Reincarnated As A What?

Chapter 12 - Defending Gurt

I left the mud hut I had been spending the last few days in and had a look over the horizon. I couldn't really see a lot due to the tall grass as unlike when I was approaching I wasn't on a horse. I hopped onto a large rock not too far away and saw a troop of probably about 100 skeletons.

I then started preparing myself.

"Acid spore!" I called out right in the middle of the army. A large mushroom-shaped dollop of sickly lime green coloured acidic whatever it was. Then the cap of the mushroom started to fall and enveloped about 10 skeletons in acid. They all started cracking and sizzling as their bones turned to sludge.

I did this twice more before the skeletons had spread out too much for me to be able to hit them in such large groups. Instead, I had to get them one at a time, sometimes I could get 2 but they were quickly approaching and I was almost out of mana. The army was less than half its original size but that didn't change the fact that I could only cast 5 more acid spore spells before I ran out.

The skeletons at that point were right at the village's doorstep. They held swords and had very basic armour, like a rusted iron helmet or a chainmail vest. It seemed that there wasn't anywhere near enough to go around.

I hadn't asked why the skeleton army was attacking yet to to be honest I hadn't actually thought about it up to that point.

I sent off 7 of my acid spores leaving myself with enough mana for 3 more before I had to get into close combat. There was nothing else I could do after all. I waddled into the skeleton army.

"Oh look a monada" claimed one of them in a very condescending tone.
"It seems they couldn't convince the mage to fire any more shots so They're bringing in the big guns!" A group of the skeletons laugh. "Come on then let's see what you have" Thr skeletons had very strange voices. They clearly weren't natural, probably generated through magic. They also had a resonant clacking sound behind the main voice sound as if bones were vibrating against one another. It was very odd, the voices sounded almost mechanical as a matter of fact.

About 3 skeletons all swung their swords at me but the blades only just scratched me, however. Not even to the extent to which the knights would have managed. They didn't have enough strength to do more than paper cuts. They hurt about as much as a paper cut and bled a reasonable amount too, but other than that they were basically completely harmless.

I then kicked one of them in the ankle and its whole shin bone shattered into a dozen sharp fragments.
It fell onto the floor and cracked its skull from the collision onto a rock but it just continued attacking me despite not being able to stand. I bit its sword arm with all my strength and it also snapped. I spat out all of the fragments of bone. But by that point, I was being ganged up on.

"Acid spore!"

Then the acid came crashing down all over the skeletons that had been crawling all over me. A good third of the remaining skeletons were right around me at that point and I destroyed them all. But the acid also burnt me. It was excruciating. The acid did me very severe damage. It wasn't enough to kill me but the damage was very severe. Basically, all of the fur, skin and muscle on the top of my head and feet was gone.

But I returned to bone-crushing. This time it hurt to kick them and sometimes I would get the sharp bone shards slicing up my throat but I managed to get rid of another 7 this way.

After the first incident, they weren't clumping around me quite like before and had clearly learnt from their mistake. So I sent off the last 2 acid spores to groups of 3 which were the largest groups I could find.

There were only about 10 of the skeletons left and at that point, they gave up. The remaining skeletons ran away. They scattered in a way that I would only have been able to hit one at a time assuming I still had some acid spores left. But I didn't, so it didn't matter anyway.