I have been wondering for some time already, why are all of those skeletons human sized, when this is supposed to be a colossans dungeon and before it became dungeon, maybe even a castle.

  Plus only one reanimated - zombie colossan and one too damaged to be reanimated and no more corpses or bones of them… Did they die here or was it here empty when something that made it a dungeon came?

  The second option seems more accurate, because who the hell would let their castle be conquered. Especially a battle loving race, like colossans seems to be.

  Well, I at least found the reason for small skeletons.

  First reason is, of course, the lack of corpses to wake up from death. The second one is that due to the lack of corpses, the necromancer has to summon them from… I dunno from where they summon them, but it makes some sense that human-like necromancers would summon human-like skeletons.

  He’s standing there, behind an army of approximately twenty skeleton knights - the armoured ones, in his dark purple robes. Bony fingers are wrapped around metal staff with something like a crystal ball on top of it…

  …Did I mention his bony nature? Yeah, he is a skeleton. In his eye holes are burning purple flames, which is the only indication of him being more than a normal skeleton and his level is of course higher.

  Skeleton necromancer - lvl 30

  A quite high level - 19 above me, but I highly doubt he will be stronger than the reanimated alchemist, after all he had an epic body enhancement, which, I assume, shouldn’t be something common.

  is perfectly balanced.

  The boss room looks like it's the first half of a throne room, but the second half, where the throne should be, is in the dark, without torches.

  Is there a shortage of them or some? I wonder.

  By this time, the necro already took notice of me and his army of twenty men started walking towards.

  Enough talking time, they’re finally on me - fun time starts now!

  I release a swing at the leading foe, expecting him to be thrown away, yet he blocks it.

  “Huh?”

  Skeleton knight - lvl 19

  A quick thought process of surprise and amusement runs through my mind as he is thrown away, regardless of his blocking effort.

  The next in-useless-steel-buried skelly is a few meters away, perfect for a quick surge.

  I hit him, but also register a light coming out of the necros staff, right in time to dodge it.

  A quick gray-green projectile flies past me.

  It hits one of the skeletons behind me, making his armour rusting in a small, area.

  I’m surging and jumping between the skeletons, usually, with some exceptions, one-shotting them. Unfortunately mostly not killing them, just leaving the crippled on the ground, but that’s enough.

  They are pretty fragile, but not as much as the level 14 ones, plus their armour is upgraded and helps them a lot, too.

  Not like I care too much. These are just small things I notice along the fight.

  I dodge the gray-green spell, kill skeletons and shit, but they still keep coming. It’s pretty annoying.

  My eyes fall on the necro and it’s all clear… of course, he is a necromancer, he will be summoning more skeletons. Fortunately for me, it seems like he can’t really summon more than twenty of them.

  Still, there is a portal next to him, from which, every time I defeat one skeleton, another comes out of it.

  “Playtime is over, baby.”

  I defeat the skeleton in front of me and surge right towards the necromancer.

  My sword is about to hit his staff, but it disappears, and the blade continues through the robes, ribs and spine, out of his body.

  Something hits me from behind, getting through my coat causing an immense pain on my back.

  I stumble forward, grinding a cry of pain between my teeth.

  Every movement of my back muscles invokes my little personal hell, yet there is only path forward. One step after another on the path.

  One skeleton from the right.

  I cover under his blow, and return it with mine… mine hits and he dies.

  Another one from the left.

  Dodge the pain projectile, ignore the hell on your back.

  Right now, I am running in pure instinctional mode, otherwise I would be laying in pain on the floor.

  passive.

  I block the second skeleton’s strike, drive my sword into the ground, and use it as a vaulting pole to kick off that bastard's head.

  Another surge towards the necro.

  A skeleton tries to step in my way, but I bash right through him, aiming for the head with glowing eyes.

  I’m late again, slaying only a normal skeleton.

  This time I ignore the skellies, ducking under the slash of one and jumping over another. My way to the necro is clear.

  Using Kairisurge

  I surge again, reappearing right in front of him. My sword on it’s way for his neck. The glow in his eyes still there.

  Then a train hits me.

  Or something very similar.

  I’m sent flying back, towards the doors, the impact taking my breath away.

  As I’m sliding down from the doors, my eyes become clear for a moment. What I see wakes me immediately up from the near unconsciousness I was in.

