Jay periodically checked behind them.
The giant fur-covered insect had made little progress on the boulder-sized tortoises, while he and his skeletons were very farm away, almost in the fog.
He thought it would take much longer, but the fog had shifted towards them, perhaps saving them an hour.
"I'm guessing Asra will come out in the fog. I wonder how much the sunlight hurts her." He scratched his chin.
He remembered when he first found her. Even while she was half-dead she had fear in her eyes as she warned him about the sunlight.
Jay walked for a few hours more, and he could hardly see the tortoises behind them, like tiny dots in the distance.
With sore feet, he made it to the fog, but he paused before stepping into it. There was a distinct boundary between the fog and everything else. It was more like a wall he would walk into than a mist he would slowly merge through.
Before entering, he had a skeleton step inside and run deeper for a moment before exiting again.
Seeing that the skeleton was unharmed, he sent a scouting party in.
Jay had Asra laid on the mossy rocks for a moment and chose Lamp and Handy as scouts. He had Blue lend four of its sub-construct skeletons, assigning two of them to both of the scouts.
Lamp and Handy sprinted off into the fog, each with two smaller goblin-skeletons following.
Jay noticed that Blue's skeletons used animal skulls with human bones, but he received no chimera research after it summoned them. It could also use human skulls, meaning it didn't have a requirement of using a 'small corpse'.
He assumed perhaps it mimicked his own summoning power, or borrowed it, but couldn't be sure.
"I wonder if Blue will be able to summon its own chimera…" Jay wondered. "Hmm, when I first gave Heavy a mind, it tried to copy me and summon, but at the time, it had no mana. Perhaps it's like a natural instinct to either summon skeletons or copy me."
Jay called Archers over, along with the other skeletons who didn't have a mind, and with the mana he had just regenerated in the last few hours, he gave minds to all his skeletons.
As for the sub-constructs, there were three here. Two were Red's guardian type skeletons, and another was Blue's, and to his surprise, he found he could give them minds too.
"Awesome. More brain power will make us all smarter." He nodded.
Jay prioritized giving minds to Red's two skeletons first, as they each had more health and were stronger, and would soon become more specialized as his personal guard.
Jay didn't admit it to Blue, but he thought the guardian type skeletons would eventually become much stronger than Blue's skeletons, which would seem like cannon fodder trash, while Red's would stand like strong towers, holding multitudes of enemies back.
With all the skeletons here having minds, Jay tried something different.
He pulled piles of bones from his gauntlet and had the skeletons stand around - which was all of them except for the four sub-constructs following Lamp and Handy, who were scouting the fog.
With the skeletons circled around the bones, Jay pointed down, (Craft whatever you would like. If you need more bones, I'll bring more out. Use them in whatever way you wish. Take your time if you need to.)
The skeletons descended on the bone pile like hungry dogs, grabbing pieces out and making a small personal pile for themselves. The only ones which didn't touch the bones were Archers, and the sub-constructs which had just been given minds.
Instead, they curiously watched the other skeletons. In time, a few of them grabbed bones for themselves, but they didn't have the ability to craft anything, and were just grabbing one as they copied the other skeletons. Besides, they already had their own daggers, which their elder skeletons, Blue and Red, had crafted for them.
Blue and Red crafted nothing for themselves, but each of them grabbed a bone to eat for healing, as they had various chips and scrapes from the journey.
Sweeper made more defensive spikes, which it lay down around their party. Heavy tried to craft a sword for itself, but had to give up after its mana ran out, leaving a formless blob of bone on the ground.
"Here you go, Heavy." Jay smiled, giving it a short sword. It seemed Heavy was tired of using a dagger like the younger level one skeletons.
Dark made itself two new daggers, which were more skinnier than the ones Jay had been crafting. They seemed to be more for stabbing than slashing, compared to Jay's wider dagger design anyway.
Archers, having no weapon, grabbed Heavy's old dagger, and while Jay wanted to turn it into an archer skeleton, he allowed it for now, as it was defenseless. He knew that when he made a bow, he would force it to stay ranged, not using a melee weapon at all.
He would also train Archers to craft its own arrows, whether they be made purely of bone, or with metal, stone and wood. Jay didn't want to be bothered by having to craft arrows for it after every battle, or swords either, for that matter.
"The skeletons need to support themselves." He nodded, deciding they needed to become more automated, more self-preserving and independent.
Yet having them craft things themselves would be inefficient, as they had low-level scrimshaw skills. Their weapons would be of lower quality, and they didn't know what they needed in terms of armor or other weapon types.
He wasn't even sure they could craft armor.
As far as Jay could tell, they only knew the designs for the bone daggers. The other weapons they could craft were things they copied off Jay. The only exception to this was the skeletons that had their roles assigned, having crafted defensive spikes, a shepherd's crook, a gut knife, and a two-handed sword.
"At least with minds, they will hopefully start testing new designs." He thought, "But maybe they just need a little nudge in the right direction."
(Blue, try making some armor for your smaller skeletons.)
Blue curiously glanced at Jay, tilting its head to the side as it thought for a moment, but then got to work, pulling some bones into its own personal pile.
Jay curiously watched, wondering how much Blue had learned from him. It only had a level one scrimshaw skill, so he wanted to see what it could do.
