[2600 Exp]
Jay woke up early today, with another smile on his face after he received exp while he slept.
“The helminth sure is great,” he smiled; he was already over 10% of the way to level fourteen. The next highest level adventurer was Anya at level nine.
Needless to say, Jay was unmatched - of course, his disguise stone still said he was level nine.
He had planned to pick up the money from his butchery shop last night, but Trenly hadn’t separated it from the rest of the gold used for expenses, and neither was he here this morning, so as Jay left for the wolf’s quarry dungeon he decided to come back later on in the day for gold collection.
“As for today, I will focus on training and learning,” he nodded.
He decided that learning the bone helminths [Spectral Bolt] spell would be the most useful to him at the moment so today he gave it the utmost priority on his list of objectives.
It would be ineffective against the helvetian guards, but he already decided he would look for a different dungeon. Wolf’s Quarry dungeon was one option, but he was getting sick of the darkness all the time, and desperately wanted a change.
As he walked to the Wolf’s quarry, he realised he hadn’t seen his little necrotic parasite in quite some time.
“I wonder if it has grown bigger. The helminth was level one when I was level ten, so it should be level three now,” he thought, as it levelled up along with him.
Jay already decided to practise and train at the guild, as it was safer than doing it at home where he could be seen through his window or would be distracted by Trenly’s noisy chopping downstairs - though he would need to use the outside target area to practise his helminth’s necrotic bolt spell.
He had his own private room at the guild and Viladore to help him there too, so he would find a way to make it work.
Sure, for extra safety he could do it in an instanced dungeon, but they were all either cold, dark, or stinky inside - much more preferable to practice in a warm, quiet, and safe room.
Jay noticed something strange as he exited Losla - there were new guards around.
Two heavily armoured men stood vigilantly at the bridge as they watched the north.
Thick and segmented dark-grey stone-like armour covered their bodies from head to toe, covered by a loose black tabard which had a symbol Jay had never seen before.
Jay stared at their armour for a moment, getting ideas for his own armour designs as he tried to peek into the sides - though he was soon noticed by one of these new guards.
The soldier only turned its helmet and glanced at Jay through its tiny eye slits. No words were spoken, but Jay understood that he had to leave as he felt a threat of danger, a wave of killing intent surging towards him.
He quickly looked towards the bridge and went on his way after a slight nervous shudder.
“Shit… I should have checked their level.” he pursed his lips as he kept walking; he didn’t dare to look back.
“Why are they here? Who even are they…” he wondered.
Being from a small and unimportant village, Jay had never even heard of the mage hunters, much less their new name, the ‘safety bearers’.
The last time he felt such a dangerous aura was during his first meeting with Sullivan.
“I’ll find out once I get to the guild. I guess it’s good we have some powerful people protecting Losla anyway. I wonder if it has to do with the wood elementals attacking?” he guessed, as he made his way to the wolf's quarry.
Jay quickly entered the wolf's quarry to collect the corpses his helminth had.
In total, there were forty-two. It seemed that the helminth was still in the process of moving bones back, and it had been focused on killing the helpless wolves.
Despite eating the soil regularly, and being partly mineral themselves, the silt-wolves were literally being attacked from it randomly. It seemed that paranoia and stress ruled over them now, and they all lived in fear after being terrorised for the last few days.
Jay sensed the helminth was quite far away as it had pushed them out of their territory and killed them off. He had to wait a moment after he commanded it to come to him, even though it headed straight for him as it dug directly through the earth.
“Hmm…” he quickly planned his next steps as he waited near the mining camp’s light.
The helminth returned, snapping its jaws at its master - its way of saying hello. Jay smiled, but quickly grimaced a little as it regurgitated some bones for him.
“Good job…” he praised it, though a little unconvincingly.
Jay had it attach onto his armour using its [Sentinel Form] and it quickly disappeared; like before, it ended up as the familiar dark-blue amulet with a dark-green crossbow bolt image hanging on his chest, along with the invisible feeling of the helminth around his neck.
“Good.” he smiled as it seemed to get comfortable and stop moving.
Jay quickly exited the dungeon - only to enter again straight after. The whole dungeon reset and all the wolves respawned.
Next, Jay summoned his seven skeletons:
- Blue, Red, level 4
- Sweeper, Lamp, level 3
- Dark, level 2
- Unnamed Skeleton, unnamed skeleton, level 1
The troop of undead looked impressive to Jay, especially the ones with the spectral armour and helmets on. Jay couldn’t help but pause for a moment and smile at their glory.
“Alright, let’s get you all equipped.” he nodded as he stood next to the mining camp’s lamp as he began to pull out all their weapons.
Jay only made the bone hammers for the helvetian dungeon as the enemies had the [Brittle armour] passive, but in this dungeon his swords did eight damage while the bone hammers only did six, so he went to give Blue, Red, Sweeper and Lamp an ossein arming sword each; the smaller skeletons would get daggers.
Jay still had to upgrade their weapons now that his scrimshaw skill was level three, but once again, he decided to leave it for another time. He had other priorities.
Unfortunately, as he went to check his inventory, he couldn’t find the weapons.
“Dammit... Looks like I will be making you new weapons after all.” he shrugged.
Jay couldn’t find the swords as they simply didn’t exist anymore - he held onto them for too long, and due to their [Life Span] attribute, the weapons had all disintegrated back into bones.
The only one who still had weapons now was Dark, who was given the same two daggers it was using last night.
Jay checked them while handing them back, and they still had nearly nine hours left; of course, he did add some mana and brought them back up to twenty hours of life.
Jay formed a bone pile as he began to craft.
“Defend me.” He ordered as he sat down under the lantern to begin crafting all the swords and daggers the skeletons would need.
He didn’t expect to get attacked, but it was better to have precautions.
Jay decided he would send his band of skeletons to cull the silt-wolves with their new weapons before analysing his helminth. For efficiency.
The skeletons all formed a defensive circle around their master and his bone pile as the familiar green mana began to glow in the dark depths of the mineshaft dungeon.
**Some of the upcoming chapters will be released all on the same day for a better reading experience (There may be a few days without some chapters prior to a mass release)**
