“Pretty strange loot” Jay thought, putting them both into his inventory.
“I wonder If I get different loot because I’m a necromancer… or technically a monster.” he wondered as he walked past the broken stone gates. So far, the soldiers have not dropped anything useful for Jay.
“Maybe I should have chosen a dungeon with more bones. I really should get more silt-wolf bones at some point.”
The stone warriors didn’t drop anything except empty soul stones and rocks; both of which were completely useless to Jay.
All the buildings he walked past were crumbled and broken, completely unidentifiable at this point. He couldn’t tell which were houses and which were shops, whatever happened here left no buildings standing.
The streets were paved with large, polished, black obsidian stone slabs that had blue mosaics covering them. Though much of the street slabs were covered by debris, Jay could tell that this would have been quite a magnificent and wealthy civilisation at the height of its existence.
Jay walked towards the first pyramid structure, it was covered in polished black obsidian similar to the streets. While the first pyramid was smaller than the others behind it in the distance, it was still huge and majestic in it's own way. Not including the other pyramid, it was one of the largest buildings Jay had seen in his life - he was merely a butcher living in a small rural village after all.
He crossed by another intersection when something caught his eye in a nearby ruin.
“Hmm…” he squinted at the gleaming light coming from the ruin, “surely it’s not a trap..?”
Approaching whatever caused the gleaming light, he had his shield and sword ready - he didn’t want to take another sword through his chest.
He climbed over a small barricade of rocks and rubble. Next to a broken down wall on the ground was what seemed to be a rusted metal torch holder, originally built into the wall; it was now completely orange and coated with rust, parts of it even seemed fuzzy because of the buildup of rust.
There was no longer any torch in the holder, nor any wood. All life in this city was gone and it seems like that included dead things like wood. Not even moss would grow on the old dilapidated stones here.
Loosely hanging off the metal torch holder was a white necklace, it was similarly not immune to the passage of time as the chain had completely rusted, though the pendant itself was made of porcelain.
Jay gently grabbed the pendant, his hand coated in orange as shavings of rust rubbed off while he moved the chain.
Looking closely at the pendant, it was white with a slight blue hue to it.
“Perhaps this was blue originally.” Jay thought as gazed at it, moving it around in his hand.
The pendant opened itself as he rotated it, whatever the clasp was made of had disintegrated long ago. Some black powdery ash fell out, disappearing in the air before it could reach the ground.
“Oops…”
Holding the opened pendant, he brought it closer to inspect it.
It was hollow inside, whatever it was holding had decomposed a long time ago.
“Hmm, probably a note or something” he thought “Wish Kel was here, we could probably have read it.”
Pocketing the amulet, he moved out of the ruins, making his way towards the first smallest pyramid.
Two stone statues were ahead, one on each side of the street facing each other. Similar to the other soldiers, they each had large shields and swords.
Jay wanted to put his new battle tactics to the test: kiting around one and keeping the second soldier behind the other so that he would only have to fight one at a time.
“The street seems a little narrow, but I’ll give it a try anyway.” Jay thought.
As he approached, one of the statues slowly turned its stone head towards Jay, sensing his presence as the rest of its body began to wake up.
The second stone soldier slowly began to move too, taking a step forward onto the street with a dull thud.
“Ah, here we go again” Jay smiled, brandishing his new hammer with threatening eyes.
He was confident despite being stabbed through the chest because he knew their attack patterns - or at the very least he could tell what they were going to do based on their movement. So far they only thrust and slashed with their massive swords, so it wasn’t too difficult.
The stone soldiers were strong and full of physical force, but slow and far too obvious. Time had not been kind to them, while being made of stone would make anyone’s movements slower.
The first one slashed its sword, and Jay ducked underneath before jumping to the side - just like last time, a sword thrust from the second statue narrowly missed him.
Jay made a smile as if he was a hunter closing in on his prey. They were harmless if they couldn’t hit him.
“Time to try my new tactic.” jumping to the side until the second soldier was behind the first, he was ready.
The two skeletons he had at the side joined the fight, smashing their hammers against the legs and heels of the massive stone warriors, chips of stone flying off at high speed as the skeletons pummelled their ankles with all their might.
Jay ducked another sword swing, crouching down low. From his crouched position, he jumped up high and brought the hammer down squarely on the stone T-visor helmet. Both of the cheek plates cracked off and fell to the side, revealing a life-like face beneath the armour.
[6]
“Oh?”
Jay almost felt like pausing his assault, a little taken back by how lifelike the stone face looked; not noticing it previously as he just wanted the fight to be over. The face even had subtle blemishes and pores on the skin.
