After handing the hammers back to the skeletons, Jay sent them away with one command.
“Resume Orders…?” He raised a brow, wondering if it would work.
The skeletons ran off towards the ruined megacity, resuming the hunt once more.
“So they do remember through death.. interesting.”
“Not long till I hit level 10… I wonder if I will get another class skill?”
He had hopeful eyes as he watched the wolf-skull skeletons running over the hill, the clattering of their bones getting quieter.
Jay left the dungeon and headed back to Losla. He passed a small party of three adventurers on the way who were heading for the mist keep dungeon - but he still hadn’t encountered Stephen again.
The party of three gave Jay a wide-eyed look as he ran back from that dungeon - not only amazed that they weren’t the first ones there, but that someone was already heading back from it.
“He’s been here so long that he's already heading home?” one shook their head in disbelief.
“Do you think he’s been there all night?” One asked among their trio.
“That’s why he’s level nine… he just doesn’t stop… He probably does this every day and every night” Technically, this person was right. Jay’s skeletons were fighting almost non-stop.
That was all Jay heard as he continued past them, though admittedly, he too was a little surprised seeing other adventurers out this early.
The mist keep dungeon was popular at the moment. It was a level 3 dungeon where you would usually fight two stone soldiers at a time. The were easy to find in the dungeon landscape, had obvious attacks, and there was plenty of time to prepare to fight - you could even avoid them if you wished.
If you wanted to have more of a challenge, you would simply need to walk further towards the pyramids where the foes would be higher level, though for the most part they still had similar combat styles to the lower level soldiers; their melee weapons would tell you what kind of attacks they would do.
The level 3 mist keep dungeon was much easier compared to the level 5 wolf quarry dungeon, which had a more complicated dungeon path with dead ends, sneak attacks, pitch-black darkness and narrow paths; the enemies also started at level 5.
Not to mention the more varied enemies such as the silt wolf variant that did mana-based attacks, or the rockleaf mollusk.
All these smaller things added up to make it a much harder dungeon to grind in, especially in groups.
Most of the adventurers were still level 5, though a few had hit level 6 by now.
Jay’s stomach was beginning to make noises, he woke up so early today that he decided to skip breakfast.
Returning to the butchery, he was met by Trenly as he entered the shop.
“Wow, you got here this early?”
“Yep” Trenly nodded “First day of work.” he smiled.
Trenly was still making sausages so Jay decided he would try them for breakfast.
He cooked them up with some bondtussle root, he did just summon 4 skeletons after all, so he needed some of the mana regen.
Trenly periodically watched Jay cooking his sausages, wondering if they would be good or not.
Finally, Jay sat down to eat.
“Hmm… mm.” Jay took the first bite. Immediately he looked at Trenly who was looking at him.
“Don’t worry. It’s good, but there’s only one thing - you need to add a little more fat from the ox badger. They should be about 20% fat.”
Trenly nodded “I see.”
He went off and adjusted the sausage mix.
“Seems like the business is in good hands.” he thought as he finished his meal.
Jay was going to head back to the mist keep dungeon, but Trenly stopped him.
“Hey, a guard came by. He said you have to go to the adventurer association.”
“Oh? What was it about?”
“I don’t know. He just said you were requested.” Trenly shrugged.
“You didn’t ask him why?”
“No?” Trenly looked a little uneasy. “Am I in trouble?” he wondered to himself.
“Hmm, alright. I’ll go see what it’s about. Keep up the good work.” Jay tapped the counter with his hand and headed off to the adventure association.
“Hmm…” Matheson squinted at a silt-wolf in the cave.
“Why isn’t it looking at me?” the light from the lamp was reaching the wolf but it had no reaction.
From behind, it seemed like a normal wolf - though it had no large jagged nodules running up its back.
Suddenly it’s head turned into the light where he could see it, and it caused a shiver to go up Matheson’s spine.
“What the fuck is that thing…”
It had no eyes or nose, only a mouth that opened into 3 jaws.
After squinting at it for a moment, it didn’t seem that dangerous to Matheson.
“If it can’t see me, it might even be easier than the other ones...”
Matheson decided to try to fight it, starting the battle off with a sneak attack.
Slowly he crept forward, but then he noticed something - another silt-wolf lay in wait in a corner of the room. A normal one, it seemed to be guarding the other eyeless one.
