From all the information I gathered in this fight I concluded, that I had absolutely no chance of winning. Maybe if I found a way to damage this thing, I could think about a long battle of attrition (against an undead), but as things are now, there is just no way that I’m going to come out alive.

Countless balls of darkness were coming at me, and I just kept dodging them, steadily draining my stamina.

[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Evasion lvl. 1] ]

I’m actually surprised I didn’t get this earlier. I kept racking up my brain, but I couldn’t come up with any ideas. My brain had a lot of experience to getting close to being overheated, but right now, was working twice as hard as normally.

[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Upgraded thought process lvl. 2] ]
[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Concentration lvl. 2] ]

Well, it just got easier to think, even if it’s still as useless as before. Crap! While I was paying attention to the projectiles, the undead just shoot a deadly beam of dark energy at me. I dodged it by literally hair breadth, but I still lost a large chunk of my hp.

At least now I know that even dodging won’t be that easy. I tried swinging my thread a couple of times, but every one of my attacks just went through without doing even a point of damage. Come to think of this, this monster didn’t have a darkness resistance for some reason, so maybe I could somehow reflect his attacks at him?

I quickly trashed this idea, since I didn’t really have any way to do so. In the corner of my eyes I saw it charging another beam, and in search of cover, my eyes landed on a huge chunk of magic stone I created earlier. Even if it wasn’t going to hold, I could gain a couple of seconds if I hid behind it.

I did exactly that, and waited for a moment. Just as I thought, the deadly beam came, and surprisingly, it didn’t have any effect on the magic stone, apart from turning it into a darker shade. I started to wonder, if I could just hide behind this rock, and wait for the monster’s mana to dry up, but it just came at me with its swords.

It seems the balls of darkness were a sort of automatic attack spell, so it didn’t need to pay any attention to aiming. I want that sort of artillery too! But no matter how much I try, when I use magic, only this stupid stone comes out.

Because it turned darker when hit with darkness magic, I wanted to experiment with it absorbing more. When dodging I made sure some of the projectiles hit the stone, and doing this, it was steadily charging up. I had no idea what for, but it was better than doing nothing.

Oh, maybe I’ll try it? I was training a lot, for different purpose, but still it should be usable in combat. I turned a part of my front limb ethereal, and then using the [Transform spirit] I changed it’s shape into a sickle and solidified it again.

Maybe if weapons don’t work, a living body will? Sacrificing some of my hp, I managed to slid between the bullet hell of darkness, and made a big swing at the monster while twisting my body. I felt impact, so it definitely did hurt him, even if the damage was minuscule.

A big success, well not really. I lost to much hp to just get close to it, and the damage I did wasn’t even visible on its body. Let’s proceed to the experiment number two. I returned my limb to original shape, since for some reason having it modified drained my mana, and I didn’t have a lot since I spent it all on the magic stone.

I coated the returned limb in mana, which was a skill that system didn’t really help with, so I had to figure it out myself. Then I spun and ethereal thread, because if a solid one didn’t work, I had to bet on one made out of mana.

Here I come! [Thread slash]! [Thread slash]! [Thread slash]! [Thread slash]!

Oho, it flinched. It definitely felt pain from my attacks, but still, it hp didn’t decrease that much. Even if my onslaught took only about five percent of its hp, it was still more than zero, so my chances of winning increased slightly, now it all depends on luck.

Now in addition to dodging, I was also throwing some attacks between. While I was dodging the beam again, I noticed that the magic stone was as dark as night, and probably couldn’t take any more mana inside. I had no idea what to do with it, but for some reason I decided to touch it.

In the same second I did, it turned white, and I felt a blasting surge of power inside me, so much that I thought I was going to die actually.

[Obtained skill [Darkness creation] ]
[Obtained skill [Darkness imbuement] ]
[Mana refilled]

I had no idea what these skills were, but I instinctually knew how to use them. It took just a bit of concentration to crate a ball of darkness in air, and just a bit more to shoot it. While I couldn’t do it automatically, I could use it as a mean of attack.

And a good one at that, since the undead visibly recoiled from this attack, and it destroyed some of its bones. I kept creating the projectiles, while using the imbuement skill on the ethereal thread I held. It took a while, but I finally managed to turn it completely black.

And with that, I resumed my attacking.

[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Evasion lvl. 2] ]
[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Thread techniques lvl. 5] ]
[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Mana manipulation lvl. 4] ]
[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Ethereal thread lvl. 2] ]

All skills are welcome. For some reason, now that I got a power of darkness, I started to overwhelm this enemy, that was supposed to be almost twice as strong as me. I had no idea why an undead was weak to darkness, but I wasn’t complaining.

In the end, if disregarding the power difference, it was pretty boring boss. It used only three different attacks, and just dodging them was enough to survive. It was dangerous at first, but now that I had a way to counterattack, I could end it quickly.

And now for the finisher [Thread pierce] !

But nothing happened.

Ah right, skeleton type undead are kind of immune to piercing damage. Silly me. So, if you want me to go with a blunt type, I’ll go with a blunt type. I grabbed the thread attached to the giant stone, put all of my strength and mana into my limbs, and swung it at the monster.

A crushing defeat. Literally.