Skeleton Knight in Another World Vol. 2

by Ennki Hakari

  There were a large number of bandits lying around as well, though none of them seemed to be breathing. Other than the frightened neighing of the horses, the whole area was engulfed in an eerie silence.

  I worried for a moment that Ariane and I had inadvertently caused this situation by letting the haunted wolves get away, but the more I looked at it, the more that seemed unlikely.

  I hopped down from the embankment to the path three meters below and made my way toward the carriage, careful to not step on any of the bodies. The knights and armored soldiers had all been killed by swords and arrows, without a single trace of a wolf bite among them. A few bodies had been charred by some sort of magical attack, though the majority looked to have been killed with conventional weapons.

  Putting all of this together, it seemed like the guards had already been killed at the bandits’ hands by the time the wolves showed up. Though I did find evidence of a few bandits who’d been killed by the guards, the majority of them appeared to have been killed by the wolves—arms torn off at the shoulder, stomachs chewed open, and worse.

  Among them, I found the body of a man in priest’s robes—a holy man, apparently, though nothing was left of his head. What an awful way to die.

  I put my hands together in a brief prayer for this man who’d given his entire life to God, only to have it ripped away by cruel fate. Then I turned my back on the mountain of corpses and made my way toward the carriage.

  The door was hanging wide open. Beneath it lay the body of a young woman in servant’s attire, her face buried in the mud. Inside the blood-stained carriage I found the body of another young woman, this one dressed in an extravagant gown. The second woman’s long blond hair was stuck to her face with dried blood. A fresh sword wound gaped in her chest.

  She must have been the one the guards were protecting.

  Her blood was still warm, her flesh still a bit pink. Tears clung to her half-open eyes. She’d only died recently. I closed her eyelids, and she looked as if she were merely asleep.

  Ponta let out a solemn cry. “Kyiii….”

  I petted the fox’s head absently while I ran through all the spells available to me.

  It was no use to try recovery magic on someone who was already dead. However, my Bishop and Priest classes had revival spells. These were pretty common in video games, but here in the real world, I wondered if they would actually have any effect.

  The mid-tier Bishop class had the Reanimation spell, which would bring someone back with one-tenth of their health. In reality, coming back to life with one-tenth of your health would probably only return you to the brink of death. You might just die again in agony.

  The top-tier Priest class had access to the Rejuvenation spell, which would bring someone back to life with full health, though I was unsure how that would play out in the real world.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was too soon for this young woman to die, so I decided to give my magic a try. I reached out and held my hand over the slumped girl.

  “Rejuvenation!”

  Her body began to glow, a yellowish-gold light flickering across her as the wound in her chest started to close. It was like I was watching a video being played in reverse. When the light disappeared, all of the girl’s injuries were gone.

  In the game, like I said, the spell would recover all of your health…but I wasn’t sure what that meant for all the blood the girl had lost. The floor of the carriage was still drenched in it, and her dress was stained a deep crimson.

  I placed my hand on the young woman’s neck. I could feel a pulse, though she was still quite pale and showed no signs of waking up. She was breathing, however, so I laid her down on the bench in the carriage and stepped outside.

  I propped up the chambermaid’s body and, after wiping away the dirt, cast the Rejuvenation spell once again.

  Her body was enveloped in the same yellowish-gold light, and her wounds began to heal. She also began to breathe again, though like the girl in the carriage, she remained unconscious.

  So…revival spells worked here, though their effects were far from immediate like they were in the game. All I could do now was pray that these revived women didn’t come back as monsters, like in a certain Stephen King novel.

  Bringing them back to life was one thing, but I couldn’t just leave them here to be killed again by monsters…or worse. I didn’t row them back up the River Styx for nothing.

  I decided to revive the guards while I was at it. Being careful to avoid the bandits, I cast Rejuvenation on all the nearby soldiers. However, I soon discovered that there were limits to revival spells.

  First off, the spell had absolutely no effect on people who were too hideously wounded. It didn’t even activate on the poor souls who’d been burned to death, or the man without a head.

  I put my hands together again in sympathy for the dead priest.

  There were also a few cases where soldiers were revived only to die again. This was often true for those who’d suffered significant blood loss, though the reasons for others were less clear. One man with an arrow in his chest came back to life long enough to take a few short breaths before passing away again.

  It seemed like there was a limit to the spell’s power, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  After trying to revive all of the guards, I put my hands on my hips and surveyed my handiwork. I’d been able to bring back about thirty of them. It wasn’t the most impressive number, but I hoped it would be enough to see the carriage safely out of the forest.

  All that magic expenditure had left me exhausted—a rare feeling for me. I must have overdone it with the revival spells.

  I was hardly in danger of using up all my magic, even with a spell like Rejuvenation, but absent any numbers to keep track of like in the game, I could only rely on how my body felt.

  Even if I did temporarily run out of magic, my Twilight Cloak would solve that problem—assuming it had the same abilities here that it did in the game.

  The Twilight Cloak would replenish my magic over time. And if I stayed in one spot for a while, the replenishment speed would increase. So, theoretically, all of the magic I’d just expended was slowly coming back to me.