“Damn.. I didn’t want to fight two at once.” he pursed his lips, “I’ll give it a go anyway.”
He was trying to push himself harder and take bigger risks.
This was the second night he had come here, and he had ventured much deeper into the mine this time, though the dungeon was an underground maze and he definitely didn’t take the same route as last time.
Hitting level 6 also gave him a confidence boost, so he decided to fight.
“I’ll start with the normal one first.” It seemed less risky.
Matheson walked over. The wolf noticed him, but before it could react Matheson jumped forward, slashing his red hot sword across its face.
The wolf whimpered for a moment before snarling and lashing back.
Matheson easily dodged it’s swipe and retaliated with his own slash.
Matheson’s sword did 5 damage, with 3 extra fire damage, and 1 burn damage for 2 seconds, totalling 10 damage per hit.
The silt-wolves only had 40 health, so after the second strike it was already half-dead - though if he attacked too quickly the burn damage would not stack (only doing 1 damage), meaning he would have to do 5 strikes to kill it.
The silt-wolves also had the [Solidify] skill, which gave them massive damage resistance. If Matheson was too slow, it would be able to use this ability twice during battle. Theoretically, a silt-wolf could last for 7 strikes from Matheson’s blade.
As Matheson waited to dodge the silt-wolves' next attack, he noticed a weird bright light coming from behind him.
He wanted to look but knew he would be bitten if he turned away from his opponent, so he jumped back and twisted his head at the same time, glancing at the light.
Not far behind him, a blue orb was slowly rhythmically pulsing as it was glowing brighter.
“What the…” he looked back at the wolf he was fighting as it was about to pounce.
With a sidestep he dodged its bite attack before slashing at its neck.
The wolf howled in pain, and while it was an easy fight, Matheson had a bad feeling about the blue orb behind him.
It had grown so bright in intensity now that he didn’t even have to turn his head to see the light.
“Retreat or fight…” he thought.
In a split second he made a decision - retreat to the entrance of the room. He ran as fast as his feet could carry him, dashing across the room.
Thankfully he had high dexterity so he ran incredibly fast.
As Matheson got around the corner, suddenly the light coming from the orb flashed brightly and disappeared.
“Hm?” Matheson raised a brow, peeking out from behind the wall.
Suddenly, a wave of blue light came flying at him, a sphere of light emanating from the centre of the room.
Matheson’s eyes bulged for a moment, he hurriedly turned and stood with his back to the wall, hiding from whatever this wave of blue thick light that was coming towards him.
*RRRrrrrrr~*
The wave hit Matheson, but he only realised after he found himself falling to the ground, though with his high dexterity he managed to catch himself and stand up. Due to the attack, he didn’t remember the last half-second.
All he knew was that he was hiding from an attack, and then he found himself falling over.
Clearly, the wall did nothing to block whatever that attack was.
“Argh..” he put his hand against his head, rubbing it as it throbbed. The pain was immense; he felt dizzy and heard a loud ringing noise.
“What the hell…” he couldn’t hear his own voice because the ringing noise was so loud.
Looking around, he noticed a silt-wolf at the entrance.
His vision was a little fuzzy too, but he wearily readied his sword.
Unfortunately, the passage was narrow and he couldn’t side-step, while he was feeling too dizzy to simply jump backwards.
Before he realised, the wolf pounced forward bearing its teeth.
“ARRGGH!” he screamed as the wolf sunk its teeth into his arm.
It was painful, but Matheson had built up some tolerance to pain through his insane workouts.
Without pause he began slashing at the wolf.
Thankfully, it died after two slashes.
With his arm free, it healed back up as he lost some health points - though there was still some pain coming from it as the bone was now cracked; It would take a little longer to heal due to that.
Health points healed flesh quite quickly, but bone was another matter.
“GRR!” he clenched his teeth in anger, entering back into the room - however, it was empty.
His brow was furrowed, angry as he looked around for his target, though he still found no traces of it.
“Dammit! Fuck.” kicking the silt-wolf corpse, he let out some anger.
He wanted revenge.
After he felt like his head felt better, he was considerably less angry.
“The wolves were attacking an intruder, not a noble.” he thought after his mind was more clear.
“Nevertheless, I will not show mercy…” he looked at his arm.
“I’ll level up more and come back some other time. It’s too risky to stay.”
