Chronos and Lyla were moving deeper into the bone field while crushing every skeleton that crossed their path. Then the Bone Lord suddenly slammed his shield into the ground causing everything in the field to tremble like an earthquake had happened.
As the ground shook the bones on the ground flew up and began forming armor on every skeleton that was still standing.
"Now we're talking. They should be able to endure at least one or two blows now," Chronos cheered as he struck a half-formed skeleton.
Just as he had expected it bounced up from the ground with only a section of the armor and ribs destroyed.
But behind him Lyla frowned.
"These things aren't any stronger than before, just a bit more durable. They can't even use their weapons properly," she complained as she easily deflected the skeleton's claws.
"That doesn't matter, we're only using them to master our skills anyways. Try using a new skill on them and see the difference between your already mastered skill."
Nodding she switched from relying on her gavels to using her [Aegis Soul Armor], [Verdict Pillar], and [Judgement Arrow]. None of which she had mastered yet.
While Lyla was working on her skills Chronos was muttering to himself in frustration. He'd failed to consistently use the double hammer blow technique, and it was really beginning to annoy him.
He was smashing another armored skeleton into the ground, crushing its head to make sure it stayed dead, when a large pile of bones rose up in front of him. A skeleton wielding a large, great sword and dressed in thick armor roared at him.
He felt the challenge of a [Duel] technique settle on his body before the skeleton charged.
"Wow, he must be ancient. [Duel] techniques haven't been actively used in 500 years," he said.
Lyla gave them a strange look, "Why haven't they been used in so long?"
"Well, the technique forces you to exchange blows with your target. If you're weaker than the target, you'll be the one to suffer so it was actively used for a long time to cut down weaker opponents on the battlefield, but it has a major weakness.
Any blow counts for the technique so if I do this," Chronos bounced a bone fragment off the chest plate of the charging skeleton. "The technique counts it as my attack before he reaches me, but he still has to finish his attack."
Sidestepping the skeleton's great sword, he tripped it with Echoforge then shattered the plate mail on its back.
"That creates a massive opening for me to exploit. Nowadays it's considered little more than a distraction and isn't actively used by most warriors."
Raising Echoforge above his head again he swung down and successfully used the double hammer blows. Smiling, he started counting how many times he could use the technique before he failed. So far, his limit had been three times then he failed to use it correctly.
As another armored skeleton approached him, he felt the familiar feeling from when he was fighting the Chief earlier.
That feeling of his skills growing in a noticeable way was very addictive. It was just unfortunate that it rarely showed up.
Focusing on the feeling he struck skeleton after skeleton slowly getting lost in a trance until he couldn't see anything around him except for the next enemy. One after another the skeletons shambled up to him just to be struck down. He couldn't help wondering if they knew they were marching to their doom or not.
As he struck the next skeleton he watched in satisfaction as its spine was blown out of the back of the armor from the second hidden blow. That was his 100th successful double hammer strike in a row.
Then he felt it, everything clicked into place as his aura started flowing more smoothly through the hammer becoming stronger with each passing second.
"Finally, my mastery of the hammer has reached the master rank!" Chronos cheered.
If Uncle Bruar could hear him now, he might beat him to death. It had taken uncle Bruar nearly a decade to reach the master rank, yet this little punk accomplished the same feat with just over a year of training.
Sometimes the world really was unfair.
Then a sound echoed in his mind.
{Ding
Congratulations Chronos on your achievement.
Hammer Mastery: Master Rank will be added to your status.
Notice five master rank weapon mastery's have been detected. Profession upgrade is now possible.
Would you like to begin?
Yes/No?}
Profession upgrade?
That was new and what did it mean he had achieved five master rank weapon masteries? He had only mastered four weapons.
Hang on, he began counting all of the weapons he knew were at the master rank.
"Twin axes, sword, spear, and hammer."
Yep, that was only four weapons at the master rank. What was the fifth weapon?
While he was trying to figure out where the fifth mastery came from Lyla called out to him, "Chronos I hate to stop your little rampage, but Gregory says it's time to go."
He looked around himself at the numerous skeleton corpses on the ground. Then at Lyla who at some point had gotten tired of having Chronos steal her kills and chose to start a campfire while watching him.
Which she was currently roasting a skull over.
"Alright lets head back," he'd have to check the system later to find out what was going on. "What were you doing with that skull?"
"I wanted to see if I could get the lost soul to come out of it. Then I would purify the soul and send them onto the afterlife," she idly replied.
"Oh, was it a success?"
"Nope, the moment it left the skull it went into the ground. Something down there is keeping them trapped and until someone can deal with that thing they'll keep being pulled back in to form new skeletons."
"That's a pity."
He thought about telling the shamans but remembering how they had reacted when he was on that spiritual layer, he had no name for, they probably already knew and couldn't do anything about it.