Since the second pyramid had no passage through it, they now had to walk around.
“Alright. We’re going to head to the third pyramid. I’ll bring the skeletons back so we can push safely together.” Jay said leisurely.
“Sounds like a plan.” Anya followed his lead.
Jay commanded his skeletons to come back to him, but he kept Sweeper out there, collecting the soulstones of the statues the skeletons slayed while he was in lessons with Viladore.
Thankfully, the skeletons had cleared most of the statues this way so there was not much of a hindrance to their journey - apart from the odd piece of rubble on the ruined city roads.
The skeletons sprinted back as a group, and Anya hadn’t seen them for a while so she stopped for a moment to watch them.
As the skeletons had returned back, they began walking ahead of Jay and Anya, functioning as the vanguard of the party.
“Wow… they’re all as big as Blue now?” Anya commented as the three skeletons returned.
“Yeah, and they’re only level three...” Jay smiled, knowing that soon enough they will be level four and probably look even more threatening.
Anya remembered the power that Blue exhibited by itself during the leech incident. She shook her head, speechless. Jay’s personal bodyguards were simply too strong.
As they walked, the silence started to feel awkward so Jay made some more conversation.
“By the way, you can see my level in the party right?”
“Yes, level 9 necromancer..?”
“Ok. Just checking.” Jay tried to sound casual, stopping himself from smiling as he was level 10.
“The disguise stone even works in parties…” he shook his head in disbelief “...and Sedulus said there were no treasures here.” he thought as he walked along silently, internally though he was cheering.
Jay began to notice a difference between himself and Anya as they walked. He travelled much more casually than Anya, and much more loudly too. Sometimes he even got bored and kicked a rock or two.
Anya however was constantly scanning the environment, she was quite tense by comparison. Her eyes darted left and right, while each of her steps were silent, not making a sound.
Jay appreciated her professional attitude, but felt like she was being way too serious. All they were doing was walking after all.
“Relax a bit, you’re making me nervous.” Jay chuckled with a light smile.
Anya pursed her lips for a moment and nodded as she lowered her crossbow a little.
“Sorry. This is all new territory for me.”
“It’s ok, me too. Don’t worry though, the skeletons will do most of the fighting. I’ll tell you when they need some help. At the moment, they can all keep one preoccupied without taking damage, or take a statue down but suffer a few hits in return.
Anya rolled her tongue in her cheek as she thought for a moment.
“So you can keep four preoccupied at once? Since it seems like you have four skeletons now? Or do you have more?”
“Yep, four. I only have four for now.”
“I see…” she looked at the skeletons with their hammers.
“I wonder how powerful Jay is now.” she thought silently as she walked, realising he could probably take on a group of five statues without much effort.
Soon enough they made it around the second pyramid without incident and were well on their way to the third.
Another black highway stretched out before them yet there were no pillars on either side, and no military blockades either - though there was a rhythmic thumping sound that steadily grew louder as they approached.
Finally, they saw their first group of enemies, a party of five stone soldiers marched in unison; three of them were spearmen while two were swordsmen.
These were not the only group however, as further behind them another group marched endlessly; in total there were five groups of enemies, all marching in unison as if they were perfectly disciplined soldiers.
As Jay and Anya stepped onto the highway, they received a message.
<[Entrance Challenge]>
[Reset Area]
- If you leave the area, enemies will be reset.
“A reset area? Huh…” he watched the soldiers march up and down the highway for a moment.
“What if I just decide to skip it…?” Jay mischievously smiled as he gazed into the distance and looked at the pyramid.
“Damn… seems like the door is shut. I guess that’s why it’s called an entrance challenge.”
Instead of military blockages, these groups of the powerful stone statues marched back and forward along the highway, each stern and threatening as each heavy footstep made a thudding sound while they marched in perfect harmony.
Jay watched for a moment before realising the difficulty of this challenge.
While each group of statues consisted of three spearmen and two swordsmen, that wasn’t what necessarily made it difficult - in fact, to Jay this was a piece of cake.
What made it hard was the marching - If they didn’t kill a group of five statues fast enough, another one would show up.
For instance, if they only killed four statues, and five more showed up, they would then be dealing with six statues.
Dealing with six would be much harder too as it would then be a 6 vs 6 battle, slowing down their killing speed. If they killed three, then five more showed up, they would then be facing eight.
Soon another group of five would show up and slowly they would be overwhelmed.
Everything depended on the first battle, otherwise it would get exponentially harder.
If they retreated from the area they would live, but the statues would be ‘reset’ and come back to life, meaning they would have to try again.
“Hmm… it’s almost like a miniature dungeon.” he thought as he scratched his chin before turning to Anya.
“We will have to kill them fast, otherwise we will need to retreat and try again.” Jay accurately analysed the situation.
“Mm..” Anya nodded in agreement, already understanding the gist of the situation.
“Let’s back off for a bit. I need to repair my shield before I’ll be ready, then as soon as Sweeper returns we can start. Are you prepared?”
“Yeah.. Yes.” Anya said as she looked over her crossbow and checked some things in her inventory and her waist. She was ready since they entered.
Since they last met, Anya had upgraded her crossbow to one which was larger and more sturdy now. It had two light-blue rails that the bolt slipped in between as well as a foot handle on the front.
The crossbow was thicker and packed a bigger punch, and the foot handle was necessary from the sheer power of the crossbow. It also allowed faster reloading, as now too hands could be used to pull the drawstring back.
Anya’s bolts received an upgrade as well, each of them were longer to fit the larger bow, and had thicker tips made from a type of hardened steel.
On various parts of her light leather armour were small throwing knives for easy access and situational use.
Jay had looked at it a few times, he wondered what the light-blue rails were for.
“Perhaps they are some kind of charging or imbuing mechanism?” he thought as he looked at it.
Obviously it was one of those powerful items that Sullivan would have gifted her.
Jay and Anya stepped off the highway so that they didn’t start the first battle and hid safely in some nearby ruins.
Jay took out the three pieces of his shield, he wasn’t sure how to fix it so it was really a guessing game at this point; sitting down, he began the repair process.
He pushed the three parts together and added some necrotic mana to it; green gas swirled around it for a moment but nothing happened, though the mana didn’t dissipate or linger, so it had to be going somewhere.
“Hmm.”
He just decided to add even more of his swirling sickly-green mana, concentrating it. This seemed like it did the trick as the pieces began to float and the eyes on the shield glowed with resurrected life once more.
The three pieces floated around each other, and soon some thin ethereal arteries began connecting each piece together, pulling them closer.
Jay continued to add mana until the process was over, and he could feel the shield still absorbing everything around it.
The three pieces pulled each other closer and glowed as mana was funnelled into them, soon the tear between them was healed and the shield was whole again.
The veins and arteries on the shield were once more brimming with the necrotic glowing mana again as the eyes on the shield gazed at Jay, its master.
“Welcome back” Jay thought as he grabbed it while it was still floating in mid air.
[Death Walkers Sentry Repaired]
Immediately he equipped it, and it squeezed his arm once.
“I guess it missed me too?” he almost chuckled; Anya was watching so he kept these thoughts and chuckles to himself.
Sweeper finally got back with another soul stone, and Jay willed it to stop its collection duty. In total it had collected 6 more for Jay.
There were still some more stones out there but they didn’t really matter too much to Jay, after all, he could simply reset the dungeon, go to sleep, and wake up the next day to a large batch of them.
“Alright. I’m ready and the skeletons are looking healthy. Let’s move” he said, standing up from the stone slab he was sitting on.
