Chapter: 820
(Remove the head.) He ordered, not interested in doing the dirty work himself - and why would he when he has underlings?
As the head came off, Jay noticed there was still a centipede-like parasite residing in the spine, but it appeared much thicker.
(Pull it out.)
Handy lightly grabbed the creature from the decapitated head of the knight and Jay’s interest was piqued.
“I see… unlike the other knights, the parasite is the right way up? That’s probably why there’s still blood flow to the human’s head… well, nutrient flow.” Jay scratched his chin.
“Probably why the knight was smarter too. The parasite must be able to use its brain somehow. I bet this one could speak too.”
Jay had noticed a few other details about this knight too: there was no wriggling parasites in its blood, and after further investigation he found there were no eggs in its lungs either.
While its body contained the same parasite, it was used for different purposes.
“The other knights must have been like egg storage or breeders; their spinal parasites are upside down so they can focus on and tend to the eggs in the abdomen before spreading them to others. This intelligent knight must be more of a protector or a fighter… or a thinker?” Jay pondered.
“I suppose that’s also why it could use two hands - it’s other arm hasn’t been morphed into a delicate egg-implanting tube.” Jay patted his stomach, reassuring himself that there was no broken skin.
“It’s probably not as smart as a human though. I mean, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that the source of the skeletons is me, so it’s no wonder it went for me. I just need to be more careful… maybe it’s time I put that mass summoning skill to use.”
The skill Jay was speaking about was the skill which allowed him to leave a physical pool of necrotic mana within a pile a bones; skeletons would endlessly raise from it as long as either the bones or mana didn’t run out.
He could simply set and forget it while hiding in another part of the forest.
Jay also had the option of simply having the skeletons run away from his location before rejoining the battle, but while an elegantly simple solution, Jay desired to test this new ability.
Looking around, Jay first decided to loot the corpses - however, Blue interrupted him again.
Blue stood infront of him and pointed deeper into the safety of the forest.
“Oh, not now?” Jay frowned.
Blue pointed further into the forest again, and in a few moments Jay heard the familiar sounds of clunking armor.
“Ah, I’ll loot them later…”
Jay quickly gathered the bones around and waved his hand over the intelligent knight’s corpse, looting it without looking at what he got as he walked deeper into the forest.
“So… this must be why Blue had the skeletons all attack as quickly as possible instead of getting into a sneak attack position - there were more coming. Dammit.”
At the start of the fight with the seven knights they had since slain, Blue had all the skeletons instantly attack, and Jay had been wondering why until now.
It turns out that Lamp had scouted the first batch of seven knights coming, but following them were a second group - and by the sounds of the armor, a larger one.
The skeletons lined up at the edge of the tree-line, this time preparing for an ambush - yet as Jay looked along the root they had been following he soon saw the group of enemies.
Ten knights, two of them intelligent.