Chapter 662 Skeleton and Spider Silk

"Let me do it!"

Brimming with fighting spirit and excitement, the young man's shout rang across the field.

His pure blond hair radiating a faint glimmer in the sunlight, Zanfrey, the noble youth from the "Shield of the Silver Lake," had already entered a combat state. Having stripped off his loose traveling cloak, he revealed Fine-quality equipment that adventurers of the same tier could never hope to match.

Through his family's connections, he had commissioned a suit of dark-brown leather armor from a high-level blacksmith in the Imperial Capital. Its primary material was said to be the soft abdominal hide of a Mud-Armored Rock Ox, offering decent physical defense without being heavy enough to impede the wearer's movements. It might not have been enchanted, but the sheer advantage of its materials and craftsmanship meant its overall performance far exceeded the cheap gear worn by ordinary adventurers.

Of course, steeped in family tradition, Zanfrey vastly preferred heavy iron armor over the light leather he currently wore—armor with a striking, weighty aesthetic that provided a powerful sense of security by encasing the entire body.

In the many oil paintings lining the walls of his ancestral home, the ancestors of the Wilmot Family wore exactly that type of heavy armor. Having grown up under their gaze, the boy naturally yearned for it.

It was just that his body hadn't yet been strengthened by the Transcendent Tier. If the current Zanfrey were actually strapped into such iron armor, he wouldn't even be able to take a single step; if he fell over, he would never get back up.

His right hand tightly gripped his one-handed Faceted Hammer, while a silver-white round shield now rested on his left arm.

As the third young master inheriting the bloodline of the "Shield of the Silver Lake," how could Zanfrey possibly abandon the Wilmot Family's shield-fighting tradition? Drawn from the family vault, the shield was arguably the most valuable item on his person.

The round shield exhibited a soft yet resilient silver-white matte finish. Its texture was incredibly fine, bulging slightly at the center and gradually thickening toward the edges. The combat experience passed down through generations of his family had refined the shield's curvature to sheer perfection; from afar, it looked like the reflection of a full moon on the water.

Unlike Ake's heavy steel shield, which prominently bore the family crest, the round shield Zanfrey wielded had no obvious decorations. Only by looking closely could one see the fine, rippling water patterns around the outer edge that symbolized the Wilmot Family.

As for the noble youth's enemy, it was a bone-white skeleton swaying unsteadily in place, looking as if it might fall apart at any second.

The spiritual flames unique to the undead flickered inside its hollow eye sockets. Looking as though it had just crawled out of the ground, a few of its bones were still stained with dirt.

A helmet so rusted it was hard to look at sat crookedly on its head. Only a third of its thoroughly rotted leather armor remained, hanging aslant over its skeletal frame. Its hands maintained their pre-death posture, tightly gripping an equally rusty four-finger-wide longsword that was in slightly better condition than the helmet. Judging by its attire, it had likely been a soldier of the Servia Kingdom in life.

No one knew what it had encountered or how it had died.

But right now, it had already turned into a mindless undead creature, reduced to a stepping stone for novice adventurers taking the first step in their careers.

Zanfrey had grown up in a noble household. Even though he was poorly treated due to his background, he still carried the bloodline of the "Shield of the Silver Lake." Having undergone considerable training with the family's Warriors since childhood, his combat stance was quite decent.

Holding the round shield up in front of him, he rested the Faceted Hammer diagonally by his side, ensuring his own safety without completely sacrificing his offensive initiative. However, since this was ultimately his first time directly facing a monster of comparable strength, his combat experience was still somewhat lacking.

His rationality, already unsteady in the heat of battle, was instantly scattered by the excitement surging in his heart.

Coupled with the fact that the swaying skeleton struggled just to stand and hardly looked powerful, Zanfrey clearly underestimated his enemy.

Not only was his charge a bit too fast, but he also threw all his strength into the shield before him, abandoning the thirty percent reserve he should have kept to deal with unexpected situations. Seeing this, the guard Ake, standing on the sidelines with his arms crossed, couldn't help but sigh silently.

The very second he sighed, the spiritual fire in the eye sockets of the skeleton soldier—which Zanfrey expected to instantly shatter under his charge—violently flickered. Devoid of nerves and muscles, its pale bones, driven by negative energy, twisted in a way utterly impossible for a normal human. With a clattering clack of bone scraping against bone, it stepped sideways and dodged the attack.

