Chapter 220 Activated Protocol 1

Number Three was the closest mage hunter to Jay, and felt like he should have found him by now. Even he was surprised a level nine adventurer had this much endurance.

Number Three trudged through the boulders, dirt, and over the rocky terrain on the side of the supreme mountain range.

Clouds seemed to pass over it high above, each of them speeding overhead but resoundingly quiet.

Following the trail of dead skeletons and strange tracks, he finally came to its end.

He began to analyze it as if it were a crime scene.

“Four skeletons put up a fight here…”

“No more tracks along the mountain…”

Finally, he noticed something under the curtains of tendrils hanging from the mushrooms.

“… Bones in the desert? But why cross here, of all places?” he wondered.

The desert had no tracks in it as there was movements under the sand, constantly shifting it around.

The little lizards plucking the fruit were still hard at work and destroying any signs that someone went across the desert.

Any signs except for the pile of bones under a large mushroom in the center.

Instead of pursuing immediately, Number Three first took something out of his inventory. Channeling some mana into it, he placed the strange item on a rock.

It was a fist-sized black sphere with a red band around it. After a moment it began to hover in the air and a red beam of light shot out of it.

Number Three turned it to face across the desert, and left it floating there.

It was a beacon. A marker.

Nothing special, simply a way for the other mage hunters to follow in his foot steps.

So far, he had guided the others by telling them he walked along the side of the mountain, between the cliffs and the desert, but now he was going to need his beacons.

While walking along the desert he was travelling south-west, but his beacon pointed south-east across the desert, which is where he was headed.

For a moment he simply stood there and gazed into the forest on the other side, wondering.

Number Three couldn’t help but wonder why Jay crossed here, of all places. It made more sense to him to keep following along the easy terrain on the edge of the desert.

Because of this, he was having a hard time trying to get into the mind of the young human necromancer.

As far as he could tell, Jays behaviour was both calculated and erratic. Blind but mindful.

A part of him still doubted that he was even following Jay since there were no human-sized shoe prints. Just skeletons and odd markings.

“Perhaps the bastards hiding in the cliffs, laughing at me. Maybe he’s not being pursued by a beast at all.” he started wondering, thinking that perhaps it was all an elaborate ruse.

The long journey seemed to be weighing on his mind as well, making him more paranoid than usual.

Number Three had no just been tracking Jay for the last day and a half, but spent days marching to Losla from the capital too – and without any rest.

Being awake for nearly a week may have been okay for his level forty-eight body, but his mind still needed rest. The subtle signs of madness were beginning to show.

After deploying the navigation beacon, he began his trudge through the desert.

His armour boots sunk deeply into the sand with each step, and the weight of the rest of his armour made them sink half-way up his calve.

The powered armour suit itself was heavier than any human could bear, heavier than ten humans combined could carry, but with a supply of mana and the adventurer strength of a level forty-eight soldier it was manageable. The mana kept it moving without much effort at all.

As he trudged through the sand, some small lizards caught his attention as they began to harass him.

Number Three glared at them in disdain through his helmet. The little things were attacking him with something which was leaving hardened red plaques on his sacred armour.

“Pests.” he grunted, raising a foot high into the air.

He chanelled some mana into the suit, and it responded in kind with explosive power.

He brought his large boot down with so much force that it caused a shockwave to travel through the sand, a wave of yellow hot sand shot out from around him like a wall. Even the rocks on the mountain trembled.

Nearby lizards were crushed and shocked to bits while ones further away were stunned for a moment.

The sands around him were stained red, with himself at the centre of a shallow hole.

Number Three kept marching through the desert, but it seemed that his problems weren’t over. The dead lizards attracted even more lizards, smelling the scent of blood.

Before he could even make it half-way, the dead lizards had already been consumed while a large group of lizards were now charging at him through the sand.

“I should have just jumped over the whole desert.” he thought, though first he had to investigate the bone pile in the middle.

All the way, the lizards were attaching the hard red plaque to his armour.

To even Number Three’s surprise, it was difficult to stomp off and remove these weird chunks of red material. He could remove surface-level chunks of it which were sticking out and not attached very well, but the deeper parts underneath seemed to fuse and harden, solidifying even further, making them impossible to remove.

Three didn’t swing his sword at it though, since it was obviously, a sword.

It wasn’t the right tool for the job, and his military training wouldn’t allow him to blunt his weapon on such a thing.

The harder red plaques would be removed after some grinding or chizzled away when he returned back to base, by some lower ranking soldier.

Perhaps a town guard, or even a peasant would be forced to do such a duty, but not him, and definitely not his sword. It was below him.

Number Three was smiling slightly, imagining the poor bastard who would have to clean his armour. Every time another small red fruit burst onto his boot, he smiled more.

After all, this wasn’t a life threatening situation, it was simply an annoyance.

Unfortunately though, some were even added to the very base of his boot, and soon it was like he was walking with balls attached to his boots, which served to slow him down and throw him off-balance.

Finally though, he approached the bones in the centre of the desert where he saw the pile of bones.

A few more broken bone spears were near the pile, each of them forged somehow into long smooth shafts.

Each time he saw them he wondered how it was possible that bone was formed into different shapes, or even what creature it could have come from if it wasn’t somehow formed.

Staring at the bone pile for a moment, he was glad that he didn’t find Jay’s body there, so he kept tracking him, looking for clues.

After tossing through a few of the bones he didn’t find anything of interest.

More bones were strewn between the forest and where he was standing now too, so there was still a path at least.

“The others will find this.” he thought, leaving the bone pile behind.

As he pushed through some of the hanging tendrils, he suddenly felt something tugging on him.

His instincts kicked in as he did a backwards slash with his sword while using a movement-ability to dodge whatever attack was coming. In a matter of seconds even more sand was kicked up into a wild cloud of yellow stinging sand.

The power from his sword slash alone made a dust cloud, as his movement ability didn’t activate due to there not being any attacker – a requirement for the defensive ability to activate.

Looking at what was tugging on him, he seemed confused, and even a little foolish for responding with such a threatening attack.

“Mushroom?” he thought, seeing one of its tendrils tugging harmlessly on his shoulder.