BXBX NOVEL Chapter 159 Mist Keep
Out of the hundred or so adventurers, only a handful of only the most dedicated were going to mist keep to continue fighting.
As they arrived, it seems that Dan, Conroy, the mace-guy and the composite-bow girl were there, having formed a party after today.
Jay and Anya only nodded at them as they went in themselves.
Stepping into the dungeon, they found themselves next to Estobar’s throne. The pyramid was still opened up, split into two halves, and the dark inside seemed to almost welcome the dreary light from the sky, along with the warm adventurers.
“Okay, so -” Jay was cut off.
“What did you do?!” Anya was shocked, “we’re at the third pyramid right?!”
She then talked to herself for a moment as she looked around.
“There’s no way this is the fourth. No one is that quick. So it has to be the third… but it can’t be… you’re not supposed to be able to enter back here, it’s not meant to be conquered…?”
Anya remembered the conversation she had last night in the guild mess hall with a guard. She remembered what the man said: you can’t teleport to the third pyramid because you can’t conquer it.
She had planned to explain it to Jay with a hint of satisfaction – but no, instead she was the one who was shocked.
Here they were – teleported to the third pyramid, a ramp leading downwards in the ruined city heading to the fourth pyramid.
“Are you done? We’ve got monsters to kill.” Jay said, walking over to a pile of soul stones and helvetian rings.
[Soul Stones] (Empty) x 15
[Helvetian Rings x 2]
“Huh, wonder why the rings are so low.” Jay raised a brow, “Oh well, at least they’re collecting them now.”
Next, Jay took out some bones from his gauntlet as he summoned his fifth skeleton.
Slowly but surely, his undead army was getting larger and more powerful..
“Arise.” he said, necrotic mana leaving the same hand his gauntlet was on.
Strangely, the mana seemed to travel through the gauntlet’s fingertips and exit through the claw tips, making it seem like Jay was a puppet master.
“Interesting…” he thought as the bones began to move.
For a moment, the bones lifted and floated up before klinking down again. Nothing happened.
“Something wrong?” Anya asked with a cheeky smile.
It seemed she had recovered from the shock and she simply accepted it was another crazy thing Jay had done.
“Just… give me a sec.” Jay gestured her off.
“Sure.” Anya said as she went to look around in this massive open pyramid.
Sadly, none of the walls had anything on them. After a small search she simply gazed into the ruins towards the fourth pyramid.
Jay began checking his skill, trying to find out why the skeleton wasn’t summoning properly.
“Hmm… what’s the problem… is it the raise feeble creature skill again?”
Jay tried again, and again the bones harmlessly clinked on the ground.
Re-reading the skill, he realised the problem and felt a little silly – he had this problem before when he tried to raise a skeleton using a wolf corpse: ‘must be cast on a small corpse’.
It seemed that so far, only the street rat and soap rat corpses counted as small corpses.
“Well, thankfully I have a bunch of soap rat corpses.” He smiled gladly.
Jay took out some rat bones and a skull, repeating the raising process. This time, the summoning was a success.
“There we go” he smiled, “It’s good not having to waste my time running around, chasing after bullshit” he thought, glad he decided to stockpile some rat corpses.
The new level 1 feeble creature stood there, gazing at its master.
“Huh, It’s smaller than I remember.” he thought as he gazed back into its hungry eyes.
Just like the other skeletons, it was keenly ready to sink its claws into some flesh.
Anya usually would watch the summoning, but at the moment she was looking at the weird throne with all its strange instruments dotted around it.
The young feeble creature looked at her, ready to slay her as soon as it was given the order. It seemed like it was wondering why there was a human around that wasn’t dead yet.
“Don’t touch her.” Jay squinted at it, sending a powerful thought.
The creature immediately turned and looked at its master, waiting for orders.
Jay had already summoned his other skeletons back to him as soon as he entered the dungeon. Like usual, he wasn’t going to progress further without them around.
“Here we are.” Jay smiled, seeing all four of them return, “Why are their arms and hands black? Weird…”
Anya freaked out once more, seeing the mob of undead return.
“Wow, you got them armour? Freaking armour? I don’t even have any armour…. Even you don’t have any and you gave them some.”
“Well, that’s a shame – but not entirely true.” Jay smiled mischievously and immediately donned his new armour.
[Necrotic Greaves] x 2
[Necrotic Vambrance] x 1
[Necrotic Barbute Helmet] x 1
“No way, you have armour now too? That’s so unfair.” Anya shook her head.