  There’s a huge colossal warrior encased in steel. He must be the train and the necro must have him hidden in that portal of his… And he’s charging right at me.

  Still a bit dizzy, I got up as fast as possible. The sword remained in my hand not by a miracle, but thanks to the Colossan grip

  When he nearly reaches me, I jump sideways, avoiding being crushed between him and the doors.

  He bash through, destroying the doors and falling on the ground, but he’s back on his feets right after.

  That’s when the necro uses the distraction made by the reanimated colossal and shoots another gray-green projectile at me.

  Unfortunately, still dizzy as I’m, I failed to register it and it hit my back again, this time from the other side.

  The wave of pain takes me unprepared and I fall on the ground - the pain is paralysing, yet I have to immediately get up. The reanimated big guy is back on his legs, and on his way to crush me.

  Ain’t no way I’m letting him do that.

  I can’t ever remember standing up being this hard, my knees are shaking and I’m all wobbly.

  This is bad.

  I have to get myself together now!... maybe it can wait, I'd rather first dodge the skull crusher of this big guy.

  I wobble a few steps sideways, a huge axe landing where I was just a few seconds ago. If that hit, I wouldn’t have to care about immerse-pain making rotting meat on my back.

  It hurts like hell!!!

  I can feel the tooth chips in my mouth from clenching the teeth too hard… better than a whole tooth, right?

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Enough crying!

  I brace myself up and get moving again; standing still, I am as good as death already.

  The colossan first.

  As I’m looking at him, there are only a few places where I can hit him, which is mostly where his joints are, thus where his armour isn’t that thick. Or neck, but that’s fucking high.

  I think I’m slowly getting good at getting those guys. So no big deal for me to get rid of another one.

  Dodging his swings of that double edged axe is not actually as hard as it sounds… it’s more or less like fighting a souls boss.

  The only difference is the need to also be dodging these magic bolts that make my meat rotting on my back.

  I fear them as fuck, not gonna lie.

  Ducking low under one of his horizontal swings, I thrust myself forward - under him, his kneecaps wide open for me.

  The armour there is just for the look - my sword coming clean through it, strucking deep and sending him on one knee… is history repeating itself?

  He supports his dysfunctional knee with the axe, which takes away all the danger he opposed to me.

  I start to realize that those guys are just big and not exactly lethal. Dangerous? Sure, but not that hard to defeat, when they don’t have enhancements.

  Still, I have to get rid of him. I ain’t leaving any danger behind me.

  As he drops to the knee, I jump on his back with a clear plan to cut his head off, but when I’m reaching out to strike, he swings his hand back and throws me off.

  I land on the rotten back which makes me scream in enormous pain. I think some flesh might even fall from me.

  Nonetheless, I get up again and rush towards the colossan.

  I am late.

  He’s still one one knee, but prepares to release a swing with his massive axe.

  Then a saviour thought pops in my mind - can I surge into the air?

  I know, I said enough flying, but…

  I prepare to swing from below, jump forward and… successfully surge.

  Before he has time to release that swing, his head decides otherwise… to fly off.

  Maybe, but just maybe, I helped his head to make that decision.

  I cut it clean, not even the spine stopping the power behind my sword, built up by the momentum Kairisurge

  As his head hits the ground, the portal leading to what I would call the necros corpse inventory summons five skeletons at once.

  No time to catch a breath for me, I guess.

  This constant summoning is pretty annoying and it really frustrates me.

  I address a quick thought towards the necromancer.

  As soon as I get rid of the first skeleton, another comes out of the portal behind me.

  I slay him from a spin, killing three skeletons at once.

  The whole time I’m on a lookout for the necrotic projectiles, time by time dodging some of them, because I don’t really wanna block them with the sword, after seeing what happened to the armour of one of the skeletons. At least, he can’t shoot that much since there are a lot of his own skeletons around me.

  Did I already say how frustrating magic is? I think I hate it.

  I have no way of getting to the necro, and it looks like he has an infinite amount of skeletons in his pocket corpse inventory dimension, or what it is.

  I’ve already destroyed so many armoured skeletons that now mostly the basic - the unarmoured ones are appearing.

  Slightly distracted by my frustration, I let one of them get a little bit too close.

