Chapter: 122

“Wait, what the.. What am I even thinking…” Jay shook his head, almost chucking to himself as he caught his own thoughts.

“…maybe my mind is starting to change?” he wondered to himself, since his thoughts were preoccupied by the bones of his enemies.

The day went by quickly as the party jogged towards the village, though Anya had to stop the party to rest since her energy dropped below 20% first.

“Uh, guys? I need to rest, I’m getting low now.”

“Ah ok. Looks like we made it pretty far anyway.” Mark said, as they all stopped jogging. Mark and Jay were both smiling at Anya for different reasons – friendliness and slyness – while Kel didn’t show or say anything as she went to sit down on a nearby mossy stone.

They had run about 15% of the way so far, however, energy would regenerate pretty quickly if they meditated so they could still make it most of the way today. It would slowly come back even if they were walking, but meditation would progress it much faster, at a rate of 1 energy every ten minutes when done at the most basic level; they would only get better if they practiced afterall.

“Hmm, it’s been a while since I’ve tried this..” Jay thought as he sat cross-legged “though thanks to my lesson with viladore and my constant use of mana, i feel like I have a much better understanding of it.”

After Jay began to channel the ambient mana into his body, he felt as if he was full of energy once more. After ten minutes passed, he checked his energy levels.

[Energy – 25/40]

“Wow, I’m up to three every ten minutes” he calculated since he started at 22/40 “Guess I’ll only need thirty minutes more and I’ll be back to full…”

Realizing he wasn’t alone, he frowned knowing he would have to simply wait for the others to regenerate – taking one hour and thirty minutes if they were not that skilled with mana manipulation – and he guessed Anya definitely would be.

“Hmm, I might as well do some scouting.” Jay left the others while they meditated, entering the forest to secure the perimeter.

Jay was using this time to check his minions’ health as well as retrieve the stink-rat teeth they were keeping for him. Once he was far enough away from the others, he willed his minions to return to him. It only took a few seconds before he heard a sound in the forest.

Two skeletons with wolf-skulls ran at him at full speed, faster than a human – then suddenly stopped as they reported for duty. Jay had to take a step back, thinking they had way too much momentum to even be able to stop.

“Huh, where’s the other one…”

A dark-blue blur went past some trees to his right, then before he could even react, his three minions were before him – but something was different. One of them, Blue, had levelled up.

Jay was speechless at the changes to his minion’s body. He even forgot about the rat teeth they were bringing him.

Blue was as tall as Jay now, with eyes glowing green staring back at him. They seemed to pierce his soul.

From inside it’s wolf-skull, a green, glowing cluster of arteries continued down its spine to form a small lump in the centre of it’s ribcage; its ghostly eye’s weren’t the only thing illuminated anymore. The lump didn’t physically pulse, but the glowing light it emitted pulsed.

Translucent branch-like structures stemmed out from it, arteries and veins covering it’s skeletal body, radiating from the lump in its rib cage – they appeared to be filled with the green gas.

“Bleh!” Jay instinctively spat. As he was trying to look at his new skeleton, a random spider web thread flew onto his face out of nowhere. He picked it off and wiped his face a few times before continuing to inspect his creature.

The spine was surrounded by tiny bone plates, making it look more like it had an armoured centipede as it’s backbone. The horns on its head had disappeared now – though at first Jay assumed they would only grow bigger as it levelled up – he could only speculate about the purpose the horns originally served.

As Jay analysed it, he realized it was at half-health, so he healed it up. This only resulted in the green gas flowing into the tree-like branches of arteries covering it’s skeletal structure to glow a little more, seemingly resupplying it.

“It’s bones got thicker too?” Jay could see they had somehow not only lengthened, but thickened too.

“…But where did it get the extra bone mass from..”