"In battle, it is not the strongest who survive, but those who adapt to the ever-changing dynamics of the fight"
(POV: Ryomen Sukuna)
(Earlier, in the Throne Room...)
There was a deadly tension in the air as I faced the skeleton king, looking right into each other's eyes, but none of us 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 us two was paying any mind to it.
I remembered feeling a surge in the king's mana every time I killed a summoned mage. It could regain mana used for summoning when the undead died.
Limitations likely existed, like a smaller amount of mana received compared to the cost of summoning, and a distance restriction.
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 are not many places where a large amount of undead creatures could be hidden, the most probable one is...
...right under the throne room
Or my whole deduction is wrong and I'll die.
This whole situation reminds me of my friend who found a bug in a game.
When a necromancer class unsummoned their summon at the same time when it is killed, they get their mana back completely.
It was a broken bug that existed for 2 days before being patched, but we wreaked a lot of havoc in that time.
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As I was falling down into the pit, I looked around to check if everyone was safe.
All four of my teammates were getting ready to land, reinforcing their legs with mana to break their fall.
I did the same, but with Cursed Energy. I landed on my feet, the ground cracking beneath me as I arrived.
The room was huge, even bigger than the throne room, but came not even close to the grandeur the latter had.
It was like a cave, moss hanging from its walls. It was filled with sounds of clacking bones as tens of thousands of summoned skeletons moved around.
I saw my four teammates immediately starting the kill these creatures.
Anny's attacks were the most effective, as she had the best area-of-effect spells.
Mana started to converge around her as she prepared a huge fire spell.
Johan shouted, "Anny, how long for that spell?" Anny, sweating and focusing, replied, "Ten seconds! Keep them off me!"
An extremely bright light, followed by loud crackling sounds was seen. A huge ball of fire formed in front of her extended hands as she struggled to keep it under control.
The smell of ozone assaulted my nose, as Anny released the spell, no longer able to keep it under control.
The amount of mana that spell took was no joke, but because of that, its effectiveness was unrivaled.
The spell exploded right in the middle of the horde of skeletons, killing more than a thousand singlehandedly.
Bones flew everywhere throughout the room, which caused even more skeletons to be caught in the crossfire.
Meanwhile, I was distracting the boss until all its summons were dead.
The boss had figured out what my plan was, but could do nothing to stop it, as going through me was not going to be an easy task.
The skeleton king became frantic as it realized that its whole plan was deconstructed by me in a span of minutes, and now it really was possible for me to kill it.
With his summons dying rapidly, it had an abundance of mana, so he started to use bigger and more destructive spells.
It immediately attacked, forming a huge water ball in front of it, followed by a compressed fireball inside of the water ball.
It didn't allow the spell to explode, holding it in place using mana.
It then released the spell onto me, the water turning into steam as it exploded towards me, the pressure exerted extremely high.
This was quite an effective attack, a large-scale one that left me no way to dodge, so I just took it face-on, regenerating the burn injuries easily.
Now, my turn, I ran in a circle around him, my movements slow but calculated.
I made a gun with my fingers, sending slashes at the boss that could do nothing but defend.
I tried to not give him enough time to form big and damaging spells.
The fight had become quite monotonous, I was slashing without stop and the boss defended from each slash using mana hardening.
But I was not expecting the boss to find out the condition for producing slashes.
It seemed to have figured out that I need to move my hands to do so, and had started to predict the direction of slashes by the motion of my hands.
Due to this, it was able to effectively dodge them, the amount of slashes hitting it slowly decreasing as time went on.
This boss is quite intelligent, he figured out my strength in hand-to-hand, and maintained a distance, 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.
This resulted in the boss being unable to dodge the next slash I produced, which was vertical, as it was in the air.
The vertical slash split the boss into two. It started healing, but the pace was slower than before, seemed like this battle would end soon.
We fought a little more, me trolling him with feints, I didn't even slash for more than 5 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, it was either Johan or Ryogaku. 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 50 or so skeletons.
A grin formed on my face.
"How about a job change, Ainz? You'll make a great bonfire."
A 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.
"Open"
Sizzling flames formed on my hand. As if guided by something, they moves in a predetermined path and formed a dense sphere on top of my left hand.
I took my right hand and touched the sphere with it, pulling it back, which caused the fire to take the shape of an arrow.
"Farewell" I said as I released the arrow, aimed at the ribs of the boss.
The skeleton 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, all they contained was acceptance, as if he was saying, "Congratulations".
The arrow connected with the bones of the boss, the area around him bursting into flames.
When the flames finally subsided, the skeleton was reduced to ashes.
I closed my eyes, thinking about this battle. It was very enjoyable, and I had to use almost everything I had to defeat it.
I was filled with injuries, but I refused to heal them, it would be suspicious if I get out of here uninjured.
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(A few minutes later)
Alexia's hands trembled as she tried to heal Sukuna. The sight of his injuries made her heart ache, and her inability to fix them, even more.
Her healing did not work because Cursed Energy was interfering with her mana.
As all this was happening, a part of the wall suddenly collapsed, revealing a passageway to a source of light. All five of us looked at each other and nodded.
They walked into the passageway which ended at a door saying "one at a time"
Before they could even think about who goes first, I rushed inside.
'IT'S TIME FOR THE REWARD,' I thought.
"Choose one item"
There were quite a lot of items kept in shelves, weapons, armor, tools and so on.
I looked at every single one, recognizing a few important ones from the game, but none piqued my interest.
The system was appraising the items in real time, only showing their official name, though.
I kept browsing until I found an item I 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 me choose this item was the System's appraisal.
I picked up the sphere and it glowed a faint light. It was slightly warm and comfortable to touch.
It was named...
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[Equivalent Exchange]
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So, any thoughts on the fight scene? Any ideas for future improvement?
Write them right here :>
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now, gimme gimme POWER STONES