Chapter 11: The Living Need, The Dead Provide

Chapter 11: The Living Need, The Dead Provide

Jadis had to admit, she was a dirty girl.

“...Do I still call myself a girl?” She pondered, eyes turning to her half-erect dicks. She shook the thought off. She’d been calling herself by feminine pronouns for way too long to change now.

In any case, she was exceptionally filthy, and not just in a figurative sense. Having gone two full days now without any kind of bathing, she would have been a bit rank even if she hadn’t been rolling around in the dirt fighting for her life against multiple bone demons. The morning’s activities, as pleasurable as they were, had not helped matters.

Jadis used her hands to swipe at the sticky mess coating her, still impressed by the sheer quantity of seed she’d pumped out. She didn’t think she could honestly complain, since it was a definite turn-on for her, but the volume was causing her problems when it came to cleanup.

“Okay, first things first,” she said, licking her fingers clean, “I’m starving. I don’t know how much I drank from myself there, but I need some real food.”

“Then, I need a bath. Hygiene is important, especially with all these cuts—Oh!”

Jadis cut herself off, realizing that she still needed to check the status of her health pool. Since she’d gained the Knight’s Rest skill, she was hoping she’d healed more over this last night than the one before. Concentrating, she pulled up her menu.

Jadis AhlstromRêAd lateSt chapters at novelhall.com Only

Race: Nephilim

Primary Class: Mirror Knight (5)

Secondary Class: None

Tertiary Class: None

Combined Level Rating: 5

Health: 165/220

Magic: 10/10

Attributes

Strength: 33

Dexterity: 10

Agility: 10

Vitality: 22

Fortitude: 15

Endurance: 15

Arcane: 0

Divine: 0

Eldritch: 70

No attack came. If there were still skeletal monstrosities about, they were waiting within the buildings where she couldn’t see them.

Deciding to resume where she had left off the day before, Jadis headed to the building she had been about to check before spotting the big-armed bone demon. House by house, room by room, she searched for anything of value to her survival. All the while she kept one of her bodies on the lookout, eyes and ears on constant alert for signs of hostile attention.

For the first few stone buildings, her luck was much the same as had been for the other houses she’d checked before. Nothing of worth was left behind, just scraps of wood and molded cloth, sometimes a few rusty cooking utensils. The fourth structure she searched, however, held a grisly prize within.

In the basement, for this building had one, Jadis found the remains of a dead person.

There wasn’t much left of the man. Desiccated bits of flesh and hair were strewn across a corner of the stone-tiled floor, some kind of leather and metal armor scattered in a pile of twisted bits. There were no bones left at all, but a braided pile of dark brown hair still attached to dried skin told Jadis this had probably been a man at one point, with an impressively large beard.

“Definitely dwarves,” she whispered, nose wrinkled as she crouched over the remains. “Gotta be with that kind of advanced facial hair.”

Other than the corpse, Jadis spotted something of real value tossed to the ground nearby. A leather backpack, probably once belonging to the dead dwarf, was left untouched by demon hands.

Slipping the straps open, she searched the contents. Laying out what she found inside, she catalogued her recovered loot.

A rough spun shirt and a pair of patched leather pants. One steel canteen, free of rust. One length of rope, maybe forty or fifty feet long. A small leather pouch with a lot more of the silver coins she’d found before, in both sizes. A second pouch filled with a variety of simple jewelry, including rings, bracelets, and necklaces. A bag of something that had probably been food at one point but was little more than black mold. Four bronze candlesticks. One steel dagger a little larger than the one she already had, but with a less ornamental hilt. A tightly rolled up woolen blanket.

Jadis immediately threw away the sack of spoiled food, not wanting to even bother trying to recover the bag from that mess of decayed filth. The rest she put back inside the backpack and tossed it up the cellar stairs for her twin to hold onto.

Clearly, the dead dwarf had been looting the village, too. Though perhaps he had been looting in a more monetary focused sense than her, since he’d focused on coins and jewelry. She might have a use for the trinkets one day, but Jadis was most excited by the rope, dagger, and blanket. Those items seemed of far more practical value to her situation.

She wasn’t done searching the basement, though. If the looter had come to the village with the express purpose of searching for valuables, the man had no doubt come more prepared than with a simple dagger for protection.

There, hidden under an overturned shelf, Jadis found what she knew had to be somewhere in the basement; The dwarf’s weapon.

The dwarf had apparently been an axe man. The handaxe felt like a hatchet in Jadis’ hands, but it was made of solid steel and little rust marred its surface. The edge had a few chips in it but looked plenty sharp in her opinion. Giving it a few test swings, Jadis took the weapon with her happily, grateful to have expanded her arsenal.

“Thanks,” she said to the remains, “I hope you’ve gone off to whatever afterlife you were hoping for.”

As she came out of the cellar, Jadis spotted the sheen of metal partially hidden in the weeds a few feet away from the stone hut. Checking the spot, she found a partially rusted crossbow. The wood was rotting and the string was gone, so she left it where it was.

“Axe and crossbow, huh?” She mused as she gathered up her looted pack. “Guess those weren’t super effective against the bone thieves.”

Jadis continued her search of the village, finding more useful items here and there, but no more dead adventurers or whatever the dwarf had been. By midday, aside from what she’d looted from the backpack, she’d found two more usable blankets, a fur skin rug that had come from something large enough to be a bear, but with gray and black striped fur, a cast-iron frying pan that had avoided enough weather to not get unusably rusty, and a wooden box containing a sewing kit, complete with needles and thread.

The final score came from a building on the far southern edge of the village that had been surrounded by wooden racks and barrels. It didn’t take long for Jadis to figure out that this had been some kind of leatherworker’s shop.

The workshop had held dozens of animal skins and leather, much of it unusable due to exposure and rot. However, there was still quite a bit that wasn’t bad off at all, the leather on top protecting the stacks underneath. All in all, Jadis was able to salvage twelve good-sized cuts of leather and seven more cuts of less processed-looking hide.

Most of the tools she found didn’t look like they were useful or in good condition, so she mostly left them behind, but she did find a couple of wooden mallets that she could see possible uses for.

All in all, Jadis felt her excursion into the village had been a great success. Gathering everything she had found between the two of her, she headed back for her home base. She’d searched half the village and there were probably more buildings beyond the western side and into the woods, but what she had found so far was more than enough for her to carry. She still needed to keep a couple hands free for her clubs.

Jadis smiled a dual smile as she headed back to her little hut, already thinking up ways she could use the leather and hide to make some real clothes, maybe something that could actually serve as some kind of protection. As she walked and planned, she almost missed the slight movement of white at the corner of her home base.

Both bodies dropping low, Jadis hid behind a couple of pine trees as best she could, watching the edge of the hut.

As she watched, a skeletal abomination stalked into view, a gentle click of bone on bone the only sound audible. Jadis quietly lowered her salvaged supplies to the ground and readied her clubs. She had an uninvited guest to greet.