Chapter 42: Chapter 42 Clarity 2

All his bone daggers had disappeared from his inventory.

“Hmm…” annoyed, he hastily crafted another one.

[Bone Dagger Level 2]

[5 damage] – Slashing, piercing.

[+50% damage from back-stab attacks]

[Lifespan – Requires essence to maintain it’s form]

[Current lifespan: 6 hours]

“Ohhh… oops.” he felt silly as he read his daggers stats, shaking his head at himself.

“I forgot to supply them with mana.. they deformed days ago.” he crafted a second bone dagger for his new skeleton. “At least the daggers are level 2 now, probably from my scrimshaw levelling up when I was making my shield… I should probably re-forged all the weapons.”

“The level one creatures don’t have any mana, so I will need to get Blue to hold it’s weapons every six hours… damn. What will happen when I go to sleep? Hmm…”

Jay took out his sword and examined it.

[Ossein Arming Sword Level 1].

[Silt-wolf bone]

[8 damage] – Slashing, piercing.

[Lifespan – Requires essence to maintain it’s form]

[Current lifespan: 96 hours]

“Okay, since the swords will last four days, I can just get Blue to switch weapons with it when I sleep. The level one will be bad at fighting due to the large swords, while Blue will be a little weaker too – but only when I’m asleep. Thankfully this won’t last for long – once it hits level two, it will have its own mana supply and can keep the form of its daggers. I estimate this will only need to be done for one or two nights, as it will probably level up in the next few days.”

“You can go,” he waved his hand at the level 1 skeleton “stick with the others.” he added as it slinked off into the woods.

Searching through his inventory, he found five bones in it – his deformed daggers. He added them back into his ring, then with a nod, he marched back. It wasn’t long before he came back to the path.

It didn’t take as long as he thought it would to get back onto the track that he had initially ventured from. “It seems that following the webbed trees slowed me down more than I realized.” He thought, since the walk back was much faster.

Looking up and down the path, he saw his companions.

Two of them were sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed, while one had already stopped meditating.

Whispering quietly, he greeted Jay.

“Hey. Where’d you go?” Mark enquired, sitting on the same black log as he was idly snapping some twigs, a small pile of broken twigs had formed below him. He was looking bored as ever as he flicked bits of broken twigs around.

Mark had finished meditating quickly since he was a spellsword – having a natural affinity for energy and mana.

“I finished my energy regeneration so I just went to have a look around, do some scouting, stuff like that.”

“Oh, right… I suppose I should do stuff like that too.” Mark looked into the forest. “Find anything cool?”

“Nah… Saw some cool-looking mushrooms, but mostly I just spent a lot of time walking into spider webs..” Jay did a sneaky smile as he turned to look into the forest too. “Other than that, it was quite uneventful…”

“Ah I see, well thanks for looking out for us” smiled Mark as he threw the unsnapped twigs down, jumped off the log and put his hands in his pockets.

“So…” Mark was curious about something.

He whispered to Jay, “Anya’s pretty cute.”

Immediately, Jay could tell what he was getting at as he started shaking his head.

Jay sighed as he thought to himself “Mark doesn’t know… about our classes or anything. Even Anya doesn’t know that I don’t trust her.” Jay looked into the forest as he made up his reply to Mark.

“She’s alright, but this life we’re living as adventurers, it’s not suited for relationships.”

Jay was satisfied with his reply. It was reasonable, but in truth, and in different circumstances, he could picture something happening with her – but this was not how things turned out, and not the life either of them had chosen. Jay even felt it could be unethical to have a relationship since he knew he was essentially, in the eyes of the nobility, a dead man walking.

Mark looked a little awkward, he already regretted asking.

“Yeah. True.” he couldn’t think of anything else to say, but he hated awkward silences.

“So.. you’re a swordsman right? What kinda sword have you got?” Mark perked up.

Jay slyly smiled “Finally, we get to talk about something we both love.” Pulling out his ossein sword, he let Mark ogle it for a moment.

A smirk appeared on Jay’s face as he showed Mark, knowing the superiority of his sword compared to the trash that Bertram was selling.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Wow, nice. How’s it handle? It looks a bit short, but man, what a wide blade.” Mark analysed it.

“And that colour is real nice – do you know what kinda metal it is? And does the blue colour add an effect? Is it imbued with something to add cold or lightning damage?”

Jay chuckled “Heh, nah, I’m not rich enough to afford a gem – but this sword doesn’t have a socket anyway. It was just blue… when I found it. In a dungeon.” Jay covered up a lie.

“It handles more like a heavy dagger – if you can imagine that. Once it pierces something it does massive damage because of how stupidly-wide it is.”

“Where’d you find it?” Mark immediately replied.

“On the second level of that bayring dungeon.” Jay decided to hide the truth about him going to the silt wolf dungeon solo.

“Wow, you guys made it that far? Huh, me and Kel didn’t even realise there was a level two – even though we spent longer there than anyone else..” Mark put his hand on the back of his head, scratching it a little.

“What’s your sword?” Jay cut him off before he could continue.

“Well…” Mark made an awkward side-smile “The guild leader saw some promise in me, so I got this…” Mark pulled out his sword.

As Mark pulled it from his inventory, Jay was shocked – not only by the sword, but the guild leader giving him this impressive gift: the sword was as wide as his ossein arming sword, yet it was long; if you stood it up straight, the guard would go up to Mark’s shoulder.

It was coloured a milky, light-yellow colour while the guard, hilt and grip was black.

“Wow.” Jay stepped closer as he scrutinized the sword more closely.

“It appears to be some kind of polished ivory, or perhaps a white soapstone. But it looks so smooth…” Jay thought.

There were no pops or dents in the sword at all.

“What even is this sword?”

Mark leaned closer as he whispered to Jay.

“A moonstone sword.”

“Moon… stone?” Looking at Mark reluctantly “Never heard of it,” Jay scoffed “But I doubt it comes from the moon,” he shrugged “though it looks cool. How’s it handle?”

“Slices through things pretty easily, but unless I feed it mana it’s pretty heavy, making it slow to swing.”

“Feed it mana? What?”

Mark gripped his sword, about to show Jay, but was interrupted by Kel waking up.

*Ahh* Kel stretched as she stood up on her mossy rock “Morning boys.”

Interrupting the conversation, Kel continued “…what?”

Kel just woke up and noticed the others staring at her head.

“Uh, nothing… you just”

“Hmm?”

“You have a twig in your hair.”

“Oh..” Kel patted around her dark hair, completely missing the twig as she searched for it; for some reason Mark looked suspicious as he put his sword away.

“Here.” Jay stepped over to pick it out.

“Thanks” Kel smiled warmly as she lowered her head.

“So, where’d you go?” Kel asked out of nowhere, while Anya opened her eyes after meditating.