Chapter 124 Acid Pools

Jay arrived in the main chamber. It was just as quiet as last time – yet now another unidentifiable corpse laid below the giant statues.

The creature failed to claim any lives of the statues this time – but they still were not unscathed; the last spearman had strange corroded parts all over it while it’s grand tower shield was basically only a small buckler now.

“Eh, I guess it was a much lower level.”

Jay looked at the statues, making sure they were inactive once more before heading over to gather his loot.

*clink~*

Suddenly, one of Jay’s skeletons suddenly collapsed.

What? Jay froze, wondering what attacked his skeleton. He instantly looked up at the statues – nope, none of them were moving.

He walked over to the collapsed pile of bones.

Parts of the skeleton were now bubbling in a puddle of clear ooze.

“…the hell is that?”

Apart from the puddle, there was a clear crystalline shard which was crushed – and it seemed to be crushed by the skeleton as some clear liquid was slowly dripping out and causing a vapour when each droplet landed on the ground.

“Hmm, it must be shards from the mannaton’s tentacles?”

Jay got one of the bones from the collapsed skeleton and prodded it.

The bone began to bubble and cause a gas to rise as soon as it made contact. Soon it had disappeared completely.

“Cool…” he thought, not caring too much about his deceased skeleton.

Around the room there were even some deep holes in the ground, created by the strong acid as it bore holes into the earth.

“Huh, so acid must hurt the stone statues? I guess it’s not like a poison at all. Seems more like a fire which burns everything… except a liquid.”

Jay retrieved what was left of the blue bones from the bubbling blue acid.

It was initially a clear liquid, but it seems that the cobalt-blue bones had coloured it after melting into them..

Jay re-summoned his skeleton; it was sickly skinny since it had lost bone mass, so he pulled some bones from his gauntlet, creating a small pile and letting the skeleton feast to its heart’s content.

The skeleton happily began to munch away at them while Jay was still putting stuff into the puddle, seeing how much would melt into it.

“This is some serious shit.”

He began to look around the room for more of the shards and soon found one – still unbroken.

A small smile appeared on his face as he tried to pick it up.

[Acid-filled shard]

– pH -0.3.]

– 20 damage per second per shard broken for three seconds.

“Jack-fucking-pot!” Jay grinned.

This prize was way stronger than any of the charged crystals he got from the bayring dungeon.

Even by itself, this shard was like a hidden trump card – but Jay saw more around the room.

Jay scoured the room, avoiding many of the small puddles created while finding mostly only broken shards – but it was worth it, as he found two more.

“Awesome” he smiled.

“Anything that tries to fuck with me is gonna get its face melted off”

The skeleton was still munching, so Jay idly began tossing some stones into one of the acid puddles.

“It’s weird, it’s kinda like a bottomless pit” he thought as he kept dropping stones into it, watching them disappear, realising he had to rephrase what he previously said.

“Anything that fucks with me is gunna get it’s whole upper body melted off.” he chuckled.

Jay carefully walked around the broken shards and puddles as he looted the mannaton soul eater.

[Soul Stones] (Empty) x 132

Unfortunately there was no helvetian ring.

The skeleton had finished snacking and reclaimed its former glory.

“Time to check the last passage” Jay grabbed the rest of the bones before leaving the battle scene.

The middle passage was dark and dormant, daring anyone to enter.

Jay walked through the middle passageway ready to fight.

Unlike the other two which went downhill, this one went upwards. It seemed like he may actually need to do something other than listen to the giants fight.

Well, the skeletons would do something at least.

It was eerily quiet as they walked along the pitch-black passage, but soon Jay heard a soft buzzing sound. A resonance of energy.

“Must be getting close, whatever is up there sounds powerful…” Jay thought, the humming sound getting louder.

As he walked he came to another iron door, this room was similarly sealed off like the others, but the metal bar had no inscriptions; Jay could lift the bar if he wanted to.

Unlike the other passages, there weren’t any scanners in the passage.

Something didn’t feel right to Jay as he got his skeletons to open the door anyway.

A blue light came from behind the door, radiating outwards as the skeletons pulled it open.

The first thing Jay noticed in the room was a throne, empty.

On the wall behind it was the source of the light; two large glowing circles filled with glowing blue inscriptions which lit up the room. These inscriptions were what were making the humming noise, it seemed that they were filled with magnitudes of power.

There was a third circle filled with inscriptions, but no glow. It seemed deactivated.

“There’s usually some stupid trick or puzzle. The pyramid can’t be this easy.” Jay thought as he waited at the doorway, not stepping a single foot into the room until he knew it was safe and had properly analysed everything he could from there.

On one side of the room there were small cages, and on the other were more small glass tanks filled with more of the purple liquid.

Various pillars were around the room, holding up the ceiling; each with their own set of distinct claw marks. It was like a different beast was unleashed on each pillar.

Near the cages was an incredibly long table; it had various talons, claws, cleavers, arms, legs and appendages on it. It seemed to be another dissection area.

