A tiny red leech was squirming away, it was short and fat though was still surprisingly quick.
Jay smiled, his guess was correct as he jumped over to it.
It tried to squirm a little faster after it realised it had been found.
Jay lifted his foot over it, lightly pressing against the leech to stop it from squirming away, rolling it into a ball with his foot. It started doing tiny screeching sounds as it was trapped.
With a placid, peaceful smile, Jay said two words.
“It’s over.”
He then raised his foot up high and stomped down, twisting his foot on it, forming a red paste, its body splattering across the ground. Jay was already covered in filth so he didn’t care about getting more on the bottom of his shoe.
Goo was squirting out from under his shoe while an evil grin appeared on Jay’s face, getting bigger as he twisted his heel on it, finally getting revenge for what the leech did to him.
[250 Exp]
“Finally. It’s over. Sneaky little parasite.” he said as he stepped off the leeches corpse and rubbed his shoe on a nearby rock. He showed no remorse at killing someone who had clearly lost their humanity. He even enjoyed killing it after it covered him in slime, not to mention what it did to the hamlet - swallowing him made it personal.
With a sigh he sat down, mentally and physically exhausted after everything that just happened.
“That could’ve been me… I wonder what happened to turn her into such a murderous monster… was she like that before or did her class begin to change her thoughts…” Jay had furrowed brows as he thought to himself.
“What’s going to stop me from becoming like that? We all have the potential to become monsters, but she went ahead with it…”
“Are my thoughts beginning to change too?” he wondered, his thoughts then drifting to his book.
“The book seems to be logical, maybe it can keep me centred, grounded in reality. Perhaps my book seems to help to keep me normal…” he thought.
“The book seems to be made to prepare a mind for eternity; an immortal body requires an immortal mind, lest it sink into corruption. Hmm… I wonder if even a little bit of corruption in the mind, spread across an eternity, can warp and twist even the most pure minded people into demons.”
“I suppose under the right circumstances, anyone could change… this book is quite valuable when I think about it like that. I suppose one of the only things that stays with you eternally is your mind anyway.”
“Even if there’s a little corruption in me, if you spread that across eternity, I would probably become worse than the most twisted, vile monster that Rosa could ever dream of...”
Anya noticed Jay, starting into the crack of light beaming down from the top of the ravine with a strange look on his face.
“Are you okay, Jay?” Anya asked, her voice seemed more soft than usual to Jay, he could tell she was genuine so he answered sincerely.
“Me and Rosa, we both have monster classes… I’m just thinking… I’m glad I’m not like that…”
“Your actions define you, Jay.” was Anya’s only response as she sat down for a rest too. They sat in silence for a while before Anya changed the topic.
“Pretty decent amount of exp huh?”
“Yeah. Won’t be long till I hit level nine.” smiled Jay, looking at his skeletons.
“You need to slow down, It’s so unfair.” Anya joked as she shook her head with a smile.
Taking out some water, Jay began washing his hair and face with it, not caring about getting his clothes wet since they were already covered in slime.
The molodus coat however was clean of slime, it had either absorbed it or corroded it away, Jay wasn’t sure - but he used it to periodically wipe away his face and hands, the slime disappearing off the coat after a moment.
The coat looked slightly different now, having a gold trim around the black buttons, while it had become an even darker green. He remembered that the coat felt a little thicker when he was being swallowed, but now it was back to normal, so out of curiosity he analysed it.
<[Molodus's Coat - Level 2]>
[Molodus's Essence] (Passive)
- Melee attackers take 2 poison damage over 3 seconds. Does not stack.
[Consume] (Passive)
- The coat feasts on whatever it can find. Does not consume it’s Master’s pocketed items.
[Poison resistance 11%]
<[Description]>
- Acquired after defeating [Stench-rat Molodus]. Molodus was King of the soap rats, scourge of the stink-rat marshlands: Part of the vile rat king's own soul was woven into this coat, he was not yet satisfied with his scourge as he died, his own hate lived on to form this from his own hide - this coat which now attempts to consume and decay all who threaten it.
Dark-green with gold-trimmed, round black-wood buttons. The collar comes up just below the chin, and the coat goes down ending just above the knee.
Jay secretly smiled at his coat, still washing himself.
