With two more of the sword-wielding stone soldiers destroyed, Jay made his way to the next pair.
“The spear-wielding ones are next if I remember correctly…” he looked at his skeletons “Focus on dodging this time.” he squinted at them, remembering that one of their rib cages was blown inwards last time.
Jay didn’t want to waste mana on repairing his skeletons, and he remembered that getting hit by the weapons of the stone soldiers caused mana burn, so he was trying to conserve as much of his mana as possible.
Feeling confident, Jay decided to simply have his two minions distract one of the spear soldiers while he would fight the other one.
As the fight started, the spear statues were more aggressive compared to the swordsmen variants.
Jay didn’t notice it before when he was low mana, but he had to dodge and duck a lot more to avoid the spear thrusts and swipes - of course, they were still obvious to him now that he was full mana.
After dodging a spear thrust, he jumped up, swinging his hammer sideways and smashing it in the side of it’s head, the stone helmet flying off.
[6]
“Oh?” He found a new trick to fighting them “I assumed the helmets were attached somehow… Well that makes things easier.”
Without much more thought, he jumped past another spear and smashed it’s head again.
[12][Critical Hit][Stunned]
Seizing the opportunity from the stun, he dropped his shield, gripping his hammer with two hands.
“It really isn’t your day, huh” he thought in mid-air.
Gritting his teeth from the strength he was putting behind the strike, he smashed it directly into its head, forming a small cave as he shattered it into rubble and stones.
[24][Critical Hit]
[40 Exp]
Jay smiled after seeing his damage, “It’s over when I land a stun, especially when I use two hands for double damage.. maybe I should just use two hands from now on.” he looked at his shield on the ground as he thought for a moment.
“...Nah, It might hurt me in the long run. The combat experience with a shield will be important, and it would suck to let such a good shield go to waste anyway…”
Jay picked up the shield “Besides, I can only go 2-handed when I know the enemy can’t strike, which is almost never. In the future, it will probably be too dangerous to fight without a shield.” he reasoned to himself as he thought about other adventurers who fought using two-handed weapons, such as Mark.
“Hmm, Mark’s probably a rare case of someone with insane damage, but most of the others don’t have those glowing swords, so how do they do it…“ Jay wondered how the 2-handed classes survived in dungeons, then he realised something incredibly obvious - something which he didn’t have, and may never have.
“Hmm, they probably go with someone who has a tank-class, someone who pulls aggression while they attack relentlessly… dammit. It would be easy if I could just party with whoever I wanted.”
He felt a little jealous, but looked at his skeletons, still fighting the other stone soldier.
“I suppose you guys are ok.” He smiled, looking at them slowly getting the upp hand over the spear-wielding stone statue.
Jay waited for a moment as he watched them, letting them finish the target off.
The skeletons were pretty good at working together as a duo. One would attack while the other would defend.
The statue thrusted at Lamp, while Red would strike the statue. After doing some damage Red would become the target, so Lamp would start to strike the statue instead.
“They make a good team.” thought Jay as he watched. “They probably can’t solo a statue yet, but they’re good enough to do it together at least.”
Before long the second statue was dead - and without any help from Jay.
[40 Exp]
“Nicely done” he smiled, seeing the experience point notification.
“Huh, how come I didn’t notice that before… The spear statues give more exp points. That’s strange. They’re still level 3 though, so it doesn’t really make sense…” Jay looted the soldiers, getting two more rings, but was still puzzled as he pressed onwards, moving deeper into the city as he made his way closer to the first black pyramid.
“Maybe I got more exp because they’re harder to kill?” Jay wasn’t sure, as he walked, he had made up different theories, but so far, none of them made much sense.
Moving further into the city, the rubble piles were larger, and more of it crossed the obsidian-paved roads as he walked.
“There must have been larger buildings near the pyramid” he guessed.
As he made his way through the rubble, he finally saw the entrance clearly.
The entrance was huge and rectangular, two giants could have easily walked through side-by-side.
A large slab made up the roof of the entrance, held up by two massive black statues on either side; they had the same armour as the stone soldiers but were made from obsidian, both looking majestic as they held up the massive slab which was jutting out from the pyramid structure, forming an extended roof of sorts.
