Jay and Anya had made it to the entrance of the pyramid, and compared to the dihexapedes they were now further away from the floating statues - they wouldn’t be targeted.
They were safe for now at least.
For a moment they watched the battle behind them, but after they broke the line of spearmen, they were now being decimated.
Jay and Anya caused a weakness in their formation which became the helvetians’ soldiers undoing.
The formation was what made them strong, but the dihexapedes could now go around and attack from behind, while getting too close for the spears to even be effective.
Before entering the pyramid, Jay quickly brought out a pile of bones and resummoned all his skeletons.
“Let’s head inside before all the statues die.” Jay said as he handed the skeletons their hammers and daggers back.
“Sure.” Anya nodded and followed the skeletons inside with Jay.
Like the other pyramids, this one was also dark inside, so Anya took out her brighter luminous orb.
“Lamp.” Jay pointed at the luminous orb in Anya’s hand.
“Thanks.” Anya said as she let the skeleton carry it.
The small passageway opened up into a large rectangular room with pillars trailing down either side.
As they cautiously crept between the pillars, two dual-dagger stone statues suddenly stepped out from behind the pillars and slashed, taking the skeletons by surprise.
*Shring-shring~ shring-shring~*
It was an effective surprise attack, as the skeletons took heavy damage before they could defend themselves.
The skeletons jumped back and got into a fighting stance.
Jay raised his shield and got into a defensive stance, checking for any other enemies in the hall about to ambush them, but it seemed like there were only the two dual-dagger statues here.
“Hmm…” he squinted around the dark shadowy pillars, not trusting anything.
Anya was already aiming her crossbow, but just before she fired Jay suddenly stopped her.
“Save your bolts. Let the skeletons deal with this.” he held his hand up.
Anya lowered her crossbow while the skeletons got to work.
Blue began to effectively command Red, Sweeper and the level one feeble creature.
First, Red and Sweeper attacked one statue each; Red took the left state and Sweeper took the right statue, taking the aggro and forcing the statues to target them.
Next, Blue and the level one skeleton went behind the left statue and started smashing their hammers down on its back.
The poor statue had no choice but to turn to face them. Unfortunately for the statue, its back was now wide open to Red, which made it suffer for turning its back.
Between Blue, Red and the level one feeble creature, the statue was basically spinning. What was once a fearsome soldier turned into a useless punching bag.
The feeble creature got a few slashes in, but its damage was minimal, almost not worth mentioning. Soon however, it found that stabbing was more effective than slashing against their dark stone bodies; it was a slight difference but was enough for it to continue this strategy, and now it was only stabbing.
Despite having weapons quite effective to face a swarm, they had no choice but to accept their fate and give up their soul stones. They were simply outnumbered.
The second statue could do nothing after its comrade died, it still did some damage to Sweeper but it wasn’t enough to create any kind of momentum; the four skeletons made short work of it as they turned its body back to rubble.
[50 Exp] [50 Exp]
Since the skeletons didn’t escape unharmed, Jay gave them a small bone pile to munch on while he, Anya and Lamp ventured a little further.
Looking around on each wall of the room were what seemed to be stone bookshelves and racks of some sort.
After walking a little deeper into the room they found a stone staircase in the very back; a set of stairs leading down and another leading up.
“Up or down?” Anya asked.
“Down.” Jay immediately made a choice.
There wasn’t any real difference between either choice, so wasting time thinking about it was just that - a waste of time.
This is what caused Jay to be so decisive for things like this; he couldn’t imagine how much time would be wasted by adventurers arguing about such meaningless choices.
Sure, there would likely be different things either way, but they had zero information, so the choice was the same.
For these situations, Jay would easily just make a decision and go with it. By the time they clear the bottom level, perhaps other adventurers would still have been arguing.
“Wait here for a second.” Jay said as he went back to collect the remains of the bone pile.
After the skeletons ate their fill they were all in top condition again, their armour was pristine and they were ready to fight. The skeletons all headed back to the stairs and went down first, shortly followed by Jay and Anya.
As they looked from the top of the stairs, they couldn’t tell how deeply it would descend into the earth because of the darkness, but it didn’t go down as far as they thought it might, maybe only one or two stories.
The bottom floor opened into a wide passageway with a triangle ceiling.
As they walked along the passage, they passed by some large stone tubs filled with loose rocks and earth, some of which had flecks of gleaming violet colours reflecting in the light.
Grabbing one, Jay inspected it closely and used his analysis skill - yet no notification appeared.
“I guess it’s useless?” he shrugged, putting it back into the storage receptacle.
He looked at the gleaming rocks once more, and then decided to take one with him, thinking it might look cool in the sunlight.
[Sparkling Ore] x 1
“Hmm, so it tells me what it is when I add it to my inventory…?” he squinted at the stone tub of ore before him.
“I wonder why the analysis didn’t show anything? Is my analysis skill not good enough?” Jay picked up another rock and looked at it, attempting another analysis.
“Perhaps I need a prospecting ability or something?” he wondered, though his thoughts were quickly interrupted.
*GURRR~*
A deep groaning sound resounded from somewhere below the floor of the room and suddenly an opening formed in the wall behind the receptacle.
A thick orange glow came from the wall opening and without warning, the stone container flipped backwards - all the ore was dumped into the wall opening, leaving an empty stone box, right before the wall closed again as if it all had never happened.
“Uhh… ok then.” Jay turned his head to the side, a little confused as he held a chunk of the ore before adding it to his inventory.
[Sparkling Ore] x1
“I hope it wasn’t a mistake to let all that stuff go.” he thought as he scratched his chin.
“Hmm, but maybe it is just a useless sparkly rock,” he shrugged.
As they walked, they passed by more and more of these empty stone tubs, all of them empty.
“It’s getting warmer.” Anya said.
“Yeah. It feels nice.” Jay said, keeping the mood positive.
Soon, they saw a faint glow in the distance at the end of the passage; it was small and appeared as if a floating ember in the wind.
As they proceeded towards it, they heard some faint rhythmic sounds in the distance.
*doon… doon… doon… doon…*
As they got closer though it became a bit clearer, sounding like metal banging on metal - Jay didn’t need to guess to know what it was.
“Why is there a blacksmith here… it doesn’t make any sense. All of the soldiers’ weapons are made from stone.” he thought, curious as they walked quietly.
He could clearly hear the distinct sound of metal hitting metal, so Jay could only guess why none of the statues used any metal weapons. Surely they would be better than stone?
Getting closer to the orange glow, they came to the entrance of the room. Two large stone twin doors stood before them; each of them ornamental with an engraving of a hammer and anvil on one door and a sword on the other.
Both were shut closed, and it turned out that the orange glow they were walking towards was a small circular opening above the doors.
Jay had Lamp give the luminous orb back to Anya; they wouldn’t be needing it because of the orange light, while having another skeleton to fight would be useful.
Jay calmly and quietly traced his hand over the large doors, taking a moment to appreciate the craftsmanship. The edges were sharp and each line seemed to be perfectly cut.
“Ready?” Jay whispered as he stood next to the large doors.
Anya raised her crossbow and nodded back.