“Congrats on levelling up,” he said quietly to his coat.
“Thanks. I put one attribute point into eminence, and four points into energy so we can travel a bit faster... During the fighting my stamina was getting pretty low, but it refilled when I levelled up… probably would’ve been bad otherwise.” she had pursed lips as she scratched her head, thinking about what could’ve happened if she did run out of energy.
Anya thought Jay was talking to her, but he went with it. She would probably think he’s weird if he was talking to his clothes.
“...eminence?” Jay raised a brow.
“Oh… It’s just part of my class. Never mind…”
“Hmm, rightio. Good thinking anyway, It’ll help in the far future too.” he shrugged, standing up “Ready to head back?”
“Yep,” Anya nodded, putting her crossbow away and her hands in her pockets. “Though we will probably need to rest before we climb up those boulders, my prostrate skill really takes it outta me.”
“Oh, sure. I’m going to leave two skeletons here to finish off any more leeches in the cave. They have that ‘kin’ skill that lets them create more of themselves. I don’t want an army of leeches marching on Losla in a few years just because one of those things escaped.”
“Oh I didn’t notice that, good thinking. I was treating this like a dungeon, thinking we finished it since we defeated the ‘boss’ monster” Anya said with a nod.
“Yeah, this is our first non-dungeon quest anyway. I think we did quite well.”
“Agreed.” she smiled.
Jay decided he would leave Red and Lamp. Both of them were level two, so they could maintain their weapons with essence, and Jay also wanted to keep Blue with him since it was level three.
Jay thought about what would happen if he needed them on the way back to Losla or at Losla. At first, he was just going to have them run back when he needed them, but even with their speed, it would take at least a whole day, so he decided to de-summon them, trying something else.
First he grabbed their three ossein swords and the old shield they were carrying, adding them to his inventory.
Jay gathered their precious silt-wolf bones and wolf skulls, adding them back into his necrotic ring. Their blue semi-solid bones were the most precious part.
After pulling out a bunch of the normal, weaker soap rat bones and two soap rat skulls, he shifted his ring back into the normal form. This was so that his ‘raise’ spell didn’t pull out the higher quality silt-wolf bones during the re-summoning.
Since he cut off the supply of the better bones by shifting his ring back to finger-form, the spell would have to use the low quality ones that he pulled out, now piled on the ground before him.
Red and Lamp were recreated before him, yet sadly were indistinguishable from each other.
“Hmm…” Jay had an idea, wanting to test something as he had a theory.
He created four bone daggers out of some normal bone before speaking to his skeletons.
Holding two daggers in one hand, “Lamp, here you go.”
To Jay’s surprise, one of the skeletons stepped forward.
“So you do know your own names! Ha!” Jay was excited about this.
The young skeleton didn’t have a name, so today was it’s initiation into the pack.
He quickly turned to the level one skeleton - the one he hadn’t named yet, while making sure Anya was looking - and of course she was, it’s not every day you get to see a necromancer summon two skeletons.
Jay tried his best not to smile as he began the sacred ceremony. Of course, if Anya wasn't around he wouldn't bother.
Jay made the small stand before him with it's soap-rat head facing downwards, submissive to it's master; It was a strange sight seeing a bloodthirsty skeleton act like this, and Anya didn't look away for one second.
“I, your eternal master” Jay made some of his green gas flow from his palm as he slowly tapped the flat side of a bone dagger on the skeletons shoulder,
“hereby grant you your eternal name” then tapped it on the other shoulder, before holding the dagger above it’s head,
He held the dagger, lightly pressing it against the top of its skull “may we fight alongside one another to the bitter end, I name thee…”
“Sweeper!” Jay began to laugh “Since you swept the path for us, Haha!”
Anya instantly shook her head, the whole ceremony that Jay constructed lost all of it's gravity and sense of majesty. Meanwhile, Jay’s laughter echoed through the ravine for the next few minutes, and for a moment it even sounded like Rosa’s maniacal laughter. After laughing for quite some time, even Jay thought he was laughing for way too long. Soon, he finally stopped, though still letting out a few chuckles every now and then.
Anya was only shaking her head in response, wondering when he was going to stop, until finally it seemed like he got tired from laughing.
*Phew* he sighed
“I really have a way with words.”
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