633 Labor, Mess, Leftover Heap of White Bones
The result was superb. The split skeleton crumbled down before turning transparent and vanishing altogether.
"Ah, that did the trick. Then... I guess I gotta do this to all of them to get their cores. Wonder how much will they fetch."
I mean the price of these skeleton cores. Dunno what's the market price but I can somehow tell it's a lot.
I took a biggish bag. To put the cores in. It's just your normal everyday bag. Nothing special about it.
Monster cores can't get in the magic bag. I learned how a dungeon core can't be stored inside a magic bag unless it's inside a specially made bag first from my time with 'White Fang' party. These cores probably fall under the same rule. Or rather, this one literally looks like a mini version of a dungeon core so it must be.
The army of Skeletons deemed me an enemy and rushed here all at once.
They're not at all sluggish. They may not be quite acrobatic but their swiftness made me wonder how they moved so well without muscles.
The very existence of these Skeletons are weird though. They maintain their forms through cores.
I can't even begin to imagine the mechanic behind their living-ness.
They're comprised of nothing but bones. They don't have anything to support them like puppets nor are they linked by muscles yet they're capable of great mobility.
Mana is some pretty terrifying stuff.
But I have no reason to play along.
And so I entered Acceleration and got ready.
(Now then, I need to take the cores out and then smash these bones. That's gonna take a while.)
It's just a blink in reality.
But that doesn't apply to me who moves normally in this state. There's no telling how long it's gonna take me to neutralize all these skeletons.
(I probably gotta have some break along the way. Let's think up ways to speed things up while I do this.)
Thus I began this tedious work starting with the bones in front of me.
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About 15 minutes after I started. I found out I need about six to seven seconds to deal with one skeleton.
First I cut up the ribs with a knife, takes the core out and then stuff it inside the bag.
Ad infinitum.
The skeleton dying from that loop is a bonus.
All is well if this method works at killing them. Otherwise, I just gotta smash them all later.
That may mean double the work but I can just go all out then.
Eventually I got to the last commander-looking big skeleton with its nice-looking equipment.
(It's the same old though. Welp, here goes. Oho, this one's a bit bigger.)
This skeleton was apparently special, its core was a bit bigger than the others.
(Let's set this one aside. Gonna be a pain to look if it gets mixed up.)
I kept it in my hand before putting some distance from the army of skeletons.
Then I undid Acceleration.
The skeletons started cackling like they were having a spasm where they stood.
Apparently losing cores isn't enough to kill them but neither can they maintain their form, hence they just crumble down the ground as bones like some sort of system error. Every single one of them.
I think as I gaze at the heap of bones.
"Ah, good thing these things never managed to run around all over this kingdom. Would have been a huge pain."
Melee, free-for-all, pandemonium. I might be stuck having to tour the entire kingdom if these skeletons ran off.
There would be more victims as well. How'd you deal with practically immortal enemies that only die once their cores are destroyed.
It's gonna take a lot of effort to do that against opponents that are actively trying to kill you. Casualty would have been enormous.
Gotta be thankful they stayed in this place.
"But, something feels off. Like it's manmade somehow. Something brewing behind the scene maybe? It stinks."
The intuition I sharpened in this world tells me there's more to this than meets the eye.
I walked up to the entrance of the dungeon where it all began.
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