Chapter: 813
Jay finished his thoughts before assessing the damage.
“I’ll have to question her some more, but I’ll need to do it in such a way that she doesn’t get tired of my questions…
If she commands me to ‘stop asking questions’, there will be no point in continuing the lie, and then, no more reliable information.” Jay nodded, and moved closer to inspect the root.
“No parasites… interesting.” He thought, crouching down and rubbing some green fluid between his fingers before wiping it on the ground. It wasn’t as sticky as it looked, and nothing at all like blood.
Thinking of blood, Jay had an idea.
“Hmm… why haven’t I tried this before?”
Pulling out the needle of the starved, he prodded the dripping remains of the root.
“Red. Tainted. So even the plant-monsters are tainted huh?” he stashed the needle away again.
“I ought to try it on one of those knights - while they’re still alive that is. Maybe a parasite egg too.”
His eyes noticed something moving in the pit.
Jay glanced back down into the dark cavity, and the flower-like flaps had seemed to lose their strength and began to open up.
While Jay had become used to the boneless, skinless horrors that he and his skeletons left behind, seeing the semi-digested remains turned his face sour.
Jay looked at the root the skeletons just cut, trailing deeper into the knight’s territory.
It was no longer moving and didn’t seem alive anymore.
“Alright. We’ll follow this root. Blue, you’re in charge…”
“also…” Jay glanced at Blue with a warm smile, “well done back there.”
“I think I’m starting to feel… hmm. Actually, it would sound weird to say, but nice work.” he smiled.
Blue looked at Jay, not really understanding what this meant, how it related to battle tactics or slaying his enemies, but it clapped its jaws in affirmation and continued on with its duties, as diligent as ever.
Blue sorted the skeletons into the same formation as before: Lamp scouting further in front, with Red and Blue at each side of Jay.
As for Handy, Blue had it march directly behind Jay - while Sweeper was much further back, comparatively.
Jay’s group walked along, following the thick root. It had since stopped all its squeezing motions, no longer pumping the green fluid through itself which Jay accurately guessed was nutrients from the corpses.
But if someone were to cut off the supply of nutrients to wherever this root was going, then what would the response be?
Clunking clanks of rusting armor sounded in the forest, yet Jay was already concealed at the edge of the trail as his skeletons had pre-warned and protected him.
Jay was realizing that effective commanding relied not only on orders flowing down, but on information flowing up the chain of command - from his scouts back to himself.