Jay had started getting experience point notifications, but he decided to ignore them until he went to reset the dungeon, otherwise it would be bugging him all day.
Of course, if anyone knew that getting experience was annoying him, they would probably slap him in the face and curse at him.
After getting the message to head to the adventurer association, he crawled up the hill and was finally here.
"Hello dear” Margaret smiled, seeing Jay walk into the lobby of the adventurer association. “You’re here a bit early today?” she chuckled.
“Hi. Yeah I guess? I was told to report here.” Jay misunderstood her joke but smiled anyway.
“Hmm, let me see…” Margaret checked some notes behind the counter “You have been summoned… for a lesson with Viladore today.”
“Oh right, I forgot about the lessons.. Shall I go to his office?”
Margaret almost chuckled, seeing a student forget about having a lesson with the infamous Viladore. Jay was the first to take these lessons so lightly.
“Just take a seat dear, I’ll call him for you,” she smiled.
*knock knock*
“Viladore? Jay is here for his lesson.” Margaret knocked and peeked into the room, but all she saw was Viladore facing away from her, standing as still as a statue.
“Viladore?”
She stepped in and tapped him on the shoulder.
“ARGH!” he was surprised with a hint of anger “You scared me.” He shook his head and looked back at his desk.
“Oh, sorry!” She smiled, “It’s just little old me.” she said to Viladore who was still looking at the cube on his desk.
Margaret briefly looked at the weird black cube on his desk before turning back to Viladore
“Jay’s here for classes.” she didn’t think much of the small black cube.
“Uh..” Viladore paused for a moment “Can he come back later?” Viladore asked, looking at her a little anxiously.
“Sure, I’ll tell him later… Is everything ok?”
“Yes.. yes, it’s fine, better than ok.” Viladore smiled, realising he was acting weird.
“Alright, well I’ll go tell him.”
Margaret left the room to tell Jay to come back in a few hours.
“Finally she’s gone” Viladore thought as he turned back to the cube. Truly nothing else mattered to him.
“Now… let’s see…” he began using his mana analysis techniques to analyse the cube.
The cube had an internal mana converter with a mana pool. The converter was meant to absorb the ambient mana and convert it into its own usable mana.
Viladore could easily sense the mana flowing into the mana pool, as well as mana flowing through coming from the mana converter, but the strange thing was that the mana converter wasn’t pulling in any of the ambient mana.
He furrowed his brows seeing this, dumbfounded.
“It has to be coming from somewhere…” he focused harder - but nothing.
“Is it absorbing something that isn’t mana? But what? Mana converters don’t just make mana from nothing, it must be absorbing something...”
Suddenly, it stopped. The mana conversion shut down.
[...Mana sense lost. Appendage growth 22% complete. Re-initializing mana detection routines…]
Viladore clenched his fist in frustration.
“So close to a breakthrough.”
The cube normally was charged by Viladore’s mana to carry out its routines - mana sensing. However, growth was a different matter because it had to use its own mana, and for some reason it was converting some other non-mana energy into its own mana.
Viladore began scribbling notes in his book, detailing his new discovery before trying to brainstorm what the cube was absorbing.
Whatever it was, he couldn’t sense it.
“Well, since my lesson has been postponed, I might as well try to make it to the second pyramid in the mist keep dungeon.” Jay thought, he had already left the association.
“I’ll check back there after lunch.”
Jay ran over the hill, past the quarry and entered the mist keep dungeon.
There were more adventurers around now that the morning had progressed, but it still didn’t matter to Jay; he ignored them all without a second glance towards them.
Entering the dungeon, there was already a small pile of crystals waiting for him.
“Good job boys” he smiled, pocketing them.
[Soulstone] (Empty) x 6
With a single thought, he summoned the skeletons. It only took a moment for them to come rushing over.
“Looks like you guys have been having fun huh?” he asked rhetorically.
The skeletons lined up before him once more with Blue in the front.
Jay nodded seeing this, he liked how disciplined they now seemed - not that they required it since he controlled them all, but they were more structured; as soldiers should be.
Jay walked to each of them, using his [Shell Restoration] skill. It didn’t use too much mana because they had only been here for a few hours at most.
“Alright, let’s get moving.” Jay said, walking ahead of them towards the city.
The skeletons were all level 3 now, so each of them could go even if they fought 1 on 1 with a stone soldier - however, there were four of them. It was always a 4 on 2 fight, completely unfair for the stone soldiers.
Jay noticed Blue walk behind him with the other 3 skeletons walking behind Blue in a line.
“Nice.” he nodded in approval, appreciating their changed behaviour.
As Jay got to the top of the hill which overlooked the city, he noticed some stone statues running towards them.
“Huh?” he was confused seeing the two helvetian stone statues running directly to him.
He wondered for a moment what was going on; this wasn’t their usual behaviour - He only just got here after all.
Suddenly, Blue ran in front of Jay, and the other 3 skeletons lined up in front too.
“Oh, they must have been in a fight when I summoned them.” Jay realised.
“I like that the skeletons will just drop whatever they’re doing and obey,” he thought with a happy smile.
The three lined up skeletons rushed forward, meeting the two stone soldiers in battle.
Jay decided to watch for now.
“The skeletons have been killing these non-stop so maybe they’ve learnt a thing or two?”
Jay’s guess was proved correct as the fight started.
The skeletons still fought the same with their hammers, but they had developed a rudimentary battle tactic.
Two skeletons would fight a single statue, while the solo skeleton would run around the second statue in circles, literally in circles, keeping it distracted.
Jay shook his head, almost laughing as he watched.
The large soldier was turning in circles slowly, trying to keep up with the insane speed of the single skeleton while its comrade was slowly chunked to death.
“It must be so stupid that it works… perhaps this strategy is because Blue is in charge?” he thought, remembering how the skeletons fought as if they were alone previously but now it seemed like they fought as a team.
Blue wasn’t in the fight; still standing on the sideline near Jay, protecting its master, though it seemed like it was observing the battle.
“I wonder.. if I wasn’t here, would Blue be fighting or still watching the fight from the sidelines.”
“Surely Blue isn’t that smart. I don’t even have that [Mind] skill yet.” Jay wondered before shrugging.
“Oh well.” he kept walking down the hill towards the fight, not worrying about the battle, as he trusted in his skeletons.
As he walked, the first statue went down. The two skeletons then ran over to finish off the last statue.
With three skeletons hammering at the one statue, the helvetian soldier had sealed its fate.
Suffice to say, the second statue was crumbled in an instant.
Two skeletons lined up behind Blue and Jay, and the last one was on crystal gathering duty - it was Sweeper.
The minion came running back like a dog fetching a ball, seemingly excited to bring them to its master, holding two crystals out to Jay.
Jay reached out to accept the crystals, “Thanks Swee-”
The skeleton suddenly dropped them on the ground before him.
“What the?” Jay felt like he got metaphorically slapped in the face.
His own skeleton let him bend down like a peasant and pick them up.
Nevertheless, he knelt down and picked the crystals up anyway.
“So this is how it feels” Jay thought, remembering how he typically throws their weapons on the ground for them to pick up.
While this seemed like a rude thing to do, the skeletons didn’t actually have a bad attitude - really. It was because Jay had previously commanded them to drop them before him.
Both to make a pile, and back at the marsh when they were covered with blood.
He simply didn’t want to touch them; they are made from decaying bone and flesh tissue after all, it was not hygenic.
Remembering that this was his fault, he wasn’t offended; only feeling a little silly.
