Entering the inn, Jay noticed Mark, Kel and Anya sitting at a table and chatting. Mark noticed Jay walking in as his seat was facing the door.

“Hey Jay” Mark smiled, “Come have a seat.” he beckoned him over.

“Oh, hey. Looks like Anya recruited you too huh?”

“Yeah,” Mark chuckled, “guess we won’t be doing a dungeon after all.” he shrugged with a smile.

“Heh, yeah..” Jay’s eyes drifted to the bar, trying not to reveal to Mark that he wasn’t planning on going into the dungeon with him. He greeted the others at the table.

“How are we all? Ready to go?”

“Good” Kel smiled back. Mark nodded with a smile.

“We’re ready. Ahead of schedule.” Anya replied before handing them the details of the quest.

“Thanks” Jay said, sitting down at the table before beginning reading the details. Looking through the information, a regretful smile appeared on Jay’s face while reading about how a second child was presumed dead, so he wanted to speed things up; while Anya noticed Jay’s expression.

“This is why I want to leave quickly” she said to Jay._.

“Yeah..” Jay pursed his lips as he thought to himself “So she does care about some people?… hmm…”

“Two days’ walking journey? We could just run and burn our energy, camp one night and arrive around morning. Might save some time.” Mark suggested.

The others all nodded at this, knowing they would only feel the effects of exhaustion when their energy started to get low so they can run as long as they have energy; however if it dropped enough they would be defenceless.

“Yeah, but we should keep a small amount in reserve in case we run into a forest monster or something.” Kel chimed in.

“Don’t worry, we’ll kill anything quickly if we run into it.” Anya replied, completely missing the point of Kel’s suggestion.

Jay almost shook his head at Anya’s remark. Kel made a good point and it was clear by Anya’s reply that she didn’t even give per point any thought. He decided to ignore what Anya said and reply to Kel as he looked her in the eyes.

“Good point Kel,” he smiled and nodded “How about we hold onto about twenty percent before we decide to rest? Whoever has the least energy can just tell the rest of us when it reaches that point…” Jay looked around “Hmm so who has the least energy anyway?”

“Well, I have thirty-five.” Mark was the first to reply.

Kel and Anya knew about his class but Jay still had no clue he was a spellsword, so he was the only one at the table who looked confused. Before Jay could question Mark, Kel quietly told hers.

“Forty-five.”

This was less shocking to Jay since she carried a wand. Energy determines mana pool size after all, and Kel had clearly dumped all her points into energy. She probably also was starting with a class that had a high base amount.

“I have fourty.” Jay said, before looking at Anya expressionlessly.

“Twenty energy…” Anya bit her lip, not used to being the one who was the baggage.

Jay was laughing internally while Mark replied.

“That’s alright. Just call out to us when it gets low, ok?”.

“Well, I guess we should get moving.” Jay said, putting his hands on the side of the table.

“Let’s go.” Mark said, downing the rest of his half-full glass as they all stood up and left the snakeraven inn, beginning their journey south-east.

As they left, Jay had his minions travel to the east side of town. Once they left the village, he planned to have them follow the group – though from a distance so no one would notice.

The track wasn’t used very frequently. Some carriage-cart tracks made a make-shift road, but the road continued east while the party had to travel southwest – finding a walking track on the side of the road, they turned off.

Walking along the path, they had to go single file. It had been semi-created by years of footsteps; the hamlet was so small that even cart’s didn’t travel there, the hamlet itself didn’t even have a name.

Jay couldn’t help but wonder what kind of monsters they would be fighting – more precisely, he wondered what kind of bones they had.

“Wait, what the.. What am I even thinking…” Jay shook his head, almost chucking to himself as he caught his own thoughts.

“…maybe my mind is starting to change?” he wondered to himself, since his thoughts were preoccupied by the bones of his enemies.

The day went by quickly as the party jogged towards the village, though Anya had to stop the party to rest since her energy dropped below 20% first.

“Uh, guys? I need to rest, I’m getting low now.”

