“Go.” said Jay, not wasting any time as two statues got up from their thrones.
Thankfully, the larger statue in the middle throne was deceased so for now, there were only two enemies.
The skeletons charged ahead, their hammers and daggers hungry for some action.
Since fighting their way out of the fourth pyramid they had not served their master very much and were raring for a fight - though they always desired to fight, so there was not much of a noticeable difference.
Jay had formed a bone pile at his side as he prepared to raise any downed skeletons, while Anya took a knee and aimed her crossbow as she waited for an opening.
By now they were accustomed to battles together and knew their roles quite well.
Blue was in command of the skeletons once again, and made Dark go to distract the statue on the right while all the other skeletons targeted the enemy on the left.
Once again, Jay was pleased seeing his little commander skeleton, Blue, make suitable tactical decisions.
Sure, Jay could make better strategies, but if he is ever going to make an army he would need experienced commanders, and it seemed like the only way to get them was to train them himself.
The battle was still quite far away from Jay and Anya, due to the room being so large, but he was close enough to see what was happening.
The left statue was completely surrounded by the undead and getting decimated, while the statue on the right was attacking wildly and unsuccessfully - Dark was dipping, ducking and dodging around with its high dexterity.
Jay smiled with an approving nod, glad that his assassin-skeleton was having to practice its agility, which was a necessary skill of any assassin.
Meanwhile the other four skeletons had surrounded the other statue and was making it suffer - though it wasn’t taking damage without giving some in return.
It slashed at the skeletons with a single dagger and landed a few cuts.
“Strange. Only a dagger?” Jay thought.
The slender statues weren’t heavily armed like Sedulus - not even as much as the soldier variants; each of them simply had stone daggers which they waved around without much precision or power.
He assumed they would be well equipped, like the dead army of statues outside, but it seemed that all they had was a single dagger each - and they weren’t even using them very well.
Still, they were attacking and hostile, so Jay continued the attack.
Seeing that there was no trap or other enemies in the expansive room, Jay began walking closer to the battle.
The statues were doing minimal damage to the skeletons and it seemed that they were quite weak so he had no fears as he added the bone pile back to his ring.
As he drew closer, something else stood out to him: they weren’t just any ordinary stone daggers.
He didn’t see it at first, but each of them released a soft blue shimmer and left a faint dark-green scrape on the skeletons each time they slashed against their bones.
The daggers seemed to be coated with more of that mana-conducting material, coating it in a complex pattern across the blade.
Anya crept forward beside Jay and prepared to fire, but Jay just held his hand up, gesturing to her to wait a moment and save her ammunition.
Slowly, he continued to walk forward and analysed one of the statues.
<[Royal Helvetian Maid - Level 6]>
[80 HP]
<[Skills]>
[Brittle Armour]
- 40% damage reduction to slashing, stabbing damage.
- 20% more damage taken from crushing damage.
[Helvetia’s Revenge]
- Magic damage immunity.
- Any wielded weapons become cursed.
[Pristine Cleaning] (Passive)
[Master Sculpting] (Passive)
[Master Gem Cutting] (Passive)
<[Description]>
[One of the rare royal servants of the Helvetian Kingdom, turned to stone. Once esteemed, content with serving their queen and happy with their duties - now hopeless, empty, lost.]
“Huh, only level six and not even any skills? Way too easy… I guess they would have been annoying if the middle statue was still alive. It’s no wonder the skeletons are having such an easy time.” Jay shrugged.
He wanted to know what magical dagger effect the maids were using that caused the green cuts, but it seemed that they were merely channelling mana through their arms into the dagger somehow, and the dagger was doing the rest - so there was nothing on their skill list.
Unfortunately, the helvetian curse would still affect the daggers, so Jay wouldn’t even be able to find out what affects the daggers were doing after they died; the curse stopped him from using their weapons.
After pondering for a moment and checking the health of the skeletons, Jay simply assumed it was some sort of toxin or a poison, as the skeletons took no extra damage.
This theory made the most sense to him, as maids wouldn’t have been particularly good at fighting; they were not warriors. A strong magical poison would therefore be suitable for them.
Still, he wasn’t willing to test it with his own flesh. Why take unnecessary damage and pain?
While the battle was going smoothly, Jay imagined that it would actually be quite a hard fight for regular adventurers, having to contend with whatever poison was constantly being applied.
It seemed to have a very long duration too, as most of the cuts on the skeletons were still coated with a sickly dark-green substance.
