As Red kneeled before Jay, he remembered he was about to check on Dark.
“Uh, guess it slipped my mind.” he thought with a shrug.
He decided to do it now rauther than later; his paranoid nature telling him to stop feeling so safe and relaxed.
“Just hang on a moment, Red.”
Red still kneeled before him, while he sat down himself and used the host skill.
The world went black and white as Jay entered the eyes of Dark.
Dark had crawled up a tree, lying in the branches as it looked at a giant crater in the mushroom desert.
“What the hell happened here...” Jay thought; he would have gasped if he wasn't in the body of a skeleton.
Dark's head suddenly turned to the right, its eyes landed on two large dark armour-clad soldiers on the other side of the desert.
A sting of fear rose in Jay's heart as he recognised them immediately.
“Fuck. Mage hunters? They're... they've been follow me? Shit. I thought I lost them, the marks haven't left Losla. Dammit!”
Immediately, Jay added a mark to one of them, realizing that neither had any marks.
“Bastards, they sent some mage hunters without any marks.” he shook his head, “I thought I had gotten away cleanly...”
“They probably found the damn skeletons I left behind too. Shit. I have to keep moving. Much, much further away... I'll need more diversions and fake skeleton paths ”
Jay sat there watching for a moment, seeing what they were doing. Both of the mage hunters had hundreds of bundles of the mushroom tendrils by their side.
“Oh, they're cutting through them?” he guessed, and as if answering his thoughts, one of them moved into the desert.
A bright blueish light flashed in the hand of one of them as they held a tendril in the other. Soon enough it was cut, and tossed to the edge of the desert with the others.
The path they were cutting was very wide, about as wide as the Losla bridge.
A subtle fear rose in Jay's heart, “The only reason to clear a wide path would be to let more people through it...”
By the looks from the size of their path, as well as the hundreds of tendrils they already cut, it seemed that there would be many, many that would march through this way.
Despite being much further away Jay knew he had to leave immediately and flee as fast as possible. The sooner he did, the better his chances of survival would be.
The invisible red threads of the mark he just used soon flew out of the forest and coiled around the mage hunter; the mark was set.
Just before ending the host skill, however, he had an idea.
Dark stealthily snuck down from the tree. The mage hunter's paused for a moment, sensing something, so Dark froze too. After they went back to work, he had Dark lie down on the roots of a tree, its dagger hidden under pile of leaves.
It was lying exactly in the path of where the mage hunters were cutting.
“You know what to do.” Jay sent a thought command to Dark, and ended the host skill.
Jay returned to his body and brought his throne over to the platform and took out the spears which were used to hold him up, assembling it himself as he readied his ride.
It was time to leave, but a few things still had to be done.
Red was still kneeling before him, waiting to accept the gift of a mind, meanwhile the other skeletons were either busy cutting a hole in the roots or hunting.
It seemed that Jay was still quite deep within the blood-vine bear's territory as the hunting skeletons had to travel quite far just to find one animal.
Much of the carcass was still sitting by his side, waiting to be either cooked or butchered, while some larger cuts of meat were in his inventory already.
“Dammit.” he shook his head, hating the idea of wasting the meat, but it seemed like he had no choice.
While Jay did get a small snack so far, the other meat in his inventory still had to be cooked, and setting up a fire and cooking later on would only slow him down, especially since he had a fire right here, already burning.
“Blue” he called, the skeleton came running over. Jay spent a few minutes showing the skeleton how to cook, hoping it wouldn't result in him vomiting later on.
As Blue got to cooking, he stashed away his swag, and left the fresh cuts of meat sitting on the rectangular-shaped slab of bone he made to sleep on.
Jay was about to hand it some skewers to cook with, but instead the skeleton simply held the meat over the fire. It was nowhere near hot enough to burn the bones.
“Huh. Good.” Jay thought.
He then pulled out the gift from sullivan: the noon-leather blanket.
One side was soft, but the other was smooth and waterproof. It would have to do for now.
“Leave the cooked meat here.” he pointed to the black leather blanket.
He felt a little shame using it to lay cooked meat on, but he had no other options at the moment.
Jay turned to Red and began to form its mind while his chef got to work cooking.
He was quite low mana since he had been consistently using mana sense all morning, as well as the host and mark skills.
After five minutes, Red's mind formed. Soon it began to spasm and have it's seizure but Jay didn't stand around watching.
Blue only just began to cook its second batch of meat, holding its hands over the fire as the meat sizzled angrily in its boney fingers.
So far, there would be enough cooked meat to last for almost two days, but he would have to ration it unless more was cooked.
Jay left it to cook as he checked on the progress the skeletons were making through the roots; still trying to get to his helminth.
So far, it seemed that their damage to the dense roots was mostly superficial. Swords and daggers really were not the right tools for the job.
Judging by how far they cut, they would probably need half a day to get the job done. Even then, there was no telling how many more ancient roots were underneath the ones they were currently cutting.
“Damn. Looks like you'll have to wait, my friend.” Jay thought to his helminth.
“I wonder if I can give the helminth a mind?” he wondered for a moment.
Red had just finished its upgrade with its mind, so Jay walked back to the bone platform with Heavy and Sweeper in tow, pulling them off chopping duty. There wasn't enough time to craft them some axes so the helminth would have to wait.
Jay gathered the meat, both the uncooked and cooked along with the noon-leather blanket and added them back into his inventory. In total, it was about three days worth of cooked meat if he rationed it.
Next, he added the bone fire crucible and the rectangle bone plate into his gauntlet, keeping them as living blueprints. The fire which was on the crucible collapsed into sparks and smouldering smoking ashes, quickly going out.
Jay decided to leave as soon as possible with the mage hunters on his tail.
Well, they were quite far away but still on the right path anyway.
As he packed up his camp he looked around making sure that he left nothing behind. He took a sip of his water bag before adding it to his inventory too.
Apart from the remains of the burnt wood, most of which had fallen down into the cracks between the roots, there was only that one strange silvery-white feather, still glistening in the light.
“Hmm. I'll take it. It makes the burnt wood stand out too much anyway... in case they come this way.” he thought, grabbing the feather and adding it to his inventory.
Jay then turned around and sighed, seeing the hundreds of bone spikes all sticking upwards around him.
He went to add all of these defensive spikes to his gauntlet as living blueprints as well. This is what took the most time, and after adding one hundred of them, he frustratingly decided to just add the rest back to his gauntlet as normal bones, collecting them all with one sweeping hand movement.
Adding bones to the gauntlet was an easy task as it basically sucked them in itself, but stashing them away as living blueprints would sometimes make them rearrange and fold up, and each one had to be added separately. A time consuming process.
With everything collected Jay stood by his throne as the skeletons assembled before him.
Jay paused for a moment, “Oh... damn.” he frowned.
Blue, Red, Sweeper and Heavy were the only skeletons with him - not enough skeletons to carry him on his throne. Heavy was like the weak link in the chain in this instance.
Jay packed up his throne, adding it to his inventory and storing his bone spears away as more living blueprints.
“Looks like I'm walking.” he shrugged.
Jay sensed that the hunting skeletons, Handy and Lamp, had ran somewhere south-east rauther than directly south, so he decided to follow them. It seemed that he was still quite deep within the blood-vine bear's territory.
Perhaps even close to the centre of it.