  However, it didn’t seem wise for a large, armored knight like myself to just stand around staring off into space in the middle of a blood-drenched battlefield.

  I used Dimensional Step to teleport back to the embankment and sat down in the bushes so I could keep an eye on the people I’d brought back to life, just in case something bad happened.

  I broke off some branches from a nearby tree to use as cover for my helmet, since a silver suit of armor didn’t exactly blend in with the forest. The gaps between the leaves gave me a good view of the road below. Now it was just a matter of waiting to make sure they got out of here okay.

  ***

  It almost felt like her body was floating up from the murky depths of the sea. Sensation flooded back into her limbs, and all of a sudden she was struck by an awful stench and a tightness in her skin as her eyelids flew open. It was as if she was taking her first breath of fresh air after being buried in mud. After a heavy coughing fit, she surveyed her surroundings.

  She was back in her carriage, the interior stained with blood.

  Princess Yuriarna tried frantically to make sense of her confusing memories, though her mind was still too foggy to reach any conclusions. She shook her head and looked down at her body.

  Her gown was drenched in blood, a hole torn in the chest.

  A memory of being stabbed flickered through her mind, and she instinctively threw her hands up in front of her heart. However, even though the dress was ripped, the skin underneath was unharmed. She couldn’t find any injury.

  “Ferna…”

  She called out for her longtime companion instinctively as she looked around the cabin.

  Yuriarna’s memories returned all at once. She remembered Ferna being stabbed and kicked out of the carriage. Frantically, Yuriarna scrabbled f
or the door.

  Ferna lay on her back on the ground, a peaceful expression on her face. Her clothing was also cut open at the chest. Yuriarna stumbled out of the carriage, her heart racing as she inspected the wound. But the skin beneath the torn fabric of her chambermaid’s dress was flawless—not a scratch in sight.

  Relief washed over Yuriarna as she watched Ferna’s plump bosom rise and fall silently. Tears ran down her cheeks, dripping onto the ground.

  She still had no idea what had happened, or even what was happening right now, but she was relieved to know that Ferna was safe.

  Yuriarna looked up. Amid the craters and scorched earth lay the charred remains of men who’d fought so hard to protect her, intermingled with the corpses of her attackers. It looked like a scene straight out of hell. She couldn’t bear the sight of all that carnage, so she turned her attention back to Ferna.

  The chambermaid’s eyelids fluttered open.

  “Ferna, you’re alive!”

  Ferna turned toward the princess’ sob-choked voice. “Miss Yuriarna, wh-what happened?”

  The fog in her head was slowly starting to clear. She sat up and looked around.

  The surrounding area was nothing but devastation. As memories of the brutal ambush came back, Ferna turned her attention to Yuriarna and inspected the princess closely.

  “Are you all right, Princess? Were you hurt?”

  Yuriarna covered her mouth to hide her gentle laugh at the sudden change in her chambermaid’s demeanor. “I’m fine. What about you, Ferna?”

  Ferna frantically checked herself for wounds as the memory of being stabbed returned. She looked at the princess with confusion. “How am I still alive?”

  Yuriarna had no answer to that. She, too, distinctly recalled having died. Her manicured eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t know. I just woke up myself.”

  A familiar voice interrupted their conversation. “Princess! Miss Ferna! You’re safe!”

  The voice belonged to Rendol, the man charged with protecting the princess on her trip to the Grand Duchy. He jogged over to the carriage on unsteady legs. As soon as he reached Yuriarna, he dropped to his knees and bowed his head low.

  “I’m so glad you’re safe! Allow me to express my deepest regrets for failing in my duty to—”

  Yuriarna cut his apology off with a flick of her hand. She stood up slowly, her light blond hair spilling down her back, and turned to face him. “Now is not the time for that, Sir Rendol.”

  Rendol lifted his head to look up at the princess.

  “We were attacked by a force far larger than anything we anticipated. There was nothing you could have done. It is truly an act of the heavenly father that we are still alive. We can worry about what happened later. Right now, we must take action.”

  The look of determination on the princess’ face was inspiring. Rendol wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “As you wish!” He bowed his head again to the princess again.

  “We’re a little less than halfway to Limbult’s border. There’s still a very real possibility that more bandits are out there, so we will need to adjust our pace. We will proceed as originally planned, bypassing Houvan and Tiocera. Ferna, please help where you can.”

  “Of course, Your Highness.”

  With their plans reaffirmed, the three stood up and surveyed their surroundings.

  Other soldiers had begun standing up from the among the bodies littering the battlefield. Seeing this sudden movement of bodies, Rendol reached for his sword. Yuriarna and Ferna ducked behind him. It wasn’t uncommon in places with a large concentration of mana for corpses to come back as undead monsters and attack the living.

  However, Rendol had never heard of bodies less than a day old turning undead, and definitely not in well-trafficked, low-mana places like this. It usually only happened in uninhabited magical regions.

  “Rendol, wait!” Yuriarna called.