  When I notice him, he’s already too close for me to use my sword, so I just kick him away, putting a lot of my frustration in the kick…

  Maybe too much, since his spine gets detached from the rest of his body.

  …

  Just joking! Nothing is too much if it kills the enemy.

  Unfortunately my slowly building up frustration, unlike the skeleton spine, stays with me.

  After like another minute, it finally reaches the ceiling.

  Usually, when I’m annoyed, frustrated or angry, I do stupid things… I won’t disappoint this time either.

  Sooo… what if I jump into one of those summoning portals?

  I mean, there will be for sure a lot more skeletons which aren’t a problem to defeat anymore, but at least, that eely bastart wouldn’t be able to shoot the fucking rotting bolts at me.

  It’s decided then.

  I break away from the encirclement of skeletons and make a run for the portal just appearing nearby.

  Your affi-

  I have to dodge the gray-green bolt as I’m sprinting towards the blue circle. My sword behind me, ready to be unleashed in a powerful blow.

  I get there right in time, before it should close - at least according to what I observed, but… it doesn't? It’s getting bigger?!

  Before I could think of a reason why, a big undeadly white hand appears, while the portal is still getting bigger.

  I don't like it.

  If that’s a colossan, then it’s extremely enormously huge in comparison to the other two I’ve already fought.

  It pisses me off.

  He’s sitting behind the whole time, shooting his shits towards me, summoning big bastards and thinks it’s gonna be okay??!!

  No it’s not gonna be fucking okay!

  I don’t wanna play this game anymore!

  Rather than being just internally pissed off, I put all this frustration into my sword and through it into the blow.

  I can physically feel the frustration leaving my body and energy going from me to the sword which… starts to glow greyish?

  No time to observe further, since the hand is halfway out of the portal and I don’t wanna know what exactly is that thing. Seeing the hand is enough for me.

  I unleash the swing, full of my frustration from this fight, my glowing sword going straight for the elbow of the hand.

  I can imagine it cutting clean through and- My expression changes super quickly from frustrated and angry to hella confused and surprised.

  The swing is finished, arm cutted clean… and the portal itself too?

  I did not only take his hand under elbow away, but there’s a piece of his arm ABOVE elbow on the ground with the cleanest cut I’ve ever seen.

  So… Since everybody knows that when you close a portal and something is coming through, it’ll get cleanly separated… Does it mean, I’ve just closed a damn portal? With a sword?... Cool!

  Right at the time, the necro shoots the bolt at me. No dodging this time. I’m gonna cut through it.

  And as I say, I do.

  It just does not go how I thought it would.

  There’s no clean cut like with the portal. It makes the area of contact rusty and the rest of the bolt spreads like a shotgun slugs.

  I manage to react fast, yet I’m not able to evade it completely, a few of the smaller leftover pieces spraying my face.

  …

  It’s not that bad, really. I don’t even scream anymore. That’s maybe because I can’t - my vocal cords must be dead by now. Yes, I screamed a little bit.

  But hey, it’s probably better than being burned alive, or buried alive, or… or… Yeah, it’s better.

  I’m sure of that.

  One of my eyes got a direct hit, so I don’t see on it and the second one is running only in monochrome.

  I hoped a bit that I could save it for later, not needing it this soon.

  It can't be helped.

  Before that scumback can shoot another hellish bolt at me. I grab the regen potion from one of my inner pockets.

  The coat I got from the chest is an actual live saver. Not only it mitigates damage the skeletons can make from making me bleed by deep cuts of swords, to only having bruises, which is huge. But it also kept the two potions I have, save from breaking…

  A shiver ran down my spine.

  I actually never thought, having the freezing flask in my pocket through the fight might not be the best idea. Now I’m curious how I didn’t die already, respectively freeze to death, with all those blows and hits against the walls, floor and doors I took. The flask still survived. Must be a miracle.

  Something like that ran through my head in a picosecond while I was getting the regen pot.

  Scary thoughts.

  I uncork it with my teeth, chugging the potion at once. It tastes like shit, bitter and sour shit, it’s disgusting.

  But it sure helps. I can see with both eyes and the immerse pain disappeared nearly fully too, which is an actual miracle.

  As I’m getting myself together a bit, I have a bit of time to think about what happened. I think I have an idea how I was able to destroy the portal, but afterwards not able to destroy the bolt also.

  Your affinity has been assigned.

