"Listen, Mennok. I don't think we should fight this thing just yet. Maybe we should check out the other tunnel? You never know we could find something useful."
When Mennok and Jenny had arrived, the creature had already fell asleep, leaving the arm under its paws. It had already chewn off the forearm, only the hand remained. If the Duo wanted any chance of taking what's left of the hand, they had to act right now during its sleep and quickly before the rest of the hand would be gone as well.
The skeleton nodded, signalling for them to go through the undiscovered tunnel. They had been walking for quite sometime when they came across a chiseled stone chest covered in moss.
["The Depths" Dungeon Chest]
[Quality: Rare]
"Finally something!" said Jenny. She ran over toward the chest and tried to slide the lid off, but it was too heavy. "Can you help me out her Mennok?". Mennok went over to where Jenny was, knelt down and pushed the lid off with her. Jenny wiped away strands of sweat off her forehead and then looked inside the chest.
"Let's see here... these look like clothes made out of leather, possibly Rogue oriented clothes?". She pulled out a grey Tailcoat, a grey shirt, grey ankle length trousers and a pair of leather boots.
"I think you might be able to Appraise these. Here, Try this one out." She handed him the Tailcoat. The skeleton held his hand out, and nothing happened.
"Ehm, you need to activate the skill by saying the word. Like this.
"So the problem is you can't really talk. So how do you use active skills?" Jenny cupped her chin with her hand and thought for a way for Mennok to activate the skill. "Try saying it in your mind, it doesn't work for us Elite races but it could be different for you being as you're a... actually are you even considered s monster anymore? I mean you're not hostile towards me and as far as I know you don't eat us. Whatever, just do what I told you and say the word in your mind."
The Skeleton held out his hand once more, this time thinking of the word "Appraisal", and a white light travelled from his palm to the clothes.
[Appraisal pending.....Appraisal successful. Bringing up Status]
(+50 Health, Basic Self Repair)
"Did it work?". The skeleton nodded his head. Jenny quickly appraised the other 3 items of clothing and then handed them both to the skeleton for him to appraise.
(+25 mana)
(+50 Health, Basic Self Repair)
(+50 stamina, Basic Self Repair)
"Those are some good items. 100 additional health would be helpful, as well as the 25 extra mana.The stamina won't help out. Try them on."
Mennok started by trying to put the boots on his head but was stopped by Jenny. "Give me those. I'm gonna help you out." Mennok have her the clothes, and she proceeded to slip the boots into his boney feet one by one, and then she showed him how to wear the breeches which after a few tries he had managed to fit into them, and then he slipped on his shirt and then Tailcoat.
Mennok slowly inspected his outfit and found that he actually liked it. He twirled around, Tailcoat whipping behind him. Jenny laughed at him, claiming that the clothes had weird bumps because all there was under it was bones, but Mennok ignored her.
"All right let's see if there's anything else here."
She rummaged through the chest and found 2 tattered papers. "This must be quite old for it to be in such a poor state. At least the writings readable.
"When dangers lurking by, from below or up in the sky, this skill will be your guide."
[Acquired skill
The paper that she was reading faded away, leaving only one paper left.
"Mennok come over here, I think I found a skill book." Mennok was fiddling with the Tailcoats inner pockets when Jenny called him over.
"Here, read this." She handed him the second paper and Mennok read the writing, shortly after receiving the same notification Jenny had gotten.
[Acquired skill
"This'll be a skill which will really help us out here. We could sneak past the Monsters that are too strong for us, avoiding them completely."
That's was a good skill to use for sure, thought Mennok. This would help them a lot in the long run.
"Let's see if there's anything left to replace that shitty sword of you-" suddenly her shoulder was yanked really hard, vigorously turning her around. When she turned around she met the pitless eyes of Mennok, only a few centimetres away from her face.
"M-M-Mennok what's going on? what happened?" Mennok hadn't liked what she called his sword, so he was very angry.
"I-i was only joking! Your sword is amazing!"
Hearing his sword being praised he moved away from her and patted her head.
"I need to remind myself to never talk about anything that he owns in a bad way" she thought.
"Ok there's nothing left here, can I double check to see if you have the skill?, I don't want you to have gotten another skill and not told me while we're sneaking." The skeleton nodded his head and waited for Jenny to finish appraising him so that they could go back and kill that creature.
"Ok so all is well so far, but there's only one problem." Mennok tilted his head in confusion and then checked his status. He didn't see a problem.
"You're already level 5 and you haven't applied any of your attribute points yet. If you had done so earlier it would have been easier to get rid of the skeletons. Try clicking on the attribute points so that you can apply them. Click on the plus sign to add the points."
Ahhh, so that's what he had to do with those points. Mennok opened his status and clicked on the Attribute points.
