Second World

Jack heard heavy footsteps and immediately looked back at the Skeleton Captain. It was charging at him! He could not afford to spare any thought for Bill: it looked like it was already too late for him anyway. Without its saber, the Skeleton Captain swung its long arm towards Jack like a mace. Jack jumped and rolled to the side as the massive hand hit the ground. Crack lines radiated outwards as the pavement buckled under the powerful blow.

The monster paused to recover from its missed attack. Jack didn't want to let this chance go. He hastily recovered his balance and slashed with his sword.

*Power Strike! 14 damage*

"Damn!" He couldn't resist cursing out loud, "Such low damage even with a skill. How high is this thing's defense?!"

The monster turned and made a horizontal swing with its backhand. It swished through the air as Jack scurried backward out of range.

Mana Bullet!

A beam of blue energy shot out from his staff and landed squarely on the Captain's face.

*Critical! 21 damage*

It was critical but the damage was barely above 20! Without critical, the damage would be less than Power Strike. He stepped back further to create a larger distance. As the Captain rushed towards him, Jack pointed his staff and used the staff's innate energy to send out standard range attacks. Small balls of energy shot out towards the Captain's body.  With the monster in motion, Jack's aim with his left hand was still not good enough to manage to hit its vital parts for critical damage. A mere 7 damage appeared above its head.

As the monster approached, Jack ran away, maintaining a safe distance. The attack of this monster was too strong, but its speed was average. Luckily Jack had a boost to his speed due to the starting attribute points from his two classes, which made him much faster than the usual Fighter or Magician class.  His speed probably even surpassed the Ranger class' speed at his level. This made Jack just enough faster than the level 6 Elite monster to avoid its attacks.

Jack kept a distance of at least five meters from the monster and kept on blasting away with the staff's standard range attack.  He could not care less about depleting the staff's energy in this kind of deadly situation. When the cooldown of his Mana Bullet was up, he cast the skill immediately.

With this cycle, he kept on grinding away the Skeleton Captain's health while leading it in a big circling trail on the street in front of Bill's house. Luckily the street was not the regular small-sized residential street, but the main street with a breadth of almost eight meters. This gave Jack just enough space to maneuver.

He didn't know how long he had been kiting this monster in this circling motion. Jack knew he couldn't let his guard down by getting sloppy, so he kept on focusing on the same repeating tasks while paying attention to the monster's Health bar on his monocle.

It was around 60%. It felt so long already, and he was not even halfway yet? He felt exasperated. He looked at his own bars; his MP bar was around 40% already. Not good. He felt lucky that he had eaten the Fried Rice that increased his MP recovery, if not, it would be much less by now. But with the way this was going, he might run out of his Mana before he could kill this monster.

Jack's stamina was still full, but he was certain that engaging this Monster at melee range would be a big mistake. Now he thought his decision to focus on his Fighter class had been a mistake.  He should have put more experience into his Magician class instead. He looked at his staff, its energy was also half gone. He figured that it took around three standard range attacks to deplete 1 point of the staff's energy. However, this energy didn't regenerate by itself and he wouldn't be able to use the standard range attack once it ran out. The situation would become much more difficult when this happened.

As he was kiting the monster, Jack didn't realize his circling route was gradually shifting closer to Bill's body. When the monster passed near the corpse, it stopped. Jack was puzzled, but then his expression changed to dread when the Skeleton Captain reached out and pulled its saber out of the body and brandished it towards Jack. Jack imagined seeing a grin on its expressionless skull face. It let out a roar and made a dash towards him.

'Crap! Was it faster?' Jack was shocked by the sudden burst of speed. He almost didn't manage to dodge when the saber came slashing down. He could feel the wind of the attack brushing past his hair. It was a very narrow escape. But before he could regain his balance, Jack saw the Skeleton Captain's movement from the corner of his eye. He hastily brandished his sword in front of him. Parry! The saber clashed with his sword for the second time and caused him to fly back again. His health went down by another 65 points this time.

'It was its weapon!' Jack finally realized, 'It must give the monster an attribute boost which makes it faster.' Some weapons in RPG games possessed such a boost. Unlike Jack's common weapon, this Elite monster's weapon was likely to be special. He had been getting used to the monster's weaponless movements; this sudden increase in speed had thrown him off guard.

However, Jack thought he should still be slightly faster. As long as he didn't get careless, he could still maintain the kiting strategy. What he needed to watch out for was the monster's throwing attack. It must be a skill that let the Captain sacrifice its weapon for a ranged attack. The damage might even surpass the monster's normal attack, so it was of utmost importance for him to be cautious now that his HP was half gone.

Now that he knew of the monster's greater speed, he moved further from it. He only attacked once when it entered his range, and quickly pulled away again. Jack did this hurriedly the first few times, which caused him to miss twice, wasting the staff's energy. But once he got used to it, he got back to the rhythm of previous his kiting, albeit at a slower pace.

Jack had a few close calls with the saber; his heart was beating like crazy every time it brushed past his body. He hadn't had such an adrenaline-fueled fight for a long while. He felt like he had gone back to the time when he first played VR games. At that time, the virtual reality made his body react like everything was real even though he logically knew he was perfectly safe. This time though, he knew it was real, and dying was a mistake he could not afford. Yes, he had the get-out-of-jail-free card from his inherent Immortal Soul skill, but, once he used that, he would have 24 hours without protection. He could not be sure that he would not encounter another life-threatening situation again within those 24 hours, so he would treat this fight with utmost caution.

When the Skeleton Captain's HP bar reached 50%, it abruptly stopped chasing Jack. It lifted its weaponless left hand up high and some gibberish voices came out of its tongueless mouth. Then it slapped its hand down hard on the ground. An eerie black light condensed at the place where its hand rested. The ground started breaking and as more black light poured forth, Jack saw a figure forming within it. Suddenly the light coalesced into another skeletal figure holding a club.

Skeleton Thug (Basic monster, Undead)

Level 3

HP: 350

"F**k!" Jack cursed again.