Then, facing the noble youth who had charged right past it, the skeleton raised its longsword high.

'Crap!'

Zanfrey cried out in his mind.

The rusty, cold gleam blooming from the longsword directly above his head made his heart clench.

His initial underestimation and carelessness were completely washed away by the stench of death flooding his nose.

Tossing his image aside and using the momentum of his charge, Zanfrey executed a rather miserable forward roll, dodging the skeleton's two-handed heavy slash by a hair's breadth.

The immense force buried the sword blade deep into the dirt.

Seizing the opening at the end of the combat exchange, when the skeleton soldier was stiff and immobilized from its attack, the fisherboy Winsor darted to the enemy's side. He formed a stark contrast to Zanfrey; utterly lacking in fighting spirit, he maintained his calm composure.

Gripping his short sword tightly, he swung it forcefully at the skeleton's spine.

"Crack!"

With no skin or flesh to act as a buffer, the sharp, hard metal blade landed squarely between the gaps in the bones.

Born into a fishing family and raised struggling against the sea, the burst of strength Winsor could unleash in an instant was no inferior to an average adult's. And the skeleton soldier's frame was genuinely fragile.

With just that single strike, the spine supporting the upper half of the skeleton was completely severed.

It was as if the skeleton soldier had been bisected; its lower half toppled forward from the momentum while its upper half plummeted straight to the ground. Utterly robbed of its mobility, it merely flailed its longsword wildly in the dirt.

"Smash!"

The metal Faceted Hammer smashed down viciously, completely shattering the skeleton soldier's skull. As a final precaution, Zanfrey sprinkled a few drops of Holy Water—specially prepared before the trip and blessed in the Church at Bloodcast Keep—over the remains, thoroughly extinguishing the skeleton's remaining undead flames.

A pale-faced Zanfrey finally breathed a sigh of relief. Wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, he looked at Winsor.

"Good job, Winsor!" he praised with a smile.

At the same time, he characteristically made a few excuses for himself.

"This pile of bones looked so crooked it seemed like it was going to fall apart any second. I didn't expect it to move that fast."

"If I'd known, I wouldn't have charged so hard. I would've just tested it with a few hammer strikes first."

To this, Winsor's reaction was as depressed and apathetic as ever.

He showed not the slightest bit of relief or joy at defeating a formidable enemy, nor did he even reply to Zanfrey.

He simply gave the other boy a slight nod.

Then, turning to face the skeleton soldier's completely shattered pile of bones, he closed his eyes and crossed his hands over his chest in prayer.

"O merciful and resilient Lord of the Broken, I thank You for Your..." he murmured.

Though he was bold and extroverted, with behavioral flaws stemming from his noble upbringing, Zanfrey's nature wasn't bad, and he respected his teammate's faith. Even though Winsor looked aloof and barely acknowledged him, Zanfrey only sulked internally for a moment, making sure not to interrupt the boy's devout prayer.

He quietly shut his mouth.

Meanwhile, Ake, who had been watching from the sidelines, walked over.

"Young Master Zanfrey, your performance during that battle was actually quite good."

"But... if you could stay a bit calmer and think a little more before acting, perhaps you could do even better."

A standard skeleton monster had a Challenge Rating of roughly "1/4", putting it on par with a goblin.

Of course, this didn't mean that any random Green-Skinned Goblin could go one-on-one against the skeleton soldier before them.

In reality, when life tiers reached the level of such "grunt" monsters, their Challenge Ratings—which were even lower than "1/2"—became somewhat ambiguous, serving only as a rough reference.

After all, if calculated strictly by Challenge Rating, a small, hunched Green-Skinned Goblin that couldn't even beat a slightly fierce stray dog on its own, a wild boar rampaging through the jungle, and a giant venomous snake capable of easily poisoning an elephant to death all shared a Challenge Rating of "1/4" in the Monster Compendium.

Tasked with guarding his young master, Ake had not accepted the bald ranger Tal's invitation to join the Sulfur Dragon Breath party.

