Re:Monster - Re:Vival

Day Ten

Half a day. That was my guess at least, as to how long I spent wandering the corridors and training my forces on the eleventh floor. Assassin had gotten used to its new weapon and style while Axeman had become the physically strongest member of my subordinates. Their abilities, I felt, were good enough that they deserved names to differentiate them from the others.

After some thought, I gave Axeman the name 'Ares' and Assassin received the name 'Ankou'. They seemed satisfied with the names. Maybe they could tell that those were the names of Gods from my previous world.

Anyway, by the time we got back to the group, the party of humans still hadn't shown up. It was starting to get annoying to be frank. The only thing keeping me from just forgetting about them and moving on was my memory of what it was like to be a human. More specifically, what it was like to be an injured human. As a Skeleton, I could probably keep going even if I was missing an arm and a leg and as far as I could tell, stamina wasn't an issue either thanks to [Tireless], a skill I've had since my rebirth.

These thoughts unfortunately did nothing to assuage my boredom though, so I decided to do some experimenting. Naturally I asked for volunteers from my subordinates as I was not the type to force things on people who haven't wronged me in any way.

As for what I was experimenting on? Well, naturally it was [Bone Fusion]. I'd already seen what it could do with a 'dead' Skeleton but what about my summons? I started with a simple test and fused the arms of one skeleton to the body of another, creating a lesser version of the skeleton i had killed to gain the skill in the first place.

This left one skeleton with no arms which made me feel a little guilty so I continued. What I was left with afterwards was either a monster or masterpiece, depending on the person looking at it. The new skeleton had two heads, four arms and the rest of the sacrificed Skeleton's bones had been used as a sort of armour or perhaps more like an exoskeleton.

It had some issues with balance at first since it had become so top-heavy but a bit of reorganisation balanced it out well with plenty of heavy 'exoskeleton armour' on its lower half. Thinking about weapons, I thought that a great-sword and two one-handed swords would suit it. Unfortunately I didn't have a great sword so they had to make due with four one-handed swords.

After it showed its strength had just about doubled, I felt satisfied to leave it as it was and called it a 'Twin-Sword Skeleton' since I made it with two Swordsman Skeletons and they were kind of like conjoined twins, especially since, unless they were female, they were extremely difficult to tell apart based on their appearance. That and I thought it sounded kind of cool.

I had made another one of similar quality, if slightly better, by the time the party finally showed up. Their shocked expressions were admittedly amusing as they saw my small army of undead. The Swordsman and Crusader were on high alert and guarded at the sight and the Ranger Girl was freaked out. I guess she must have been really out of it last time she was here.

As for the Porter Girl, she was surprisingly alright with the situation, smiling and coming over to say hello to me and Mara. It was a little strange to be honest but I made sense of it by thinking that she was probably pushing herself to make herself seem more useful to the party since she wasn't a main member. If I thought about it that way, it made sense, especially when I looked closer and saw that her legs were shaking.

We moved on quickly and finally began to make our way through the eleventh floor. Since I had my summons scouting the area, we could have made it to the next floor far faster than we did but I thought it would be wise to see how strong the humans were.

They were hesitant to show their strength to me at first but after having Ares and Mara show off, a fire seemed to have been lit under their asses and they tried their hardest to keep up. From what I could tell, the Crusader was about as strong as one of the stronger skeletons on this floor while the Swordsman was a little stronger. The Ranger was basically useless and acted as a diversion most of the time since her arrows didn't really have much of an effect on the skeletons.

If I were to compare them to my own forces, the Crusader and Ares were around the same level, the Ranger was a better archer than my own but lacked the quantity of my group and the Swordsman surprisingly seemed to have a lot in common with Ankou when it came to his swordsmanship style. Perhaps he had been an assassin before taking up the sword. This thought stuck with me long enough for me to order my summons to pay special attention to him and alert me to any suspicious movements. Former assassins were always annoying in my previous world.

After around two hours, we continued to the next floor. The same kinds of enemies appeared there and I managed to get the [Arithmetic] and [Head Smash] skills from them which would no doubt be useful. It was a little awkward having to sneak around to take the skills but with the sheer amount of summons, I was able to use them to hide me from the humans' eyes. After looking into it a bit, I discovered that [Head Smash] wasn't as useful as I had hoped. It wasn't a skill centred around smashing a target's head, rather, it was a skill used to headbutt a target. Not the best when the skull is one of maybe two weaknesses I had.

While the twelfth floor had little in regards to skills, the human party decided to stay on the twelfth floor for most of the day. Whether it was for training or something else, I wasn't able to tell. Mostly because the Porter girl, who told me her name is Lia, kept talking to me. I wondered if she'd been put up to it by the rest of the party; sending the expendable party member to make friends with the skeleton necromancer made sense in theory, but if that was what she was doing, she was good at hiding it. That's ignoring the fact that I'd be more likely to kill the others for putting her up to it instead of her since she already proved she was worth something, unlike the others who dropped like flies against the gangly monster from a few days ago.

As we walked towards the stairs leading to the thirteenth floor, I noticed that Mara was peering over at Lia and myself more often and eventually found myself walking with both of them at my sides. At the time, I thought Mara might be wary of the her for the same reasons I would have been. Mara was quite intelligent after all, especially for a skeleton. Even more-so when compared to the other Mage Skeleton.

I was surprised when we reached the thirteenth floor and the group started to set up camp. Lia explained that, while it's not particularly common, many adventurers will do this when they wish to continue going deeper the next day or if they still have enough supplies but simply lack the energy. I guessed that it was thanks to my summons pitching in that their supplies hadn't run dry yet. That and Lia's incredibly well-packed bag.