Chapter 90: Chapter 90 Summoning Jay

Viladore paced back and forward in his room.

“Why? why is there no change?” he wondered, looking at his cube.

His cube was slowly turning into a prototype instead of the final version.

“You sensed mana for two consecutive days in the afternoons, but yesterday and today – nothing. No mana detected and no new growth.”

The black cube didn’t respond, as it had no answers.

“What was different…”

“I was asleep one time and another I was training a student. Other than that, nothing changed.”

He looked at his black cube with a hint of bitterness on his face, shaking his head.

“I’ll figure it out tomorrow. Hopefully… hopefully this is only a small setback.” he felt defeated.

It was night time by now, and without a word he went to check his training roster.

“Hmm… Jay’s training session. We were meant to meet a few days ago but that’s alright. Let’s see… Last time I taught him how to channel a spell, and he learnt mana membrane too.. Good…”

Viladore had previously written the letter ‘N’ next to Jay’s name, and suddenly remembered that Jay was a necromancer.

It seemed like a massive thing to forget – but Viladore had his cube to worry about.

It was all he thought of day and night, believing that if he was successful, even an army of necromancers would bow before him.

“Oh right, we have to keep the training a secret too. Hmm, though I’ll train him like any other student – focus on the basics before moving onto more advanced stuff.”

“Next steps are to learn to detect, and then to channel through a medium.”

With a nod, he made a note in a pocketbook before returning it to his coat.

“I’ll have to send someone to tell him he has a lesson since I haven’t heard anything from him in a while.” he shook his head “Usually people are dying to have a lesson with me” he began to smile, still shaking his head.

“I suppose I was like that when I was young.”

Viladore usually hand-picked a few adventurers each year to teach, so he was surprised Jay didn’t come.

The students he picked were the cream of the crop..

If you were one of the chosen being taught by Viladore, other adventurers would compete to have you join their party for dungeons – you were that much better.

Not to mention that to be picked, you would have to be naturally skilled with a useful class to begin with.

Of course with enough money, people such as Matheson could buy lessons too. There were even some adventures that were grinding in dungeons for the sole purpose of saving up enough gold to buy these private lessons.

Viladore also suited the teaching role. Compared to other manacraft practitioners, Viladore had a class which allowed him a greater sense and control of ambient mana; his class being a [Telekine], which had to do with telekinesis, magic analysis, and telepathy.

Having such a keen sense for mana was what made him not just a good teacher, but also a good researcher – which was his previous job in the capital where he used to work for the mage hunters, now called ‘the safety bearers’.

“I’ll send a guard to summon him when I wake up tomorrow.”

– – –

Jay woke up with a smile, seeing some notifications greet him.

He didn’t have much to do last night so he went to bed early, allowing him to wake up before the sun came up.

He quickly opened his notifications, his eyes filled with expectation.

[2870 Exp]

“Awesome, a hung chunk of exp – all while I slept” he smiled, checking his stats while he was still in bed.

[Race – Human]

HP: 93/93

MP: 68/68

Strength: 15

Dexterity: 25

Vitality: 35

Energy: 40/40

Exp: 5419/9000

(1)

[Raise Feeble Creature level 4]

[Shell Restoration Level 1]

[Shift] (Unique)

[Unstable Teeth Level 2]

[Asklin] (Equipment)

[Undead Mastery Level 2] (Passive)

[Stress Response] (Passive)

[Running level 2] (Passive)

[Dagger Proficiency level 1] (Passive)

[Sword Proficiency Level 1] (Passive)

[Poison Resist 10%] (Passive – equipment)

[Scrimshaw Level 2] (Passive)

[Class Utility] (Passive)

[Chimera Research 9%]

[Immortality Research 3%]

“About half way…” he thought, seeing his experience.

Soon his eyes drifted over his vitality stat. It was high, but he now felt silly whenever he looked at it.

Why have lots of health and still be weak? He basically made himself into a walking training dummy; a punching bag.

Strength-wise, he was even weaker than most level one’s, as other classes started with 20 or even 25 points in strength – of course, they would most likely have low energy or really bad energy-mana scaling, resulting in a small mana pool as a trade off.

Of course, none of them would have undead companions.

“Well, I’m sure Sweeper has levelled up. I better go gather the crystals and reset the dungeon… but there’s no point in healing the skeletons as I have to unsummon and re-summon them.”

Jay headed off to the dungeon. It was still early in the morning so there weren’t many people around, which made it easier to sprint through Losla to the dungeon.

Jay entered the dungeon area, this time there were no other adventurers around since it was still so early in the morning.

A big smile appeared on his face as soon as he stepped into the dungeon, as a large pile of soul stones greeted him.

“Oh yes! One step closer to completing the quest” he grinned as he added them all to his inventory.

[Soulstones] (empty) x 94

Next, he willed his minions to rally to him.

