SS Awakening: My Monster Merging System!

The Privious Chapters are all Fixed.

...

Zich stayed still while the ring tightened. His eyes moved once across the square, and his hand rested near the side where the spatial bag hung. The undead did not swarm him at random because each group kept sliding toward his backpack like it was the center of the fight.

Helen raised her staff and drew a careful breath. Her eyes tracked the formations, and her shoulders stiffened when she noticed the same push toward his backpack every time. She did not swing yet because she was watching intent instead of motion.

"They’re not trying to tear us apart," she said. "They’re trying to get to the stones."

"That’s obvious," he muttered under his breath.

Then an idea struck him.

Without hesitation, he pulled out a normal monster core and tossed it across the square. It bounced once, slid near a broken stall, and stayed there without drawing any attention from the undead.

Zich took out one of the warm stolen stones and threw it toward the same spot. This time, several skeletons snapped toward it at once as if a command had been spoken.

RATTLE!!!

The monster core rolled toward a drainage crack. Skeletal hands reached up from the gap and pulled the soul stone down in a clean motion.

"Smart bastards."

Zich was genuinely annoyed seeing how easily the undead could differentiate between soul stones and monster cores.

Regardless, he pulled another warm stone and flicked it down a narrow alley. A large cluster of undead rushed after it and stacked into a tight formation at the entrance.

BOOM!!!

Helen’s fire swept through the packed group, and Slimy’s poison spread under their feet with a wet hiss. Her violent flames hungrily devoured the monsters, causing the mutated hounds to collapse onto the ground.

Zich repeated the trick with a second bait and watched another cluster break apart. He pulled his hand away from the bag before taking a third, and his jaw tightened slightly as he counted what remained.

Helen glanced at him and snorted.

"You’re counting bait during a siege?"

Helen was genuinely speechless.

To think that even in such a crucial moment, Zich was more worried about his soul stones than his life.

So far, thanks to Zich’s tactics and because the undead were not that brilliant, he was having a relatively easy time killing monster after monster.

Then something new stepped into the square.

These undead were taller than the skeletons around them. Their rib cages were stretched outward into large cage-like frames that covered most of their torsos. Long chains dangled between the bones, rattling softly as they moved.

Their arms hung almost to their knees. Thin fingers ended in hooked claws, and several bone chains were fused directly into their forearms as if they were part of their bodies.

Most importantly, they completely ignored the tossed stones.

While the other undead rushed after every piece of bait, these creatures kept their hollow eye sockets fixed on Zich.

[Bone Claw Lv. 30]

Zich felt like cursing when he realized the level of these new monsters.

Moreover, to make matters worse, there were at least three of them.

Helen gulped as well, taking a step back and bumping into Zich. The two stood back to back, and although they did not exchange a word, they both knew they were now in deep trouble.

One Bone Claw snapped a bone chain toward his spatial bag. Zich cut it with Blood Arc in a clean line, and the severed links fell to the stones.

CLANG!!!

The chain regrew from the Bone Claw’s arm and lunged again. Zich stepped back, and the Elite Undead Knight blocked another Bone Claw with a hard shoulder check, but three more moved in from the sides.

The warm stones inside his bag pulsed faster. The undead became more aggressive with each pulse, and their lines tightened around him as if they were following a signal.

"They’re calling them," Helen said, her voice lower now. "Keeping those stones is making this worse."

Zich kept his posture steady and his eyes on the Bone Claws.

"It also makes them predictable."

Another chain snapped toward him, and he cut it again. The link regrew faster this time, and a second Bone Claw joined the pull from a different angle.

The bag jerked hard as a bone chain wrapped around it and started dragging him toward the Bone Claw. Zich’s eyes remained cold, and using Blink, he escaped out of the enemy’s reach.

He planted his foot and kept his breathing steady. His posture remained balanced, and his free hand hovered near the chain.

Helen moved to his left and raised her hand without looking at him.

"What do we do?"

"I don’t know!" Zich shouted back, half annoyed.

He pulled one warm stone with his free hand and tossed it past the Bone Claws into a side lane. Several undead turned toward the sound, but the Bone Claws themselves ignored it and kept pulling at the bag.

"Tsk, I hate intelligent creatures."

The Elite Undead Knight stepped in and caught a bone chain on its blade. The impact pushed it back half a step, and dust kicked up around its boots. Another Bone Claw slid in from the right and reached for Zich’s bag with a long cage-ribbed arm.

Helen burned the ground between them with a low, controlled line of fire. The heat forced two lesser undead to stop, but the Bone Claw kept coming as if it did not care about being burned.

Zich’s fingers tightened around the strap of his backpack, a clear sign that he would not let it go without putting up a fight.

Helen saw this and felt like pulling her hair out.

"Just give it to them already and let’s run!"

Of course, Zich acted ignorant and ignored her completely. He had found these stones brick by brick and was not ready to give them away just like that.

"If they want it, let them come get it!"

"You..."

Helen was speechless.

However, before she could complain any further, a bone chain wrapped around her neck and...