The stone air from my standard snapped into place, separating three of the hell dogs from the rest of their pack. I wasn’t sure that this was the best idea I had, but it was what I was going on. The concept of divide and conquer had worked so well in so many battles through the ages that I was hoping it would work again.

I had just over a 6-foot radius to work with and not much time to use it. If I cast a small Lay to rest, I would only get one of them as it affected such a small place, so I needed to use something else. So I dropped my pack and drew my sword. The thing I had going with me was they were all on one side.

I activated my Skeleton Dance of death and moved. Again, there was a level of grace that was present in this type of fight. I had all of my skills working flawlessly with each other, assuming that they didn’t knock me out of the skill.

The three hell dogs looked different. Even though they were all empowered skeleton dogs, I could tell they were not the same as when they were alive the first time. The one on my left had a rounded face and short legs. When it moved, it was almost like it moved its chest first. The middle one had large teeth, bigger than the rest, and its bones glowed green. The third one stood taller than the other two by at least half a foot, but its bones looked lighter.

Chesty was the first to move with his round head. He darted in low and fast. By being on my left, he was going to be the hardest for me to deal with. I felt my skill guide my right foot back and around, causing me to spin as I lashed out with my sword. As in the past, when fighting skeletons, I felt my sword turn to the flat of it as it slapped into the face of the hell dog.

If they were capable of making sounds, I was sure that I would have heard the dog whine as I knocked it to the ground. I finished my spin and saw that the other two were on the move. The green one was impeded by the body of Chesty, but that left Legs, who jumped at me.

When I knocked Chesty away, Greeny took stumbled threw the bones. Never thought of how missing skin would change a fight this way. The magic that kept the bones aligned and let them move didn’t block off the spots between the bones. So things like arrows could fly right through. However, something like the legs of other skeleton dogs could and did get caught in rib cages.

The lack of flesh, however, didn’t adjust how well they could jump. At least not in short bursts. I was able to get my sword around, but the move that my short sword skill used wasn’t a great idea. Unfortunately, I adjusted my stance and took the jump onto the tip of my blade. If this had been a living creature, it would have been great. As it was, my sword passed into the chest, and then when the dog hit me the rest of the way, it got snapped out of my hand.

Legs bit its bony mouth onto my right arm, becoming a mounted arm weight. My wrist was between the front legs and under the neck, trapped in bone. Its mouth was trying to bite through my chainmail. The attack, however, more than the damage, yanked me out of my dance, which made me stumble.

I needed to learn how to use the dance without giving the skill control. It would help in cases like this so that I could recover and keep going. As It was, I did the first thing that came to mind. I tried and failed to shake the dog off my arm.

I was only shaking for half a second when I saw that Chesty and Greeny had gotten untangled, and they were coming at me again. I brought Legs around to take the charge and lost my footing as the two other Hell dogs hit me with enough force to push me back. My gamble of finishing these guys off might have been a poor one.

Then I smiled and quick cast a small Lay-to-Rest on Legs. I felt it weaken its grip some, but I also felt the other two move off of me quickly. While the spell would only be one square yard, I could move it now that it was on something else. I could use Legs as a magical club.

Chesty went to my right, and Greeny jumped right at me as I got to my feet. I brought my arm and Legs around to meet Greeny in the air. If I could get my hand out through the rib cage, I would have grabbed ahold, but I couldn’t. So Greeny just went flying. However, Chesty took a bite out of my right thigh. I needed something better than the weighted skirt that I had made.

I yelped and brought Legs down onto Chesty’s head breaking Legs apart and showering Chesty with bones and my sword. While I would have loved for that to have been the end of Legs, it seemed that the magic holding the dumb thing together was strong enough that even with just the head and front legs, it was gnawing on my armor.

I dipped down and punched Chesty with my left hand as I snagged my sword from the ground with my right. As I was stepping through and coming back up, Greeny took out my legs from the left. Even with just bones, he had enough weight that with my awkward footing, I went down like a lineman hit me in the fourth quarter. My legs went out from under me, and my head went to the ground bouncing and sending me back up to my knees.

I had flashing in front of me the concussion debuff and heaved across the ground as I tried to stand. To stay on the ground in this would be death. With my head ringing and mouth tasting like breakfast, the second time through, I stood up. Legs had finally died and fallen off my shoulder. Chesty was still getting up but looked worse for wear as one of Leg’s bones was stuck inside him. I could feel the mana from the Lay-To-Rest still moving in that bone.

