Chapter 31 Semi-flesh

The spell bolted towards the creature, leaving his palm with the speed of an arrow. The unstable tooth landed one of the three fleshy flaps, the force of the explosion ripping it off.

This proved to be ineffective at stopping it as it started to charge again, meanwhile Jay and Lamp still had not dispatched the siltwolf.

“Dammit, I won’t let you escape again.” Jay didn’t lose his cool as he flung another unstable tooth at the siltwolf to help Lamp out before he ran over to Red and Blue, intending to stab whatever this variant was.

Charging at it, the first thing he did was smash his shield against its body – the light on the creature flickered and seemingly slowed it’s charge speed based on the luminosity. Jay smiled widely as he realised his shield was causing mana burn.

“Ha, you’re fucked now.” He smashed it wildly with his shield, burning away more of it’s mana.

The mana-light stopped growing brighter at this point. One of the fleshy flaps was missing so Jay stabbed his ossein sword straight in, helping to disrupt the mana gathering process through the raw pain of his sword.

Now that his sword had pierced it, the mana-organ of the creature stopped gathering and completely dissipated.

The creature, knowing it couldn’t cause a physical-pulse, attempted to flee. However, Red and Blue had already done far too much damage to it, one of its front legs was so heavily damaged that it seemed to be dangling from a piece of its hide.

With a whimper, it released another pulse as it’s final act – but this one was not mana based.

[300 Exp].

Jay leant down to look at the creature, “What the…” the creature died before Jay could analyse it, and Lamp was still carrying the light so he couldn’t see it clearly yet. “Did it sacrifice its own life to do that weak pulse? And the pulse didn’t even do anything, it wasn’t physical or magic based…?”

As Jay was thinking these things, he had to get back into a fighting stance as the siltwolf dashed over to fight, for some reason it was ignoring Lamp.

“Are you stupid…” Jay raised a brow, confused by the silfwolf charging at him, Red and Blue. Even though it was half-health, it’s body riddled with stabs and chunks of hide missing from the unstable tooth explosions, it charged into a three versus one fight.

Suddenly, Jay’s shield detected more enemies, squeezing his arm as a warning. Two more silt wolves rushed out of the shadows. Jay raised his shield in time as a silt wolf slashed at it with it’s claws.

Lamp ran over to assist. The fight turned into a four verse three – Jay and Lamp both fighting the near-dead siltwolf – while this time Blue and Red held off the other two.

Thanfkully, the cobalt-blue bone skeletons were incredibly durable. Jaw and claw attacks landing on their bones would only leave slight grazes and indentations – instead of being broken or shattered completely.

Jay dodged a wolf bite as he smashed back with his shield and slashed with his ossein sword. Lamp stabbed it just behind the jaw but it’s sword got stuck – Jay quickly smashed the wolf with his shield, forcing it back a few steps as he handed his sword to Lamp then summoned another from his inventory.

“Emergency relief” He smiled – the wolf seemed to look confused as its opponent’s face changed into a menacing shape.

A few more cuts, slashes and stabs later the weakened wolf slowed down and died, Jay landing the final thrust of his sword – stamping his foot on it’s head as he planted the sword behind its skull, severing it’s spine.

[200 Exp]

Jay considered sending Lamp to help with the other fight and relaxing, but he decided it was kinda invigorating and fun to fight, so he continued to slay the other two wolves with the help of his minions. Lamp and Red fought one while Jay and blue fought the other.

The first wolf died to Lamp and Red – mainly because Lamp didn’t need to worry about being damaged.

[200 Exp]

[Short Sword Proficiency Level 1 – Acquired]

Not reading the notification, Jay helped with the last enemy. The final wolf didn’t last long as six swords, all crafted from the wolf’s own bones, slashed it and stabbed it to death – three skeletons and Jay easily dispatched a single wolf at this point.

[200 Exp]

“Finally, now I can check my notifications.”

<[Short Sword Proficiency Level 1]>

[+2% damage when using short swords]

[+2% speed when using short swords]

[Parry – 5% chance] (Passive)

“Parrying? Awesome. I thought I could already do it though. Huh…” Jay didn’t understand why the sword proficiency gave him a skill he already had.

