"Mr.Skeleton, why are you a skeleton?"

The skeleton stayed silent for a while, either ignoring her or contemplating the question that she had asked.

Finally, he opened his mouth to speak.

"...Betrayed..."

Caroline then thought about it. When her daddy used the word betrayed it usually meant people doing not very good things.

"Well, they're meanies! I think you're really nice, even as a skeleton!"

"..My..Name...Vilard"

"Your name is Vilard?"

"yes"

They were currently trailing behind the two skeletons that were riding ahead of them. There was the occasional goblin or kobold that got in the way but the skeletons just swept them aside with their longswords like it was nothing. The ones that were right under them usually got trampled by the large skeletal warhorses, if they got through Vilard just smacked them into the forest.

"Mr.Vilard, do you really know where the magical fruit is?"

"Yes...undead...eat"

Caroline stared wide-eyed at Vilard as he continued to steer his horse on the correct path.

"You eat it!? But they said it was poisonous to anyone who wasn't sick!"

"...poison...useless...undead"

"Really!? That's amazing!"

Vilard was internally smiling. This little girl turned out to be a handful to keep entertained, but it wasn't all bad. If anything she sort of reminded him of his daughter, he didn't mind it at all.

"...there..."

Vilard and the other two skeletons arrived in an opening with rolling green hills. Fireflies lit up the area as the serene beauty was captured in the place where no human had stepped foot in many years. 

There was a large castle that overlooked everything on top of a large hill, from down here Caroline could see there were multiple skeletons that were dragging plants, monsters, and other supplies into the castle. They looked just like normal workers, chatting in their own undead tongue while working.

"...we...wait"

The other two skeletons rode off towards a group of odd trees nearby as Vilard and Caroline waited for their return.

"Mr.Vilard, do you have friends?"

"...I..have...Lord"

"Which lord? The one above or one that you're working for?"

"....Both.."

"Cool! Is the one you work for important?"

"...Yes..."

"must be nice. My daddy is a lord as well, he's been really stressed recently though. Bad people like before are everywhere now!"

Vilard stayed quiet. In all honesty, if Vilard had blood in his body it would boil with rage and anger at the men who dare do such things to a girl. He wanted to torture and strangle them but he didn't want to do that in front of the little girl so he gave them a swift death instead, which was much more than they deserved.

He looked at his fellow skeletons who had just exited the weird trees and were now heading back. They rode back to him and one of them hoisted a bag up.

They handed him the bag and he opened it to reveal the green fruits that perfectly matched the picture on the book. He nodded towards them and they started riding back through the forest once again. 

Vilard kicked the side of the horse, which made it speed off through the trees as well. Though they were going at high speeds through a dense forest, they never even came close to hitting any of the trees. Perhaps it was because they were indeed skilled at riding in their past life or maybe it was because the horse was undead so they could communicate, you never know.

"Um, Mr.Vilard. I know I've asked for a lot from you but can you help my friends? A lot of them look like they're not feeling too well and the bad men could be back at any time"

"....yes..."

"Yay!"

With all the technicalities aside, Vilard was still completing his mission. To survey the borders and kill anything hostile, which the bandits definitely classified as hostile. He even said that he could talk with humans if he really needed to, a Demon Lord with this level of flexibility was unheard of in the past but Vilard appreciated it.

Vilard had leveled up many times as he took down the bandits and monsters that plagued the forest. A portion of the experience is transferred to his lord but it didn't matter too much, at this rate he could evolve from a rank C+ to a B in a month. 

A monster evolves based on their level, which again increases when you fight and kill other beings. Once the monster in question is at the appropriate level, they evolve, then their level resets.

"Over there! That's where we have our horses!"

They had covered an incredible distance in a short time due to their skeletal horses, which don't feel tired or feel pain at all. 

All Vilard prayed for was that the adults would be as optimistic as the child when it came to seeing a group of heavily armored skeletons come bursting out of the woods with their lord's child.

Yeah, that didn't sound to good even in Vilards head.

---

Terence

"What do you mean Caroline's gone!? COUGH!"

The knight looked at the men to his side. They had even fewer men now because the soldiers that were sent to clear a path for their carriages to go through were now missing, meaning they were most likely dead.

A soldier had checked inside of the wagon to find the small child missing with the book that contained all the poisons and antidotes gone as well.  They easily put two and two together and knew that she had eavesdropped them and headed into the monster and bandit-infested forest by herself to go look for the antidote.

"I swear COUGH! If I die I'm coming back as a ghost and haunting you!"

"Don't worry sir, we'll run into the woods to go and find her. Soldier, get your weapon we're going-"

"INCOMING!"

They had put a soldier on the monster scanner for the whole time they were here. The monster scanner detects if a monster enters in close proximity and shows a rough estimate of their ranks.

Currently, the dials on the thing were flipping into the C rank and another dial displayed the number three. This meant that there were three C ranks heading towards them. 

The only C rank in the camp was the knight and he was still a C-, the bandits that they had fought were D- or D ranks and their soldiers had been absolutely massacred before the knight and the regular soldiers took care of them.

"Bastards! Protect the Lord!"