Further outside, two huge obsidian pillars stood in front of the pyramid, each as wide as Jay’s house and taller than the 3-story Snakeraven inn. The pyramids and these columns were the only things so far that weren’t in ruins.
Approaching the pillars, Jay saw three stone soldiers coming into view, standing in between them; at first the pillars looked like the size of a normal soldier, while the soldiers near them looked like ants - but Jay was just far away.
“What is this, a dungeon for ants?” he thought as he approached.
In between the two swordsmen was a spear-wielding soldier; each of the three of them carried a shield in their off-hand.
Jay squinted at the spear soldier, trying to see more clearly “...Is that a black helmet?” he paused for a moment.
“That may complicate things, hopefully I can just knock it off.”
Jay decided to make a strategy since there were three soldiers this time. After seeing how well his minions could fight, he decided to have each of them fight a statue - well, not fight, but distract.
There were three in Jay’s party and three enemies.
“I’ll fight the first swordsman and slay it, then I’ll come over to fight spearmen. The skeleton fighting the spearmen can go help fight the second swordsman.” he nodded.
“At this point in the fight, two skeletons will be fighting one swordsman, and I’ll be fighting the spearman.” Jay nodded to himself affirming his plan, “Not much else to worry about after that.” he shrugged, casually walking forward as he made his skeletons form a line next to him.
With his plan sorted, there was nothing more left to say. Jay marched forward with his minions as the stone soldiers began to ‘wake up’, breaking out of their guard stances and readying for battle.
Each of the soldiers picked a target, and thankfully, one of the swordsmen statues picked Jay.
“All according to plan” he smiled.
Like the previous fights, it was easy for Jay to beat a swordsman statue. He didn’t take a single hit, and in no time, the soldier dropped to its knees, falling face down and it’s head crumbled when it hit the ground.
Jay looked to see how the other fights were doing.
Red was fighting a swordsman, and was doing fine as it dodged it easily; Lamp was having trouble with the spearman, and had taken a few hits already.
“Damn.. I thought I told them to focus on dodging.” Jay quickly ran over to relieve Lamp and sent his skeleton to help Red.
“I’ll handle it.” he said to his skeleton, commanding Lamp to go fight the swordsman.
Like usual, Jay dodged a thrust from the spear and went to smash against the side of it’s head.
To his expectations, the black helmet flew off, revealing another normal-looking stone head underneath.
“Heh, I guess you’re not that special.” Jay smiled condescendingly as he dodged another thrust.
*Sploii!*
“Fuh!” Jay was stabbed in the shoulder, the pain stopping him from swearing.
[5 damage]
[Mana burn - 0.5mana/second for 5 seconds]
Jay backed up, retreating until he was out of attack range. The hole filled up as his hit points went down.
“What the hell? It just attacked twice… what the hell was that…”
As Jay thought this, he realised he hadn’t analysed any of them yet.
“Ugh, I should’ve analysed it when I saw that damn helmet…” He felt silly, starting his analysis with the spearman.
<[Helvetian Soldier - Level 4]>
[50 HP]
<[Skills]>
[Brittle Armour]
- 40% damage reduction to slashing, stabbing damage.
- 20% more damage taken from crushing damage.
[Helvetia’s Revenge]
- Magic damage immune.
- Any wielded weapons become cursed.
[Double Strike]
- Does two attacks in rapid succession. Each attack is 75% as strong as a normal one.
- 10 Second cooldown.
<Description>
- A soldier of the Helvetian kingdom, turned to stone. It stands guard, waiting for it’s chance to exact revenge on those who would harm its kingdom.
“Damn, it’s level four. That double strike skill must have been what hit me.” he read over the other information as he back stepped - the soldier was slowly walking towards him as its steps caused trembles in the ground.
“I wish it showed me information about their weapons... I guess the analysis skill can only go so far. It’s annoying that it doesn’t show me the curse information either, but I suppose that may be part of the curse?” Jay shrugged as he looked at the skill again.
“Double strike, 10 second cooldown… guess I need to end this quickly before it can hit me again.”
Jay sprung back into action, side stepping the spear thrusts as he smashed it’s head. It had more hit points than the level three statues, so Jay realised it would be able to use it’s skill at least one more time.
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