In this world, people can learn a technique without a weapon or skill, and still fight effectively in combat – the only difference is, if a weapon or skill says it will do something, there’s a 100% chance it will accomplish it. Eg. A shield will say it has a 15% chance to block – this means, in the 15% of the time it does block, it will block perfectly no matter the skill of the user.

This is why Jay and his minions can disable body parts by stabbing at them with swords even though the sword doesn’t specifically say that it does, it can still happen due to physical damage – meanwhile a sword may have the ability to disable, and landing such a hit means guaranteed success.

Jay carried on, checking his other notification that he ignored before.

<[Mental Coating – Level 1]>

[Mana shield – defence from mental/magic attacks]

[Area covered – 8 Liters]

[5 Mana per second]

“8 Liters huh? Well, I guess it coats it, so that’s about the size of a small bucket of water, enough to cover my sensitive brain. Seems like a high mana cost, but I am low level so I’ll have more mana later on – but knowing the pain of not having it, it’s totally worth it. Hopefully I can cover my whole body by the time I fight mental-based monsters that are strong enough to harm it.”

Looking at the corpses, Jay retrieved the sword that Lamp lost, stashed the bones of the three siltwolves in his ring along with nine ferritic plates and three more spines, before making his way over to the variant.

It’s body was strange. It had no black fur like the other silt wolves, neither did it have any eyes, nose, ears – it seemed to all be covered by a fleshy, hairless hide – the hide itself was a deep, dark blue. It’s mouth was made up of the three fleshy flaps – one of them missing since Jay had blasted it off. It had no claws, and was completely defenceless if not for it’s mana abilities.

Jay extracted the bones from it’s flesh with his ring, and they tenderly left it’s body. No ferritic plates or spine were left behind however, and Jay noticed the creature didn’t have any plates lining it’s back, so his previous conclusion about the back-spikes being the ferritic plates was correct.

The extracted bones were the same colour as Red’s, predominantly cobalt-blue with blotches of red, though Jay noticed a few purple spots after looking more closely, almost blending into the blue.

As Jay was about to leave, he noticed something strange – a lump in the remaining dirt-crystal flesh. Pulling out his sword, he carved a hole to examine what it was, holding his breath in the event of it simply being gas or pus – though he was pleasantly surprised.

Pulling open the flesh, he uncovered a dark purple stone. It seemed like it had been polished for years, reflecting Jay perfectly under the light from the lamp.

“Huh, a nice little reward for catching one of you slippery bastards.” smiled Jay as he went to analyse it.

[?]

“What?” He analysed it again.

[?]

And again a few more times, with the same result.

“Weird,” Jay stashed it in his inventory. “Maybe I’ll sell it later” he thought “Come to think of it, I still have to sell those green crystals… I could probably sell the charged ones to that brat for a decent price too. I better check what the prices are at the guild first before trying though… come to think of it, that brat could check too and realise I ripped him off… Maybe I’ll just sell them,” he shrugged.

“The charged ones only do 5 damage anyway, and my unstable teeth attacks already do that, with a chance to do 4 extra damage from the [Propagative Stress Rupturing].” he checked his inventory, finding he only had twelve teeth left.

“Seems like I’ll need to send the boys into the marsh.” he thought “I wonder how much a tent costs.”

Jay was making plans to camp near the stink-rat marsh dungeon entrance so he didn’t have to go back into that stinking, sweaty cesspool which was almost a celebration of filth.

“Maybe I’ll find a tent tomorrow while I’m ditching Mark” he emotionlessly thought.

Sitting down for a moment, Jay considered if he should head back home. “Hmm, I’ve been here for at least 5 hours, not including that time I fell asleep… so maybe even 10 hours? It’s probably night time outside; though I don’t feel tired yet, I’m more hungry than anything, so It’s probably getting close to dinner time.”

Even though he was close to levelling up, Jay decided to exit the dungeon – the dungeon responding to his thought.