*Awooo!*
Snarling wolves chased Jay through a black forest, his heart pounding as he pulled himself through bushes and kept falling over roots and rocks; It was like they were trying to hold him back.
He felt like the wolves were close to him, and at any moment they could snap their dooling jaws and crush his neck - it would be his doom.
Soon, the black trees got thicker and the forest floor turned to mud, which only got slipperier, and the more he gave into this thought, the slower he seemed to become.
Soon the trees became so thick that they formed a wall. There was no escape, he was done for.
Turning around, he saw the wolves charging through the forest.
The wolves were not normal by any means: all of them were large, blue and translucent.
Their tails all had blue strings attached to something, and as Jay’s eyes followed these magical blue strings, he soon saw a tall jagged mountain with a giant blue diamond-shaped mana stone of some sort.
It almost hurt Jay’s eyes to look at it, and as he gazed, it seemed sentient as it flashed a blinding blue light back into his eyes and caused him to flinch for a moment.
Panicked, Jay tried to pull some bones out and summon his skeleton, but as he looked down, fear gripped his heart.
There was no necrotic gauntlet - not even his necrotic ring. Just his plain old hand.
He tried to release some of his necromancer mana from his hand, but nothing happened.
“My class… my power?” he looked at his hands in fear, which were beginning to shake.
He was merely a butcher again. Weak and fragile. A nobody.
The blue wolves were bounding over the forest with ease and were about to reach him.
“Blue! Red!” he panted, but to no answer. No one was coming to his aide.
As the blue wolves closed in they opened their jaws on his head and just before snapping down, Jay was shocked awake.
Jay sat up quickly as he woke up and lightly bumped his head against deathwalker’s sentry, which was still being held over him by Red.
*Huff huff huff*
His breathing was rapid as he woke up in darkness.
*Scr! - Shring!~*
[30 Exp]
Another perreton wolf was slain by his skeletons.
His skeletons were still hard at work, and Jay despite the crazy dream, he felt relieved - his skeletons had not abandoned him.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt“What was that dream… it felt so real…” he took a sip of water and gave himself some time.
Jay suddenly felt glad to be back with his skeletons. It was a horrible dream, but it showed him one thing, perhaps something he hadn’t realised yet: He loved his undead minions, and perhaps even loved being a necromancer.
As for the blue wolves and the shining blue crystal in his dream, he had no idea. Perhaps it was just a strange dream.
At the moment it was still night time, and Jay wasn’t sure how much time had actually passed since he went to sleep.
It was still dark though, so he hadn’t slept all night, but he guessed it may have been a few hours, as the sounds of wings flapping from the perreton wolves had grown much quieter.
Feeling refreshed, Jay decided that it was time to move. The perreton wolves weren’t a threat to them, so he collected the barricade of bones around the top of the rock as he prepared his next steps. He didn’t need to see the bones to collect them, as the necrotic gauntlet did all the work.
Next he opened the exp notification from all the slain perreton wolves, and used the loot skill.
[2220 Exp]
[Tooth] x 3
[Soft Medium hide] x 2
“Huh?” Jay was confused - there was so much exp but only a few drops.
As he walked to the edge of the rock, his feet made some light splash sounds as if there were pools of blood.
Clearly many had been slain, so where were all the bodies?
“Someone help me down.” he commanded as he held out his hand.
Blue answered the call and dashed over to assist its master.
Jay felt strange holding the skeleton’s bony hand. It was like holding some cold wet sticks, though Jay would soon realise that they felt wet because of all the blood.
For now though, the skeleton continued to lead him forward, though Jay was sure the rock ended here.
He was curious, but decided to trust his skeleton anyway and felt around slowly with his foot.
*Squelch~*
Despite it being dark, Jay’s eyes bulged as he felt like he took a step right into the stink-rat marsh.
He connected the dots quickly as he just realised where all the dead wolves were hiding.
“So that’s what happened” Jay frowned as he was forced to walk down a ramp of mutilated wolf corpses.
“They simply threw the dead bodies over the side… well, I guess I would have done the same.” he shrugged.
*Shr-Shring!~*
[30 Exp]
Another perreton wolf was disassembled in mid-air, and by the sounds of it, it landed right on the pile.
“Excellent,” Jay smiled.
He used his gauntlet and got to work, as he tenderly extracted all the bones from the large corpse pile.
For a moment, his green mana gently lit up this part of the forest with a soft glow.
It wasn’t bright enough to attract anything, but Jay could see the outlines of the bones through the wolves flesh and so now he could easily walk himself around the rock and extract all of them without tripping over.