“It is what it is.” Jay shrugged as he noticed something on the skeletons.
“Oh, they have a few scratches on their armour… good. I’ve been wanting to test this.”
Jay took out some bones from his gauntlet, making a tidy little pile on the ground.
“Feast.” he gestured to his skeletons, and each of them began happily munching away.
Anya’s face grimaced a little as she watched this, It was simply too unnatural.
“Say Jay, have you seen this?” she pointed at the throne with Estobar’s corpse still lying on it.
“Seen what?”
“This old guy? He had a note in his pocket.”
“Huh? No? I mean, I used my loot skill on him but… I guess the note didn’t count as loot?” Jay raised a brow, “What’s it say?”
“Here.” she said, handing it to him.
It seemed to be some sort of personal diary entries. Each of them began a little less legible as they went.
[~ I’m glad Heidi volunteered to be here. She really makes this compound a little less dark.
[~ I worry for Heidi, my assistant. Each passing day, I see the light fade from her eyes, replaced by desperation.
[~ Heidi always wanted children, and even after she turned part of her body to the cursed stone, it seems that she didn’t give up. She has already created some different creatures using her own blood – but she assures me that it’s purely for experimentation.
[~ Heidi is changing herself… She says it’s for the revenge pact, but I think the motives are obvious.
[~ Her – no. It. Its drive for offspring has only magnified as we have both aged. Perhaps our life-scaling chemicals are warping our minds. It gave up pieces of itself as time went by. Amputating itself, implanting different parts from other creatures, and conducting small-scale experiments on its own flesh.
[~ It released some specimens from containment and tried to leave in the chaos. I sealed the facility; we can only be opened from the outside now.
[~ Even parts of its own soul were not spared from the mad experiments, and the more pieces of itself it ripped away, the madder it got.
[~ Slowly it began adding parts of its experiments back into itself, eventually becoming the abominable beast that it is today. It’s hard to tell if it’s still alive, and I don’t think Heidi is still with us.
[~ It released more specimens… then killed some soldiers. It’s truly not human anymore. I have locked down the facility. No more experiments – we have failed.
[~ I will sit here on my immortal throne and will keep the pyramid locked down until the end of time, or until the stone guard saves me. If any of these creatures get free, our chance of revenge is lost. Perhaps everything will be lost – not that we had much left anyway.
[~ The pact must live on. Long live Helvetia’s revenge.
[~ Its making me mad, the constant scratching
[~ Chemicals I love chemicals feel good good
…
Jay took a big breath in after reading this.
“Fuck, so that’s what it was… also why it was mad enough to give half its soul up.” he thought.
“Pretty damn tragic… I suppose even emptiness can turn some people into monsters. While they don’t start out that way, it doesn’t mean they’re not currently monsters. Pity is not reserved for monsters.” he shrugged, scrunching up the note and tossing it away.
Anya looked at him as if expecting some emotional response – he was the one who dealt with the creature anyway.
“Oh, thanks by the way. That was enlightening.” Jay nodded and turned back to his new level 1 feeble creature.
Anya shook her head as Jay prepared his little minion.
“Hmm… I’ll have to make you some armour at some point… I guess it’d be a waste to make it now while you’re so little though.” he looked at the small skeleton, it was barely up to his waist.
“Hm, you’re probably too small to wield a hammer too… I guess a bone dagger would be better than nothing though.” Jay nodded before calling to Anya.
“Just give me a couple minutes, sorry.” he said.
Anya didn’t seem to mind, she was still looking around the ‘immortal throne’ as he pulled out some bones and sat down, preparing to make a dagger for his new minion.
“Hmm… now that I have level three scrimshaw I wonder if the dagger will be different?”
***Hello I have some exciting news! There may be a comic coming – we’re still working out the details though, but it should be great.
Who knows, maybe one day I may just become a full-time writer. That’d be a real dream.
Anyway, if you’d like to support me, there’s going to be a patreon-discord (with art, mechanics, hidden stats, monsters, ideas, uncut material, and QNA.)
So if you’d like to support me directly, here are the options:
buymeacoffee.com/MyNecromancer
*******.com/MyNecromancerClass
ko-fi.com/aero182
Our community strength is up to you. If we get enough support then we can run exciting events, and becoming a full-time writer may not just be a dream. For the ******* I’m planning to provide QNA discord chats, commission artists, host art/monster-idea competitions (which could end up in the book…?).
The discord is still in construction-phase but it’s looking pretty good so far
These links will be in the book description/synopsis too.***