For a second, silence fell over the room.
Midas was surrounded by darkness, his vision bare and his senses on high alert.
"Death will consume you..." A whisper sounded.
Midas heard a step behind him, instantly turning. He saw a skeleton a few feet away.
It looked nearly identical to the last one, but instead of a longsword as a weapon, it wielded a short and well-crafted steel dagger.
Midas rushed forward this time with no hesitation, 'These skeletons don't seem to really exist.' He thought, 'I didn't get a notification that I killed that last one. Still, that doesn't mean they can't kill me. Thinking as such would be foolish.'
The skeleton matched his pace and darted forward as well.
It swung its dagger at Midas's face as the two neared attacking distance.
Midas blocked the attack with both of his daggers by shielding his face in an X-shaped formation.
Since it was a side-swipe, the pressure was enough to handle.
The skeleton didn't let up, struggling against Midas's defense.
But then, Midas noticed that the skeleton's strength wasn't so scary.
A slight smile grew on his face, "You're fast... but I can match that speed. That also means I can match your strength." He flung the skeleton's arm back with a push.
The skeleton stumbled back. Before it could take more than two steps, Midas slashed across its torso--obliterating it into bones.
He instantly glanced down at his bone daggers.
'As I thought,' He grimaced inwardly, 'They can't hold up.' The blades of the daggers had slight lacerations on them.
'The quality of the weapon that these skeletons have is too great for my daggers. Even if I match them in speed and strength, I won't be able to hold out for too long if I continue blocking.' He thought, 'I have to fight in attacking distance at all times, avoiding all attacks.' He furrowed his brows as he made this decision.
Unfortunately, it looked like he couldn't use the weapons held by the skeletons either. They seemed to simply dissipate into orbs of light before disappearing.
"Death..."
Midas turned, noticing two more skeletons. One held a broad-axe, the other a katana.
'Wait...' He thought, his eyes darting across the room at the four seemingly randomly placed pillars. 'The position of these has changed.' He noted.
"Death is your God..."
"Become one with death..."
"You will be consumed..."
Before Midas could think, he heard another step behind him.
He instantly turned, noticing three more skeletons behind him.
He furrowed his eyebrows again, 'Tsk... I have to get behind a pillar.' He thought, running toward the closest one to him.
As soon as he turned the corner to get behind it, however, the pillar instantly disappeared.
Midas's eyes widened with surprise as he noticed all four pillars in the room had teleported to completely new random locations.
'Huh? They moved... but they are still here. I can use them somehow, but I don't know what triggers their teleportation... or even why they teleport in the first place.' He mused.
However, he didn't have time for thinking as the five skeletons had already entered closer than ten feet away from him.
An axe swung from above, the kinetic energy pulling air along with it.
'Slow.' Midas thought, sidestepping the attack and decapitating the skeleton.
A katana swung from his left, nearly slicing through his torso. Midas wasn't caught off guard. He swiftly knelt down and swiped the skeleton off its feet.
Its balance was interrupted, giving Midas the perfect opportunity to lunge in and decapitate it as well.
'Looks like decapitation is the easiest way to dispose of them...' He noted as more swings were hurled in his direction.
Midas continued fighting the skeletons with extreme focus. A stoic yet intense expression remained on his face as he dashed around the room--decapitating skeletons as he went.
The pillars continued to switch, but in random intervals.
He even kept a timer in his head while fighting, noticing that they teleported at seemingly completely random intervals.
'Tsk... I still can't figure out why they teleport. If I'm not meant to use them to hide, what else are they meant for? They might as well not be in here at all in the first place.' Not being able to figure it out slightly annoyed him.
Time passed as more and more skeletons arose from the ground.
He couldn't face them all at once, so he had to continuously run around to keep a distance and create enough space for him to fight.
Despite this, it seemed the number of skeletons was getting out of hand.
After what felt like ten minutes or so, more skeletons began to summon than he could slay.
And of course, with them came a sea of whispers.
A single skeleton was enough to generate dozens in Midas's head in a single minute.
Facing more than thirty at once, however, Midas could barely even hear his own thoughts.
"Death will be your ruler..."
"Realize the infinite death..."
"Are you not scared..."
"Bathe in death..."
"Do your knees not buckle before me..."
"Relish in death..."
The voices interlapped each other, all sounding like a bad TV screech after a certain amount of time.
Time. Midas quickly began to lose track of it.
His thoughts were harder to put together, each idea interrupted by another dozen whispers.
Midas made it to the center of the room, panting slightly. He looked all around him, noticing over fifty skeletons in the chamber.
'There's... too many.'
All fifty lunged at him at once. Midas could go nowhere, completely surrounded.
He darted toward the left wall of skeletons, sliding below them while slashing out the legs of a few.
He backed himself against a pillar, slashing away at the necks of dozens of skeletons with immense precision and confidence.
A single millisecond of lost focus could have meant his life here. It was like trying to walk on a rope over the valley between two mountain peaks.
However, the goblin dagger-fighting style did not disappoint here.
Since he couldn't escape much, fighting in attack range was mostly lucrative for him.
Unless his opponent also had a dagger, he found it fairly easy to find the weak points in his opponents.
Speaking of a dagger, however, a skeleton with two daggers in his hands faced Midas next.
Midas attempted his normal attack--sliding below the first attack of the skeleton before aiming for its neck.
This time, however, the skeleton managed to stop the blow. Its blade was much shorter than a normal sword--able to pull back its weapon just in time.
Midas's eyes widened with shock. For just a split second, he was thrown out of his concentration.
Just then, he felt a warm sensation in his lower back. After a second, the warm sensation burst into excruciating pain.
He glanced back, noticing a long blade sliding straight into his waist.