Add the middle statue into the mix and it would have been an absolute nightmare - thankfully it was deceased before Jay even got here.
It wasn’t long till the left statue fell in battle, succumbing to the relentless skeletons who only took small cuts in return.
[215 Exp]
With the first statue dead, the skeletons all rushed over and bullied the last statue, pummelling it without remorse as they took the pressure off Dark.
Dark managed to sneak a few hits in as payback, adding deep stab wounds to the back of the statue’s knee joints and causing it to stumble a few times.
Jay was glad he forced it to use the dual daggers against the stone statues, as it seemed that the skeleton had inadvertently learned a form of vital spot targeting.
“I wonder if I should make Dark some armour… hmm, perhaps?” he scratched his chin as he thought, “but perhaps armour would only slow it down. Cloth armour maybe? Hmm, but where would I even start? It’s not like I can just request someone to make some cloth armour for a skeleton, and anything for humans would be too big.”
The statue was about to die as it began to crumble, so Jay put his thoughts of Dark’s armour aside for now.
[215 Exp]
With all of the enemies dead, Jay happily went up the ramp and approached the large throne - but before he got to it, one of his skeletons approached him, looking absent minded at him with its hollow eyes.
It just stood in front of him and gazed.
“Huh? What?” Jay raised a brow, wondering why it was behaving weirdly.
It took a moment but then it finally clicked.
“Oh, Red you levelled up?” he grinned, “Good, here, eat your fill!”
Jay quickly made a feast of bones fit for a king - an undead king anyway. The skeleton happily obliged as it began to munch away at the bones.
Anya thought it sounded like it was eating dry rice, so she got used to the unearthly eating noises quite quickly.
Before checking Red’s role choice, Jay grabbed the soul stone off the throne.
[Greater Soul Stone] (Empty)
“Finally.” he smiled, looking up at the statue - he paused.
“Such beauty…” Jay's smile left him as he looked over it. He was simply stunned.
Every detail was pristine and perfect; the lips, the nose, the eyes - even its eyelashes survived the petrification process and somehow the passage of time.
Jay could only imagine how beautiful such a being was before it was changed into a statue.
“Perhaps it wasn’t hellbent on revenge like the others, maybe it just wanted to be with its people?” Jay thought, assuming that such a beauty would never have such bitter thoughts of revenge.
Still, it was just an assumption after all - perhaps it could have been this one who suggested the revenge pact in the first place.
It almost seemed like an offence to turn such a beauty to stone, but it was now the shining centrepiece in this decorated room so at least its beauty still lived on in some form.
After staring for a moment, Jay snapped back to reality and wasted no time in looting its dead body. No remorse, no hesitation.
[Helvetian Ring] x 6
[Highborn Helvetian Ring]
[Porcelain Locket]
In the statue's hand was a stone tablet too, but Jay decided to check his loot before investigating further.
<[Highborn Helvetian Ring]>
- Protection from a single calamity
- 0/1 charge
- Can be recharged
“Wow…” Jay immediately began to add some mana to it.
Despite his mana being necrotic, the ring greedily ate it up.
Jay could tell that the ring wouldn’t be filled for quite some time, so he stashed it away; he decided he would spend time charging it later when he had no use for his mana.
He may need his mana for more enemies after all.
The next item Jay brought out was the porcelain locket.
This time, he grasped it tightly in his hand, stopping it from flying away and opening some other gate - or even closing the one they entered through.
It was simply too dangerous to let it fly away as it could trigger a trap or any other danger. There was no way of knowing until after it was done.
The porcelain locket had the same strange energy within it, and Jay felt an odd connection to it again. It was obvious to him that it was another key - but he still didn't understand the weird feeling it gave him.
“Perhaps it's the magic of whoever charged it? Hmm…” he squinted at it, wanting to know its secrets.
“All right then. Keep your secrets…”
“For now.” he stashed it away again.
Anya made her way back to Jay - just as he was about to look over the stone tablet in the statue's hand.
At this moment, two skeletons each brought back a soul stone for Jay along with four more helvetian rings from the maids; eight in total.
Jay pocketed the soul stones but decided to let Anya have the eight rings; he was quite content with the highborn ring he just found.
Plus, he just got six rings for himself anyway so he really didn’t mind giving away some charity.
“Thanks” Anya said, grabbing the rings off the skeletons “This throne seems… off.” she remarked as she stood on the platform and began looking around.
Jay shrugged, “Seems okay to me,” he said casually, grabbing the tablet from the middle throne and began to read.