Greeny was on his feet and moving like nothing had happened to him. Which truthfully mainly was right. He had tripped and tackled me but mostly had avoided anything that would give him pause, so I was messed up, but they weren’t too far from where they started.

Chesty started to come at me when its chest fell out from Leg’s bone. Then Chesty went down, and so it was just me and Greeny, who was circling me. I turned slowly. My head was all slushy, and I was trying to track, but that wasn’t working. Greeny took that time to make a jump at me. As it was in the air, my weighted skirt activated and healed my head, so when Greeny hit, I could react, and I rolled back.

I reacted wrongly and launched the hell dog through the stone air dome. My fight had taken only around twenty seconds. That was time that I couldn’t get back, and I needed to move fast. My standard would only hold up for so long before giving out on me, and then we would be back to low mana fighting.

I snagged my totem from the ground and aimed it toward the largest group. It spun up and started putting out its smoke, slowly filling that side and breaking apart the bones. Next up, I fired as quick as I could all of my arrows at zombies. While the arrows wouldn’t do much to a skeleton, they would do a fair amount of damage to the zombies that were in the mix.

My goal was to spam as much damage as I could as quickly as I could. Even with the totem, I still didn’t have an actual area of effect attack. I could, with assistance, toss out a single medium Lay-to-Rest for forty-five mana. However, I could only do that once if I was full. If full up on mana, I could do two smalls without any additional mana sources. I was missing Lannah’s mana at this point. I could have popped out a few large Lay-to-Rests and been done with this.

I dropped my bow to the ground next to my pack and yanked open the top. The problem with using mana that is stored is you have to touch it. This meant that the geodes I had in my bag needed to come out if I would be casting using the magic, and it was the only mana I had. So I reached into my pack and started to pull out geodes. Then I started in on my dance for Lay to rest small.

It wasn’t much of a spell, but it was all I could do right now. My bow wouldn’t do much against them, and nothing I held onto would pass the shield. So between dancing to draw mana in and burning through the geodes’ stored mana, I was able to cast out a one-square yard spell every 5 seconds. Each of these would last for 30 seconds and hopefully be able to finish off some of them.

I only had 12 geodes left as I had been using them to create things like my Standard and tree growth stakes. There was no way I would be able to kill all the undead before the shield went down. I just needed to get as many as possible and hope for the best.

Blink was out in the mass, messing with them as best as she could. I kept seeing fire show up in bursts, so she was likely using fire strike as she ripped them apart. While she was a great assassin, this wasn’t really the type of battle that she excelled in. She did great when there was blood to let and vital organs that she could chew on. Reanimated bones and bodies just didn’t have the same weakness to precision strikes.

I blew through all of my geodes and started to worry. The horde of 100 skeletons had dropped down to about 60 as the hot smoke was finishing them off as quick as it could. I checked my standard, and my mana was almost gone at this point. This meant that if they kept it up, then they would be through my defenses in about another thirty seconds at most.

I was in the same type of problem as Blink was. I was decked out to bleed an enemy, not to crush them. I had left my staff at the waterfall because I was trying to cut weight. The best thing I had for beating around the skeletons was the frying pan, but I wasn’t sure that it could kill them. The damage being magically removed gave it excellent hitting power, but if I couldn’t put any of them down for good, then I would end up losing, and that was something that I didn’t want.

I had to think quickly about what I would do as I was about to lose this fight. I quickly pulled up the list of my spells to see if I missed anything, and then I saw what I chose to forget. My Necromancer spells. I hadn’t done anything with them, but I guess it was never too late for a last-ditch try. I knew that I wasn’t going to try to raise any of the dead skeletons, and turning them into zombies wouldn’t work right now. So I took a quick look at steal health only to see that it was touch only and wouldn’t work on undead. Likewise, Festering wound would hardly work on skeletons since it did rot damage. I would have to touch a skeleton to claim it, so that wasn’t working for me, however.

Necromancy Spell

Level

Mana usage

Cast time

Drain Mana

1

2

3 second

This is a Necromancy spell.

This spell lets the caster drain mana from the living through touch and add it to their own mana pool. This spell is highly effective against all undead and animated. The caster must only be within range of the undead or animated target for the mana to drain.

Unlike stolen health this spell doesn't convert mana but uses it to start. It also can not permanently raise your mana nor lower their mana. This is a simple drain that will let you take the mana you need from those around you at a rate of 1 mana per second.

With Undead and animated targets your range is 1 yard per level of the spell.

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