“Ah ok. Looks like we made it pretty far anyway.” Mark said, as they all stopped jogging. Mark and Jay were both smiling at Anya for different reasons – friendliness and slyness – while Kel didn’t show or say anything as she went to sit down on a nearby mossy stone.

They had run about 15% of the way so far, however, energy would regenerate pretty quickly if they meditated so they could still make it most of the way today. It would slowly come back even if they were walking, but meditation would progress it much faster, at a rate of 1 energy every ten minutes when done at the most basic level; they would only get better if they practiced afterall.

“Hmm, it’s been a while since I’ve tried this..” Jay thought as he sat cross-legged “though thanks to my lesson with viladore and my constant use of mana, i feel like I have a much better understanding of it.”

After Jay began to channel the ambient mana into his body, he felt as if he was full of energy once more. After ten minutes passed, he checked his energy levels.

[Energy – 25/40]

“Wow, I’m up to three every ten minutes” he calculated since he started at 22/40 “Guess I’ll only need thirty minutes more and I’ll be back to full…”

Realizing he wasn’t alone, he frowned knowing he would have to simply wait for the others to regenerate – taking one hour and thirty minutes if they were not that skilled with mana manipulation – and he guessed Anya definitely would be.

“Hmm, I might as well do some scouting.” Jay left the others while they meditated, entering the forest to secure the perimeter.

Jay was using this time to check his minions’ health as well as retrieve the stink-rat teeth they were keeping for him. Once he was far enough away from the others, he willed his minions to return to him. It only took a few seconds before he heard a sound in the forest.

Two skeletons with wolf-skulls ran at him at full speed, faster than a human – then suddenly stopped as they reported for duty. Jay had to take a step back, thinking they had way too much momentum to even be able to stop.

“Huh, where’s the other one…”

A dark-blue blur went past some trees to his right, then before he could even react, his three minions were before him – but something was different. One of them, Blue, had levelled up.

Jay was speechless at the changes to his minion’s body. He even forgot about the rat teeth they were bringing him.

Blue was as tall as Jay now, with eyes glowing green staring back at him. They seemed to pierce his soul.

From inside it’s wolf-skull, a green, glowing cluster of arteries continued down its spine to form a small lump in the centre of it’s ribcage; its ghostly eye’s weren’t the only thing illuminated anymore. The lump didn’t physically pulse, but the glowing light it emitted pulsed.

Translucent branch-like structures stemmed out from it, arteries and veins covering it’s skeletal body, radiating from the lump in its rib cage – they appeared to be filled with the green gas.

“Bleh!” Jay instinctively spat. As he was trying to look at his new skeleton, a random spider web thread flew onto his face out of nowhere. He picked it off and wiped his face a few times before continuing to inspect his creature.

The spine was surrounded by tiny bone plates, making it look more like it had an armoured centipede as it’s backbone. The horns on its head had disappeared now – though at first Jay assumed they would only grow bigger as it levelled up – he could only speculate about the purpose the horns originally served.

As Jay analysed it, he realized it was at half-health, so he healed it up. This only resulted in the green gas flowing into the tree-like branches of arteries covering it’s skeletal structure to glow a little more, seemingly resupplying it.

“It’s bones got thicker too?” Jay could see they had somehow not only lengthened, but thickened too.

“…But where did it get the extra bone mass from..”

The skeleton was now more imposing since it was the same height as Jay, it’s eyes meeting his – not to mention it’s blue wolf skull, which previously seemed to be too big for its body, but now seemed to be just the right size. Parts of it’s joints were now strengthened by black fibrous tissue strands running over them – though they still had a sickly green reflection in the sunlight. Despite its size, it was much faster than the level two skeletons who could already run faster than a human; appearing as a blue blur in the forest. Now it’s claws were larger, almost looking like finger claw armour; it’s finger and wrist bones were reinforced with the black fibrous tendons too.

“It could probably crush a skull in its hands” he thought as he looked over it. The new form of skeleton looked truly menacing; a thick-boned, blue, wolf-skull skeleton holding two blue swords stood before him in all it’s glory.

Jay analyzed the level three skeleton.