Chapter: 843
Blue analyzed the situation keenly, and had already put strategy into place. Sweeper and Lamp went down to hold the stairs while Red darted back up and entered the gatehouse chamber again. Standing by the bone pile, it healed itself while feasting.
Blue prioritized Red’s safety, as it was the only skeleton with metal armor and would be the last bulwark in an emergency. Jay’s most sturdy protector.
Handy, having no armor, was the fastest. It had the duty of scouting the two passages connecting the gatehouse to the wall. It dashed back and forward through the chamber, monitoring each side so that the knights did not flank the party.
The knights saw no merit in manning the walls or the gatehouse as they had free rein in the crucible, and there were zero enemies inside. For now.
Jay used his necrotic sense ability to keep track of the skeletons in the other stairwell, but noticed a subtle change in the pit of bones in his own stairwell. They dropped less regularly.
“Too suspicious. What are they planning…” he thought, “Only a few have died, but already they’re slowing down their digging.”
Taking a moment, Jay hastily walked to the gate enclosure and peered down. Below the gate were several intelligent knights, all standing in a circle, making hand gestures and communicating in their own silent way. Other than the sounds of shifting bones and clashing swords, it was silent. Their behavior seemed so calculating.
A string of fear stirred in Jay’s heart. The enemy had underestimated him, but he would not do the same in return.
“They’re planning something, but what…” he thought, squinting suspiciously at them.
Jay returned to the staircase he was holding and topped up the bones, but the paranoid part of his mind spun as he plotted his next moves.
“This place is defensible for now, but isn’t safe. I won’t let myself be a sitting duck. I have seized the initiative, but I need to keep it in my favor.”
As Handy dashed through the gatehouse chamber again, Jay gazed into the dark hallway tunneling through the wall.
When Handy ran back through the main chamber again, Jay acted.
“Alright, it’s time.”
Jay quickly ran into the passageway on the right side of the gate, closest to the staircase that Red and the other skeletons were protecting.
Once inside the passage, he formed another plug with bones, yet he also held his necrotic gauntlet up.
Thick streams of swirling green mana left through each claw point, and a large orb of the glowing mana appeared, mixing into the bones. It became their core, causing them to float and swirl around it.
Strangely, Jay thought it seemed like an egg yolk among the whites; of course, rather than a chicken, skeletons will rise instead.
“Hmm… I’ll add some non-human bones, too. That way, the chimera research skill goes up.” He thought, and dumped some Perreton wolf, soap rat and silt wolf bones into the mix, which assured Jay that with each summon, it would make a hybrid skeleton.
Jay checked the skill to make sure he used it correctly.
< [Mass Summoning] >
- Can summon multiple skeletons at once.
- Can create a mana well within a pile of bones; skeletons will continue to resurrect until the mana runs dry or the bones run out.
- Requires free skeleton slots. Does not sub-resurrect.
Jay had only formed a small energy well of twenty-eight mana, which would only be enough for two skeletons. He wanted to add more, but it was all he could spare.