What stood out to him was the colours of the wolves. He didn’t see it before since the skeleton's vision had no colour, but their tails were pure white.
Jay made sure to loot the wolves too, gaining forty more teeth and twenty hides, but it seemed that to get the white tails, he would have to physically remove them.
Normally he wouldn’t bother, but this time he made an exception.
“Oh, they look so soft…” he thought as he kneeled to touch one.
It was just as he suspected - they were unreasonably soft; so soft that it would have put royalty to shame.
It would take some time to harvest them, but Jay just woke up from sleeping on his swag and really didn’t want to do this for the next few months, or however long he would be in the wild. The swag was comfortable enough, but this was a better option, a far better option.
“You know what I want.” he said to his skeletons, and they responded to his thoughts.
By now, each of them had followed Jay down from the rock and were still protecting him, but now only Blue stood next to him - the others were harvesting the wolf tails.
Now that the bones were extracted from the corpses, the skeletons each picked up the blubbery jelly-like hollow wolf bodies and began removing the tails.
“Try not to get blood on the tails.” Jay added.
All he could hear were squelching squishing noises as the skeletons processed the corpses.
Jay ignored the wet sounds though as he scratched his arm. He thought that he must have slept on his arm at an odd angle as it felt strangely itchy and tingly at the same time, so he spent some time scratching it as he waited.
After a few moments, he heard the skeletons moving and returning to one spot so he assumed that must be the tail pile.
“Blue, lead me to the tails.” he held out his hand.
Blue obediently brought him over, and Jay smiled as his hand lightly caressed the tails again.
[Perreton Wolf Tail] x 6
“Ahh all mine” Jay smiled in delight, though wondered why he couldn’t loot it from the wolf himself.
“It seems that I have to process some things before adding them to my inventory.”
“I wonder… How is ‘looting’ and adding to inventory different?”
“Hmm…”
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmWhile looting and adding things to inventory resulted in the same thing, sometimes a looted item would simply appear as if out of thin air, while something added to the inventory already had to physically exist.
Jay decided to test something. He got a tooth that he ‘looted’ and charged it with mana. He released some of his necrotic mana on his other hand and its soft glow helped him to see some of the movements in the sky.
He was tempted to fling the tooth off into the sky, but decided it would be too loud so he quickly drained the mana back out and added the tooth to his inventory.
“Rip out a tooth” Jay said, pointing at the wolf corpses.
Unfortunately, Jay had already extracted the skulls from the corpses - the tooths along with them. He simply forgot.
Blue however would not let its master down, and it decided to have Dark come over - Jay could sense it but he couldn’t see anything so out of curiosity he let it continue.
*Clink… clink… Crack!~*
“What are they doing…” he raised a brow, listening.
Blue used the bottom of its sword and smashed it against Dark’s jaws lightly - then after seeing that it didn’t work, Blue went from using 1% strength to 100% strength.
The jaw cracked open and many teeth popped out. Jay was oblivious to the whole situation.
Blue gently placed one tooth in Jay’s open hand.
“Good.” he smiled.
Jay attempted to charge the tooth with mana - yet instead of the tooth filling up with mana like usual, it acted more like a bone and became soft and malleable.
“Huh… so I only loot the teeth that are usable in spells…? Interesting…” he flicked the useless tooth away.
“I guess that’s why the tails didn’t get looted - but it’s not like I can’t use them for a future bed.”
With all the looting and bone gathering complete it was time to leave.
Jay had another skeleton fetch the two wooden beams for his chair. The perreton wolves were still attacking, but they were more like annoying pests.
The skeletons easily cut them down, and since most of the flying wolves had died, the attacks became more and more scarce.
Jay set up his throne again and sat on it once more, feeling strangely euphoric. After the nightmare where he cried out for help from his skeletons, he now had them lifting him as if he were a king, and so now he felt a deeper affection for his skeletons than ever before.
“Onwards,” Jay pointed, a grin on his face.
He knew which way to go as he still sensed the marks he left on the mage hunters in Losla - he simply needed to head away from them.
With everything gathered, looted and harvested, Jay left the pile of boneless, blubbering and drooping wolf corpses in his wake.
After Jay made it some distance away, there were no more wolf attacks: The perreton wolves had a feast laid out before them - and with no bones.
It was a free buffet.
Jay smiled as he heard their screeches dying out behind him, glad their sounds were getting quieter as he was carried harmlessly away.
After the harvest, he got 73 tails in total, which was more than enough to make into a bed of sorts - though now Jay had other things on his mind.
“I’ll be getting past the mountain soon… Once I get on the other side I’ll keep going, but I should be relatively safe. I wonder what I’ll find in the deeper forests…”