BXBX NOVEL Chapter 171 Upstairs 1
Anya waited patiently nearby as Jay sat down next to a pile of bones. He resummoned his dead skeletons and began working on their new hammers.
It was a faster process since he knew how to craft them and already had the designs in his head, but they both came out as higher quality bone hammers. It seemed that the combination of steel ingot and his level three scrimshaw skill resulted in a better product.
<[Bone Hammer Level 3]> (Steel Ingot) x 2
[10 damage – crushing, bludgeoning]
[0.1 damage – elemental]
[5% chance to stun or cripple targets – Dependant on point of impact]
[Lifespan – Requires necrotic essence to maintain it’s form]
[Current lifespan: 20 hours]
“Not bad” Jay said as he admired his handiwork.
The steel part of the makeshift necrotic hammer still gave off little glints of light. It seemed that the residual sparkling ore gave a small elemental damage bonus.
Still, the 10 damage was a massive boost in power compared to the other bone hammers which were doing 6 damage. It was even stronger than Jay’s ossein arming sword now.
Jay decided to make himself a better hammer; using his necrotic mana, he melted away the bone from one of the other ones and saved the iron bar, before using it to craft another.
<[Bone Hammer Level 2]> (Iron Bar)
[8 damage – crushing, bludgeoning]
[5% chance to stun or cripple targets – Dependant on point of impact]
[Lifespan – Requires necrotic essence to maintain it’s form]
[Current lifespan: 10 hours].
“Not too bad.” Jay nodded, standing up again.
He would have re-crafted the others but he decided to save his mana, he was getting low from all the summoning and crafting.
With one last look around the room, there really was nothing worth taking. All the metal tools would not enter his inventory, and hence could not leave the dungeon. It was almost like the most lucrative rewards were at the start, when he could have taken all the sparkling ore. Basically it was like a reversed dungeon.
Still, the exp was worth it to fight the boss for. Jay would have done it differently if he knew how powerful it was, but in the end it was worth it.
“Have you finished crafting your things?” Anya asked with a yawn.
“Yep. Let’s see what’s up the stairs.” Jay pointed to the passageway.
They both walked back down the passage they came down, though Jay gave one last look at the cube-forge. It was an impressive piece of magical technology after all.
When they made it back to the stairs, they entered stealth-mode again; Jay and Anya cautiously crept up the stone stairs to the top floor this time.
They didn’t know what to expect but if it was anything like the blacksmith statue there would be a possibility of instant death.
It was pitch black again, and Jay decided to hand his cheaper luminous orb to the feeble creature. It could do the scouting for them since they couldn’t see very far ahead anyway, a safety precaution of sorts.
Jay wasn’t exactly sure how the statues had any vision at all, but it seemed that neither light nor darkness made a difference to them, which worked in their favour as seeing a glowing orb across the room would have been like a beacon.
Reaching the top of the stairs, they looked around and to their fear they entered a room full of weapon racks – all covered with glistening Helvetian steel weapons.
Most of the swords and spears were the ones they typically saw the soldier statues carrying, but among them were a few daggers and other odd weapons – some looked like fists with spikes on them while others were sickle-shaped attached to long chains.
One of them was just a metal hat with a sharpened rim. Very edgy.
Jay was slowly getting ideas for future weapons for his minions, but Anya had other thoughts.
“Imagine if the blacksmith was up here…” she whispered.
Jay didn’t nod or respond to her whisper.
He knew it would have been fine since the blacksmith was bonded with its hammers which is why it was so powerful, but he decided to say nothing.
It would take too long to explain and it wouldn’t change anything anyway.
Finally they spotted the first enemies.
Some stone statues which had no legs or lower torso simply floated around. Each of their T-shaped helmets had distinctive wings pointing upwards from the ears, while their hands came equipped with spindly claw armour – though in this case it would be more accurate to call them claw weapons.
Two of these floating statues were rushing about busily. Each of their long claw gauntlets working with various weapons and tools.
Jay and Anya hid behind a spear rack as they watched them move about.
One would grab a metal weapon from the rack, and it would wait a moment as it turned to stone due to the helvetia curse before handing it to the other. The other would sharpen it on a circular grinding stone, attempting to restore some of its former pre-cursed glory.
