Chapter 20: Sneak attack

Riven realized he wasn’t as surprised as he should be by the plan she told him. She told him it was simple, and it was. He would be the bait, and with her skills, she would sneak around to steal the crown.

So simple.

Riven gave her a skeptical look. “How exactly are you planning to sneak around and steal it? From something of that size? You can’t even jump that high to reach it.”

She didn’t look convinced by the plan either. “Well, you can’t fight, and I can’t fight that thing face to face either. That leaves us with very little to work with.

“With my aura, I can sneak around it while you keep its attention and try not to die early.”

Riven was liking the plan less and less, but he really couldn’t think of another way they were figuring out that mountain of a monster. “Alright,” he said unhappily.

Kivara began to walk away from him, giving him space, and then she crouched. Riven looked at her, and if he didn’t know better, he would think she wasn’t there at all.

From her place, she raised her thumbs for him. He took a deep breath. He hesitated before removing the stone from his neck. He didn’t know where he should keep it. He turned toward Kivara, who was less of a stranger than the day before. He sighed and threw her the stone.

At least if he died and was coming back, he would prefer it to be by someone stronger than him. And if she died before him, that just meant he never had a chance.

She gave the stone a confused look but then shrugged and put it in her pocket.

Riven then faced the monster. He turned around and walked around it. He rubbed his sweaty hands on his trousers and wished he still had his knife with him.

The monster was still as stone, like a statue, but Riven knew better. He stayed as far from it as possible and waved his hands in front of it, but the monster didn’t stir.

He frowned. “How do I get its attention?”

Then he raised his voice. “Come here!”

But he might as well have been shouting at a wall or a mountain for all it did. Riven wasn’t discouraged, though. He began shouting, waving his hands, and jumping. Still, nothing.

He bent, picked up a stone, and hurled it with all his strength at the monster. The attack hit it on the cheek, landed on the tattered robe, and rolled off without having any effect.

Riven sighed. On instinct, he raised his hand and tried to steal the aura from the monster. At the same time, he was speaking to Kivara. “I don’t think this thing is ready to move. Maybe it’s dead already, and we just have to take the crown.”

But then he immediately frowned because the energy he was trying to take from the monster wasn’t coming his way. It was as if he was trying to tear flesh from a living person.

It was at that moment that the monster stirred.

A loud crack sounded, a groaning and rustling of two dried old bones rubbing together, and the monster turned to face Riven, who froze.

They stared at each other. Monster and Riven.

Moments later, the monster opened its mouth and roared.

A ground-shaking screech hit like a hammer to the gut. Riven was already running by then. He heard the ground shake behind him as the monster lifted itself, but he didn’t look back.

The monster didn’t chase him. Instead, it raised its sword high above its head, and it was instantly set aflame with green light. Then it slashed down.

A sword arc of intense green heat leaped from the sword and struck the ground so hard a line appeared from the monster straight forward.

Riven had felt the attack coming, and since he knew he could not outrun it, he tried a different approach. He began to run sideways, doing a zigzag run, and even then, the shockwave of the attack still lifted and slammed him hard on the ground.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Kivara was rethinking the plan. She thought she had the easiest job, but that was before the monster stood up and literally split the ground with a single attack.

“Just what rank is this Catacomb? Dying and then rising as an undead was never my idea of a glorious way to die,” she thought to herself. With her aura surrounding her, she should be invisible unless they saw her, to anyone and anything below her rank, but she doubted that the monster was below or at the same rank as her.

Still, she moved with a crab-like legwork where she crouched and then did fast and slow movements, all the while maneuvering toward the monster’s blind spot.

She quickly ran behind it as the monster began to advance toward Riven’s position. She waited until it stopped to search for him, and then she raised her hand and used her command technique, Call to Ruin!

She gestured, and at the same time, she yanked her hand backward as if she was ripping something free. The crown atop the monster’s head shook and trembled as it responded to her technique.

She added more aura and pulled. The crown flew free and jumped toward her. Her eyes lit up, but the monster spun, a whirlwind of tattered robes, and its skeletal hand reached out and caught the crown.

The monster stared down at her with rot-filled sockets and roared.

It wasn’t a simple roar. It was a technique, because all around Kivara, coldness surged, and ghostly white light flickered. Before she could blink, she had been surrounded by a translucent skeleton army that swung themselves at her with rusted weapons.

She wasn’t fazed. The first skeleton that reached her got a punch wrapped in void aura to the face. It carried so much force that it shattered its head.

But another one was there to immediately replace it.

Kivara grinned, and her right hand darkened. A sword of darkness and faint light appeared in her hand, and she flung herself right at the monsters as well.

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