Chương 3: Chapter Three: Roads of Bone

THREE Roan climbed down the shelf in a hurry, leaping the last few feet to slam into the skeleton. His boots broke the shins of the skeleton, shattering them like rotten wood. It folded in half, slamming into the ground in a pile of bones. Roan slammed the axe into the skull, splitting it with a single blow. Hands came and grabbed at him, skeletons coming from the shelves above him and below. Thin fingers wrapped around his hair and ankles, pulling him toward the graves.

"FUCK OFF!" Roan screamed in rage and fear, slashing at the hands holding his hair. Steel bit bone and a hand hit the ground, a chunk of his hair still in its deathly grasp. Roan snarled in rage as his heart pounded in his chest in a frantic rhythm. He tore his ankle free, feeling the fingers rip at his skin. Away from the close proximity of the shelf, he watched as the skeletons got to the ground, their broken bodies not slowing them down.

One of them staggered toward him while the other turned and started to reach up, grabbing at the other slumbering undead.

"No, you don't!" Roan charged forward, but the skeleton lifted a rusted sword up, barring his path. Roan slapped the sword away and lunged forward, grabbing the creature's neck with his free hand. Bone snapped under his fingers as he wrenched his fingers to the side. Its head hung on with scraps of skin attempting to hold the skull in place. Roan didn't give it a chance. He shoulder checked the skeleton while ripping his hand the other way.

The last fragments of the skeleton's neck broke free, leaving Roan holding the skull by the truncated remnants of its spine. More skeletons started to stir as they were awakened with nothing but the briefest brush. Roan reared back and threw the skull and watched as it crossed the short space to slam into the fully awakened skeleton. It slid and fell free of the shelf, hitting the ground hard but rising with its own axe as it started toward him with murderous intent.

Above it the other skeletons were starting to slide free and a touch of panic started to pierce through the anger and pain." If they all come at me, I can easily become overwhelmed." Roan didn't slow down, just pressed his attack even as his limbs started to feel the strain of the brief but fierce fight. He knocked the enemy axe blade out of the way and drew the second axe in a smooth motion, chopping down and leaving the blade buried in the undead's head.

More of them started to come down from the top, stabbing down awkwardly with their swords. Rusted steel parted the air as Roan threw himself backward, hitting the ground ass first and rolled away as the last of the shelf landed ready to fight. Blood and sweat dripped into his eyes, the patches of torn scalp weeping freely to pour down his face. His ankle throbbed as he crouched down, balanced as well as he could be. He looked over his shoulder, a part of him wanting to run from the crowd as they headed toward him.

Then he looked over the alerts with all the credits he'd earned.

"It's only three of them. I can do three," Roan whispered. The tight confines of the mausoleum and realized the skeletons could only come at him one at a time. Roan moved forward in a shuffling step, the tip of the sword wavering before it lunged. Sparks erupted as he threw himself against the crypt, knocking the sword to the other side. He pressed his advantage, stepping closer and cleaving its head open. Before the body could fall, he shoved it back and into the feet of the other skeletons.

They all stumbled backward, a mess of clattering limbs and steel, Roan leaping atop of them and slashing down as fast as he could. Bone splinters flew around him as the two of them tried to fight back, but he overwhelmed them with speed and ferocity. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. He slumped back as they stopped moving, the alerts sliding down his vision. Twelve of the skeletons killed in less than three minutes of frantic fighting.

One-hundred-and-twenty points earned, which he had no idea how much buying power that was. From his understanding the other towers had all unique interiors, but he'd never heard of a tower wide market system. Roan checked over his wounds, wiping away the blood on his scalp and clearing his eyes with a scrap torn from the hem of his shirt. He'd sustained worse when he'd been training for the trip.

His ankle wounds were wrapped with more of his shirt, nearly half of the garment sacrificed to keep his bleeding restrained. He counted over the shelves of undead stacked around him. Parallel to each other and spaced only a few feet apart, there had to be hundreds of them in eyesight. The hallway stretched as far as Roan could see until the gloom grew too thick to see past." I could stay here for days farming skeletons. But what's the point if I don't know how much the points are worth.

Or the cost of anything on the market." Roan's brow scrunched as he thought through what he should do as he gathered up the weapons he wanted from the undead. He stacked the weapons to the side, keeping an eye on anything further down the hallway in case more of the skeletons began to rise. Where he had arrived was the middle of a hallway, but there was an obvious way forward. There was a path of candles that lit the way, giving him enough light to see by.

The other passage was completely black, the sandy floor simply disappearing as if an obsidian blade had fallen to cut it free from the world. He kept a pair of the axes, one in his belt and the other in his hand. The longsword was simply misplaced for the tight confines of the hallway. There was still a desire to take one, a sword was always useful and the further length would be an advantage in the future.

"Bag of holding would have been nice, right about now." He got to his feet and started to look over the abandoned graves, looking for anything else he could salvage. He'd only gotten through the first of the graves when he heard the screams. High pitched and fierce it echoed and bounced off the walls of the crypts. Multiple voices, or rather lungs, engaged in the fiercest cries of terror that Roan had ever heard.

He moved without thought, leaping free of the graves and grabbing the longsword he'd previously been about to leave behind. More and more screams echoed down the hall as he began to run, paying careful attention not to brush against any of the skeletons. Not all of them rested carefully in their graves, arms, legs, and even a head hung over the side. If he touched any of them it'd start a chain reaction of this entire hallway. Hundreds of the creatures chasing after him in the matter of minutes.

Roan managed to keep from touching any of them. Dancing back and forth as he ran, sweat started to slide down his back and face as the screaming began to grow louder. He couldn't tell if it was because he was getting closer or they were coming toward him. Seconds morphed into minutes and his pace began to slow even as he willed himself to keep going. Cloth grew sodden on his ankle as the makeshift bandages soaked through and he felt a stitch forming in his side as he passed by dozens of shelves of undead.

Counting the shelves was the only way he could tell the distance he was traveling. Sweat poured down his face as the landscape finally changed. The endless rows of undead ended abruptly at a massive intersection. A boulevard of perfectly clean onyx stone appeared running perpendicular to his row of dead. People were staggering along the boulevard, drenched in blood and dirt, holding rusted weapons as waves of undead pushed against them." Guess they weren't as careful as me."

The thought was mean spirited as he watched a man fall, his throat slit as a trio of skeletons held him down and another ran the edge of its sword across the vulnerable skin. Hundreds of humans were fighting but there were thousands of undead. People fought with as much skill as he had, with the ferocity of people trapped in a corner and knowing there was no way out. Roan could do the math. Even with all the skill and ferocity shown, there was no way they were going to survive.