  Your affinity: Null

  It’s not none anymore. Now it’s Null

  And why wasn't I able to destroy the bolt? Or should I rather say to nullify it? Yeah, I think it’s clear now.

  I just got the best fucking affinity I could - an anti magic one.

  I wasn’t able to destroy the bolt because, when I was cutting the portal, I infused my sword with what I called frustration, but it must have been this Null

  The thing is, I didn’t infuse it while trying to cut through the bolt, which must be the reason for what happened.

  The necros bolt seemingly cooled down and another gray-green shit is flying towards me. Oh System thank you that the bolts are actually flying slow.

  Thus I have no problem evading it. Now it’s time to strike back.

  Refreshed by the disgusting crap I just drank, and thus can use Kairisurge

  I kill the two skeletons trying to “sneak” up on me from behind… And immediately surge towards the portal which appeared to summon new skeletons for the ones I killed.

  I streamline the weird power into my sword again and successfully destroy the portal.

  The portal must have some cooldown when destroyed, since it doesn’t reappear right away.

  Which is perfect - it gives me time to kill the rest of the skeletons.

  Pretty easy task in those conditions, even with the need of dodging the bolts.

  The skeletons may be level 19, yet it doesn’t show on their overall intelligence nor their battle iq…

  I disperse the rest of walking bones, occasionally “closing” the portal which seems to have cooldown around fifteen seconds.

  That’s enough time for me to laxly finish my job.

  Only one skeleton remains.

  The whole time of cleaning the bones I’ve been thinking how I’ll kill the necro.

  He won’t be able to body swap anymore and I bet he got no more surprises up his sleeves. Why would he then let me masacre all of his summons and cancel his portal?

  No, he's definitely done this time.

  I walk towards him with a calm steady pace.

  He shoots a few shitty bolts at me, but a few moves of my sword infused with that Null

  His end is nearing, yet he seems unbothered by that fact.

  It’s weird. After all, he is still a dungeon boss - he should have some kind of, at least, battle intelligence.

  However, he feels… dull? If that’s the right word.

  It bothers me, because there’s something unknown to it and I feel like it might bite me in my precious ass.

  It’s just a feeling though, but I would rather not underestimate it.

  It’ll be almost fifteen seconds from the end of last portal and I don’t wanna be surging again - I’m exhausted, not only physically, but mentally also, so I just quickly walk towards him.

  I cut through one last projectile and stood in front of him.

  He doesn’t run, he doesn’t fight, he’s just waiting to send another bolt after it cools down.

  No one acts like that when facing death - something there stinks so fucking much.

  One wave of the hand, one cut with the sword. That’s all it takes to defeat him. On one side, he wasn’t an easy opponent and there were a lot of challenges while defeating him, but on the other hand… It just wasn't it. I haven’t felt that much alive as I felt when fighting the alchemist, and he was even at a lover level.

  My life wasn’t in enough danger.

  LEVEL UP

  LEVEL UP

  LEVEL UP

  SYSTEM MESSAGE

  You have successfully cleared the dungeon, a teleporter door has been activated.

  You’ve been granted a reward for clearing the dungeon. Your reward has been further upgraded for the solo clear.

  A blue light starts to form in front of me, but what mainly catches my interest is what happened behind. Something just went outside of the necro? Like a shadow that has been sucked out of him. I got just a glimpse of it but it was there for sure.

  That’s when the blue light in front of me - the System reward finally forms. To be honest, at first I expected another skill choice, but it seems that System thinks I have enough skills for now… which I can’t agree with, since there’s never enough passive skills.

  I catch the reward, which is actually a cool looking dagger, before it falls on the ground.

  It’s a bone dagger, with a mild gray-green glow lining the center of the surprisingly long blade.

  But before I’m able to look at the descriptions of the dagger, an extremely powerful aura rises over me, its heavy presence leaving me gasping for breath for a moment.

  I wouldn't say it scares or horrifies me, but it definitely makes me want to be somewhere else than there.

  There’s no way I could possibly fight whatever it is.

  So I turn around and sprint as fast as I can towards the teleport door behind me, eventually even remembering that I can surge towards it if really needed.

  …I should have surged…

  Behind the door is the already known sea of stars. Relief wash over me as I step into the stars… only to smash my nose against a stone wall.

  The portal disappeared.