"Digging holes?" Lucius asked. "What, do you think I'm some animal?"

You would think a spirit of the demigods would know how to dig. If you turn into a shield, I can use it to scoop dirt.

Lucius looked at her as if she'd insulted his lineage. He sighed. "Vivi, just ask me to turn into a shovel."

You can do that?

"I'm a spirit," Lucius said. "I can do a lot of things with enough ether."

Vivi swam to shore. She was welcomed by Eem's concerned eyes. The fiend ran over and hugged Vivi's leg. Vivi smiled. "Eem, let's build a little trap."

*

For the next three hours, Vivi rearranged bricks and dug a hole with her spirit shovel. The ground underneath the bricks of the dungeon entrance was unfortunately stone. Cutting into it required a lot of ether. Each hit dimmed out a small part of Lucius's wisps.

In shovel form, Lucius's emotions were hard to read. He wasn't sulking, but he wasn't exactly happy to have his head smashed into stone repeatedly. But the spirit shovel was strong enough to cut stone. The job was heavy, requiring Vivi to break a sweat, but eventually, she had dug a hole she was satisfied with.

With the "trap" done, Vivi rearranged the bricks in place. The blue glow didn't come back. It was clear something had been done to the entrance. Other than that, the footing seemed solid.

"I don't know if this will work, Vivi," Lucius said. "The idea is way too simple. Surely, we can't defeat something with five thousand ether more than us with this trick."

"All we need is one skeleton to lose its footing," Vivi said. "Whether the trap will work depends on how sharp their senses are. The brick path looks solid, at least."

Lucius frowned at the trap. "Intelligence is definitely these monsters' biggest weakness, but this might be stretching it."

"Well, it's better than nothing." Vivi stretched and readied her muscles.

She couldn't believe she was about to fight monsters of pure ether with nothing but a javelin crafted out of a single ether root. She didn't even know how to use a spear.

"The mace skeletons are probably slower than the spear skeletons," Vivi said. "Speed is my biggest weakness. I can't keep up with anything that's agile. The skeletons have a solid footing and good technique. But what if their stance is broken? I can poke them down with my javelin."

Lucius's eyes said he was just hoping they wouldn't die. "They do drop a lot of ether…"

Vivi nodded. "Let's go. You know the plan."

She summoned her javelin, then stepped through the misty doorway, into the dungeon.

The first room was empty, as it had been before. She sneaked next to the far-most wall. The last time, when Eem had peeked into the room, all of the skeletons had been alerted to her presence simultaneously. Three skeletons had chased her outside. If Vivi carefully revealed just a little bit of her presence, perhaps she didn't need to alert every skeleton of her presence at once.

From the far end of the room, Vivi had a slight angle to see into the next room. She saw vague blue flames of a skeleton in the next room. Standing there, Vivi pushed a few dozen wisps into her body. Just enough to give herself a slight ethereal aura.

The blue flames in the room twitched. A skeleton turned around, slowly walking into the next room over.

Two skeletons entered. One of them was an archer, the other was a heavy mace-skeleton. Spotting Vivi, they went into stance and charged after her.

Vivi dashed for the exit. Behind her, a mace crashed into the ground, shaking the dungeon. A single hit would mean her death. Vivi had no margin for error. She ran over the now colorless bricks and waited for the monsters to chase. Her weight wasn't enough to spring the trap.

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The mace skeleton arrived through the mist, chasing onto the bricks. It lifted its weapon. The ground underneath still held.

Vivi stomped on the bricks. Finally, the ground underneath cracked, and the bricks fell into Vivi's hole.

The hole was barely a few feet deep. There was nothing underneath to kill the skeleton, not even spikes. Vivi didn't have any materials for a proper trap.

But the ground underneath the mace skeleton was lost. Its footing wavered, and the swing it was preparing was off balance.

Vivi immediately dashed forward, activating Shadow Swipe and thrusting the javelin at the skeleton. It tried to block with its mace. Vivi redirected the javelin, hitting it in the shoulder. A crack formed, and ether began leaking.

It wasn't enough. She pulled it back and aimed for the head. It was on path for a clean hit.

The skeleton opened its mouth, then bit down on her javelin. The attack stopped in place.

