Ha-neul was glad his legs were broken, because if they weren't he would have jumped backwards into his own fire. The skeleton slowly, and awkwardly, unsheathed his sword. Flakes of rust showered down from the horrible blade. Silent as death, it began to advance on him. However, the monster seemed to be wary of him. Instead of rushing in, it stayed on guard and came at an angle.
Ha-neul staggered up onto his knees. The monster feared him! Ha-nuel gave a great and thunderous war cry. Or he tried to. Instead, in his current state, he gave a hideous shriek. It was the most pitiable and terrible sound he had ever heard.
The skeleton was barely a meter away from him now. For the duration of his cry, it stopped.
He took advantage of this to seize a flaming piece of firewood and hurl it at the monster. It bounced off of its leg with a flash of sparks. The skeleton didn't seem to notice. Ha–neul, who didn't have anything else within reach, threw his whole damn fire at it. Including the flint and steel. Fire did not seem to harm it, and neither did the impact of the sticks. Also, his light source was now reduced to a couple of fading embers scattered across the floor around them.
The skeleton raised his rusted sword high and swung down at him like a raging bull. But by then he had crawled into the ashes of his fire. The sword caught the upper lip of the fireplace and the tip broke off.
This was bad. Ha-neul was now cornered. He looked desperately at the chimney above him. The bricks slanted up to a small opening. It wasn't even big enough to fit his stupid head through. He was good and stuck in here.
He cursed his luck. Of course there would be an undead monster in the abandoned castle in another world! Back home, ancient ruins were tourist destinations. At least they were when tourism was still a thing. Why had he relaxed in front of a fire without even checking the place. And what difference did it make? Even if he managed to kill this monster, there were probably hundreds more just like it in this terrible place.
The skeleton had to take a moment to regain its balance and then wind back to thrust its sword at him. Ha-neul had already pressed himself as far back into the corner as he could go. The skeleton was slow, but he would not survive its next strike. This was it.
Ha-neul sighed.
'Ain't no way I'm dying to this bonehead.'
He pressed his hands to the ground and somehow managed to activate all of his muscles and use all of his strength to somersault out of the fireplace and fly knee first into the skeleton's collarbone. They both troubled backwards. He heard the sword clattering to the ground behind him. The two of them crashed into a table in the center of the room, breaking it in half and sending them falling.
Ha-neul scrambled past the monster before it had a chance to attack him. This side of the room was lined with shelves covered in long since rotten food. It was so old it didn't even smell anymore. Behind him, the skeleton had already gotten back into its feet. Luckily, instead of rushing him, it turned around and looked for its sword. Ha-neul was hunting for a weapon himself. Beyond the shelves was a metal tub and then a pile of barrels. He crawled that way, even if there wasn't a weapon, he would at least be putting some space between him and his assailant.
He grabbed onto the rim of the tub and pulled his head over to look inside. That was a mistake. The tub was filled with long since dried blood. There was something mangled and unknowable poking out of the coagulated mass. He recoiled and pulled himself away from the tub. If there was a weapon in there, Ha-neul would be glad to never find it.
He pushed himself to go on and forget what he had just seen. He had made it to the far corner of the room opposite to the door. There were twenty or so barrels and crates stacked in the corner. And sitting on top of one of the barrels, stacked three high, was a knife block. Ha-neul scrambled forwards with renewed vigor.
As it turned out, finding where a weapon was, happened to be the easy part. On any other day, getting to the knives would have been as simple and jumping high enough to grab it off its high perch. With two broken legs and limited time, it became a very difficult task. But for a reason Ha-neul didn't have the time or energy to comprehend, he felt incredibly confident in his ability to do it.
He used his arms and core to pull himself on top of a square crate with nothing on top of it. And then he stood on his knees, and reached up the stack. It is now only two barrels higher than himself. His hands could reach over the top of the barrel, but no matter how hard he strained he couldn't reach the knife block. He knew it was up there, but from this angle he could not see it or feel it. He tried doing a pull up on the top barrel, but the stack was unstable.
He cursed under his breath, and then wrapped his arms around the middle barrel and pulled the whole stack down. The top barrel fell directly where he was standing, but he was able to nimbly dodge it before it could crush him. The barrel hit the ground with a sound like thunder and then began rolling to the opposite wall. A moment later, there was the quieter and sweeter sound of a dozen or so knives ringing on the stone floor.
Only a little after that, Ha-nuel snatched a handful of them up and sat himself on a crate, facing the skeleton. The monster had retrieved its sword. The tip had broken again, and now the sword was hardly forty centimeters long. Ha-neul might be able to match it with a kitchen knife, even. Still, the skeleton could walk, and he was stuck sitting. It was approaching him now, with the same caution it had shown before.
