Chapter 113 The 5th Servant

“Go.” Jay said, sending his skeletons in to fight.

He quickly then ran to the side and started smashing his hammer against two statues, successfully grabbing their attention and causing them to focus on him.

The plan was working perfectly so far.

With the two statues now slashing at him, he focused completely on dodging.

*pshew~*

Anya began blasting one of the other statues with her crossbow as chips and chunks of stone began to fly off and break away.

Jay was still focused on dodging as the two spearmen thrusting at him ceaselessly. The endless barrage of attacks keeping him busy.

Thankfully it didn’t take too long before the first statue was slain.

[50 Exp]

Six versus five.

Each of them got half of the exp from the first crumbling level four spearman.

“Nice” Jay thought, dodging under another spear swing then sidestepping a thrust.

*clung~*

[-4.2]

His shield took a hit as the spearman used its double-strike ability.

Jay sidestepped another follow-up thrust, raising his shield up again just in case it was a double-strike.

Anya and the skeletons were just as busy, as the skeletons’ hammers and her bolts continued to ring out as they pumelled against the statues.

[50 Exp].

Another statue went down as its knees buckled, becoming ruins with the rest of Helvetia.

Now that it was six versus four, the speed of statue deaths increased exponentially; the battle would end soon.

Jay had the next free skeleton come over and attack one of the two statues he was fighting, giving himself some breathing room

The skeleton gained the attention of one of them, so now Jay could start fighting back too.

*Thwunk~ smash~ dringgg~*

Finally, now he could attack. After all the thrusts and swipes he dodged he was raring for battle.

He walloped the statue without mercy as he quickly shattered its helmet.

[14.4] [14.4] [14.4]

His hammers were doing much more damage now that he put more points into strength and levelled up.

[50 Exp]

[50 Exp]

The group ended two statues at once, and Jay decided to step back from the fight.

The skeletons could handle the last two statues, so Jay stretched as he stood next to Anya.

“It’s no wonder you’re levelling up so fast, It’s like you’re in a party of five but you get all the exp.” Anya commented as they watched the last two statues being ravaged by hammers.

“Yeah.” Jay smiled slyly, knowing they even fought for him while he was sleeping.

“Let’s head inside,” he added.

The cavernous mouth of the pyramid was opened wide to them. After standing silently for countless centuries it was finally unlocked, waiting for its first victims.

Of course in other instances of this dungeon people had conquered this pyramid, but this was a new instance. As far as this dungeon was concerned, Jay and Anya were the first ones here.

As Jay and Anya approached the darkness, a stale, thick wave of foul air assaulted them.

“Eugh, disgusting.” Anya said as her face crinkled.

“Smells like death.” Jay similarly was frowning from the putrid smell.

They pulled out luminous orbs as they walked into the darkness of the pyramid.

On each side, giant pairs of statues of different soldier types were on each side, like massive columns.

Jay analysed each of them before proceeding, but they had no level – thankfully these were just scenery otherwise each of them could crush Jay and Anya simply by stepping down from each of the pedestals they stood on.

The first in the series of statues were quite different, they had no weapons or even legs – they seemed to float somehow, though they had clawed metal gauntlets.

There was no mana signature or anything, they were like rocks frozen in the air.

After those were two-handed swordsmen, archer, spearmen and lastly sword statues.

It seemed backwards to Jay because he would expect the swordsmen to be at the front, followed by the spearmen. This was the general structure of the dungeon thus far too.

On each side of the walls that the statues were placed in front of were more murals.

The murals showed mountains of crystals, lines of soldiers leading to a circular altar, and lines of soldier statues.

Near the altar was a large pit.

“Perhaps this is what the pyramid was built on?” Anya guessed.

Anya had already ventured closer to the murals behind the statues, looking across them as she tried to find any clues about this pyramid while she was trying to decipher what they were depicting.

“Seems like some sort of ritual?” she whispered, though her voice still travelled through the silent structure, echoing off the flat walls.

“Anya,” Jay whispered, “you can look at those later.”

“Sure, sorry.” she hopped back near Jay.

