133 Split
*GRROOOOOOOAAARRRRRRRRR*
Jay crouched down to keep his balance, as the whole pyramid started shaking.
Stones, dust and pebbles fell from somewhere high above, creating loud cracking sounds as they exploded against the ground.
Whatever was happening was big.
Jay immediately pulled out his luminous orb, looking around for somewhere safe to go, out of the way of the falling rocks.
He knew the exit had been blocked in the assistant’s room so he didn’t see the point in running towards it. It would just be a dead end after all, and there was no guarantee that it was safer than where he was right now.
The only feature in this empty room was the throne estobar sat in with the two pipes next to it.
“That may be the only safe spot here.” Jay guessed, thinking the maker of the pyramid would have protected the throne.
*GRRRRRR-BRRRRRR~*
The pyramid groaned more loudly and a light came from above Jay; a sliver of light turning into a long rectangle which was slowly getting wider.
It was the sky, being revealed as the roof opened up.
“No way… the whole pyramid is opening?”
Jay welcomed the dark, gloomy sky with a whimsical smile. Despite it being overcast and dreary, it was truly refreshing to see after being in the pitch-blackness of this dark, quiet pyramid.
Well… mostly quiet anyway.
*GRRRRR~~~~ DOONNNN!~…..*
With a final, deep booming noise the pyramid came to a stop.
“Finally…” Jay sighed, still looking up at the dark clouds as a light breeze flowed through the pyramid; he was thankful that no building-sized boulder came crashing down to crush him into a red paste.
A gentle path downhill led from behind the throne, exiting out the back of the pyramid.
In the distance was another black highway to the next pyramid. It seemed that this whole pyramid was split in half with the immense power from the glyph.
*Scree~* *Hiss~* Eiiiii!~*
Jay noticed some small escaping dihexapedes, exiting from somewhere in the recesses of the freshly opened and cracked pyramid.
“Shit…” Jay watched helplessly as the long leathery creatures sneaked through the ruins of the city and began their sneak attacks on helvetian soldiers, devouring the soulstones with zero remorse.
Was it by design that these were here? He couldn’t be sure.
Perhaps it was just another part of the dungeon, another twist to hinder his progress. What he could be sure about was that he would have to face them now too.
Thankfully, it seemed that they were quite low level, as the soldiers they preyed upon were only swordsmen, while the dihexapedes were only barely winning their fights.
They were definitely not the level 133 nightmares Jay had previously encountered.
“Seems like we have an intense battle ahead…” Jay said to his three remaining skeletons.
With a sigh, Jay finally went to the skull-shield projector.
Finally he could study it; he smiled, glad that it wasn’t hit by a high-speed falling pebble and died – It only had 1HP after all.
He crouched down on his knees, looking closer as he tried to gain some understanding of it as he tried to figure out its parts.
Unlike the turret, it had no moving parts – it was quite literally a teepee of bones around a soul stone with a skull on top.
“It’s definitely not that simple…” Jay thought as he inched closer.
“Hmm…” Jay gazed into the skull’s eyes. There were more smaller bones inside, so small that they seemed like hairs. They seemed to make the form of a tree within the skull.
Looking at where the skull was connected to the teepee, he found that these branch-like bone structures came from under the skull, going down through the teepee support and touching the soul stone on the top.
“Ok, so it must be channelling the energy into the skull… somehow…”
Jay made a mental note with a yawn; he was getting sleepy. That battle had taken much of his energy, not to mention that he had been here for hours.
“But the power source… what do I use.” he looked at the soul stone, pursing his lips while thinking about what he could use to power its barrier.
The only thing Jay had for a power source would be his sickly green necrotic mana. He put the shield on the ground and traced his fingers across the glowing arteries on the shield – it’s the closest thing he could think of which used his mana like a power source.
“Maybe I can make something like my shield, with necrotic mana arteries?”
