Jay could hear the rattling of bones and the grinding of stone, the sounds slowly getting louder as he ran.
“Hmm, yep, they must have been backing up so they wouldn’t get hit”
“I don’t want to have to heal their damage, I should speed up.” Getting closer, Jay ran a little faster.
“Oo~!” Jay came to a halt as he saw the back of the stone statue appear in the darkness, but he was running too fast and had too much momentum to stop in time.
“Ah shi-” *thud*
Jay’s face softly landed right onto the ass-cheeks of the soldier. “Ugh, dammit, ouch…” he realised where his face landed as he stepped backwards.
“Dammit!” he grimaced as he realised what he ran into, falling into a frustrated rage.
“Why?! Why does this always happen -” he smashed his hammer at the spine of the statue “with every fucking dungeon -” he swung sideways at it’s knee, causing the soldier to stagger for a moment. “Every dungeon I go into my face always gets covered in filth, dammit!” he exhaled with a grunt, gritting his teeth in anger and giving it one more hammer strike.
“And why doesn’t it have any ass armour!?” Jay shook his head, he wasn’t sure if it was the darkness playing tricks with his mind, but for a second he thought he saw some mud…
Responding to the damage, the soldier turned around, meeting Jay’s rage with it’s own fury - though it was all for nothing. As soon as it turned, it gave up it’s back to the ravaging of two skeletons who were both using 2-handed hammers.
Before it could even strike once at Jay, it crumbled to the ground.
[100 Exp]
“Egh…” Jay grumbled as he collected it’s empty soulstone.
There was nothing on Jay’s face from the encounter, but he naturally wiped it anyway before continuing. It was almost an instinct for him now.
“Bleh, ok, I think that’s enough for me...” Jay decided to bring Sweeper and Blue into the fight.
Switching his bone ring into the orbital form to summon his other skeletons, some of the bones clinked and rattled against the side of the corridor as they floated around Jay.
Green gas left his hand, mingling with the silt wolf bones floating around and assembling his two minions before him. Jay had a smile on his face as he saw sweeper assemble with blue bones; it only meant one thing.
“Congrats on levelling up buddy,” Jay smiled at his youngest skeleton. “and there goes the last of my silt-wolf bones.”
Jay planned to send his skeletons into the silf-wolf dungeon for more bones, but the skeletons had no way to carry the bones, or to extract the bones from the silt-wolf corpses - he would have to go personally.
Without his bone ring, he would have to re-summon the skeletons each time to get all the excess muscle, organs and viscera off the bones - and then figure out a way to carry them.
The last time Jay saw sweeper, it was a little level one skeleton, still using the white soap rat bones from the stink-rat marsh, but now when he resurrected it the spell automatically used the silt wolf bones, including the wolf skull.
Seeing that they had no weapons, Jay realised he needed to get them some hammers.
“Oh.. this is a bit of a miscalculation… damn. I completely forgot. At least I bought some extra iron bars.” Jay pursed his lips, “So much for conserving my mana.” he thought, popping some bondtussle root into his mouth, getting a familiar notification.
[Mana Regen buff 1%] - lasts for 1 hour(s)
Jay crafted two more hammers from his remaining iron bars before venturing forwarth again. Both hammers were successfully made on the first try.
“Hmm, how far did I run before?” Jay thought, looking back towards the entrance. It was like a small light, a distant star. Unknowingly, he had ran a long way as he followed the sounds of his skeletons fighting.
“Hmm, Surely I would have exited out the back of the pyramid by now? This place must be bigger on the inside.”
So far, all the walls were smooth with no distinct markings - the only gauge he had to measure was the light from the entrance.
Jay continued venturing forward, deeper into the pyramid. It seemed to be almost endless as the passage started to turn left and right, with some parts going up and down - meanwhile there were still many walls with stone statues hiding behind them. After walking for an hour, Jay and his four skeletons had destroyed eight more statues before coming to a T-intersection.
On the wall of the T-intersection was a petroglyph - an image made by carving into stone.
The carved picture was massive, the light from Jay’s orb only reached across half of the image, making him have to look at one half before the other.
The image showed a tremendous sprawling city with beautiful buildings, streets and gardens. Hundreds of thousands of people were in its streets, vines and plants hung from balconies and various streams, gardens and fountains dotted the vibrant city.
It was easy to tell that this city was luxurious, it was like a paradise, a utopia; at the side of the city was a massive purple-blue orb of dark clouds and purple light, it was much larger than the city itself and its effects had only just touched on a small part of the city boundary.
Standing closer, Jay could see tiny lightning bolts in the clouds of the orb. The buildings near it were all crumbled, and Jay could tell that the artist tried to depict parts of the stone floating into and around the purple orb. This would have causing debris to destroy buildings, which would create more debris to feed into the storm of magic.
Jay noticed that the plants, trees and vines near it had all withered, and bodies littered the streets near it - though they didn’t die to rampant debris hitting them, their cause of death was something else.
“Is it some sort of life-draining spell?” Jay thought as he looked across the city once more. Now that he noticed it, it was like the area near the purple storm orb was like a zone of grey; the rest of the city was relatively green and colourful with all sorts of flowers.
“Hmm… there’s no pyramids in the picture… but it wouldn’t make sense to have a picture of another city. Perhaps the pyramids were built after whatever this was?” Jay reasoned, examining the picture. The six black pyramids were huge, they definitely would have been a main feature of the city.
“Oh well, I guess I won’t know more until I explore more of this dungeon” Jay thought, deciding what to do next.
“Hmm… left or right..” Jay took a moment to think about any clues he may have seen, wondering if he should go left or right.
“Eh, I’ll just go left,” he shrugged.
Going left, Jay fought two more statues which springed forward from the wall - though they were easily destroyed by the four skeletons, with Jay at the side of the fight periodically landing an easy hit.
Soon enough, he came to a halt. Before him were two more statues - though these ones weren’t hiding in the walls, but standing side by side in front of a series of pillars.
“Oh? What are you guys protecting?” a mischievous smile appeared on Jay’s face as he leisurely walked behind his four skeletons.
