Dungeon (Part 6)

There was a deadly tension in the air. A skeleton and a human faced each other, looking right into each other's eyes, but not one was making a move.

Faint sounds of metal clashing and falling of bodies came from the other side of the room, indicating that a huge battle was underway, but neither of these two was paying any mind to it.

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'I remember feeling an increase in its amount of mana every time I killed a summoned mage, which means that it can regain mana used in summoning an undead when that undead dies.'

'Though, it must have some limitations, such as the amount of mana received on death must be lesser than that required to summon it, and it should not be too far away.'

'Every time the boss needs to heal or regain mana, it orders a summoned undead to kill itself, or for other undead to kill it, regaining a little mana.'

'There is not many places where a large amount of undead creatures could be hidden, the most probable one is'

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'Right under the throne room'

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Sukuna channeled Cursed Energy into his feet, while sending multiple slashes towards the skeleton.

But, his goal was not to damage the boss, but to distract it, making time to head towards his allies. The boss, though late, noticed this.

Sukuna jumped into the air, his landing spot near where his teammates were fighting. The boss saw that this was a good opportunity, as he could not dodge an attack in the air.

It used up close to half its mana in sending a deadly combination of attacks. Though, due to its late noticing of Sukuna's plan, and a slight delay caused during the formation of elements in a spell, his aim faltered slightly.

This combination of spells was meant to directly pierce his heart, but instead, it only succeeded in blasting off his left arm.

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There was no reaction from Sukuna on his whole arm being blasted, he landed on the ground near where his allies were fighting, albeit a little unstably.

The skeleton was quickly moving towards him.

'I really have to commend his agility, he's almost halfway here'

"Listen you four. I think I found how this boss works, just kill every skelly you see"

Sukuna said as he placed his remaining hand on the floor.

"Cleave: Spiderweb"

The entire floor cracked before the debris fell into a seemingly endless pit.

Everyone, including the boss landed in a huge room, longer and wider than the throne room, filled with tens of thousands of E-Rank and D-Rank summoned skeletons.

Many skeletons were crushed by the falling floor. Sukuna's four teammates were a bit confused, but followed his orders nonetheless, splitting up in four directions and slaughtering skeletons left and right.

His plan was to hold off the boss and prevent it from attacking his allies until they cleared out the summons to a certain extent. He immediately sent slashes towards the boss, trying to make it kill a few summons as well.

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The skeleton became frantic, its whole plan had been deconstructed by this human in a span of a few minutes, and now, he could actually kill it. It immediately attacked him with multiple spells, including a new one, in which it created a compressed water ball, then put a fireball inside it to make it explode.

This was quite an effective attack, its scale was big as it used up a lot of its mana, but Sukuna just regenerated his burn injuries.

Now, it was his turn, his movements were slow, but elegant. He danced through the battlefield, making a finger gun and sending tens of slashes at the boss that could not do anything but defend.

This fight was quite monotonous, Sukuna kept slashing the boss, while it kept defending and healing, but the battle took a new route when the boss figured out that the condition for producing slashes is movement of his hands.

The boss observed the motion of Sukuna's hands and was able to predict the location of slashes, hence being able to effectively dodge them. The amount of slashes hitting the boss slowly decreasing.

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'Oh? He's predicting my slashes and dodging them, huh? Interesting'

'This boss is quite a good one, he figured out my strength in hand-to-hand, and maintained a distanced, then it figured out the condition for my slashes. I guess its time for a little trolling.'

I moved my hand horizontally, causing the boss to think that I would produce a slash on its feet, but I suddenly stopped my hand. The boss jumped into the air, trying to dodge an imaginary slash, but now, it was in the air, unable to dodge.

I pushed my hand up through the air, producing a vertical slash that split the boss into two. It started healing, but the pace was slower than before, seemed like the work would be done soon.

We fought a little more, me trolling him with feints, I didn't even slash for more than 10 seconds, but just kept moving my hands, and it kept jumping, blocking and running like a madman, it was quite a sight.

"WE'RE ALMOST DONE"

I heard a voice, the person was heavily breathing, just from the sound I knew that he was very exhausted.

I glanced back and saw my allies ganging up on the final 30 or so skeletons.

A grin formed on my face.

"I guess its time to end this, huh, Ainz?"

A familiar tension was felt by everyone, the air started slowly heating up, the boss as if recognizing the feeling, tried to use its last reserves of mana to end me here and now. But . . .

"Open"

An arrow of fire formed on my hand, with such a high temperature that it was burning the floor where I was standing. The boss had sent a tsunami of debris towards me, but I was unfazed.

"Farewell" I said as I released the arrow, aimed at its ribs.

The boss had seemed to accept its fate, at the last moments of its life, it was looking straight at me, but its eyes held the intimidating presence no more, they looked as if he was saying, "Congratulations".

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Five people were standing with the support of the wall, the two girls were very tired, but not too injured. Two boys were slightly injured, but seemed to be doing fine, while one boy was filled with scars and still bleeding cuts.

This boy was Sukuna, who had refused using Reverse Cursed Techniques to look like a 'man that triumphed over a battlefield alone'.

Alexia was trying to heal him, but it was not working at all, he figured it probably was because of Cursed Energy and mana interfering with each other.

As all this was happening, a part of the wall suddenly collapsed, revealing a passageway to a source of light. All five looked at each other and nodded.

They walked into the passageway which ended at a door saying "one at a time"

Before they could argue about who goes first, Sukuna opened the door and rushed in.

"Choose one item"

There were quite a lot of items kept in shelves, weapons, armor, tools and so on.

Sukuna looked at every single one, recognizing a few important ones from the game, but none piqued his interest.

The system was appraising the items in real time, only showing their official name, though.

He kept browsing until he found an item he had no memory of, it wasn't a weapon, nor did it look like a tool, it was just a black sphere. At first sight it just looks like a polished stone, it doesn't even exude too much mana, but what made him choose this item was the System's appraisal, it was named . . .

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[Equivalent Exchange]