Instead, after the quest restrictions were lifted a few days ago, he had taken Zanfrey and their companion Winsor directly to the conscription registry at Bloodcast Keep. They thought this would be how they began their military life on the border, but perhaps the severe troop shortage had already been resolved. With soldiers training intensely as if preparing for some impending battle, the conscription program had been temporarily halted.

Staying holed up in a tavern in Bloodcast Keep was meaningless. At Zanfrey's strong insistence, the trio headed to the registry, intending to spend this brief transitional period as adventurers, taking the opportunity to temper their practical combat skills.

Two rookies who hadn't even earned a Class Level yet, plus one veteran guard—from an adventurer's perspective, the three of them absolutely didn't qualify as a proper party. Furthermore, they had never completed a quest at Bloodcast Keep's Military Merit Office before.

Therefore, after they finished registering at the Military Merit Office, the receptionist made a rare inquiry into their commission preferences.

Only after Ake stated they didn't need to consider him, and that everything should be geared toward the two rookies in the party, did she hand them their current quest.

[Quest Number]: D1032

[Reward]: 5 War Merits

[Quest Summary]:

Recently, adventurers discovered traces of undead creatures haunting the ancient battlefield ruins southwest of Bloodcast Keep. Suspecting a connection to the recent phenomenon of monster frenzies near the border, adventurers are now required to investigate the vicinity.

It was exactly as described in the [Quest Summary]. While still a short distance from their destination, the trio encountered the skeleton soldier.

And the creature's attire indeed looked like that of a dead soldier who had crawled out of the ancient battlefield.

Normally, combining the elements of "ancient battlefield" and "undead" birthed profoundly dangerous and unsavory existences.

But the reason the level of this current quest was so low was partly due to its "investigation" commission type. To put it bluntly, Zanfrey and the others could actually turn back right now.

After all, they had already confirmed the presence of undead, which meant they had, to some extent, completed the investigation.

On the other hand, it was also because this so-called "ancient battlefield" was actually just the site where a few ordinary squads of soldiers had clashed a long time ago, rather than the massive battlefield involving hundreds of thousands of people that one might imagine.

On such a scale, even if every corpse inside turned into an undead creature, it would be very difficult for them to spawn any truly dangerous monsters. Ake alone could easily handle them all.

With that as a premise, leaving these fragile, combat-limited skeletons as practice targets for the two rookies in the party couldn't have been more appropriate. As the squad's sole experienced veteran—ostensibly a guard but having long since taken over command—Ake swept a glance over the bone fragments on the ground, confirming that this skeleton soldier was entirely dead.

Then, he raised his head and glanced at the sky.

"We'll rest for half an hour, then continue on our way," he said to the two rookies beside him.

Xia Nan observed his surroundings very carefully.

Ever since the shepherd brought him to the Sheep Pen that had been attacked earlier, he had pushed his Perception to the absolute maximum.

"What about footprints? Did you sweep the ground clean?" Xia Nan asked the shepherd beside him, sensing something amiss.

"Right, right, right! That's exactly what I've been wondering about!" the shepherd complained, looking completely bewildered, as if Xia Nan's words had struck upon his exact confusion.

"I've lost so many sheep these past few days. When I hear noises at night, I don't dare go out, but when I come out during the day, there are no tracks on the ground at all. Logically speaking, no matter how swift a monster is, it shouldn't be completely devoid of footprints, right?"

"There aren't even any drag marks from the sheep's carcasses!"

"It's as if they vanished into thin air."

At this point, a touch of fear surfaced on the shepherd's face.

"I wondered if it might be some kind of flying monster. After all, there are many towering ice peaks further north of the Rime Hills, and quite a few bird species choose to nest there," he added.

"But I've never heard the sound of a bird monster flapping its wings at night."

"Usually, there's just a strange 'swish' sound, and then everything goes quiet over at the Sheep Pen."

Vanished into thin air...

Xia Nan looked thoughtful. Suddenly, as if noticing something, his gaze shot toward the roof at the edge of the Sheep Pen.

There, upon the crossbeams, pillars, and roof, lay several deep, parallel scratches. Grouped in sets of three or four, one could faintly glimpse trace amounts of coagulated blood deep within the grooves.

Beneath the edge of the roof, a wisp of almost imperceptibly transparent silver-gray spider silk swayed gently in the cold valley wind.