Employment Ice Age of the Dead - Chapter 12
VS Skeleton Horde
"Keh keh keh!"
"Clack clack."
"As expected, they've revived..."
The swarm of skeletons, composed of bones tinged with a bluish-white moonlight, displayed a strange, eerie sort of beauty to me.
Naturally, this village—or rather, this district—had a graveyard.
Under normal circumstances, it posed no harm at all, but now that this world was overflowing with zombies, the likelihood of undead emerging from the graveyard, just like in another world, had become extremely high.
"This district isn't burial-ground styled, so if anything was going to pop out, I figured it'd be skeletons..."
My prediction seemed to have hit the mark brilliantly.
Out from within the graveyard—where the tombs of the residents from the dozen or so houses in this district stood—dozens of skeletons emerged, destroying the graves as they wandered about the enclosure.
"There's still so much about this that makes no sense..."
Even though cremation had taken place long ago and hardly any bones should have remained, the skeletons always manifested with their entire bodies fully intact.
Even after defeating a zombie, skeletons would invariably revive with their full bodies intact, regardless of the condition of the remaining bones.
I remembered trying all sorts of things in the other world to prevent defeated zombies from turning into skeletons, but every single effort had ended in vain.
There was something that had always puzzled me in the other world: where on earth did skeletons replenish their lost bodies (bones)?
And while zombies could keep operating for years—their bodies rotting and emitting a foul stench—their forms would never decay away completely unless they were defeated.
In the other world, I had even encountered zombies that had been active for several hundreds of years.
Completely detached from physical laws, the undead were troublesome entities that could exist forever as long as they weren't destroyed.
"Bones cremated in the distant past should have crumbled to dust..."
Yet the skeletons in this world, too, had all their bones completely assembled.
It looked just like a skeleton model from a science classroom, but they were stronger than zombies, so I had to be careful.
"Either way, if I don't defeat all of them, I can't use this place as a base."
Ruri-san and Kaede-san wouldn't be able to take a single step outside the house.
Moving forward, I intended to expand the anti-undead sealing barrier we placed on the house out into the village and its surroundings, but to do that, I needed to raise my level as well.
"The only silver lining is that I don't know whose bones belong to my grandfather or grandmother. Here I go!"
First, I unleashed holy water from the large water guns I held in both hands directly at the skeletons.
"Clack-clack-clack-clack!"
Upon being doused with the holy water, the skeletons let out white smoke and ground to a halt.
"At least it works."
Unlike zombies, their skin and flesh didn't burn away and cause them to writhe on the ground.
Even so...
"This is plenty."
I already had my silver sword ready, and I slashed right into the paralyzed skeletons.
"I wonder if my level is high enough yet?"
No matter how much rich combat experience I had gained over five years, at least with single-digit levels, you couldn't beat skeletons.
However, according to my calculations, I should just about be able to win against skeletons now.
"Haaaaah!"
I immediately slashed at the skeleton whose movements had been arrested by the holy water.
As it raised a plume of white smoke, it shattered and crumbled apart.
"Yes!"
It was a relief to see that my current level was enough to defeat skeletons.
This must be thanks to raising my level by defeating countless zombies.
"Whoa!"
That said, skeletons were fast.
I immediately took a direct hit to the chest, and even through my leather armor, it knocked the wind out of me for a second.
"Guh! They're just bones, but their attack power is incredible..."
I needed to raise my level further so I could equip metal armor.
While I was stunned from taking the hit, the rest of the skeletons—whose movements had been halted by the holy water attacks—came swarming in one after another.
"Blunt force is fine, but I have to avoid getting scratched by their finger bones..."
If you got scratched by a skeleton and didn't treat it properly, you would turn into a zombie just the same.
Thinking that blunt trauma wasn't an issue, I let my guard down slightly, only to take a few blows from the skeletons that apparently fractured my ribs.
"My chest and side really hurt..."
Hurryingly casting Heal while dodging the skeletons' attacks, I forced my eyes and body to grow accustomed to their speed.