Ha-neul steadied his nerves. What did he know about Undead monsters? He wracked his brains. They were most susceptible to magic attacks. But he was not a Noticed, and didn't have any way to do magic damage. Other than that, he knew that Undead were rare and strange. They were both highly unpredictable, but did not ever change tactics. This skeleton would have feared him equally if he was a half frozen cripple or if he was a Noticed of the 3rd tier. It was approaching him the same way it had at the start of the fight. He even wondered if it would do an overhead strike followed by a thrust again.
Ha-neul brandished a rusty kitchen knife in each hand and slightly egged the monster to come and face him.
'Come and meet your doom, you wretched fool!'
At that moment, the skeleton abruptly stopped. It turned its head to the side, looking at the table they had split in half by falling on. It had seen something Ha-neul had missed entirely. Buried into the surface of the wood, was a shiny meat cleaver. It was not a dull ancient blade, its edge was sharp and dangerous. Ha-neul felt his heat drop at the sight of it.
The skeleton held the cleaver in one hand and the shattered sword in the other. The skeleton entered a wide stance and held it's two blade up high, mirroring the pose Ha-nuel had struck before. Then it crouched into a fighting stance and began to move towards him with the same caution as before. It was like it was taunting him!
Ha-neul shouted again and then their blades met. Ha-nuel barely managed to block the first swing of its sword, and even then the knife snapped. When the skeleton stepped back and then swung wide with the cleaver, Ha-neul didn't even try to block it. He simply threw himself forwards, pinning its sword with his other knife and driving the monster back. Both the knife and the sword shattered.
The skeleton tossed away the useless handle and put both hands on the meat cleaver. Ha-neul, who was now on his knees, retrieved two more knives from the pants pocket he had stuffed them in. He only had one more blade left if he lost these two.
The skeleton stepped out of Ha-nuel's range, raised the cleaver high above its head and then flew down. Ha-neul had never been very good at martial arts, but at this monet he could tell exactly how the skeleton was going to strike. He raised both knives to meet the blow and watched as both were cut clean through before the blade caught him in the brow. Blood poured into Ha-neul's left eye. The poor fool was left momentarily stunned by the sensation of a blade cutting through his flesh. But the skeleton had failed to land its blow, and now it was horribly out of position. It looked almost as if the skeleton was prostrating itself before him.
Out of nothing but instinct, Ha-nuel seized his final knife and drove it as hard as he could into the side of its skull. The blade shattered on impact, and seemed not to have damaged the skeleton at all. He was doomed from the start. He couldn't even damage the skeleton with his weapon! The skeleton tried to raise the meat clever again, but Ha-neul grabbed onto it as well. They began to wrestle with it.
Feeble, frost-bitten fingers struggled against the cold, frictionless fingers of death. They both pulled each other back and forth in a see-saw motion. Suddenly, Ha-neul's dead fingers seized up and his grip slipped. The cleaver came free of his grasp, and then the skeleton fell backward.
They both watched the cleaver fly through the air, and then fall into the bath tub. They both looked at each other, and then back at each other. However, neither of them made any move to go for it. Instead, the skeleton raised both its fists in front of its face in an unarmed combat pose. Ha-neul nodded and put his hands in a boxing stance.
Then the skeleton dived at him. Ha-neul, despite his injuries and exhaustion, was furious. He rained down vicious strikes all over the monster. And while he took many in response, it slowly became clear that he was winning.
He was simply able to predict its every move and meet it with perfect strikes. Still, the skeleton was undamaged. At one point he even managed to knock its head off by twisting its neck, only for it to pick it back up and put it on again.
Ha-nuel was blinded by fury for a moment, and then he was struck by an idea. The next time he got it into a pin and pulled on its arm until it popped off. The skeleton lunged after him, but Ha-neul effortlessly dodged –It had been minutes since the master could even land hits on him. Then he took the arm and dropped it into an open barrel before wedging on a lid.
The skeleton stared at him before running over and desperately clawing at the barrel. It was then only a matter of time before the monster was relieved of its other limbs, before its torso and head was unceremoniously dropped into a box and sealed in as well.
Ha-neul dusted off his hands, and then collapsed onto the floor. A great deal of blood had come out of the cut in his forehead. And worse than that, at some point the tourniquet had come undone. He couldn't even move anymore. He was simply done.
He lay there for a while before he became aware that a door that had been hidden by the barrels had been opened at some point. Standing in the doorway, illuminated by a dim and distant light, was a human man with fluffy black hair and a sharp chin.