“H-he’s coming right towards me! Ah! Help!” Erene shouted as she nearly threw her weapon and tried to scamper away. What scared her wasn’t the tall man holding two knives, but rather the massive undead trailing behind him. Due to the chaos and ruckus the undead caused with its entrance, nobody could hear what kind of sound it made, but now that things have died down a little bit, she could hear it. It was the haunting sound of laughter.

With his quick thinking, Ryan immediately sprang into action. He lifted the woman onto his shoulders before swiftly dashing away. Compared to the weight of Brandon who he was so used to carrying, the woman was nothing. Although carrying her still weighed him down slightly, he had to keep the only fighting chance they had safe, and he was pretty fast even still—

It came in a flash, and Ryan suddenly felt a sharp pain in his ankle. He nearly tripped and fell, but the wound wasn’t that severe, and his enhanced regeneration was already beginning to close the wound.

“I forgot he could do that!” He turned around to try and gauge where the knife came from. “Don’t underestimate me! Attacking me just means revealing your position—”

Crack!

A blunt force slammed into his reptilian nose and blood immediately began to pour out of his nostrils. It felt like a hammer struck directly into his face, and before he could even react, he received another bludgeoning to the side of his head and was sent skidding a few meters away. His head landed hard on the metal floor.

‘It can’t be? He already caught up?’

Despite the throbbing pain on various parts of his head and face, he knew he couldn’t just lie down forever. He immediately got up and looked around, and was shocked to find that Erene had completely disappeared. A short distance away, Zhang was shouting at him.

“Watch out! The skeleton's here!”

A shadow loomed over Ryan, followed by a massive sword that fell upon him. In a moment’s desperation, he dug his claws into the floor, crawling away as fast as he could. Luckily, the attack missed him by a hair’s breadth.

He quickly scrambled to his feet and poked his tongue out in the air. One of his abilities from his blessing allowed him to ‘taste’ the scent of the air, which would allow him to catch wind of Kayden’s location. Before he could even get a hold of him, however, a blur of white rammed into his side and sent him flying.

He nearly thought that he was once again struck by the invisible thief, but realized quickly that it was the skeleton. The raised skeletal leg looked quite menacing, and the force of the kick had sent him flying into Zhang, causing them both to topple onto the floor. Clearly, it wasn’t a lucky day for both of them.

Zhang pushed off the wincing Ryan and picked himself up. “Leave that fellow be for now. It’s better to take down that skeleton first. With our combined firepower, we should be able to do it.”

Ryan was hesitant but had no choice but to agree. As of right now, they had to address the biggest problem in the room, and only then could they go after their target. With a brief nod, he got up to his feet and prepared to fight.

It wasn’t long before Brandon caught up to them as well, and he angrily spat out a few words.

“That thing’s completely ignoring me!”

“We… We can see that.”

Ryan decided not to tell Brandon about who the skeleton’s most likely going after, for it will cause his obsession with vengeance to flare up again. Zhang didn’t need any telling and wisely kept his mouth shut as well.

They each drew their flourished their individual weapons, Brandon his great axe, Ryan a short sword, and Zhang his crossbow. Together, they charged toward the massive skeletal figure.

***

Kayden was having the time of his life right now. His increased speed made dodging and outrunning the skeleton as easy as cake, especially when you compare it to how it was before. Like cutting down grass, the skeleton swung its blade constantly, whittling down the adventurer’s numbers almost as fast as the number of gold to his name.

‘Haha… That wasn’t funny.’

Of course, Kayden wasn’t going that far. He wasn’t going to take the lives of adventurers when they haven’t even done anything to him, so he only ran after those he knew could protect themselves. As for why he kidnapped the woman who could see him, it was both to save her and to prevent her from revealing his position.

Erene, who he got the name of thanks to the appraisal ability, was currently lying limply over his back. He had knocked her out earlier and was now going to hide her away before he would jump into the fray again. Surprisingly, knocking her unconscious granted him some experience.

Once he placed her down at an inconspicuous corner and covered her with a temporary illusion, he ran off towards the adventurers again with the giant skeleton trailing behind him.

‘I can definitely see how Matou managed to become so powerful now. These stat point things are incredible!’

It didn’t take him much effort to outrun the skeleton, and he led it around the room in a goose chase. Of course, he didn’t miss the barbarian who seemed to get more and more desperate the more the skeleton ignored him.

‘Hah! If you want to be a meat bag so much, I’ll let you!’

Kayden ran straight towards Brandon, not because of revenge or anything— Ah, who was he kidding? This is for kicking him so hard that he nearly flew to heaven!

Strangely, as the skeleton’s blades started descending towards Brandon, instead of utter terror and fear, there was a smile on his face instead. Forming two mana swords in his hands, he caught the undead’s weapon between his two blades, a very impressive feat, even for Hel.

“[A-ranked strength. That’s unusually high for a human of his level.]”

Kayden wasn’t nearly as impressed.

