Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Two - Maid it Out Alive

Maid-Butler Abomination, level 10, Angry

I licked my lips, looking past the maid-thing toward the Bone Lord. He was hobbling away, making his way over to the end of the balcony with repeated clunks of his bony feet.

It seemed that, if I wanted to catch up to him, I’d need to face off against his guard first.

The abomination was... an abomination. It was boney and skeletal, some of its features partially covered by a poofy black dress with torn white lace. Its arms ended in a pair of boney scythes, and its head was twisted to look a bit like a cat’s, with bony ears and all. Coiling vines clung to it from the inside and poked through its dress.

It was quite spooky looking.

“Hi there,” I said. “Would you mind terribly if I ran past you?”

The abomination lunged at me, one scythe arm swinging.

I barely had time to duck backwards and stumble out of the path of its swing, and that was only because its arm was tangled up in nasty looking vines. “Hey!” I shouted.

The monster swung with its other arm, but this time I was expecting it and launched myself up and over the swing.

While in the air, I brought my spade around and met another scythe mid-swing with a heavy bonk of metal on bone.

My attempt to jump away was foiled as the abomination continued to move towards me, cutting off my escape.

I saw it raising its arms to slice down at me, and brought my spade up as a horizontal bar to meet the bony spikes. They smacked the haft, and soon I found myself being pushed down onto one knee while I grunted and tried to keep the mantis monster from bearing down on me.

I was in a bit of a bind, but I did have one way out.

Shifting so that most of my weight was on my one knee, I kicked out with my foot and smacked the Abomination in the shin while launching a burst of Cleaning magic at it.

The leg creaked at the first kick, then snapped with the second.

The monster tipped over, and I helped it along by rising up and shoving it to the side. The moment it crashed down, I made a fist and wrapped it in Cleaning magic to smack it with.

The monster reeled, legs scrambling as it tried to stand.

A second burst of Cleaning magic, then a third, finally knocked it down completely.

“I’m sorry!” I apologized as I swung my spade up and then brought it back down to bonk the monster on the head.

It died a very unceremonious re-death.

I shoved the notification to the side, then started running after the Bone Lord.

A glance below, and I saw my friends still fighting on. Bastion was taking out most of them all on his own, but I noticed him letting some of the skeletons pass towards where Amaryllis and Awen were working together to smack them down.

Was he letting them practice their teamwork on purpose?

They... probably needed the help. Amaryllis had a tendency to expect others to move in the way that she thought was best, and Awen froze up often, especially when someone else was in her bubble. She was more concerned with not hurting a friend than making sure the monsters trying to eat her were no longer a threat.

Bastion really was a good friend, I decided. I would give him hugs and thank him, but that was for later.

Speeding along with little hops to help me move faster, I tried to catch up with the Bone Lord.

The skeleton was at the end of the row. He had paused before a shelf of old books, and was looking over them with a hand tucked under his chin.

“Hey!” I called out as I flung a ball of Cleaning magic out ahead of me. I still had enough magic that one or two missed strikes wouldn’t be too bad.

The Bone Lord picked a book off the shelf, then smacked the Clean ball away with it.

“Dang it,” I muttered as I started running again. I held my spade with both hands and brought it up to deliver a big swing. The Bone Lord moved fast. He opened the book, touched the page, then let it drop and pointed his hand towards me.

As ten meters became five, then two, I was able to make out the words in the book. They were big and bold, taking up half of a page, or else I would have missed them.

‘Greater Explosion.’

I squeaked and threw myself to the side. I intended to roll, then get back up and smack the Bone Lord.

The explosion behind me ruined that plan.

I grunted as I was sent flying across the walkway. My tail bumped the ground and I rolled to bleed off some momentum. Bits of burning books and wooden shrapnel landed around me. I blinked and tried to hear anything past the high-pitched whistling of... something.

The Bone Lord had been flung back a bit too, but he was pushing himself out of the pile of debris he’d landed in.

Being undead probably meant that he didn’t have to worry about bruises as much.

My foot found some purchase, and I climbed to my feet. My spade was... somewhere, I’d lost it in the tumble. That didn’t matter.

I ran at the Bone Lord, and he looked up, expressionless face twitching back as I cut the distance between us to nothing and slapped my hand over his skull. “Sorry!” I screamed my home nation’s battle cry as I let loose a surge of Cleaning magic.

The air around us stilled as the dust was washed away.

I paused, panting hard, breathing in the faintly fiery scent of burning books. My hand loosened its grip a little and the Bone Lord’s skull fell, soon followed by the rest of the body.