“Hmm… I’ll also need some kind of container for my mana to keep powering it…”
“Soul stones are not an option – I only have access to empty ones… well, I have a single full one now but then I would be back to square one.”
“Some sort of bladder holding my mana is not an option, I can only manipulate bone.” he scratched his chin as he tried to come up with solutions.
Jay crouched and looked around the other side of it.
“Somehow it must use the energy of an escaping soul to power the shield… damn this is advanced…” he furrowed his brows, looking at the numerous tiny connections.
“Maybe I’ll understand it one day.” he shrugged, “But not today.”
After gaining at least some understanding of the concept, all he could do now was try, persevering in experimentation until he got it right.
Of course, this wasn’t the time or place, and he wasn’t in the right state of mind.
With no more analysis to do, the only way to get any more knowledge about the skull now was to destroy it and look at its parts.
Gently placing his hand on the skull, he took out his trusty butcher knife and lightly tapped it.
[1]
“Phew. Glad I kept this.”
Thankfully, he was gentle enough and the teepee structure didn’t even collapse. Pulling the skull off, there was a strange structure underneath, it was like a honeycomb, having a hexagonal structure.
Some tiny hair-like bones were snapped off as he lifted the skull up, breaking the connection between the skull and the hexagonal honeycomb structure.
Jay shook his head, “There’s no way I can scrimshaw something this technical…” he thought as he looked inside the skull.
“I’ll definitely need to level that skill up.”
The honeycomb structure was filled with the many tiny hair-like bones. They were almost like hair but incredibly brittle.
Holding the skull in his hand, he looked into the eyes more closely.
“It seems that the honeycomb structure is merely for support of the delicate bone-hairs… The hair-like bones pass through it and connect to the inside of the skull.”
“Interesting…” he nodded.
Finally, Jay cracked the skull open. He didn’t see much else – just the hair connecting to the inside of the skull.
“Hmm…” he set it aside, turning his attention to the teepee.
The bone-like hairs wrapped around a hexagonal sphere sitting at the top of the teepee, while more hairs flowed out from the inside of the sphere and went downwards to attach to the soul stone.
Each face of the hexagons on the sphere was like an empty window going into the middle, it was more like a scaffolding, or a ball of chicken wire.
“Everything seems pretty straightforward except for that strange angular sphere.”
Jay gently put his hand on it, while slowly cutting the hairs on the top and bottom sides.
During the cutting process, he found that the hairs from the bottom attached to the inside of the sphere, while the hairs wrapping around the outside all went upwards to the skull.
“Strange… I wonder if this is how the soul gets converted to energy?” he guessed, pulling little hairs off.
Jay decided to put the hexagonal sphere in his inventory to study later, in case there was something he was missing.
With another yawn, Jay knew it was time to leave; his body was begging him to go home and get into bed.
He analysed the bones of the teepee but they didn’t seem to be connected in any meaningful way – they were merely support.
“Ok, time to head out I think… Hopefully I’ll teleport back here when I enter the dungeon tomorrow.”
“Hmm, I wonder if Anya will want to come fight some dihexapedes…”
Jay willed to leave the dungeon, and as the exit sprung up next to him he sent his skeletons out on a killing mission for soul stones – as well as to gather any helvetian rings.
He would definitely not let them forget to loot the helvetian rings again.
Unfortunately, he still didn’t have enough mana to summon the fourth one, but he didn’t really care, he was too tired to wait around anyway.
“I’ll have to study Estobar’s journal tomorrow and practise my scrimshaw skill.”
“I definitely have enough bone to practise crafting with.” he thought as he stepped through the exit portal with a proud smile.
***One of you requested a power stone goal, nice idea – here it is: If we reach power stone ranking #3 (on the 91-180 day scale) I’ll release 5 bonus chapters.
I made the goal sorta-kinda hard since I am in an exam period, but if you manage to pull it off, I’ll deliver.
Not really sure what golden tickets are good for though?; I’m not Willy Wonka***