In works of fiction in this world, both zombies and skeletons were slow-moving, but reality was completely different.
In fact, living humans had limiters on their bodies to prevent self-damage, but the undead had no such thing.
Aside from a few powerful variants, the undead in the other world weren't all that strong—they were about intermediate level at best.
However, they were numerous, they multiplied, and even when you defeated them, they would evolve: Zombie -> Skeleton -> Wraith.
In a world with a large population like this one, the undead posed a threat on the scale of a catastrophe.
"I have to get used to this speed..."
I picked off the skeletons that exposed openings one by one, continuously dodging their attacks as best as I could, and recovering the damage I took with Heal.
The number of skeletons gradually decreased, but the prolonged combat brought an overwhelming wave of fatigue.
Right before defeating the Demon King, my level had been high and my stamina wouldn't run out even during prolonged fights, but this was clearly the side effect of dropping back down to level 1.
You couldn't easily raise your level using just undead, which left me feeling pessimistic about the future.
To survive, continuous level-ups were an absolute necessity.
"Haa... haa... I've really grown weak..."
I'll have to keep leveling up moving forward.
Even though I was now able to defeat skeletons, I couldn't feel at ease at all given the sheer number of undead that had appeared in this world.
Furthermore, there was a high likelihood that special entities—bosses—would appear in the future.
"And I can't form a party, either..."
At the present moment, I hadn't found a single person other than myself in this world whose level had risen or who could use magic and special skills.
You could wipe out zombies by burning them down, but for ordinary people, doing so required immense effort and was far beyond dangerous.
"If people carelessly get bitten by zombies or scratched by skeletons, it'll just increase the number of targets we have to exterminate..."
You couldn't force ordinary people to do the impossible, but telling me to save the world all by myself was more than I could bear.
After all, I was just a
("I want to live prioritizing myself. Above all, from now on, I won't have the bandwidth to care about others.")
Zombies were overflowing all over the world.
The question was whether we even had the spare capacity to help other people.
And it didn't look like anyone else was going to run all the way out to this abandoned village, either.
Thinking such thoughts while fighting off exhaustion, I slowly chipped away at the skeletons.
Unfortunately, my silver sword was already lacking in power, so I fought by
weakening the skeletons with holy water water guns and the multi-target
healing magic,
"Haa... haa..."
My level and status seemed to have gone up during the battle, but even though I restored my stamina with Heal, my sense of fatigue only kept mounting.
No matter how high your level gets, humans get tired when they fight for long periods.
Mental fatigue couldn't be completely cured by healing magic or recovery potions; unless you took proper rest and sleep, your body wouldn't move even if you still had physical energy left.
Because I was human—not the Demon King, not a demon, and not an undead.
("Even so, if I had put off exterminating the skeletons until tomorrow, they would have been wandering all over this village.")
That's why I had to wipe them out today.
"The last one!"
My level had risen all the way up to 17 by the time I successfully defeated every single skeleton in the graveyard.
Even in this world, they seemed to grant more experience points than zombies.
"I'm completely exhausted. Let's head back to the house."
Even if there were any skeletons left, it would only be a handful, and I had already cast a barrier around the house so skeletons couldn't enter anyway.
Leaving the cleanup of any stragglers for tomorrow, I collected the magic stones left behind in the completely crumbled remains of the skeletons and headed back to the house.
"Starting tomorrow, I'll take care of what's necessary to live in this village."
With the two girls helping out, my top priority was making a place where we could live with peace of mind.
"I'm home."
"Welcome back!"
"Kozo-san, you look terribly exhausted."
"I'm tired, so I'm going to sleep."
There were futons in the house, so I quickly walked over and collapsed onto the futon laid out from the closet.
Since it was mid-summer, a top quilt wasn't necessary.
It hadn't been aired out in years, so the quilt smelled musty, but telling myself I'd deal with that tomorrow and onwards, I fell into a deep sleep.
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