“It’s fine craftsmanship…” he admired the details put into the masonry of their stone faces “it’s too bad.” he thought as he smashed the hammer right into its jaw, chipping off more stone.
[6]
“Damn, no stun.” he jumped back - but not fast enough. Jay was relying on a stun after smashing it’s head, so now he didn’t have enough time to dodge.
Bracing himself, he held his shield high as the sweeping blade came in.
*Btush*
The damage was mitigated, but creaking noises sounded from the shield as it made contact. Jay was pushed a few metres to the side, almost falling over completely.
The shield remained intact, but Jay could tell it had been damaged badly as he channelled some of his necrotic essence into it; There was no resistance as the shield greedily absorbed up all the essence it could. It didn’t appear to have any damage, but the veins travelling over it’s surface weren’t glowing anymore, it was as if it had used up it’s internal blood supply of necrotic energy to stop itself from splitting apart.
Jay realised he made a critical mistake after this encounter.
“I better not rely on chance..” he stepped back into the fight after a short analysis.
This was an important lesson which was better to learn early on while the consequences wouldn’t be bad.
He side-stepped a sword thrust and retaliated immediately, bringing the hammer down near it’s shoulder - but the strike was blocked by it’s shield.
[1.2]
Another sweeping strike came which he easily ducked, but missing caused the soldier to stumble and it had to step back, giving Jay another opportunity for another hammer strike.
*Drung*
[12]
The hammer landed with a ring, a critical hit in the same spot as before, squarely on it’s head and with just as much force. Three large cracks travelled through the soldier’s head as it dropped to its knees.
Somehow it looked heroic as it fell to its knees, ready for it’s enemy to end it’s life as it knew it had been bested.
For some strange reason, Jay didn’t want to end it’s life. It was like he felt pity for it, or perhaps even respect - nevertheless, with one final solid hit he smashed his hammer against the soldier’s cheek.
The head split into three blocks and fell to the ground alongside the stone warrior’s body.
The other soldier swung forward with it’s sword, leaning over it’s comrades body but not harming it.
[6]
[35 Exp]
Jay backed up, stepping smoothly out of range of it’s attack. The two skeletons were focusing on it now, but it’s target was still Jay.
Something strange happened as it tried to fight Jay. The stone soldier didn’t walk on the corpse of the other one, it was as if it was showing respect.
“Huh..” Jay walked around the remains of the first stone soldier as the other one did too. It wouldn’t step over it’s fallen comrade.
“Interesting...”
Jay continued to run around the broken stone statue. The skeletons were still smashing the one chasing him to no end, and soon it fell without Jay even doing any damage to it.
[35 Exp]
In a quiet office of the adventurer association, a man converses with a cube.
“What? You sense mana? Yes! Great!” Viladore was with his talking cube in his office.
“Yes, master. I sensed mana. Out of 1,847 iterations, I felt it 3 times, successfully drawing it into my reserve. Stored power increased by 0.74 percent.”
“Oh… well good, it’s not much but it’s a start! Keep it up and-”
“Mana has not been sensed since.” the cube interrupted.
“...” Viladore stared at the cube.
“...” The cube remained silent, staring back through its tiny crystal eyes.
“...what do you mean ‘not been sensed since’?”
“Since exactly 49 minutes and 21 seconds ago, master. That was the last time. The first time was 44 minutes and 37 second ago.”
“... So you only grasped it three times within those times?”
“Yes, master.”
“What was different about those times?”
“...”
“Hmm?” Viladore poked its eye back down into the cube.
“...Unknown.”
“Dammit, shit. I mean, you did a good job, but damn...” Viladore then channelled some mana into the cube, raising it’s stored mana back to one hundred percent.
“Keep doing the exercises.”
“Yes, master.”
He sat down at his desk as he pondered “What happened forty-four minutes ago… what was different…” he furrowed his brows in thought “If only I was here.”
Viladore was puzzled and slightly bitter, he missed out on the opportunity to be here and was doing a lesson with a student at the time so he couldn’t know what caused the change. It frustrated him to no end as he could have easily sensed the changes in the ambient mana of the room if he was here.
With a sigh, he sat down, feeling a little defeated before encouraging himself.
“It’s fine... It’s only been a few days. We can wait for another breakthrough; I now know that I’m on the right track anyway, so that’s a victory.” he lightly smiled “Yes, this is a victory. It’s progress..” he walked around the room.
“..And when I find whatever it was that helped it sense mana, whatever it was that happened. I’ll make it happen again, and replicate the results.”
Viladore had renewed determination; he was betting everything on this, and felt like he was getting to the point where he would do anything to finish this project.
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