Chapter: 696

“Hopefully I didn’t offend something…” he thought, trying to get his heart back under control, “Hopefully it will let me go. Whatever it is.” he shivered for a moment.

Once he was back into the deeper shaded parts of the forest, he felt some relief as he could no longer see the orange glow of the sun in that perfectly circular clearing.

The fear also disspiated and his heart and breathing both went back to normal levels.

Jay backtracked north, then went far to the east before heading south again. He used the sun as his compass since it set in the west, so finding which way to go wasn’t hard.

Jay believed he was getting closer to the edge of the blood-vine bears territory, so he decided to camp for the night.

“I bet the blood-vine bear stayed clear of that part of the forest too.” Jay thought, “And since ‘it’ didn’t kill the blood-vine bear, perhaps it won’t hunt me down and kill me.”

“Whatever ‘it’ was, or is…”

While he would have liked to continue travelling at night, he didn’t want the skeletons carrying him into something like that black soil circle while he slept on his throne.

Eventually, he found a natural cradle of interweaving roots surrounded by three ancient trees, each of their trunks as wide as a carriage which formed natural walls on three sides.

Compared to camping anywhere else, it was only slightly more advantageous.

Looking up into the tree tops, he wondered if anything dangerous could be lurking up there, but he still had not heard a sound, not even the chirps of birds coming into spring, so he assumed the blood-vine bear had picked these trees clean as well – both birds, snakes and sneaking threats in the tree tops had become water for its hungry blood vines.

“Hmm, this place looks as good as any.” he thought, but hesitated before stepping off his throne.

Jay suddenly grinned, “With no one around, I can finally camp the way a necromancer should…”


Jay glanced at the parasites in his arm before stepping down from his throne.

He felt a little relieved that they had not gotten bigger and weren’t more numerous.

It seemed that they were not feeding on him. For now at least – but he knew he had to get them out eventually.

Before Jay stepped off the throne, he held out his necrotic gauntlet.

Before his eyes, hundreds of bones began appearing out of a swirling green mist.

This spiral of bones began to get bigger and bigger as bones flying around and falling onto the forest floor.

Soon enough, the whole cradle of roots was covered in a thick layer of bones. Thick enough to protect Jay from any other parasites which could be crawling around below the ancient tree roots.

“Now that looks better” Jay smiled.

He added much smaller bones on top to fill in the cracks between the larger femurs and ribs below, creating a more flat and smoother surface to walk on – most of the smaller bones being from fingers or remains of shattered larger ones.

All in all, the cradle of bones was about the size of Jay’s butchery shop.

“Now.” he said, ordering his skeletons to carry him closer to the platform.