Chapter 53: Undead on a throne

Leon let out a sigh after she finished speaking.

"I guess we have something in common," Leon said. He smiled at her. "I lost my mum because of a decision I made.

I should have known better, but I didn’t, because the person that killed her was also a friend of mine. I lost my mum and my friend all on the same day."

"And I’m guessing that the friend is the monster that you are after?"

"Yeah, that one," he replied.

She wanted to say something else, but there was a sound coming from the other side of the wall where the rocks had collapsed.

"Something is there," she said.

"We should actually start moving as well," Leon said and got to his feet. He picked up his sword and his wand.

He walked to the passage that had been blocked and pointed his wand at it, gathering a compressed fireball and attacking it. The rocks were blasted into bits and the space was cleared.

Behind it was an army of undead skeletons standing, rusted weapons in their hands.

Sophia stepped forward. "I’ll handle it," she said and rolled her scythe. She took one deep breath and shot forward, her scythe moved through the air fast, decapitating each one with speed.

She planted her foot, spun around, and dug into the head of one. She pulled the head off, spun it into the air, and kicked it. It bounced off the head of all three undead, pushing it then back.

She dashed in after.

’She is fast and precise, seems she works better against more enemies,’ Leon thought.

The scythe was a weapon created for many enemies, with a curved black blade that was crafted to slash through them in massive numbers. A tool originally created for the gathering of hay for livestock. Created not as a weapon but only a tool.

Many people tried to master and use it, many tried to harness it, but only the best of the best were able to control its nature. Sophia was beyond that. The way she moved was specific, the way she carried the blade was clean.

She cleaved through more undead, darkness wrapping around her blade. She manipulated her darkness until it began to twist around her scythe. She slashed with it and the twisted arc shot through the air. It slammed into one undead, twisted it into the air, and slammed into the next, twisting more until it created a vortex of darkness that ripped them apart.

Her technique, she twisted the darkness. Two main forces at work in a vortex were the centrifugal force and the centripetal force. One force pulled things inward and one pushed things outward.

She managed to control both in her attack, one that pulled the undead inside and one that pushed them out, the centripetal to pull in and the centrifugal to push out.

"Done," she said and stood, looking at Leon.

"You are really skilled with that scythe," he complimented her. "That twisting skill you used, how did you do it?" He asked as he walked toward her. It was not a spell, so he knew it was something deeper.

"It’s nothing too hard, to be honest. All I have to do is control the output of my darkness, twisting its structure like a vortex. It’s a personal technique I made myself."

"That’s pretty good, to be honest," Leon said.

They kept moving through the passage while Leon asked her a few more questions about her technique and then soon started practicing it as well. He held out his hand as a flame lit on it. He controlled the flow of the flames and it created a vortex, but it only lasted a few seconds before it vanished.

"What am I doing wrong? I keep controlling it constantly and yet it keeps stopping," Leon complained.

"The fact that you are able to even do this much from the start tells me how skilled you are with mana," she explained. "But you are focused far too much on keeping it spinning with your own control.

What you have to do is understand how both forces work with each other. Each one has to find an equilibrium, and when that happens, you only require a minimal amount of force to keep it spinning."

"Hmm, that makes some sense. I’ll work on that and see."

She smiled when she saw how eager he was to learn. She had her questions about him and was not sure about Leon, but the more time she spent with him, the more that she realized he was just a kid that wanted to learn stuff.

Life had been rough to him, but at the end of it, under all that strong-willed effort was a kid, a normal, young, and curious kid.

They kept walking and soon stepped into a large chamber. They did not expect what they saw there. A stone throne sat at the center of the chamber, and on it was a seven-feet-tall skeleton seated. It was hooded with a dark, torn cloak, and in its frozen bone hands was a twisted black staff with a purple crystal.

Even in the state where it did not move, it gave off an immense aura that caused sweat to fall down their backs.

"Seems we might have found what we came here for."

"Yeah, and that does not look like an easy undead to take down," Leon replied.

"We should find the others before we do anything about it."

While she was speaking, Mark walked in with Kira behind him from another tunnel.

They spotted each other immediately.

"Yo, seems we found ourselv-"

Smack.

Kira smacked him at the back of his head.

"Shut the hell up, you are going to wake up that undead and have all of us killed."

Sadly, it was too late, as the eyes of the undead lit up with green flames and its body began to move where it sat. The pressure there grew rapidly.