something akin to a blacksmith’s anvil as Rum watched the pounding. Next to Darmon, Rulli was not doing much better either. Rulli, as a two-handed axe wielder, was not well suited for defending against as many as five skeletons with swords and shields. This fight did not look like it would progress well.

Rum suddenly heard the sound of more running skeletons, and as he turned to look at Gilda and Elrith he saw a small swarm of skeletons running up towards them to reinforce the four skeletons currently fighting Gilda. Not only would these reinforcements make it harder for Gilda, but now Gilda was in serious danger of being outflanked, and if she was downed then they’d not only lose the rear torch but Elrith would be massacred, and possibly Rum to. For a few seconds Rum looked upon the fights, stunned and unable to understand the best course of actions at this time. But he tried analyzing the situation: Darmon was having a hard time standing up because of the relentless hammering of the giant claymores smacking him down. Rulli was unable to cut down any the skeletons as he was desperately trying to defend. Gilda was in an increasingly desperate situation, she’d already been unsuccessfully stabbed twice now, only coming out unharmed due to Rum’s Skin Toughen spell. Elrith was doing fine, but her situation was conditioned on Gilda’s survival. In the end, unable to just observe anymore; Rum reached a series of decisions, first of which was to throw away his skull-to-be-researched:

“Skin Toughen! Muscles Grow! Body Thicken!” he yelled as a second, and Rum grew a little, pouring massive amounts of mana into his spells. This was a life-or-death situations after all, and not a time to conserve mana. His first priority onwards was to save Rulli who, contrary his spouse Gilda, didn’t have any spell protecting him. Also, if he tried to save Gilda first then Rulli would possibly not be able to see his fighters and get stabbed to death in the dark.

“Rulli! I’m coming!” He yelled and stormed towards the skeletons who were now surrounding Rulli on all sides. Rum only had one hand free to use however, so he needed to do something that wouldn’t be a waste of initiative and time. In his quick reasoning he decided to grab one of the sword-and-shield skeletons from behind by the rib cage. Then, using his massively increased strength, he pulled the skeleton away from the fight by the ribs, lifting it up in the air a little, before, still by the ribs; throwing the skeleton to the other side. There it landed straight into two skeletons about to join the rapidly closing circle of skeletons surrounding Gilda, giving her a brief moment of relief.

Rum’s first act of aid didn’t free Rulli though. Rulli was still desperately trying to dodge stabs and using the top middle of his axe to push his enemies away by pushing at their shields. This tactic was only staggering them for a couple of seconds at best though, because properly reanimated skeletons like these are strong beings, and while Rulli is also strong, he was not overwhelming their individual strength anytime soon.

At this point Rum decided to use the encirclement of Rulli by the skeletons against the skeletons. He ran behind the next skeleton, also grabbing this one by the rib cage, and threw it across the shallow river. This time his throw only managed to knock the skeleton against bridge though, sending it face-planting into the river. But his tactic was working, and as Rulli was catching up on what Rum was doing, Rulli used his staggering knock against the skeleton’s shields to ideally position each skeleton for Rum’s next rib-cage-toss, and one by one in quick succession the remaining 3 skeletons were thrown into or over the river, helping to also temporarily knock down 3 other skeletons on the other side.

As he was now liberated, Rulli was finally in a position to help Darmon who was at this point being hammered unconscious bit by bit. The dwarf ran up to the claymore wielding skeletons and planted his two-handed axe in their skulls, managing to take down two skeletons before the other skeletons caught on to the tactic, and went for defense; swinging their claymores in wide arcs at Rulli’s direction. Rulli managed to dodge, and yelled at Darmon to get up and join the fight. Darmon responded by trying to do so, but his attempts at standing looked like that of someone severely drunk as he swayed back and forth, having to lean on his spear not to fall over.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Rum had decided to come to a rescue. Here he found a Gilda exhausted and barely visible from the swarm of skeletons surrounding her. Worse than this she appeared to being stabbed almost every few seconds. She was clearly bleeding in multiple places too, but nothing that looked too serious as Rum’s Skin Toughen spell was still keeping her relatively safe.

Rum didn’t have time to count, but he guessed there were at least a dozen skeletons surrounding the undying Gilda, and possibly closer to 15. Seeing as he only had one hand free there wasn’t much he could do, and he couldn’t risk being swarmed and leaving the other side of the bridge completely without light either. Thus he decided that since the other side of the bridge now was doing quite well and likely winning; that side could need some more skeletons to fight. So Rum repeated his earlier trick and started rib-cage-tossing enemies one by one over the river to where Rulli and Darmon were.

It took almost five minutes, but slowly the swarm around Gilda thinned out, and Elrith’s continuous firing of crossbow bolts helped taking down a few skeletons to. In the end, Gilda was left with just five skeletons to fight, and at this point Rum joined Gilda by grabbing skeletons, lifting them up in the air, and then slamming them down against the ground, making them easy pickings for Gilda’s axe which crushed their skulls one by one. It took only another two minutes now before Gilda, Elrith and Rum had completely cleared their side of the river for skeletons. On the other side the fighting ended just a few seconds later, finished off by a bolt from The Heart-Piercer, who by now could possibly be renamed to The Skull-Piercer.

Rum ran up to the other side, waving his torch around to see if there were any more skeletons coming. They heard nothing, and saw nothing. The battle was over.