A sense of sadness grew in Jay as he saw the lovely weapons being massively downgraded into stone variants.
It seemed that the curse would make the pristine weapons become blunt and round, so after they turned to stone the sharpening process was necessary.
Still, much of their quality and damage was lost. The weapons were like shadows of their former selves.
“This production process would have been implemented after the curse.” Jay thought as he patiently watched.
The floating statue then carried the stone weapons to different weapon racks deeper into the room.
“Huh, but what’s the point if there’s no new soldiers?” Jay scratched his chin as he squinted.
Looking around at the weapons around him, a mischievous grin appeared on Jay’s face as he attempted to add every single weapon around him into his inventory.
Unfortunately he couldn’t. These weapons were also part of the dungeon.
“Fair enough,” He shrugged, “Becoming rich overnight shouldn’t be so easy”.
Before planning anything, Jay diligently analysed the enemies.
<[Embroidered Truth Guards – Level 5]>
[HP 70/70]
[Damage]
– 5 (claw gauntlet)
<[Skills]>
[Seeking Toxin]
– Poisons enemies from afar, weakening them for the guards to finish
– Ignores armour
– 4 poison damage per second
– Can stack (4) times
– Duration: 4 seconds
[Rend]
– Uses its claw gauntlets to slash frantically at enemies, cleaving deep into the flesh
– Ignores armour
– 5 flat damage
– 5 bleed damage/2 seconds
– Can stack (4) times
– Duration: 4 seconds
<[Description]>
[Only the most esteemed Helvetian upper mages went through the process to transform into the truth guards. Before the transformation ritual, they will go through another procedure in which their mana pool is ripped out; their mortal bodies tremble endlessly from the pain. Their mana pool is melded with a forbidden metal and is then fused onto their new stone bodies. They are weakened from the process and are merely relics of their former selves, but their desire to keep their mana is almost as strong as their thirst for revenge.]
“Hmm, forbidden metal huh…” Jay squinted at them.
“…I will just have to scrape it off their bodies” he thought as he smiled fiendishly.
Jay and Anya crept a little further away so they could plan an attack. The enemies had quite low health compared to some other monsters, so they weren’t very alarmed.
Hiding behind some shield racks, they came up with a plan.
It was a relatively simple strategy: attack the one grinding while the other went to fetch a weapon – let the skeletons do all the attacking until the enemies targeted Jay, then Anya could get to work doing heavy crossbow damage.
After they were done with their hushed whispering they crept back again and waited till the grinding statue was alone.
“Now!” Jay mentally yelled a thought-command to his skeletons.
Each of the skeletons rushed from behind different weapon racks and slammed their hammers against the statues back.
Instead of falling forward like one might expect, this was a floating statue – It went spinning helplessly across the room, smashing into some weapon racks and causing destruction to the equipment.
“Nice.” Jay grinned, seeing how his skeletons made it pathetically crumple against their hammers; If it had a spine it would have been shattered.
However the battle wasn’t over – the statue wasn’t dead, while the banging sounds of the falling weapons alerted everything in the room.
*…Doon… Doon… Doon…*
It turns out that the two floating statues were not the only ones here. Something had been awakened.
More heavy footsteps sounded, approaching from the back of the room.
“Hmm…” Jay squinted, trying to see anything.
The second hovering statue was already beginning to cast its poison spells on the skeletons, though they were still completely ineffective.
Would their spells work on the undead? Of course not.
Like the other stone soldiers in this dungeon, it was clear that they had lost their intelligence with the passage of time.
Perhaps they had other useful offensive spells before but these would have been long forgotten.
The purple spells harmlessly floated into the skeleton rib cages before dispersing into nothingness.
“Tch,” Jay shook his head, pitying the floating statues.
All this time he had a bone pile next to him and was ready to summon skeletons, but it seems that for now he was overprepared.
Still, this would have been difficult for a normal party of adventurers, as the truth guards could deal as much as 16 damage per second with their poison spell, but for Jay, it was as easy as a walk in the park.
All he had to do was watch and wait.
*Doon… Doon… Doon…*