Jay had already given his luminous orb to one of his minions and was squeezing his nose with his hand, the stench was many times worse than all the other things he had smelt thus far.

They walked silently past the statues with the skeletons ahead of them.

Unfortunately, the skeletons made light tapping noises as they crept ahead, decreasing their chances of staying undiscovered.

The hall split off into three passageways, each path descending downwards into the earth.

“Let’s clear left first?” Jay whispered.

Anya nodded back silently under the warm light from the luminous orb.

They were already a few hundred meters down the passageway, and they began passing through some sections of blue glowing crystal.

The crystals were seamlessly built into the walls, the floor and the roof forming a rectangular ring.

Each time they passed through, the crystal rings glowed green as they responded to their presence; however the skeletons made them glow yellow.

Jay and Anya only had confused expressions as they went through cautiously.

They turned back to blue after passing through. It seemed like they were a scanner of some sort.

*urarRRrr*

A distant whimper, a lonely moan echoed and reverberated through the darkness.

Jay, Anya and all the skeletons paused as they listened to the sound. It was coming from further down the passage below.

The sound made Jay cautious while he held his shield up to see down the passage, but nothing, there was no response.

He looked towards Anya – tiny hairs were visibly raised on her arms.

For some reason the single sound scared her much more than Jay.

Without saying a word, Jay decided to have a skeleton walk behind them as well, protecting them from either side.

They eventually came to an iron door. It had no door handle, instead it had a large iron bar with inscriptions covering it, and a message.

*click click click click click click~*

Before they approached the door to read the message, a series of sounds came from behind it.

Sounds of many lightly tapping footsteps came from the other side. They must have been made from stone too, but much lighter as their feet made gentle tapping sounds against the floor – rauther than heavy plodding thumps like the soldier statues did.

The inscriptions were undecipherable as it was written in with some sort of advanced helvetian hex magic, but the message accompanying it was still partly readable.

“For crimes… (unreadable) forever sealed. (unreadable) Certain death.”

A faint green light came from under the door, but both Jay and Anya couldn’t make anything else out.

Jay tapped Anya on the shoulder, beckoning her to come back further up the passageway so they could talk without whatever was in the room hearing.

“What do you think?” Jay whispered.

“I think it’s dangerous. Certain death?”

“Mm… but.. I want to know.” Jay shrugged. “And this is a level three dungeon. How bad could it be? I’m level t… nine. Ten almost.” he quickly corrected himself.

“I’m curious too… Plus, I’ve just about recovered from my last use of prostrate. About ten more minutes and I should be ready.”

“Good. Let’s just do it. If anything happens, just leave the dungeon while I have the skeletons hold them off… I’ll get the skeletons to open the door too in case it’s some kind of trap. Just tell me when you’re ready.”

“Sure.” Anya nodded.

She was as curious as Jay about what was behind the door.

Jay decided to go back to the door. He got on his knees and peeked under.

In the room there was what looked like a large cylinder of glass, filled with some sort of purple translucent fluid.

It seemed like it went further down into the room, making Jay think there were probably stairs on the other side of the door.

Suddenly five sharp dark-brown daggers tapped across the door entrance, skittering across swiftly.

Jay recoiled his head back quickly, startled as he tried to not make a sound.

“What the fuck was that…” he thought, holding his breath.

***Author here.

I’m anticipating people asking why Jay is doing 14.4 damage with a 6 damage bone hammer. New weapon damage calculation for anyone interested:

[Weapon damage*((str*char level)/100)] * modifiers = damage dealt.

E.g. 6*((15*9)/100)]*1.2 = 9.7 damage

E.g. 6*((20*10)/100)]*1.2 = 14.4 damage

The first example is from when Jay was level 9 with 15 strength.

+1 level up and 5 more strength has given him 4.7 more dmg.

The *1.2 is the modifier. Jay does an 20% extra damage to the statues when using the hammer (due to their brittle armour passive).

Hopefully this scales well into the future and I won’t need to adjust it….

Sometimes I don’t write the damage numbers for smaller fights as they become irrelevant and can take away from the fight scene (in my opinion anyway. Always happy to hear what you think though).

– Aero182

***