Three skeletons searched the room while Jay idly waited next to the safety of a large pillar, impossibly holding up the grand subterranean castle above.

Some sounds started coming from a nearby staircase.

“Knights.” Jay thought.

In moments, a light appeared. Another jar, carried by an intelligent knight in one hand, yet in its other hand, was something which was a cause for concern.

“Skulls… some of my skeleton’s skulls?” Jay creased his brows. “what are they doing with them?” he wondered.

“The skulls must have come from the skeletons slain under the gate before I closed it.” He thought, as the others had died recently.

Jay doubted they could use magic to track him with it, but whatever they were going to use it for couldn’t be good.

Worst-case scenario? They were going to test whatever weapons worked best against the bone skulls.

Best-case scenario? It was merely a trophy.

As Jay thought about how they may use this against him, he noticed this knight was alone, and a smile appeared on his face.

“Actually, they will not do a damn thing with it. It’s my property.” He smiled.

(Converge on the knight. End it swiftly.) he ordered.

The knight walked alone with its light and skull, almost peacefully, that was until three deathly skulls emerged from the darkness; swords poised to strike.

Each of them closed in on the knight with shocking speed, their weapons all pointed precisely at its weak points.

The knight froze. It didn’t know what to do.

And how could it? It had no weapons, and it had no allies. All it had was its armor – yet that proved useless as a sword pierced its back.

There was one behind… well, of course there was.

[115 Exp]

The knight dropped to the ground; a luminous cloud appeared for a moment as the jar smashed. Its armor rattled, but the echoes soon died out too.

Jay listened for a moment; the cavernous room returned to silence. It was a flawless assassination.

Hearing that there was no response, he walked over to the body.

They tied the four skulls together with a piece of torn cloth, which now lay at its side in some broken glass.

“Huh. Mine.” Jay whispered, reaching out his hand and adding them to his necrotic gauntlet.

(Red, loot it. You can have the armor.)

Red had gained itself a new pair of boots; plated and angular. They fit well with the shin-guard armor. The spectral greaves ran down the skeleton’s shins and into a cusp of the armored boot, sealing in and protecting the skeleton’s ankles. It was practically a perfect fit.

“Now… what to do with the dead body?” Jay wondered.

“Sweeper, you might as well take its armor. You’ll lose it once we leave the dungeon, but for the time being, it’s decent armor. Even though it is rusted through.” He shrugged.

Jay watched as the skeleton began to physically strip the armor off the knight; it was troublesome as there were several fastenings it had to find and undo.

“I probably should’ve taken the armor off the first group of knights we slayed. I guess I didn’t really value it, since I couldn’t loot it. Perhaps had tunnel-vision for the system… System-vision?” he thought.

Jay decided not to watch the knight slowly being stripped and went back to his relatively safer pillar, giving a follow-up order.

“Lamp, dispose of the body once Sweeper takes its armor. Somewhere at the back of the room.”

After the skeletons finished hiding the body, they resumed searching the room.

During that time, no more knights had appeared, but before Jay acted out his next plans to get into the giant doors, he sent some commands to the skeletons above; the ones aimlessly running around the castle and distracting the knights.

“I’m not even sure if this will work, but it’s worth a try…”

(Blue, Handy. If you can, find an empty, pitch black room and un-summon yourselves – with none of the knights knowing. Try to find somewhere they won’t find your bones.)

Jay added the ‘if you can’ modifier at the start of the order, in case the skeletons didn’t have the ability to un-summon themselves.

As for the un-summon order, Jay hoped the skeletons would find a secret area to do this in, because if the knights didn’t find their bodies or slay them, they would still waste time and manpower trying to find the skeletons, assuming that they were still alive.

In the meantime, Jay could summon them and have all five skeletons with him.

However, Blue and Handy would need time to do this, and Jay would not wait for them to carry out their new orders.

The skeletons found nothing in the room and returned to Jay, ultimately finding nothing. However, one skeleton looked quite different.

“Oh… Lamp got some new clothes. Great.” Jay thought sarcastically, shaking his head at the horror that was Lamp.

Lamp had disposed of the knight’s body, but also took a reward for itself. It was now covered in skin from its head to its ribs. Apparently, it needed more than one corpse to create its full skin suit, as it lost some in the conversion process.

“Alright. Nothing else is in this room other than the stairs, the roots, and the door. Let’s move.”

Walking from pillar to pillar, Jay and his three skeletons moved to the door.

Eventually, he was standing by the last pillar closest to the door. Knowing how many knights had already left these giant doors, Jay felt quite tense.

“We’ll be fine. It’s a level four dungeon… just don’t underestimate it.” Jay told himself.

Jay was about to expose his presence here, so gave Lamp a luminous jar to light the way. Lamp hastily accepted the gift, however, instead of ditching its shepherd’s crook, it placed them both down, with the jar sitting in the curved part of the shepherd’s crook. Using a little necrotic mana, it molded some bone around the jar and fixed it in place.

“Huh… so it carries lamps and grabs humans with its crook…” Jay raised a brow, yet there was no time to ponder over it further.

Taking a step away from the cover of the pillar, he gripped his sword and shield tightly. His breathing became heavy. Each of his steps felt incredibly loud.

Approaching the door, he saw that apart from various iron bars covering it; the stone was smooth. The crack between them was smaller than his fingers.

“Impressive.” He thought, gazing upwards.

Somehow, the door appeared even larger up close, as if it leaned over him.

“Well, I can’t knock on stone.” He thought.

Looking over at the roots, he followed them along. They didn’t lead to the door itself, but to a part of the wall near it.

A hole had formed in the wall, complete with cracks, dirt, and seeping sap. They had formed a larger hole as they eroded the cracks of the years.

“Insidious.” Jay thought.

Combined and twisted together, all the pulsing roots formed a giant pipe of pumping nutrients, and all of them grouped up like this were as tall as Jay.

Jay’s plan was simply to cut them. All of them. He hoped it would cause the door to open. In fact, he was counting on it.

However, seeing the sheer number of these roots, as tall as he was, he didn’t believe he could cut them all; not him or the skeletons.

While the goal was to get the door open, and cutting one would do, he also wanted to do as much damage as possible.

Jay held another acid-filled shard in his hand, knowing it would do the trick.

“Ah… no.” He stashed away the shard. “It would be too easy. I can’t keep relying on these when things get hard. I need to do it myself.”

The skeletons rushed over, “well, by my own power anyway.”

As the skeletons got into place, he reasoned with himself some more, “I guess I don’t have to cut them all.. I want to, but it’s more of a secondary goal.”

With the skeletons in place, Jay readied his sword. He wasn’t worried about getting hit with stray plant fluids, as he knew from the breeding room that they add the parasites and eggs later on.

Together, they surrounded the mass of roots. Red stood by Jay’s side. Sweeper was on the other side of the roots, while Lamp awkwardly stood on top.

“Alright boys, one my count. Three… two… one.”

*Pssh~!*

A deadly jet of high-pressure, green fluid burst from a slight cut on the root. It pushed back on Jay’s sword as it shot high into the air, and in moments, caused a green rain.

Yet the root was not done. Jay had just ruined its structural integrity. He broke the seal.

Three other jets also spurted out the high-pressure fluid, and each of the skeletons similarly jumped back.

“Ah, it’s -” Jay stepped back in surprise, “Oh shit… Oh! Shit!”