However, only six of the men, including the knight, could even muster up enough strength to stand up and take a stance in front of Terence. They were all young and had just watched their friends get cut down right beside them, there was no way they could survive this.

NEIGH!

Three large figures burst through the cover of the Demon Forest. They were skeletons that were armored and mounted as well, much better equipped than the bandits they had just fought.

"The one in front's even wearing Mithril armor, we're pretty much done for. It was a good run guys, see you on the other side!"

The knight dashed at the skeleton in Mithril armor and slashed at his horse, aiming to decapitate it. However, before the blade met the horse it was instantly parried by the skeleton and knocked away.

Strike after strike, the knight furiously tried to hit the horse and the skeleton but all his attacks kept on getting blocked by the skeleton with a single hand holding onto the sword.

The knight retreated backward before looking down at himself. There wasn't a single dent on his armor even after fighting for so long and being at a disadvantage in both skill and strength. 

"Why am I still alive?"

"Hello, Mr.Knight! I'm backkkk"

The utter shock was on everybody's face as the small Caroline jumped off of the skeletal horse followed by the heavily armored skeletons who all dismounted and headed towards the group of disheveled men. 

They had left their weapons on their horses, so they were completely unarmed as they advanced towards them.

"C-Caroline!?"

Perhaps the one that was the most shocked out of all of them was Terence himself, who just witnessed his daughter on the back of a gigantic skeletal horse with a bunch of monsters.

"Why are you with those things!?"

"That's mean! Mr.Vilard is not a "thing" he's a very nice skeleton!"

The skeletons advanced towards the extremely terrified men, with Vilard holding the sack out to them.

Shakily, the knight took it from him and opened it to reveal the Manchineel fruits that had been freshly picked.

"No way... young miss, you got them to pick these fruits for you!?"

"Well, I just asked them and they said yes so I guess...yeah"

Wordlessly, he handed the bag to the soldier who knew healing magic 

"Will these work?"

He nodded

"Affirmative, however, I will have to risk poisoning myself to apply this fruit and healing magic onto the lord. Long Live Lord Terence!"

The soldier grabbed the bag from the knight and was about to stick his hand into the bag to grab the fruit before Vilard yanked the bag out of his hand and shook his head.

"GAH!"

The soldier fell backward as the skeleton stuck its own hand into the bag and grabbed the fruit. He crushed the fruit in his hand and dripped a bit of the juice into Terence's wound before casting.

[Medium Heal]

A golden glow came out from his skeletal hands as the skin wound started to close up, which closed the juice of the fruit up with it. Immediately, the green around his wound was gone and he started breathing normally.

"I have never seen this in my entire life! A skeleton that can use holy magic, this is completely unheard of!"

However, the skeleton had just cast it right in front of their eyes. The soldiers didn't really know what to do now, they should've attempted to kill the monsters by now but they hadn't shown any hostility in the slightest. It was truly surreal seeing the thing that they should be killing up close without it mindlessly attacking them.

A soldier nudged the knight while the skeleton finished the magic.

"Sir, what do we do in this situation!?"

"Like I would know!"

Vilard looked around at the soldiers that were mostly cut up and bruised, though some were more serious than others. He decided to do something drastic, though this would probably waste all of his MP.

[Regeneration Zone]

This time a golden light surrounded the men and the wagons in a large circle, starting to heal the majority of them from all their wounds. This spell allowed a person to heal from small to intermediate wounds for 10 minutes, but in turn, it uses 80 MP to achieve this. The soldiers were enveloped with a warm light that started closing all their wounds.

Vilard nodded in satisfaction as the men had gotten back their energy to stand up again. 

"...we...will....escort"

Terence really couldn't believe what was going on, did he just say that they will escort them out?

"I may have heard wrong, but did you say that you'll escort us out of here!?"

"...yes..."

Vilard and the other two skeletons hopped back onto their horses and steered them in front of the wagons. The living horses reared back as their undead versions stared them in the face.

"....I guess we go now then. My lord, your poison is gone now and we know that the forest is extremely hostile so we must get adventurers that are more experienced to come here instead of us. These skeletons seem to be trustworthy for the time being and are all very strong."

At this, the rest of the men loaded back up into the wagons with Caroline now sitting next to her father. The drivers were still alive from the whole bandit ordeal so they took charge of the horses. Due to instinct, the drivers motioned for their escort to go ahead before remembering that they were undead.

However, to their surprise, they nodded and took off in front of them. The driver hurriedly got the horses to start galloping forward to catch up to them, though they were stopping at some points to allow them to catch up.

"Caroline, where in god's name did you find them!?"

"Well, it's a long story really"

"We've got time"

And so, a group of humans was being guided by three skeletons that were killing everything in their way as they headed back towards human civilization.

What a weird world that we live in

---

For anyone who thinks that I wrote all this beforehand, I'm telling you right now I have zero backlogs. I'm writing this from scratch every day that I upload, and yes that means I just wrote almost 5000 words in a day, I just wanted to make up for the missed days so here ya go.

I appreciate every comment and review, it means the world to me!

See you guys tomorrow!