BXBX NOVEL Chapter 308 Goblin Wand
“Wait…” he raised a brow.
(Slow down.) he ordered.
The boulders only raised slightly, and to Jay’s surprise, they didn’t give chase. In fact, they weren’t fast at all.
(Stop.)
The skeletons came to a halt as he watched the shifting boulders behind them and, without all the shaking, he noticed peculiarities.
Each of the giant boulders had a smaller one next to it, which moved too.
More of the moss pulled away as they moved and Jay saw that these were not stone elementals at all.
He was too far to analyze them, but he guessed accurately what they were.
“… Tortoises? Giant rock tortoises?”
He watched as they picked at and eat the moss off each other. The only one which didn’t eat was the one the helminth had attacked. It turned around and was slowly crawling away from Jay and his skeletons.
It seemed none of the others realized there was a threat around. Perhaps they thought their shells were impenetrable.
“Alright, resuming marching speed.” Jay said while glancing back.
The skeletons lowered their weapons and continued on the journey.
As the tortoises moved and caused the earth to shudder, more awakened from their long slumber, and soon they had all woken up. About a hundred of them, all as slow as each other, ignored Jay and his skeletons completely as they munched away at the moss carpet.
“We better fire our attacks in the air until I can set up a target range. I don’t want to risk awakening some ancient horror.” Jay said to his helminth.
The helminth snapped its jaws twice, which Jay accepted as an agreement.
He pointed into the sky, “Alright, show me again.”
The helminth charged and shot another necrotic bolt into the sky.
Jay guessed it went about 220 to 300 yards (200m) before slowing down and bursting into a dark green mist.
“Hmm, next time, maybe don’t aim it so high. Something out there could see it… definitely don’t fire at night.”
While in the daytime it was a nearly unnoticeable green ball, at night it would’ve been a glowing beacon. Especially when it burst into a cloud before dissipating.
Jay tried again, but this time, he tried to mimic the parasite’s jaws. Infront of his chest, he held his palms facing each other, and between them he funneled his mana into a ball, trying to push it together with his mind and hands.
He crammed as much mana as he could into the chaotic sphere, and as it started to deform and ripple, he released it, pushing both hands forwards at once.
A part of him felt a little childish doing such a movement to cast the spell. He had seen little kids in Losla doing the same gestures, imitating mages while they played.
The necrotic ball wasn’t as fast as his last one, but went further before it deformed and burst, getting about 16 feet (5m).
“Still pretty abysmal. I guess I’ll have to practice.” Jay thought, a little disappointed he didn’t get any notifications.
Jay tried to use his spell conduit, the goblin wand, but he couldn’t even form a ball with it.
The necrotic mana swirled around the wand, sticking to it, drawn to it like it was magnetized. Normally, Jay would need to hold it into shape so it wouldn’t disperse. Jay tried to mold it into a ball at the end, but it formed a cone shape instead.
“Hmm…”
Jay flicked the wand, but instead of an orb, it sent a wide leaf-shaped slash forwards. It was easy to tell from the green glow that it was necrotic magic, and the wand didn’t convert it to something else.
The first slash was quite slow as Jay had flicked slowly and only added about five mana to it, so he prepared another attack.
This time, he stood up on his throne and reeled his arm back.
Five mana, ten, twenty… the swirling cloud around the wand became thicker, darker, more potent.
Jay added up to fifty mana into the goblin wand, which caused it to shiver in his grip. It was enough to summon 10 level one skeletons.
“I think that’s enough.”
The swirling mana chaotically spun around the wand, looking like a raging dark-green river.
Jay horizontally snapped his arm forwards, releasing all connection and control of the mana.
The spell seemed to darken the world around them as he released it.
A great arc of deadly magic shot forwards, over the heads of the skeletons.
It sounded like a howling wind as it hungrily crossed over the stones.
As it went further, the arc grew wider.
The powerful spell grew weaker as it widened. It made it about 230 feet (70m) before it lost its shape and burst into a wide, glowing cloud.
The cloud itself was about 50 feet wide (15m).
Jay tried the spell again with less mana, around five. It traveled the same distance, but was only as wide as Jay’s forearm.
“Hmm, I wonder how strong it could be…” Jay wondered.
Regrettably, he received no notification, nothing about learning a new spell. He guessed it required a spell conduit, and that the conduit itself ‘knew’ the spell.
“I wonder, do different spell conduits cast different spells? How much control does the caster have over the spell channeled through the wand? Will different mana result in the same or different spells?” he wondered.
He tried again, doing a few different techniques. After experimenting with the wand, he came up with two new techniques.
A jet of necrotic mana which reached 10 feet (3m) forwards, appearing like a flame, and a swirling necrotic lance-shaped sword. Unfortunately, the lance was more like a thick cloud, and could not block or cut anything, giving it no use as an actual sword.
“Probably needs different magic types to be useful as a sword.” Jay shrugged, stashing it away.
“I wonder if my skeletons can use wands… hmm. Perhaps I could just craft one of their hands into a wand. A dedicated spell-caster would be a nice addition.” Jay thought, letting his imagination spin for a moment.
The two sub-skeletons of Blue had finished twirling some ghost silk twice.
Jay grabbed each end, but before letting it twist itself together, he brought out the first piece of ghost silk twine, which had a loop at the end. He slipped the second strand through the loop before letting it twist on itself.
“Hmm…” he frowned, holding his first bowstring.
The twists of two pieces of ghost-silk twine made it feel lumpy. It disappointed him a little, as it was pretty low-grade. He tied the loose ends away, making what was effectively a rope made of two twisted strands.
Jay had them craft another string. This time, he took out two clumps of ghost silk. Before handing them to the skeletons, he merged them and mixed them together into one larger piece, then broke them down into three smaller pieces.
He stretched the three pieces out, making each of them much longer, uniform in shape and length, before handing them to the two skeletons.
“Blue, have them twist one at a time. Once they make the three strands, twist them together... but twist them in the opposite direction when you combine the three strands.”
Jay quickly thought of changes to the process before adding the first bowstring into a bow. The second string will be better, however, he would still try to use the low-quality string in his first bow.
“Alright, now to make a tiny bow.” He thought, seeing the size of the level one skeleton he was making it for.
“Archers, you had better appreciate this.”