Jay was surprised how he still didn’t have a mana sense skill after all his practice, yet he picked up this new skill on the first attempt.
[Soul Sense]
- Grasp the intangible
- Offend life and death at your own risk
“Hmm… I really shouldn’t mess around with this.”
“It’s odd how it's called ‘sense’ even though I literally restrained a soul.” Jay thought before Sedulus spoke.
“Young one, you have done well.” Sedulus held out her hand as Jay received a notification.
[Complete quest?]
[Yes/No]
Jay immediately selected ‘yes.’, his eyes glowing with anticipation.
<[Quest Complete - Hidden Quest - Soul Liberation]>
[Gather soulstones and bring them to Sedulus]
[Progress - Complete]
[Skill Acquired - Mind]
[Skill Acquired - Mark]
[Skill Acquired - Host]
“Fuck yes.” Jay couldn’t help but grin broadly. He didn’t care about the soul sense skill anymore as these are the ones which would help him now.
Finally all his hard work to do this quest had paid off.
“Young one, the spear is yours… I removed much of the curse.” Sedulus gestured to the large black-stone spear sitting on the table.
“To end the curse, you must stop the spinning of the crifex rings in the last pyramid…”
Another notification for a quest appeared, but Jay quickly accepted it and ignored it - right now he just wanted to check out his new weapon.
Its design was simplistic and angular with refined, flat edges. Jay could tell that it was made by an experienced craftsman, and he guessed it was probably the same craftsman he slayed in the fourth pyramid - at least before they lost their minds.
“Thank you for freeing my people… now, I wish to join them.” the old statues voice got softer as she said the last part.
Jay’s smile disappeared as he knew what he had to do; what he was about to do. He had made a promise, and carrying it out was now his duty.
He started telling himself it was just a dungeon, and that Sedulus was just a part of it - but his heart wasn’t listening as a feeling of cold loneliness crept into it.
Jay didn’t possess immortality yet, but there was still a vague connection between them; he felt like she was an older sister or a mother. Perhaps the one he never had.
Sedulus pointed to her chest as Jay grabbed the ancient’s spear from the table.
“...” he had no words to say.
Slowly he thrust the spear into the slender statue's chest, killing her with her own weapon.
It seemed that there was a powerful force behind the spear, helping him to push it deeper until he received a notification.
Sedulus’s final gift became apparent as her cold stone arms dropped to the side. Cracks spread from the spear until she crumbled into pieces.
[Level Up]
Jay still would have needed 9,000 experience to level up, and he quickly realised this was a final gift, as it wasn’t promised in the quest rewards at all.
“Thank you Sedulus.” Jay whispered, sensing a presence slowly drifting out of the statue's remains.
Instead of trapping it with his mana, he gave it a gentle push upwards and a sense of peace and relief filled his heart; Jay wondered if that was what the soul was feeling, and if he somehow sensed its emotions.
He couldn’t be sure, but in the end, he was glad.
Now that he could analyse the rewards, he started with the spear.
<[Knowing War Spear]> (Cursed)
[Unknown Material]
[16 Damage] (Two handed)
[9 Damage] (Single handed)
[Curse - Weapon is weakened until the curse is removed]
[Curse - 50% less damage when wielded by non-constructs]
[Curse - Locked Skill]
[Curse - Locked Skill]
“Damn, that curse is strong.” Jay pursed his lips.
Checking over the fifty percent damage decrease, he realised it would still be useful in his skeletons hands, as they technically counted as constructs.
Jay realised he could still make Red switch to a zweihander role (two hander skeleton), but he decided to save the spear for now and store it away in his inventory. He still needed the extra protection after all.
As for the skills the spear had, there was no indication if they were passive or active, so he would just have to wait and see.
“Now, my new skills…” he smiled as he began to go through them.
It had been a while so he mostly forgot what they did - he just remembered they were useful.
<[Mind - Level 1]>
- Craft a rudimentary sentience. Form a basic mind.
- 25 Mana
<[Mark]>
- Use your mana to mark an enemy or object. A bond will exist between you and the mark
- Mark is undetectable(weak) and invisible.
- Can place the mark using vision alone
- You will know exactly where the mark is
- 0/10 marks used
- 1 Mana to Mark (Decreases maximum mana by 1 until mark is removed)
<[Host - Level 1]>
- Project your mind into your own constructs
- Control them as if they are your own body
- 1,000 meters maximum projection distance (0.6 mi)
- 5 Mana per second. Doubles for every 500 meters projected.
“Awesome. Pretty heavy mana usage but I’m sure they will all be useful.” Jay thought.
He could already imagine marking a gold coin to find out where a treasury might be hidden, or marking that brat Matheson to one day execute divine justice.
Sure, it would lower his mana pool, but the benefits outweigh the costs.
As for mind and host, Jay decided to try the latter immediately as he pictured Red and used the skill.
Immediately, everything went black and he felt a sense of weightlessness - then suddenly the world reappeared again from Red’s perspective.
To his surprise, everything was black, white and different shades of grey; there was no colour at all.
The next thing that stood out was that there were no shadows. Instead of the pitch-black corners of the pyramid, they appeared as simply being dark.
“Must be the shade vision skill of the skeletons.” Jay said - but all that came out was a chattering clicking sound from his skeleton jaw moving.
Jay turned around to look at his body, and realised he made a mistake. His nose was bleeding and his ass was sticking in the air after he face planted.
“Dammit…” he thought as he went to walk over to prop his body up.
As he took the first step however, he ended up jumping instead, almost landing on his own body.
It was at this point that he started feeling dizzy - his mana had been draining all this time and suddenly he was sent back into his body.