[Attribute points: 20]
[Do you wish to apply your attribute points? Yes/No]
The skeleton clicked yes and another box showed up.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attributes:
Strength:2 (+)
Vitality:1 (+)
Agility:1 (+)
Intellect:13 (+)
Will:16 (+)
Attribute points: 20
____________________________________________
Mennok began to think on what he should upgrade. Will? No it already had enough. Intelligence? Maybe a little bit. Strength, Vitality and Agility definitely needed upgrading. So he decided to put 5 each into Strength, Vitality and Agility. The number went down from 20 to 5. He put 2 into intelligence, just to make it reach 15, and now he was left with 3 points. He put one more into Vitality and Agility to even then out, leaving 1 point. He didn't know where to put it so he just decided on adding it to Will. Now that there were no points left, a smaller blue rectangle appeared.
[Do you wish to confirm changes made to Attributes? Yes/No]
The skeleton clicked yes, and suddenly he felt a surge of energy pass through him. He felt his mind expanding slowly, his bones hardening, becoming tougher than they were before. The pain that was once in his head completely disappeared, and 2 more boxes appeared.
[Requirement met, entity now has the ability to speak. Speaking disabled until a voice box is obtained.]
[All available attributes assigned. Required level to evolve met. Commencing evolution]
The skeletons mind went blank, and it fell back into the darkness.
Jenny was brushing off dust from her robe when she heard a loud clank. She turned around to find that Mennok had fell to the ground and lay unmoving.
"Mennok?" she called. No movement. Worried that he had died, she rushed over to him to check if he was alive or not.
"
[Appraisal pending.....Appraisal successful. Bringing up Status]
__________________________________________
Status:
Name: Mennok
Race: Skeleton (evolving)
Gender: Male
Level: 5
Attributes:
Strength:7
Vitality:7
Agility:7
Intellect:15
Will:17
Stats:
Health: 150(+100)
Mana:100(+25)
Skills:
Achievements: (Dungeon Escapee) (Kinslayer)
Attribute points:
Items:
(+50 Health, Basic Self Repair)
(+25 mana)
(+50 Health, Basic Self Repair)
(+50 stamina, Basic Self Repair)
____________________________________________
"Huh? Evolving?!?!?!?! I didn't know skeleton's could evolve! What do I do what do I do. I can't leave him here laying in the open." Jenny tried to find a place where she could hide him. She kept searching on both sides of the wall until she finally found a small crevice which could fit a whole body. She tried picking up the skeleton but he was too heavy for her weak physique, so she dragged him from his legs. "Sorry for this."
Once she had reached the crevice, she pushed him into it. By the time he was fully in there was still plenty of room, so when he woke up he would have plenty of room to get out.
"Ok now that that's done and dealt with, where do I hide? The only person here who can actually fight is evolving, while in out here stuck with nothing to properly defend myself."
She looked for everywhere nearby for anything that was similar to that crevice or at least a rock to hide behind, but she found nothing.
"It really is hard to hide in this place. However there was still room inside Mennok's crevice, but she hesitated. After a huge battle had occured inside her mind, she had finally made her decision. She went down on the ground and crawled into crevice, laying right next to Mennok. Now she was at least somewhat safe.
However a new problem had arose.This was the first time she slept near someone other than her family, and her first time was with a male to make it worse. Not that anything was happening, it was just her first time so she felt really nervous.
Her breathing became heavy and ragged. She couldn't believe she was sleeping next to a boy!
"Calm down Jenny. He's just a skeleton, he has no muscle, no skin, nothing down there either. It'll be fine."
She placed her hands behind the back of her head to act as a pillow, and then dozed off to sleep.
____________________________________________
Mennok was back in the darkness, this time with a yellow screen Infront of him.
[Level 5 requirement met. Evolution is now available. Options will be viewed soon.]
After waiting a little while longer, another yellow box appeared.
[Evolution options:]
(Skeleton Swordsman):
[Description: The most common evolution for the skeleton. Recieve a small increase in Agility, Strength and Vitality as well as the ability to use a few skills from the Knight Class.]
(Skeleton Fighter):
[Description: The second most common evolution for the Skeleton. Recieve a large increase to Strength, Agility and Intellect, as well as the ability to use a few hand-to-hand combat moves from the Martial Artist Class.]
(Skeleton Spellslinger):
[Description: One of the only skeleton evolutions with the ability to use mana. Gain an increase in Intellect and Will aswell as the ability to use a few skills from the Mage Class. Element used is random]
(Greater Skeleton):
[Description; A greater Skeleton is the most common evolution after the normal skeleton. Greater skeletons become larger, almost 2 meters tall, and gain a massive increase to Strength and Vitality.]
(Muscular Skeleton):
[Description: A rare evolution that gifts the skeleton body muscle tissue and organs, except for skin and hair. One of the only skeleton evolutions with the ability to use mana. Very minimal increase to all attributes.
Requires more than 15 Intellect and Will to unlock.]
So many options to choose! This was exciting. But he had to choose carefully, as the rest of his life depended on this one decision. He scrolled through all the evolutions, comparing the benefits and drawbacks as well as which evolution he preferred more, and then clicked the screen.
[Evolution in progress. Estimated time: 3 hours. All injuries will be healed during this process.]