  Rendol suddenly realized that the men standing in front of him were his own troops. He could hardly believe his own eyes. Several soldiers, some of whom he’d personally seen cut down on the field of battle, were now standing groggily, as if they’d just woken from a nap.

  Yuriarna and Ferna stared, too, disbelief plain on their faces.

  “Commander Rendol…you’re all right?!” One of Rendol’s soldiers—a man who’d died right in front of him—ran forward. “How’d ya make it out alive, ya scoundrel?”

  The man was far from undead, and he seemed to have all of his mental faculties. Rendol looked him over several times, just to be sure his eyes weren’t lying. The soldier’s armor was smeared with blood, but otherwise he seemed to be unharmed, if a little pale.

  Sadly, not all of his men had been spared. The charred remains of several soldiers lay still on the ground while others, unburned, remained motionless, as if in a deep slumber, even as their comrades tried to wake them.

  The man in front of him kept patting his own body, as if making sure he was truly alive. “I could’ve sworn I was dead. What happened here?”

  More soldiers started to stand, their voices blending together in a cacophony of laughter and tears as they realized they were still alive.

  This was nothing short of a miracle.

  “Sir Rendol…”

  Yuriarna’s voice brought Rendol back to the matter at hand. He turned to face the princess. No words were exchanged—the look in her eyes spoke volumes. Rendol turned back to his men.

  “Atteeennntion! Princess Yuriarna will be giving a speech!”

  He stepped beside her and took a knee, bowing his head in respect. The men followed Rendol’s example and assumed the same pose.

  “Though we may have suffered a harsh defeat at the hands of our enemies, it seems we have been spared by our heavenly father. Some of our brothers in arms, however, have been called up to serve the higher power.”

  Of the original fifty men charged with protecting the princess, only thirty remained to hear her words. Nearly twenty had been killed in combat. Several men wept openly at her words, their shoulders shaking.

  “However, the heavens have made it clear that they wish us to proceed on our journey! We must not dwell on what has happened. Instead, let us focus our energies on the road that lies ahead and make the most of the blessing we have all been granted. We are unstoppable! Onward to Limbult!”

  The soldiers let out a loud cheer.

  “Hoorah!”

  Rendol stood and began firing orders to his men.

  “Swap out the horses and track down the ones that have escaped! At the very least, secure enough for the carriage. Arm yourselves with any weapons you can!”

  The men leaped to carry out their leader’s commands.

  ***

  The force of around thirty men—apparently a procession for the princess—quickly assembled their gear and took the carriage off to the east. I continued to watch over them until they were small specks in the distance.

  When they were completely out of sight, I spread the branches I’d been using for cover and stuck my head out. From atop my helmet, Ponta snored faintly. The cottontail fox had apparently decided to take a nap. I moved slowly, careful not to disturb its slumber.

  For a while, I’d been worried about what might happen to all the people I’d revived, so I was quite relieved to see them off.

  I’d figured that the young woman was some sort of nobility, but I’d had no idea she was from the royal family…or that she would interpret my simple spell as a miraculous act of god. After thinking about it for a moment, however, the ability to bring back the dead reminded me of a certain red stone a pair of alchemist brothers had searched for in an anime I used to watch.

  As far as I could tell, there had been no negative side effects—like men turning undead, or going crazy.

  I still wasn’t sure what had prevented me from bringing all of the men back. The whole experience had left me with the impression that I should avoid using the spell too often. In the game, people were merely thankful to be rev
ived. But here, I ran the very real risk of being seen as some sort of cleric…or worse, a god. What if someone got it into their head to form a religion around me? What if I started a holy war?

  Bringing back the occasional daughter of a farmer or son of a minor noble killed in some sort of accident was all well and good, but a princess who’d been murdered… that was another thing entirely.

  Without a doubt, this would be a day for the history books.

  On the other hand, royal families often had many princesses. Maybe the history books would just gloss over the incident. That was my hope, anyway.

  Then again, no one had actually witnessed what I’d done. In the future, I would just need to make sure I only used revival magic when absolutely necessary.

  The committee in the back of my mind reached a conclusion. Protecting myself had won out over the other, dissenting voices. The overwhelming majority had voted in favor of moving forward as if nothing had changed.

  “We’ll just pretend that never happened.”

  I turned around carefully, so as not to disturb Ponta, and headed back the way I’d come. How long had it been since I left Ariane?

  Following the markers I’d placed, I used Dimensional Step to move through the woods at a rapid pace. Soon, I caught sight of three wolves with their hind legs bound together hanging from a tree branch.

  Sitting against the base of the tree was an amethyst-colored dark elf with a very angry look on her face.

  She sat with her knees held tightly against her chest. A smile appeared on her face for the briefest moment when she saw me, though the scowl quickly returned.

  “Well, you certainly took your time! How far did you go, anyway?”

  I muttered the first excuse that came to mind as I stepped through the bushes and approached her. “I’m sorry. I got lost.”

  “Well, the blood’s completely drained from the wolves. Let’s head back to Lalatoya.”

  “Ah, that’s right…I was searching for a landmark, wasn’t I?” I slammed my fist into my open palm as I suddenly remembered the reason I’d left.