“Yeah? But what’s the point of having monstrous strength if you don’t have the brains to use it?”

Hel laughed in reply. “[Ah, but you see, he doesn’t need the brains to think, because there are already others to do it for him.]”

“What do you—”

His voice was cut off by a sudden explosive clap, followed by tremendous gusts of wind that almost knocked him off his feet. Swiveling his head around, he was surprised by what he saw.

A cloud of dust and smoke filled the air behind him, and the skeleton that was so eagerly chasing after him was nowhere to be seen. Kayden however, wasn’t as surprised by this than the tremendous amount of notifications that just popped up on the System’s interface.

[-14!]

[-3!]

[-11!]

…

[Combined damage dealt: -218!]

The numbers were small, but they added up to so much. Once the smoke cleared up, he could see the skeleton kneeling on the ground, its skull fractured, and one arm missing. Kayden couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“No way…”

“[Is it that unexpected? There are nearly one hundred adventurers here, and even if you did incapacitate a few of them, there would still be a lot. If everyone did an average of three damage, that number isn’t that hard to hit.]” Hel explained matter-of-factly.

“Uh… Thanks for calculating everything, I guess.”

Kayden looked over to what seemed to be the commander of the adventurers, yelling orders while firing at the skeleton with magical bolts of light that came shooting out of his crossbow. He briefly considered knocking the leader out to make a mess of things but decided against it. Bringing down the giant skeleton benefitted him, too.

And sure enough, without Kayden purposely messing things up, the skeleton was swiftly brought down. It didn’t even manage to put a fight, with every blast knocking it down before it could even regain its footing. As if to mock its strength further, the death throes of the giant skeleton included it going off with a dark, fiery bang, which got very easily contained by barriers formed by the adventurers. Although the black flames tried to spread as fast as they could, they didn’t even touch anybody.

“Wow. To think that this thing once gave me so much trouble. Now it just looks… pitiful.”

[Skeletal Champion has been killed! You gain 13,375 EXP! (Assist)]

[You level up! (Gain one stat point)]

 

[Stat points remaining: 1]

“[Congratulations. You have reached the same level as Matou before he got robbed of his System.]”

“Nice! Does that mean I can beat him?”

“[I mean… Sure... Why not?]”

“Wow. That didn’t feel genuine at all…”

Kayden looked around at the devastation that the skeleton had caused, which wasn’t as devastating as he had thought. Although many adventurers were injured, none of them died thanks to the several healers all around, and despite their injuries, all the adventurers were cheering to their heart’s content.

“Look at them being all happy and stuff. I doubt there’s any loot to be had from the skeleton, and the sword’s a little too big for me to take, anyway.” Kayden dropped the illusion spell covering Erene before beginning to sprint off. “Time to regroup with my party. See? Things didn’t turn out so bad.”

“[Indeed. It seems that fortune does favor you today. Do you have any plans after regrouping with the rest? If you don’t, I recommend you to not stay here too long. It’s very unsafe.]”

“How so?”

“[…Do you really need me to spell it out for you? You would have nearly died if it weren’t for me.]”

“Bleh. You’re starting to sound like my master.”

“[That’s because she’s a reasonable person, unlike you.]”

Kayden shook his head. “Ah, whatever. I’m not leaving until I get something substantial out of this place. Until then, you can expect me to remain.”

After saying this, Kayden picked up his pace and headed back to the room where his party would be.

As he passed by the various hurt but cheerful adventurers, he couldn’t help but cheer along with them, despite the fact that he was the one who brought all this trouble here in the first place. Everything went super smoothly, so how could he miss this opportunity to celebrate? He even clapped along with them as he continued to run. However, something soon caught his attention.

“Hey, guys! It’s the Crimson Menace! Some adventurers managed to find her! Let’s go check it out!”

“Really? Alright!”

Kayden slowly came to a stop.

‘Did I hear that correctly? Why is she here all of a sudden? Crap, I have to get her out!’

“[You’re going back to help them?]” Hel asked him incredulously. “[She said it’s ‘every man for himself’. You don’t have an obligation to risk exposing yourself like this.]”

“What are you talking about? She clearly wasn’t in the right mind when she said that. Besides, she’s a friend.” Kayden sounded very adamant.

“[…Fine, I’ll allow it. But if things get too dangerous, you best do what I say.]”

Kayden waved her off. “Sure sure. If it ever comes down to that.”

He strutted over to the place where the adventurers were beginning to crowd around, carefully avoiding knocking onto people lest they catch him immediately. All he needed was to take a good peek at the situation, and thankfully, with his height, he could simply look over the heads of others.

What he saw was completely out of his expectations. Four adventurers stood in front of the crowd, confronting one singular person. It was the Crimson Menace, looking extremely worse for wear. Many of her armor pieces were missing, and all over her body were wounds and bruises that anyone could tell were affecting her tremendously.

A sudden, scary thought surfaced in his mind.

‘Don’t tell me… She’s the only one left?’