The bones started to break apart into so much dust, just like dungeon creatures usually did. The jacket stayed though. A drop?

Ding! Congratulations, you have Laid to Rest three (3) ‘Skeletal Guards of Newbining Library’ Level 10! A Skeletal Limpet, Level 9! A Maid-Butler Abomination, level 10. And The Herald of Newbining, Bone Lord, level 12! Bonus Exp was gained for defeating enemies above your level!

“Pheew,” I said as I tipped my turtle hat back and wiped a hand across my forehead. That had been exciting.

Moving over to the side of the balcony, I found my friends looking around themselves while a whole lot of skeletons turned to dust around them.

I tucked my loot under an arm, then found my Warspade. I was just about to jump down when I got another message.

Bing Bong! Congratulations, your Cinnamon Bun class has reached level 11!
Stamina +5
Flexibility +5
You have gained: One Class Point

“Oh, ni--”

Bing Bong! Congratulations, your Wonderlander class has reached level 3!
Mana +5
Flexibility +5
You have gained: One Class Point

“Double nice!” I cheered. “Hey! I levelled up!” I called down. “And we got loot!”

Amaryllis looked up, then shook her head. “You moron. Get down here. It’s too soon for celebrating,” she said. But she sounded pretty happy.

“Oh wow, you levelled up too?”

“I didn’t say that!” she said.

“Congratulations!” I said as I hopped down and landed with a crouch one floor down. I shook myself a bit, then grinned at my friends. “What about you, Awen? Bastion?”

The sylph shook his head. “Nothing for me, I’m afraid,” he said. That was too bad, he seemed to have taken out the most monsters.

“Awa, I went up a level,” Awen said. “You too?”

“I got two!” I cheered.

Amaryllis huffed. It was a strange huff, part ‘I’m happy for you’ and part ‘I’m a bit envious.’ I pulled her into a hug to remind her that I liked her a lot and that she didn’t need to be envious. “Why are you hugging me, idiot!”

“‘Cause I love you lots,” I said. Then I hugged Awen and Bastion for good measure. “So, why’d I get more levels?” I asked.

“Ah,” Awen said. “I didn’t use Glass magic. And I don’t think Amaryllis used any Puppeteering skills.”

“And you’ve been using that weird second class of yours a lot. It’s natural,” Amaryllis said.

I nodded along. That made sense. “In that case, we’ll need to practice even harder!” I eyed Amaryllis. “Or at all.”

“You make it sound like I don’t practice,” Amaryllis said.

“I didn’t say anything like that,” I replied evenly.

She whapped me with a wing.

“Well done, children!”

I had almost forgotten that Momma and the other buns were there. The team of bun adventurers stepped into the library and looked about. “That was a good show!” Carrot said. “Like looking over the little ones, but with a few skills you don’t see so often.”

“We did good?” I asked.

Carrot gave me a big thumbs-up, but Momma was a bit more serious about things. “You did well enough. I’m worried that you may have a hard time keeping up on the later floors. This dungeon focuses mostly on swarming tactics, which means that the general level of the enemies found within are lower than you’d expect. Still, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, or even run out of stamina or mana mid-battle.”

I nodded. That was true.

“We should move on,” Peter said. “Did you find the Bone Lord’s key?”

“Key?” I asked. I looked to my friends, but they seemed just as lost as I was. “All we got was this jacket.” I raised the tweed jacket up. It was the cool sort, with some patches over the elbows and big pockets on the side.

“Let me see that,” Amaryllis said. I let her take it, and watched as she shifted it this way and that. She fished out a key from the breast pocket. “Ah,” she said.

Peter gestured, and Amaryllis tossed the key over where he snatched it from the air. “We can move to the next floor,” he said.

“This jacket’s interesting,” Amaryllis said as we started to walk out of the library. “It gives you a skill called Reading Comprehension. It’s of decent quality too.”

“I don’t think it’s my style,” I said.

Amaryllis shrugged. “Do any of you want it?” she asked.

“It’s a common drop. We cut them up and use the material to make suspenders for the little ones,” Carrot said. “It’s pretty durable.”

I let them haggle over the value of the jacket. I had more interesting things to look at as I followed our bun friends to the next floor.

I had so many things close to going up in level!

Just a couple more fights, or maybe a few more hours of practicing really hard, and I’d be all ready to move on with quite a few of my skills. Cleaning was the most exciting of that lot, but there were others too.

I grinned, then realized there was no reason not to skip ahead, even when Amaryllis gave me a look.

Onwards, to more adventure, and more fun!

***