“Please… stop hurting them…” A girl's soft voice cried out.
Jay paused, surprised from hearing a young woman's voice in here, a dark ravine filled with deadly leeches of all places.
“Surely everyone was dead by now…” he questioned Anya to make sure he wasn’t crazy.
“Did you hear that? The voice?” he asked Anya as he looked around for the source of the voice.
Since the red-lined leeches weren’t attacking or closing in anymore, he had his skeletons temporarily stop attacking because of what the voice said - they seemed to freeze like statues in mid-attack, still ready to continue the slaughter after the slightest signal from Jay.
“Do you see anyone?” he asked.
“No, I don’t see anything… Shouldn’t everyone be dead by now?”
Suddenly, the red-lined leeches circle formation moved and opened on one side.
Anya aimed her crossbow at the entrance to the circle as a girl with a hooded coat entered. She stayed just far enough away from the light so that all Jay and Anya could see was the faint white skin of her hands and face. The clothes she was wearing blended into the darkness and almost made her look like a floating head.
“I’m sorry…” she said “please just leave…” She hid her face under the hood.
“What do you mean you’re sorry? What did you do? Don’t you want our help?” Jay asked.
The girl looked down, hiding her face.
“Why aren’t the leeches eating her alive…” Jay wondered to himself as he began to get suspicious; he held a hand behind his back, holding something from the girl's sight.
“We’re here to exterminate the leeches, we can’t just leave. Not after what happened to that hamlet.” Anya replied, “Blood requires blood, and this infestation has gotten out of hand. We can’t let this slide, and neither will the association. The leeches here must be culled.”
Jay squinted at the girl, nodding in agreement while raising his shield. He was still wondering how a young woman was standing there, asking them to leave while surrounded by monsters. It seemed like they even obeyed her.
After being annoyed by not knowing, he lowered his voice and asked directly.
“Why aren’t the leeches attacking you?”
The girl in the hood looked to the side, into the darkness.
“I was just… they’re harmless… and my family, since everyone else is dead… after what happened…” she began to cry, lowering her head. She wasn’t making any sense to Jay, it seemed like her mouth couldn’t keep up with her thoughts.
Jay didn’t hear the next part, but she whispered this to herself:
“The blood of my family runs through them, so they are my family… and no one will hurt them.”
Jay continued “We came here to save any survivors. What happened to your family? And the other families? And how come they aren’t attacking you? Don’t you want to come with us? We can leave right now.” Jay questioned the mysterious girl. He wanted to analyse her but she was too far away.
It almost seemed like she didn’t hear him, perhaps she didn’t care about what he had to say, as she started spiralling off into her own thoughts as she whispered things to herself.
“...They’re here to kill my family… I won’t let them die again… It was my fault, so I have to protect them this time…” she whispered to herself.
The circle of leeches closed again as the girl sunk back into the darkness.
She started crying, and Jay heard the crying sounds but he felt his hair start to stand on end as the crying sounds turned into a maniacal laughter.
The red leeches all started moving again as she laughed from behind them. The circle was closing, so Jay responded with his skeletons; they became life-like again as they began to hack and slash endlessly once more.
[Stress Response Activated]
[5% Melee Damage]
“Anya, I have a plan. Follow me closely.” Jay said. He was planning his escape while the girl was mentally spiralling, whispering to herself. The moment she appeared, he had started to charge some unstable teeth spells.
Since his experience with the silk woods dungeon, Jay knew how changing and volatile even the dungeons could be; this quest had already changed since the village was massacred, and he wasn’t taking any chances. The slightest suspicion meant danger in situations like this.
His five teeth had charged now. Running towards the skeletons, he flung the teeth at the leeches they were fighting.
Three of them died instantly, but two remained alive. The gap in the wall wasn’t big enough for him to pass through.
Jay had the level one skeleton stand behind the higher level ones.
Running towards it, he stepped on its head. It was easy since its skull only came up to Jay's hip.
The skeleton proved to be a reliable stepping stone as Jay sprang off of it.
He then planted another foot on Lamp's head, leaping right over the skeletons, and the red-lined leeches - successfully escaping the encirclement.
Jay nearly lost his balance as he landed since the luminous orb was with Anya, landing in the darkness was risky and even a sprained ankle would mean death.
Anya followed shortly after, landing perfectly since she was much more dexterous than him and had the orb with her.
This looked like magic to the leeches, since their heat-vision made the skeletons look invisible. It was as if Jay and Anya both used the air as steps.
The leeches turned into a loose mob now as they chased after Jay and Anya. There were still at least thirty of them left - most of which were level two.
Thankfully, they weren’t very fast since there was no slime around - silent, but not fast.
“Argh! Stop them!” the mysterious girl's voice cried out from the darkness once more.
Jay brought out more teeth, charging five more as he ran.
Anya kept reloading and firing her crossbow.
The skeletons continued to hack and slash while they were at the sides of the mob of charging leeches.
The skeletons were much faster than the leeches, after all, they could run much faster than a human without all the organs, blood and flesh weighing them down. They could catch up to Jay if they wanted, and quite easily too - but Jay had them on murder duty, running along the side of the swarm and they sliced at the leeches.
Slowly but surely they were thinning out the crowd of leeches. It wasn’t a very heroic tactic, but at least they would survive; people only became legends after they died, and Jay wasn’t ready yet.
Leeches started dropping off one by one, though this conversely created a problem for Jay and Anya. The dead leeches create pools of slime, which made the other leeches faster.
“Shit..” Jay thought, noticing the paradox he was in. He temporarily had his skeletons stop attacking - but this wasn’t the end of his problems.
The leeches they killed on the way into the ravine had ended in pools of guts and slime, and the slime increased the speed of the leeches. Each time they passed over a leech corpse, the masses of leeches got closer.
“This is a problem.” Jay said, noticing the horde was closing in. He flung five teeth at the ones in the front, killing two of them and heavily injuring another, but the two new dead leeches only helped the others to get closer.
“Hmm..”
Jay had to think of a solution or they would have to fight their way out of a leech stomach.
First, he had his skeletons go to the rear of the pack and kill them off from behind, this way, the pack wouldn’t be able to get a speed boost and their numbers would still be slowly reduced.
They continued to run, but Jay knew there were still enough puddles of slime ahead for the leeches to catch up.
A sly smile appeared on Jay’s face as he remembered something.
“Red, come.”
The cobalt-blue skeleton with red flakes on its bones promptly ran from behind the mass of leeches and appeared next to Jay.
Without a second thought, Jay stuffed his hands into its ribcage and pulled out a thick, large wad of silk.
The ball of silk was quite condensed since they squashed it up there, but if it was pulled apart back to its original state, it would probably be enough to reach all the way back to the hamlet.
Jay ripped pieces of the sticky silk off as he periodically tossed it at the leeches. The silk was effective at slowing them down, as strings of it were getting twisted into the tentacle-like feet of the leeches.
Soon they crossed another corpse of a leech, so Jay tossed a large piece of the silk onto it.
Something strange happened as the silk mixed with the slime.
At first, it seemed to dissolve harmlessly into the slime, yet it had a staggering effect as the leeches crossed over it: the slime had turned into an incredibly viscous, thick and sticky goo.
Instead of speeding the leeches up, it now slowed the leeches down - even more so than when Jay was simply tossing pieces of silk at them. The pool of slime turned into glue.
Jay started smirking as he looked back “Let the cull begin.”
***Author here. Hooray, chapter 50! Send a power stone if you're enjoying the book :)***
