-Vol 5: A New Life-

-Mysterious Twin-tailed Girl-

“Ouch!! Why? Why I am feeling pain. Ouch. It hurts so much.” The man who called himself ‘Controller of death’ screamed in pain and flailed around like a fish out of water. He started to pat all over his body as if to put out some imaginary fire.

On the other side, Joy was looking indifferent as he scanned the man but dared not to go any closer with his skeleton soldiers guarding him. He had already tasted a bitter defeat at the hands of these skeletons who coordinated well with each other.

“That’s just a taste of what my powers can do.” as he spoke these, he thought of his powers ‘It's true that I don’t have a skill that could directly harm my enemies, but so what? I have trained my ass off to make the best use of my skill. I have racked my brain to come with different ways to use my powers. I won’t lose to those pure aggressive skills.’

It was clear that Joy had some bitter experience throughout his career as a hunter due to his skill, which was, despite being a magic skill, wasn’t purely one. Not only that, due to his absence of pure offensive powers, his initial level up was very slow and took more than 10 years to reach where he was now. It's only after his first awakening that his skill had gone through a total evolution and he became aware of some of the obscure things that it can do. This screaming, self-proclaimed controller of death was an example of his skill’s obscurity.

The pain lasted for a few more seconds before the man stopped screaming. Then he shakily stood up and glared at Joy who had a serious look on his face. The necromancer didn’t believe that he would be on the receiving end in this fight, his strategy was perfect. With the help of his three melee skeletons and one magic skeleton, he would have been easily dominating the fight with this hunter who didn’t seem to have any offensive magic.

But then where did this pain came from? It totally messed up the necromancer’s tempo. Even worse, he couldn’t understand why this happened. Just in case he decided to be careful. He decided to not get too close to the man ever again and will fight from a distance. He learned his lesson already. That phantom burning sensation, like his very soul on fire, had left a deep impact on his psyche.

As such, with swift movements that looked like a snake’s slithering, he made the distance between him and Joy. Then had his skeleton magician flank his front. After that, he ordered his three foot-soldier skeletons to make a circle in front, to guard him against Joy.

Giving out a smirk, Joy once again vanished and appeared a few meters above skeleton foot soldiers, trying to catch them unguarded. Just as he was about to land a punch on one of the skeleton’s head, the one standing near it reacted and intercepted with its shield. The one who was being attacked rolled back made a spin and aimed its sword tip at Joy who was still airborne.

When the sword approached, Joy extended his palm coated in lightning and touched the tip. Using the force, he propelled himself back, making a back roll on mid-air he landed on ground half kneeling and observed the neatly shuffling skeletons.

At this time, the skeleton magician started to cast its magic. A bright fireball appeared in front of its boney wand and gradually compressed to become as small as a ping-pong ball. The skeleton’s bone mouth clattered against each other, perhaps in an attempt to recite the spell for the fireball. The small ball of concentrated flame instantly left the bone tip and flew at Joy.

Being prepared for this, Joy rolled out of the way, letting the ball land on the road. The moment it touched the concrete, a bright light shined, melting the road to goo of black leathery substance. He stood up ran at the skeletons again, with his thunder knuckles making a white streak across the dusky road. He then suddenly stopped in front of a skeleton and threw a punch at it. Like before the skeleton used its shield to shield it.

Bang!

Metal collided with metal, and the shield had a dent on it in the shape of knuckles wore by Joy. But the necromancer didn’t notice a faint trace of green energy entering the shield via the dent formed from the impact. Rotating once more with his right toe as a pivot, he threw an elbow to another skeleton and like before it was stopped by another shield. After that, he no longer lingered around and ran away again, creating distance.

Rolling his wrist, he put his hands inside his pant pocket and retrieved his latest model smartphone. His eyes were on the top trey, more specifically the clock. Waiting for some time, when saw 10 seconds passed, he kept it inside his pocket and started to fall down on the striking stance again.

He closed the distance in a scant seconds before landing a vicious punch on the shields held by the vanguard skeletons. As the metal collided with metal, it created a loud banging noise, followed by the distinct crack of thunder. Like fire, thunder is extremely deadly to undead due to divine nature that could cleanse any impurity. To avoid it, the two skeleton vanguards distanced themselves from Joy and shuffled once again with the one in the back.

Just as necromancer was about to initiate another attack on him, suddenly he heard a distinctive cracking sound, as if a glass had just broken. Looking at the direction of the sound, he found the shield held by two skeletons suddenly turned to dust and fell off to ground in small clumps. The skeletons were void of any emotions, so there were no facial expressions at the broken shield. Even their hand posture of holding the shields didn’t change despite not having one. They are actually didn’t have any intelligence, forget about emotions.

But same couldn’t be said for the skeleton magician and Necromancer. For a skeleton to cast magic, it needs some amount of INT and WIS. Although the skeleton magician didn’t show any intelligent behavior yet, it was clear from its strategic magic casting that it knew when to strike and where to strike very well.

When it saw the shields crumble, its limited intelligence already warned it that something bad had happened. As for necromancer, he was even more stupified and became solemn. His mouth hung wide, large enough for flies to freely access the premise. His body twitched involuntarily as he saw the two hips of iron sands gathered at the foot of the two skeletons on front and back.

“Wha-what?” he stuttered but, couldn’t come up with a coherent word.

Joy moved once again, he immediately took advantage of the stupefied and disorganized skeletons and speed past them, appearing near Necromancer with his fist poised for a vicious uppercut laced with power of lightning.

Boom!

The force was so large that it sent Necromancer flying in the air, at the same time the ground which Joy was standing on also cracked a little. Unfortunately, he became a target for a tiny fireball that came too sudden from his back.

The skeleton magician made its move even though the master was beaten like that, as expected of intelligent undead. Gritting his teeth, Joy braced to receive the impact, at the same time he wanted to use his ability to boost up his defense. Unfortunately, his skill’s cooldown period wasn’t over.

As the fireball came near, Joy felt the scalding hit even though it hadn't touched his skin yet. Suddenly time stopped in Joy’s perspective as a small petite figure with red twin-tails appeared out of nowhere holding a big hammer, even bigger than herself in front of him.

“Hei!!” with a cute shout, she swung her hammer, sending the fireball like a baseball player hitting a home run.