The large Skeleton's mass bore down.
An instant.
The enormous arm exploded sideways.
Its trajectory bent at an unnatural angle, the massive limb drove into the ground beside me instead of through me.
It hadn't actually exploded. Something had hit it — a thrown weapon, detonating on impact, forcing the arm's path off course by sheer explosive force. The arm was still attached. The Skeleton itself was still standing.
"Are you alright?!"
Aron's voice.
He'd thrown one of his improvised projectiles to intercept it — the same kind he'd thrown into the formation at the start of the fight.
"Yeah — I'm alright. Thank you, Aron."
The moment of frozen shock broke. My head came back.
At the edge of my vision, Aron had already taken down two of the agile beast-type Skeletons and was in the process of putting a third on the ground. Rescuing an ally and working through his own targets at the same time, without a wasted movement. I watched and felt something between admiration and inadequacy.
But the large Skeleton hadn't gone down. Aron's intervention had thrown it off balance — nothing more. My strength wasn't enough to put this thing to rest.
"No—"
The Razboard in Kusteri Forest flickered through my mind.
That thing had been larger than this. And I'd driven it off.
"Come out!"
I called the same club as then — over a meter, the full length I could manage. The large Skeleton had its arm embedded in the earth and hadn't recovered yet.
Now or never.
"AAAAAAGH—!"
Everything I had, every muscle in my body, full rotation.
The club found the ribcage. A deep, heavy sound. The enormous frame folded and hit the ground.
"Ha— hah— okay—"
My lungs were on fire. But there was no time to feel relieved. The skull had to be destroyed before the undead pulled itself back together. If I didn't finish it here, I had nothing left to fight with afterward.
"This ends it—!"
I brought the club down on the fallen skull with everything remaining.
"—!?"
The impact bounced back into my hands. The club flew.
The torso alone had been that dense. The skull was worse.
"Damn it—!"
Frustration clawed up through my chest. If I didn't act, it would regenerate.
Thoughts scattered. Options blurred into each other.
Keep hitting with the club — but my arms were already at their limit. Fall back and let Elkan or Sed finish it — give up the ground, rely on someone else.
Run. Ask for help.
Wasn't that the same as admitting I was useless here?
Elkan and Sed could cut through bone like this. Aron was moving through the whole battlefield, covering every angle with precision. Teok called himself a non-combatant, but he'd handled the Razboard better than me, and he was handling this better than me too — multiple Skeletons at once, keeping them off-balance.
What could I do. I was just a human. What everyone else managed without thinking, I couldn't manage.
Maybe I was weaker than even this world's humans. Fundamentally.
My vision clouded. My thinking clouded with it.
All I could do was produce a club that might or might not be useful. If I'd had a sword or an axe from the start, I wouldn't have needed to rely on this at all. Even a metal weapon like Teok's mace—
Wait.
Something stopped.
The thought that had been fogged cleared completely, all at once.
…What if.
I released the oversized wooden club in my grip and called out to the air.
"Come out — club!"
The texture I held in my mind was not wood. Not the familiar weight I'd been relying on until this moment.
What materialized in my palm was heavy, and dull, and cold.
Iron. A solid mass of it — a substantial, dense mace, gleaming with a low metallic light.