87 I’m Weak? 2
Instead of leaving the dungeon, Jay decided to wait here while his health came back to a reasonable level. He still needed those teeth after all, while the extra bones would be useful in the future.
Of course, with only Red out hunting rats, his gathering operation slowed down.
Jay decided to have Red drag back the nearby dead rats too, as he needed the bones for his ring.
There were many dead rats nearby, so it didn’t take long for Red to bring back some fresh corpses; previously, the skeletons killed them and only took their teeth.
Jay shifted his ring, extracting the bones from Molodus as well as 4 other corpses now surrounding him.
When done with the corpses, Jay had Blue form a pile of the boneless corpses nearby.
Slowly, the piles of boneless sacks of flesh started to form a large unidentifiable mass of flesh in the small clearing. Since they have no bones, they looked like desiccated pieces of a rotting whale as they slapped on top of each other.
Afterwards, Jay finally had some time to check the notification he had ignored during the desperate battle.
[Sword Proficiency Level 1 Acquired]
+2% damage when using swords
2.25% Chance to parry. Scales with dexterity. ((Dex*sword proficiency level/20)+1).
“Finally… it took so much longer than my dagger proficiency… I wonder if it’s because I was constantly backstabbing with the dagger?”
After an hour, Jay’s health went up by 4.2, bringing it back to [16/93].
Health regeneration was increased with vitality, along with how fast his body would heal from wounds. When he previously had much less vitality, it would take much longer for his health points to fix up a wound.
Red was the only skeleton collecting teeth and corpses, and had brought back 5 more teeth so far.
Jay decided to send Lamp off to hunt, now having only two guards; of course, he took an extra precaution of charging an unstable tooth spell.
“Damn. This sucks… but I suppose it’s what I deserve. I’m glad I found out how weak I am this early on.”
Jay waited a few more hours in the swamp, and soon enough his health was nearly back to being half-full.
Feeling a little more secure, he sent off Sweeper to collect teeth and corpses, only having Blue to guard him – though he was quite safe as all the rats in the area had been culled.
Jay had a small collection of 52 teeth so far – though not as many corpses as he only had the skeletons bring back the nearby ones.
Each time a skeleton left, it took longer and longer to return as they had to travel further to find a rat.
The soap rat population was thoroughly decimated. Eventually, Jay considered leaving the swamp and returning so that the rats would all respawn, but he decided to just wait.
“I’m nearly ready to head back to Losla anyway…” he had been waiting there for hours for his health to regenerate – not to mention the time he spent reading his book and messing around with the spell channelling crystal.
Jay had plenty of teeth by now, so he put Red on primarily corpse collection duty. It was quite a strange sight seeing a skeleton drag corpses across a swamp, it was like it was an ant bringing home food for the colony… If the colony was a large hive of bones and flesh.
Collecting 5 more corpses, Jay was satisfied as he watched a thick curtain of bones floating around him.
He called his skeletons back to him, collecting any teeth they had.
“58 teeth and 10 corpses, this will keep me going for a while” Jay smiled to himself, “I think it’s time to go.” He willed his skeletons to return to him.
Jay looked at his skeletons and made sure they were all complete; having 45 health.
“Ok, you all look as bulky as Blue, so I’m happy. Clearly the bone eater skill is doing its job..”
“And your new bones still have red flakes in them, good” he smiled at Red.
“Hmm… speaking of different bones…” An idea flashed across Jay’s mind.
“Sweeper, come here.”
Jay unsummoned sweeper, its bones collapsing to the ground. Jay took out parts of its blue bones and added some soap rat ones of approximately equal proportions.
There was now a mix of the rat bones and the wolf bones before him.
“Arise.” he said.
[Chimera Research 7%]
Jay repeated this process until his mana got low.
“Arise.”
[Chimera Research 8%]
“Arise.”
[Chimera Research 9%]
“Okay… I think that’s enough for now” he said, feeling a little light-headed and checking his mana.
[MP 24/68]
“I’ll keep some mana in reserve so I can raise another in an emergency.. I’m about to unsummon all of them and leave the dungeon after all.”
Raising a level 3 skeleton would take 13 mana. Jay could ‘raise’ again, but that would leave him with only 11 mana left. This would be dangerous because if he left the dungeon with only 11 mana and no skeletons, he would have no hidden trump – which of course is the ability to summon a skeleton.
Before leaving, Jay used his loot skill on the deflated-looking pile of blubbering corpses.
“Damn, no soap rat tail…” he pursed his lips.
Jay checked around the perimeter once more, making sure he was safe before he unsummoned all of the skeletons, adding their blue bones to the ring and leaving the dungeon.