As if responding to a call to war, they immediately started sprinting out of the ruins. Their wolf skulls would probably begin to make whistling noises if they could run any faster.

It wasn’t long before the four skeletons stood before Jay – but there was something different.

Three of them had lined up, while Blue stood in front of them as if it was their commanding officer.

Instead of being like a loose rabble of four unruly teenagers, they were now more like a single military unit.

“Huh, I guess they act more like soldiers when you give them a commander?” Jay thought, remembering that he said Blue was in charge before he left the dungeon last time.

“Well done, good job” he said, before he grabbed their hammers.

Jay didn’t know if they would even acknowledge his praise, but at this moment it seemed like Blue’s skull raised up a little, as if proud that it had served its master.

Jay began the process of resetting the dungeon. He stored the hammers away before de-summoning them, returning their bones to his ring.

He then left the dungeon so that the monsters would respawn, before re-entering again and summoning the skeletons.

After being summoned, they immediately re-formed their formation: Blue in front with the 3 others lined up behind him.

Jay raised a brow seeing this, it was as if they weren’t all just de-summoned at all. They skeletons remembered that Blue was in charge.

“Cool… I guess he continues with his orders even after he’s summoned?”

This would be handy if Jay had numerous skeletons, he would simply have to re-summon them if they died, and they would then leave to carry out their orders.

“Sweeper looks skinny… oh right. You need some food” Sweeper had levelled up to 3.

Jay still had his ring in the orbital form, so he let sweeper feast.

“Go on” he said, pointing with a nod towards the bones floating around him in the ring.

Sweeper happily obliged, plucking some bones out of the ring and began chomping them down.

Jay didn’t need to heal any of his minions, as he just re-summoned them.

As Sweeper ate, Jay analysed the hammers before giving them back.

“Hmm, seems like they’re in pretty good condition” Jay thought as he analysed them.

Most of them were still holding their shape; it seemed that the skeletons were feeding them mana to maintain them.

This couldn’t be compared to Jay’s [Shell Restoration] skill, as to maintain necrotic items all they needed was a mana supply.

The skeletons still had the ability to craft rudimentary bone weapons – this was where Jay learnt the skill from in the first place, but they still had no need as Jay supplied them with much better weapons than they themselves could craft.

Jay did spend hours crafting bone daggers in order to raise his scrimshaw skill up to level 2, eventually making the [Deathwalker’s sentry].

– – –

Later in the morning, a guard visited Jay’s butchery.

He had to knock a few times before Trenly answered.

“Hello, we’re not quite open yet but how can I help?” Trenly thought it may have been a customer who was there before the shop even opened; Trenly was a nice guy too so he didn’t like to keep people waiting either.

After all, any reasonable person wouldn’t mind bringing in a customer early, and it made the business seem more like a part of the community, like it had a soul rauther than being there simply for profit – of course, profit was necessary.

“Jay? You’ve been requested by the adventurer association.” the guard said.

“Oh. I’m not Jay… I’ll go see if he’s home. Give me a moment.”

Trenly headed upstairs, knocking a few times on Jay’s bedroom door.

“Hello? Jay?”

No answer.

Trenly knew that Jay wasn’t a very heavy sleeper, or he would’ve been up by now, so he headed back down to tell the guard.

“He’s not here, sorry, but I’ll pass on the message?”

The guard had walked inside without invitation.

The guard didn’t actually know why Jay was summoned – he had assumed that Jay was in trouble, or perhaps had stolen something, so he did act quite overbearing.

Normally, stepping into someone’s house would have been rude and imposing, however, it was also a butchery. People were expected to come into the shop, so Trenly didn’t even seem anxious.

The guard looked upstairs for a moment before pursing his lips.

“Just tell him that he’s been summoned and he should come to the association if he doesn’t want to be punished.” he spoke with a raised, raspy voice.

With a nod, the guard left, closing the door enough to be loud, but not enough to slam it – another petty intimidation tactic.

He wasn’t even phased, and if he realised what the guard was doing, he would probably even laugh at the guard and his ridiculous behaviour.

Trenly had grown up around a few of his fathers fellow hunters who were like this.

These kinds of people would seemingly find any reason to get angry and yell at someone who they deemed to be below them.

Of course, they were quite gutless and wouldn’t yell at him with his father around.

These kinds of people would usually end up bitter and alone, Trenly knew this after seeing it as he grew up, so when people acted like that he would think about their future and laugh.

Their anger was not his problem to deal with after all, and to Trenly, they were more like small dogs, barking out of fear.

Many would yell to dominate others, as it stemmed from a feeling of powerlessness, a lack of control and weakness.

Trenly knew that deep down, these were damaged, emotionally unstable children, and so he never took it personally.

Of course, he wouldn’t willingly spend time with such people.

“Huh, I wonder why Jay was requested at the guild.” Trenly wondered before going back to make some sausages, completely unfazed. It was like the guard was never even there at all.