“Ouch.” Jay wiped some dirt off his face and ignored the pain.
“Quite an interesting skill…” he smiled, “now I can fight with them till death.”
“I’ll definitely need a much larger mana pool though.”
Jay immediately opened up his level-up notification and was greeted by five attribute points and one skill point.
Of course, he proceeded to put all his attribute points into energy, raising it to 80.
Since Jay checked his class recently, he now realised that levelling up gave him one HP, two MP, and one point of energy gave him two MP; this resulted in his mana pool jumping from 68 to 80.
Next, he decided where to put his attribute point - but now that he discovered that the skeletons could have roles, he only wanted to discover more of them, so he opted to add it to his [Raise Feeble Creature] skill.
He did consider adding it to [Undead Mastery], however the majority of the skeletons weren’t even level four yet, so he would hold off on it for now.
After adding the point into [Raise feeble creature level 5], he was greeted by another notification.
<[Skill evolved]>
[[Raise feeble creature level 5] has evolved into [Raise Lesser Undead level 1]]
“Huh?” Jay raised a brow.
He had never even heard of a skill evolving. He thought it would probably be a regular thing and not something related to his special class, but most of the information relating to adventurers had been kept hidden from younger people so he couldn’t be sure.
Jay quickly checked the new skill.
<[Raise Lesser Undead level 1]>
- Imbue a skeleton with necrotic energy, raising it to fight for you.
[HP: 30]
[Damage: 5]
[5/7 Raised]
[“Raise”][“Arise”]
[5 mana+3/level of creature]
“Awesome, two more skeletons?” Jay grinned.
“So I’m guessing the skill evolved when it hit level five?” he guessed as he pulled more bones from his inventory.
Without any hesitation, Jay summoned two new skeletons - unfortunately his mana was still too low to summon two of them, as he did just use most of it using the [Host] skill.
His mana had only just reached up to 5 when he summoned the first new skeleton, and he was already regretting it as he felt some dizziness.
The skeleton formed as usual, but Jay immediately realised another aspect which made this evolved spell great: It used human bones.
The new skeleton was still smaller than the others, but taller than a feeble creature.
Its human skull came up just below Jay’s shoulder as it stood there, ready for his orders.
“Finally, I don't need anymore of those stinking marsh rat bones. That actually works out great because I have an almost unlimited supply of helvetian skeletons.” he smiled lightly.
Jay was glad he wouldn't have to return to the stinking swamp anymore. He still needed teeth for his unstable teeth spell, but he was sure he could find other ways to get them, and he believed he could copy his helminth's spell eventually, finally putting his goblin wand to use.
Jay’s mana reached zero and he was feeling slightly dizzy, so finally, he decided it was time to leave; it was already night time in the outside world after all, and all this time he was fighting yawns.
His skeletons were still culling the stone statues but he quickly recalled them, taking their bones back into his gauntlet and their weapons back into his inventory.
Before leaving, he did one last check of his status.
<[Necromancer Level 12]> (Pure)
[Race - Human]
HP: 94/94
MP: 80/80
Strength: 20
Dexterity: 25
Vitality: 35
Energy: 45/45
Exp: 70/20,000
[<[Skills]>]
<~[Necromancy Skills]~>
[Raise Lesser Undead (1)]
[Summon Bone Helminth]
[Shell Restoration (1)]
[Unstable Teeth (2)]
[Host (1)]
[Mind (1)]
[Undead Mastery (3)] (Passive)
[Necrotic Sense (1)] (Passive)
[Scrimshaw (3)] (Passive)
[Soul Sense (1)] (Passive)
[Shift]~[Living Blueprints]~[Transplant]~[Amputation]
[Uncaring Rip]~[Pitiful Mortal]
<[Other Skills]>
[Mark]
[Asklin] (Equipment)
[Dagger Proficiency (1)] (Passive)
[Poison Resist (11%)] (Passive - equipment)
[Running (2)] (Passive)
[Stress Response] (Passive)
[Sword Proficiency (1)] (Passive)
[Class Utility] (Passive)
[<[Research]>]
[Chimera Research (17%)]
[Immortality Research (5%)]
[Skull-shield Projector Research (32%)]
[Dreadmourn Turret Research (22%)]
As the dungeon exit emerged from the ground, Jay decided tomorrow would be dedicated to training: upgrading skills, crafting equipment and creating minds…
As for Anya, well, she would just have to wait. Besides, Jay wasn’t very interested in storming the last pyramid to remove the remainder of the curse from his new weapon anyway.
Sure, it would make one skeleton powerful, but in a group of skeletons he couldn’t really picture it making much of a difference. Completing that curse-removing quest, which he didn't even look at, was just a secondary objective in his mind.
As Jay walked back home, he considered his next steps.
“There were better ways to spend my time,” he thought, “such as exploring more of the wolf’s quarry dungeon. Using the mark skill, maybe I could create a basic map in that dark labyrinth...”
“Though, I am getting sick of the dark.” he shrugged.
As Jay approached the north bridge of Losla, he heard some deep marching sounds in the distance. They were similar to the Helvetian guards, but not as heavy - though they were similarly in sync. Whoever was marching must have been well-trained.
It sounded like some troops were approaching Losla from the north.
Looking around, the guards all looked focused, but not like they were ready for battle. It was more like they were getting ready for their commander to walk by; their uniforms all looked perfect and unwrinkled as if they had never been worn.
“Hmm, I wonder what’s going on…” Jay wondered as he walked by the guards casually.
A little smile formed on his face, and he was glad he didn’t have to be so formal like them.
