Chapter 65: Elimination

The moment Ryuji pushed open the heavy basement door, a sudden chill crept up his spine.

Without turning around, Ryuji channeled his magic, and the sun crystal atop his Death Staff instantly flared. A blinding white light engulfed the entire corridor outside the basement.

Stepping forward swiftly, Videnina, who had been guarding the basement entrance, made her move. Four longswords slashed toward the empty space directly behind Ryuji.

Driven out from the shadows by Videnina's sweeping blade, a Bone Guard stumbled into view. Like other Bone Guards, he wore armor crafted from bones and a mask over his face, but instead of standard weaponry, he wielded a pair of short daggers.

Recovering instantly, the Bone Guard did not hesitate. With a flicker of movement, he sprinted toward the staircase.

However, Ryuji had already spun around, swinging the Death Staff down toward the fleeing figure.

Following closely, Ryuji drew the thin estoc from his waist, whipping three blade-like wind slashes through the air that traced a sharp, miniature Z-pattern as they hurtled toward the Bone Guard.

The Bone Guard had not anticipated that Ryuji was an unorthodox practitioner of physical combat—much like an assassin who happened to be clad in heavy armor.

Caught off guard, the Bone Guard could only lunge forward, tapping his hands twice rapidly against the ground to wrench his body into an impossible angle, narrowly dodging Ryuji's assault.

That micro-second of delay, however, allowed Videnina's four swords to close in from all directions, forcing the Bone Guard to turn back and desperately parry the onslaught.

Displaying the combat instincts of a veteran, the Bone Guard used the momentum of Videnina's strike to propel himself backward, crashing straight into the upward-leading staircase.

Even at that moment, the Bone Guard casually waved a hand at Ryuji as if bidding him farewell.

Yet, the instant he raised his hand, he felt an eerie presence materialize before him—a collection of pale white and ghostly blue figures, resembling the very people he had previously killed.

A jolt of shock pierced the Bone Guard's heart. He knew that necromancers commanded dedicated private armies, but turning victims into incorporeal phantoms was simply impossible.

Even as he thought this, the Bone Guard lashed out with his daggers, attempting to engage the apparitions.

Try as he might, his blades passed through empty air, failing to make contact with a single shadow.

Soon, the Bone Guard realized something was amiss. Even if ghosts possessed a fifty-percent immunity to physical attacks, they wouldn't continuously dodge like this. Could these phantoms be illusions?

As this realization dawned on him, the Bone Guard instinctively glanced toward Ryuji.

It was already too late. Ryuji and Videnina had closed in from left and right, reaching the Bone Guard's side with multiple swirling wind blades gathered along the edges of their swords.

As the Bone Guard raised his head, he saw the barrage of wind blades descending upon him.

He had already witnessed the power of those wind blades earlier and knew they could not easily pierce his bone armor. With a fierce roar, he lunged directly at Ryuji.

Right at that critical juncture, Ryuji spoke: "You guessed wrong again."

To the Bone Guard's absolute astonishment, those incoming wind blades collided mid-air, coalescing into a massive, swirling vortex of wind that instantly swallowed him whole.

While his bone armor could withstand one or two direct impacts from wind blades, it was entirely powerless against the relentless, compounding assaults swirling inside a concentrated wind sphere.

Having trapped the Bone Guard within the vortex, Ryuji and Videnina swiftly retreated back into the basement and slammed the door shut.

A split second later, the unattended wind sphere detonated violently. The Bone Guard, trapped helplessly within the blast, was slammed hard onto the ground, utterly paralyzed and motionless.

Once the roaring echoes of the explosion subsided outside, Ryuji emerged from the basement. He glanced down at the lifeless corpse sprawled on the ground, a nagging sense of familiarity gnawing at him. Why did this fellow's face seem so recognizable?

Thinking back carefully, he hadn't encountered any other players recently.

Unable to puzzle it out, Ryuji exchanged a glance with Videnina, signaling her to drag the corpse away and haul it into the Underworld Palace.

This was the body of a player. Though his level was uncertain, he clearly hadn't reached the point of effortless resurrection; dead meant dead for someone like this.

For a Necromancer player, killing an enemy was merely the beginning—an adversary's corpse was the ultimate prize. Given that this player was an assassin-type Bone Guard, perhaps he could be repurposed to forge specialized assassin-type undead, sparing Ryuji from future ambushes.

Besides, what kind of player walked around without gear? Looting those items and equipment guaranteed a lucrative haul.

This wasn't just a game anymore; this was murder in the real world. Surely, some cross-realm system wouldn't retroactively reclaim a dead player's gear.

With these thoughts in mind, Ryuji and Videnina dragged the corpse directly into the Underworld Palace.

The moment they stepped inside, even before dropping the body, a flash of realization illuminated Ryuji's mind. He finally remembered where he had seen this face before.

Summoning a specific skull with a mechanical upper half and octopus tentacles trailing from the lower half into his palm, Ryuji carefully compared it to the face of the deceased Bone Guard. His conclusion was undeniable: these two were brothers—blood-related brothers.

"No wonder," Ryuji muttered to himself, finally connecting the dots. He had wondered how such a formidable Blood Adept hidden beneath the great ocean trench had managed to evade detection by the Bone Guards all this time. It turned out there was an inside man.

This revelation sparked a new hypothesis in Ryuji's mind: could this entire incident not be a coincidence, but rather a deliberate trap engineered to lure him out?

After a brief moment of reflection, Ryuji shook his head. He didn't flatter himself enough to think he was important enough for anyone to orchestrate such an elaborate trap solely to target him.

With the enemy's identity established, Ryuji wasted no time on idle speculation and began stripping the bone armor from the player's corpse.

Just as a Mortician was granted a nether realm stronghold as a base of operations, the bone armor worn by Bone Guards was not their personal property, but rather standard-issue equipment assigned to them.

Such gear was forged by high-level players, though the armor on this particular corpse had been severely battered and cracked by the wind blades.

Having no personal use for the shattered bone armor, Ryuji casually tore it away from the body.

It was then that he noticed a peculiar mark branded across the dead player's back.