Chapter 237: Striking Directly |
After dealing with those seven skeletons, Fulan glanced back.
She saw Anna covering half of one eye as she walked over, saying as she came, “Hey, wait for me...”
Fulan turned her head slightly and waited a moment. Anna rubbed her head and walked up with some embarrassment.
“I didn’t expect you to be this strong. Sorry, I didn’t do anything at all...”
Anna paused for a moment, then continued, “There’s still that party inside, the one that was fighting those undead creatures earlier. We should be careful. A party bold enough to come in here might attack us outright.”
Generally speaking, when exploring some ruin or a place known to contain plenty of valuables, if two unfamiliar parties ran into each other, they were little different from enemies.
If one party had been exploring peacefully and then another suddenly appeared behind them, anyone would be extremely displeased.
On top of that, the resources inside any one area were limited. If you took something, then I could no longer take it.
So most of the time, when two parties met while exploring some remote and uninhabited place, there was a very high chance that a fight would break out.
But in a situation like this, where there was a “powerful” undead creature inside the mine shaft, the two parties fighting each other would be little more than asking to die faster.
When faced with an enemy that neither party could easily defeat, the two sides would temporarily join forces no matter what and deal with the immediate threat first.
But things were never absolute. Sometimes, not everyone was perfectly rational.
Anna had once seen a party directly launch an attack on the party she had been with at the time while they were subjugating a First-Tier monster.
Their reason was that the First-Tier monster was their prey. Anna had seen with her own eyes that the party was already on the verge of collapse.
In the end, the party Anna had been with could only withdraw a little farther away and wait until that party had all died, then happily claim the heavily weakened First-Tier monster for themselves.
Not to mention that the party ahead of them now was very likely Anna’s former companions. At a critical moment like this, they would definitely make a move against them.
But it was also possible that Grant and the others would not attack right away, and would instead pretend to cooperate, only to strike at the crucial moment while they were fighting that undead creature.
For them, killing an unexpected intruder was absolutely necessary. What they were about to do was far too dangerous.
When they stole that item, every member of the party had been carefully chosen. None of them had much of a background, or else they had offended many different forces.
A chill flashed through Anna’s eyes. At this point, it was already impossible for her to hand that item over to the original buyer, so giving it to the Alliance would benefit both her and the two party members who had died earlier.
As for Grant and the others, they could cling to that unrealistic dream until they died!
Anna deliberately slowed her pace a little, then took the shortbow from her back and nocked an arrow, while loosening the sheath at her waist that held her dagger.
Fulan walked straight out of the passage and arrived in a somewhat open area.
This was clearly a space where a large amount of ore had once been excavated. The walls and ceiling were full of pits and gouges, marked everywhere by the traces of tools used for digging, and even the ground itself had several large hollows sunken downward.
And in another corner of this space stood a white figure towering there. It was planted inside a large pit, its body bent over, with a length of roughly more than three meters.
A body like that was still somewhat cramped inside this mine tunnel, though it was able to move while hunched over.
That was Fulan’s target this time, the undead creature occupying the mine shaft. But the way it looked now seemed rather different from the Necromantic Skeleton Mage Fulan had learned about from books.
Its body was too large. The Necromantic Skeleton Mages described in the books looked nothing like the one standing before her now.
According to the descriptions in the books, a Necromantic Skeleton Mage was usually between one and a half and two meters tall, nothing like the one before Fulan.
And the books had explained in detail that a Necromantic Skeleton Mage had two clusters of soulfire: one inside the skull, as was common for skeletons, and one above the chest.
As long as those two clusters of soulfire were extinguished, the creature could be defeated directly.
But Fulan strongly suspected that the Necromantic Skeleton Mage before her was about to advance to the Second Tier.
She saw that aside from the two clusters of soulfire in the usual places, two more limbs had grown out from its body, and at the end of each limb was another mass of soulfire.
She could even see through the gaps in its skeleton that a thick bony tail extended from its tailbone, and there was another cluster of soulfire on that as well.
Looking at it, Fulan felt that this Necromantic Skeleton Mage had become something like an aberrant variant built on top of its original form. With such an appearance, it was hard not to suspect that something unusual had happened to it.
The Necromantic Skeleton Mage also sensed Fulan’s arrival. It opened its jaws wide, and through that gap, the soulfire inside its skull and the white bony layer around it could be seen.
A shriek immediately reached Fulan’s ears, and even Grant and Gavin, who were resisting the skeleton minions within the chamber, clutched their ears in pain.
That was an undead screech. It did not carry any real offensive power. Much like a beast roaring before battle, it was used purely to intimidate and create an atmosphere.
But normally speaking, a Necromantic Skeleton Mage could not use an undead screech like that. That was usually something only large undead creatures could use.
Then again, with its current size, it could probably be considered a large undead creature.
Grant looked at the Mage Shield he had just cast, now rippling under the impact of that undead screech, and could only frown.
He shot a glance at Gavin beside him. Gavin understood immediately and called out to Fulan, “Hey, friend! How about we attack that big thing together?”
Meanwhile, Grant stood beside Gavin and stared at Fulan with a cold expression.
Although Fulan’s arrival had caught him somewhat off guard, it was also a good thing for them in their current situation.
During the battle just now, he had already realized that the two of them alone would have a very difficult time dealing with that undead creature.
With Fulan’s help, perhaps they would have a chance to defeat it.
Of course, before that undead creature was defeated, Fulan definitely had to be dealt with as well.
Just as Fulan was also about to pretend to cooperate, a skeleton wielding a greatsword slammed directly into Grant’s shield, causing it to shake violently, as though it might shatter in the very next moment.
And just as Grant was about to restore the shield, the sound of a bowstring being released rang out from behind and to the side of Fulan.
A black afterimage cut across the air. It seemed to carry some special treatment made specifically to counter Shield Spells.
The arrow pierced straight through the shield and plunged into Grant’s neck.