Vivi's eyes opened wide. She pulled, but the javelin was stuck in the skeleton's mouth. The skeleton was still stuck in the hole, but its footing had recovered. It raised its mace and swung.

Vivi stepped to the side with a grimace and called Lucius's claws. In a split second decision, she jumped forward, driving Lucius's claws into the skeleton's head.

As Vivi had hoped, the skeleton was too slow to raise its mace. Vivi had slipped past its weapon. She pushed the claws into its eyes, slashing at the head, causing as much damage as she could.

The claws only left scrapes, but it was enough to cause panic. The skeleton dropped its weapon and punched Vivi in the back.

A single weak hit from the skeleton hurt enough to send a jolt through her whole body. She stood through the pain, practically hugging the skeleton.

She grabbed onto her javelin and pulled. With her other hand, she swiped at the skeleton's face.

Another fist hit her in the back. Vivi's eyes saw black.

But the skeleton lost its hold on her javelin. Vivi yanked it free and drove it right through the skeleton's forehead.

No more punches came. The mace skeleton disintegrated. Lucius quickly collected its ether and pushed all of the powers to Vivi's head, keeping her conscious. Another six hundred ether was added to his reserves.

Behind the mace skeleton's corpse, a bow and a giant ethereal arrow was aimed at Vivi's head.

She ducked immediately, hiding in her hole, just in time for the arrow to fly over her head.

It missed! Vivi dashed forth like a savage, both hands on her javelin, driving it into the archer skeleton's head.

A dagger materialized in the archer's hand. It thrust the dagger at Vivi's chest from the side.

Lucius appeared. He turned to the shape of a buckler, concentrating all of his ether to the point of impact. The shield cracked regardless, and the dagger pierced through.

But the shield around the crack stayed solid. The edges of the buckler crashed into Vivi's chest, blocking the dagger's hilt from fully piercing through. Only the tip of the dagger pierced half an inch into her skin.

Vivi growled as her javelin landed straight through the archer's head. It, too, disintegrated to ether.

Vivi collapsed on the ground. Her back burned. Something was probably broken. Blood flowed from the dagger wound in her chest. Another hole was added to her raincoat. The dagger hadn't hit vitals, but it was deep enough to cause blood loss. Her javelin was slightly bent, and the tip was cracked

Lucius collected the six hundred ether from the archer's corpse. His reserves rose to 2785. He pushed more ether to Vivi's wounds.

"I can't heal you right away," Lucius said. "It'll take some time. I'll try to protect the wounds from getting worse."

It's fine, she said. Not as bad as with the boss…

Vivi crawled out of the dungeon. She thanked the gods that no more skeletons had rushed after her. She must have killed the archer on the very edge of whatever line alerted the skeletons in the next room over.

Eem waited for her outside the cavern. The fiend looked almost angry as she ran to Vivi. "Ivwi! Aaa!" Eem shouted, punching Vivi lightly in the head.

"Vivi's an idiot, I know," Vivi said. "That was stupid. But we have a lot of ether now. We're twice as strong."

"My claws will do damage to the skeletons now," Lucius said. "If we charge a claw hard enough."

Vivi forced herself to stand, pushing through the pain. Her wounds weren't too bad. She probably had a broken bone somewhere, but it wasn't her spine. The wound in her chest bled slightly, but Lucius's ether was slowly closing the wound.

Vivi started tossing fallen bricks out of her hole. "Let's rearm the trap and do the same thing again. I should be strong enough to just beat them now."

"You should rest first, Vivi," Lucius said. Eem pouted next to him. "If we abuse ether, you'll take days to recover."

"I'll rest while we work," Vivi said. "I want to make it back to Zand for collection day. We're not strong enough to escape Zand and defy the Stewards yet. Uundref is far faster than any of these clumsy skeletons. We need Zand's facilities to craft a three-runed sword."

Lucius and Eem both frowned at her.

"I'll rest," Vivi said. "We won't beat the skeletons if I'm weak. But I'm not so injured that I can't move. Let's get this done. A few more fights, and we're maxed out."

"You're only standing because of my ether right now, Vivi," Lucius said. "The moment I stop supporting you, you'll probably pass out. If you don't believe me, I'll prove it."

He cut off the sources of ether from Vivi's body, and her legs collapsed. She fainted.

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