“Hmm, this must be like miniature versions of the labs downstairs?”

*tat tap tat tap tap~*

Jay still hadn’t stepped foot into the room, but Aa fast tapping noise came from somewhere in the room, causing Jay to step backwards and raise his shield, preparing for whatever was coming.

Jay sent three skeletons into the room to secure the entrance while he had the third stay by his side.

*HISSSS~*

Something responded as the skeletons marched in. Entering the territory of another hostile failed experiment, they were clearly not welcome.

Suddenly, something dropped from the roof, knocking the three skeletons down.

“Fuck” Jay said as he crouched a little lower, waiting for it to bowl him over, anticipating that it would made a mad dash for the exit.

Suddenly it hissed a little more deeply and ran off, back into the room somewhere.

It happened so fast that Jay couldn’t tell what the creature was, and he had no time to analyse it. All he could see was a Helvetiian T-visor helmet, one of those long tentacles similar to the mannaton soul eater, and a long segmented body with multiple legs, similar to the dihexapede – yet with no soulstones were poking out of its body, at least from what Jay could tell.

Whatever it was seemed to be an ungodly mixture of all three: a mannaton, a dihexapede and a stone statue.

The skeletons stood up again, this time one of them watched the ceiling, making sure that this wouldn’t happen again.

Jay noticed one of the skeletons’ hammers had a splatter of red blood on it, somehow it must have injured the beast when it went down during the struggle.

This gave Jay a sign that it in fact could be injured, it definitely wasn’t level 133 like the dihexapede.

“If it bleeds, we can kill it.” he said as he gripped his shield and hammer a little more tightly.

With some assurance, he cautiously entered the room. If the skeleton could injure it, he surely could too.

The skeletons were all standing, but as Jay got closer to them he noticed a difference – one of the skeletons had half of its rib cage missing – it had been ripped right out.

Looking around, Jay couldn’t find any bones or ribs on the ground.

“DId the creature take the ribs with it? What the hell does it want with half a rib cage?”

Jay decided not to feed the skeleton, he wanted all hands on deck until he knew how powerful the monster was.

Thankfully the blue light coming from the two large circular glyphs on the wall were illuminating most of the room, so he could at least see if it was anywhere on the roof.

There were a few pillars in the room that the creature could have been hiding behind, but he soon found that there was a small room off to the right, shielded from the light, it was in complete darkness.

“Hmm…” he squinted as he gazed suspiciously into the darkness.

Jay sent one skeleton to peer into the room, looking for anything moving.

Slowly, Jay was learning to delegate orders to his skeletons rauther than do it himself. It was a skill that came natural to some, but to others it had to be practised.

The skeleton silently crept over, it wasn’t in sprinting mode at the moment as it went to inspect. Its undead shade vision allowed it to see in the dark perfectly.

The skeleton peered around the corner into the darkness of the room, and once more was met with hostility.

*Hisss!~*

The skeleton stepped back but it wasn’t quick enough – a long spindly twig-like hand with incredibly long fingers appeared from the darkness and grasped the skeleton’s neck, quickly snatching it into the darkness. It happened so fast that the skeleton dropped its hammer, unable to even swing once.

Of course, it still had its natural weapons, its claws.

*Sciii!~*

[Your Perennial creature level 3 has been slain.]

Jay got a notification as he guessed that the skeleton at least did some damage before it died since the creature let out a different sound.

It sucked to lose a skeleton, but at least he now knew that it was in that room.

Before moving in, Jay pulled some bones from his ring and re-summoned the level three skeleton. This time, he was forced to use the bones from the pit; these were all he had.

The skeleton took its form once more, but this time it had a human skull.

A weird feeling of accomplishment came over Jay despite it being just another summoning. For some reason, the skeleton just made more sense. Its form was no longer a warped skeleton of an animal that was cruelly forced into a humanoid shape, but it was a literal human skeleton.

“Hm. Peak performance?” Jay wondered.

*Hiss~ clink~**

The creature seemed to still be attacking the bones as clinking sounds came from the room. Jay realised this wasn’t time to ponder over strange details, so he promptly sent two more blue skeletons in, along with the new human skeleton.

“It killed one of our own. No mercy. Go,” he waved his hand as if shewing away a stray animal.

The skeletons all sprinted in, the human one grabbing the hammer as it ran into the darkness.

*HISsSS~* the creature once more hissed deeply, wondering why these puny skeletons thought they could just march into its territory. What despicable insects.

Jay idly stood near the exit, ready to summon more skeletons if need be as he listened to the fight.

*doong~ cling~ HISS!~~ Shatter~ Doong~ Sciiii!~*

[Your skeleton level 3 has been slain.]

“Again?”

Jay hastily summoned another skeleton and sent it off into the room as he waited.

As he cleaned some dirt from under his fingernails he noticed something different, raising a brow.

“Wait a second, ‘skeleton’ has been slain? Didn’t it say perennial creature before?”

*Slower chapters, studying for exam. Hope you enjoyed this beefy longer chapter :)*