Chapter 212 Train

Chapter 212 Train

“You two will fight again, but now, Dark will be one-handed.” Jay said as he picked up Dark's dropped dagger.

The skeletons each looked at Jay dumbfounded - their master wanted them to fight again?

Of course, Jay expected Heavy to win now, and this strategy would also allow Dark to thick more tactically and gain more battle experience.

After another short battle, Heavy did win, though it lost its shield. Jay could craft another as he had the blueprint down in his mind.

Dark won the next round, then the next round - until Heavy used its second arm to start grappling, and won again.

Soon enough, Heavy lost its arm too, and then Dark continued to win for the next few rounds.

The skeletons didn't kill each other during the fighting, but would stop just before killing each other, and would mostly only use tactics to disable - however, if any human or animal ever took a dagger to the eye socket, they would perish without enough health, suffering a major critical hit.

Soon, Jay gave them some respite and healed them, restoring their weapons and crafting a new shield for Heavy.

The skeletons, despite being level two and one, were each quickly turning into experienced fighters.

Someday they would be masters of war, able to sway the ebb and flow of any battlefield, but for now they were nothing but novices. Novices who could happily amputate each other and keep fighting to the death.

A threat was still approaching however - and Jay didn't think he would need to conserve his mana before the beast would reach them, as he believe it would die this time.

That was until he got some notifications.

[Your skeleton has died]

[Your skeleton has died]

“Fuck... Train normally again.” Jay had a bitter expression on his face.

Two skeletons perished almost instantly.

Quickly, he sat down and activated the host skill on Blue and was transported into the body of his minion.

[Your skeleton has died]

“What the fuck?” his jaws clinked.

Sweeper stabbed the bear and jumped back from a claw attack, but the beast pounced forward with a second slash, ending Sweeper with a single strike of it strange thorn-like claws.

The spears did absolutely nothing to stop it. The beast shrugged off the hit without even flinching.

Jay got a glance at the beast before it came charging. Its form was like a bear covered in thorns and thistles, a twisted piece of nature and beast made up of sickly grey vines and thorns.

The vines seemed to wriggle and twist around its body endlessly, and despite having shade vision, Jay couldn't tell if there was any fur or flesh underneath.

Unfortunately, he didn't analyze it - the beast was already charging and he didn't want to experience second-hand death again, so he quickly ended the [host] skill.

[Your skeletons has died]

Jay exhaled with a heavy breath, only just escaping the feeling of death right before the beast came crashing down on his hosted skeleton.

“Dammit. What the fuck was that thing...”

For a brief moment, Heavy and Dark looked up at him, but soon went back to slashing their swords in the air as they trained themselves, minding their own business.

Jay added more bones to his pile and began his summoning ritual. In no time, all his skeletons were summoned once again and it wasn't long before they were equipped too.

“Try to at least do some damage this time.” he shook his head, disappointed in his skeleton as they ran off once more.

Jay had not been paying enough attention to the time, but it was clear the beast was getting closer, as the skeletons were dying more frequently.

For the beast though, it would simply be encountering skeletons more regularly as it drew closer to Jay, probably thinking it was getting deeper into enemy territory where there were more patrols.

Jay went back to meditating, recovering his mana while the skeletons ran back into battle.

The meditation didn't last very long, and not even thirty minutes passed before he started receiving the death notifications once more.

Unfortunately, he responded a little too slowly as he was meditating, and before he could come to his senses they were all dead again.

“Shit... thirty minutes away...”

Before he began summoning again, Jay checked the desert progress. It seemed that Handy was almost done with clearing a path across the mushroom field.

In the back of Jay's head, he knew his options were to either keep running along the desert, trapped between the cliffs and the mushroom desert until nightfall, slay the beast, or cross the mushroom field now while he had a path open and hopefully it wouldn't follow.

With a worried look, Jay summoned them all again and remade their weapons.

He was getting annoyed that they were dying to one single enemy so quickly, and he didn't care for excuses, but the skeletons didn't make any either, they simply carried out their task without any hesitation.

Jay pointed his finger with a quick angry gesture towards where the beast was coming from.

The skeletons dashed off once more, but Blue lingered for a moment, glancing at Heavy and Dark.

Blue seemed to be interested in the skeletons strange behavior, almost sensing that they were different, but after a moment Blue dashed away and followed the other skeletons.

“You'll get a mind soon too, Blue. Just as soon as we're safe...” Jay nodded.

“Why is Blue curious anyway... Hmm. Perhaps getting a mind is a natural progress kind of thing. Or perhaps it's just my own subconscious, interested in my own skeletons...” Jay scratched his chin, wondering for a moment before making some preparations.

Instead of meditating this time, Jay began to craft more weapons instead.

He made the usual sets of weapons for the skeletons - in this case, ossein swords for Sweeper, Lamp, Blue and Red, and then crafted another set of six daggers along with six spears.

All of the products were level three except for the spears which Jay needed more practice with, though he was quite happy to see that his swords were now level three even though he didn't use any silt-wolf bones.

As Jay crafted, he wondered if he would be able to give his weapons abilities or if it was a random chance that they would get them. Perhaps it was a matter of design, like with the shields.

He remembered the impressive cloud spear that the guard Paul wielded, and considered his own shield was a unique one with abilities.

Technically his swords did have abilities, such as their lifespan ability, but those were just passives on all his undead weapons.

Jay wanted to simply sit down and spend a day, or even a few weeks, simply crafting weapons or working on his spells and research, but between levelling up, and experimenting when he first started, or his current predicament of being on the run, there was simply no time to do anything.

Plus, he now had to give the skeletons minds and then have them re-train with each other.

With his to-do list growing he was feeling mentally fatigued, and in this pressing situation of the beast now closer than ever, the signs of stress were beginning to show.

[Your skeleton has died]