Colorful lights illuminated the night: two magic circles projected over each other pointing toward a corpse held upright by sticks, multiple deep voices overlapped each other making ununderstandable sounds, creating a new symbol on the formations for each word, once the last word was said, the front circle shot towards the target, leaving behind it a trail of mist, the moment the magic circle touched the corpse, both formations imploded, releasing a lightning bolt between the two points and a violent explosion of the target.

At the origin of the spell, a large skeleton could be seen stopping an hourglass and trying to determine how much time passed while sighing loudly.

"...two seconds, still too slow, but that's enough for today."

A month passed since the incident and in that time many things changed about it: first of all it was now bigger than before, standing almost two meters and a half tall, this was thanks to all the mana it absorbed.

After learning how it could control and absorb mana to grow stronger, it begun to absorb it whenever possible, while leaving alone the magic crystals in cases of emergency or to test some theories.

While entering the tent, the skeleton gazed at a pile of bright yellow crystals tucked in a far away corner and shivered, thinking how fortunate it was for not choosing those out of all the others to heal itself: they were filled with light mana.

There were a total of seven kinds of mana in this world: pure mana, heat or "fire" mana, motion or "wind" mana, still or "earth" mana, fluid or "water" mana, alteration or "dark" mana and light mana.

Each of these have their own properties and effects, these effects are described by their names, but the more uneducated call them by their latter name because they see these properties in the mentioned elements, except for the alteration mana.

In short: pure mana is the mana of life and reality, it is used to summon or resurrect beings, if used expertly enough, it can change world laws for some time, examples being position shifting by teleportation or time distortion via time stop or time slow;

Heat mana controls the heat, both cold and hot, though the cold aspect is usually ignored and people mostly use it to "burn" the air and create fire out of the heat, hence the name "fire" mana;

Fluid mana controls the change, the energy that lets organisms grow and develop, and the one responsable for the decay of things and at the same time for their improvement, most people cannot understand this concept so they associate it with water changing into ice or steam;

Still mana controls gravity and solidity, it's what keeps things from moving and what stops them from crumbling, it can be used to harden objects or beings increasing their durability or simply giving more impact to hits;

Motion mana is the opposite and controls all the movement, from the blowing wind to the waves in the ocean, anything that moves creates and is pushed by this energy;

Alteration mana is found mostly in shadowy and dark places, hence the "dark" in its more known name, this doesn't act on the phenomena of the material world but on other mana types, changing them into another, the mana does not stay the same, but keeps changing its class, and to do this it first fuses itself with the alteration mana to, as the name implies, "alter" itself into another kind, spells using this magic usually result in death spells due to changing the living state to its opposite, mutations, curses, hexes and psychological effects;

And lastly, light mana, just like the last one, it affects magic but in a different way, this type is found on anything the light touches as it is emitted by the sun, the reason why everything in the world is as it is, is because the light mana posses a paradoxical "mana oppression" effect, meaning that any of the kind that touches it cannot keep its form nor perform its actions correctly because it provokes a reaction similar to boiling, dissolving any mana type into pure mana, reducing the effects of uncontrolled mana into what we live in now, also making it the perfect anti-mage magic or anti magic creatures.

Sitting down at the desk, the skeleton started writing down the results of its tests, after reading all the books in the tent and re-reading over and over the magic volumes, the only thing left it could do was mastering the art.

It was preparing to leave, all the knowledge that could be acquired here had been acquired and so it had to go and search for something new to learn and hopefully some more books to read.

There was only one thing keeping it from going, and that was the sun, but that would not stop it from its search for ultimate knowledge, that's why it was training to resist it.

"Oh, the light is out... I guess it's time."

Stopping its writing and carefully closing the book, the skeleton stood up and walked to the tent's entrance.

Taking a deep breath, it slowly put its hand outside, after making sure it wasn't burning, it went out and stared at the sun as it was rising, keeping the mana in its body calm, it challenged the light.

A minute passed, then another, and another, ten minutes, thirty, an hour, and another one, a total of ten hours passed before the light's effect started showing and so was the burden on its mind.

As expected, I still can't hold for a whole day, but I can last well over midday now, and I'm sure I can resist another hour or two before starting to actually fade, but the pain is really annoying.

The skeleton gave a satisfied nod as it bore through the growing pain from its boiling body, compared to the first time it wasn't as agonizing, but it still hurt a lot.

Having completed its daylight training, the undead came back inside to cool itself down, record its improvements and go over the next steps to take.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

But in the middle of writing the ink ran out.

Oh, that is unfortunate... If I remember correctly, then there should still be some ink in the commander's tent.

Looking at the cloth of the tent, there was still light outside, but soon the sun would set and he already had the ability to stay under the sun for several hours without burning so it was pretty safe.

After taking in consideration all the risks, the skeleton set out.

It wasn't that far, but it was still quite a considerable walk, so in the meantime it contemplated if it should train in some magic while on the way, using magic while willing its body not to burn could possibly turn ugly, but outside this place it was quite a real possibility.

Mm... Let's test that scouting magic, that is probably going to be really useful in my travels.

Recalling the words, it preapared itself to cast the spell, an interesting thought it found out during its practise was how it could read and understand the chant it was saying: in the book it spoke of those words as incomprehensible sounds with no apparent meanings attached to them, though it did call this "magic language", it didn't know why it could understand it, but it was thankful for that as it made casting really easy.

Gathering the motion mana and pure mana around it, the skeleton started chanting, its voice that always sounded like many different people speaking in unison started desynchronizing and every person started saying a different word each, almost speaking on top of the other with just enough of a delay to make sure that every word was said after the other.

This was a trick it learned after noticing how its voice always seemed to echo while all the other scavenger beasts only had one voice and really improved its chanting speed.

"I am all that is, was and will be, I see all that all can see, where are you? Tell me."

The magic circle imploded releasing a gust of wind that shot in every direction before coming back to it full of informations.

Unexpected and unwelcomed informations that stopped the skeleton in its tracks: the moment the wind hit it back all of the surroundings in the range of 15 meters from it were visible in its head, just as it remembered it, with every detail in the right place and it managed to find the ink, which was in fact inside the commander's tent, together with two unknown individuals, and worst of all, the wind came back with their words, just a sentence:

"Someone's here, and they're using scouting magic." [???]

Whoever they were, they knew it was here, and they would very probably come and search for it.

Before having the opportunity to think on what to do, it noticed the mana in the air moving abnormally: it was opening a path toward it.

The undead threw itself sideways fast enough to barely dodge the strange wave of light that flew at it, pushing itself back up, the skeleton looked at the entrance of the tent just to see a bulking man in cape and armor holding a weakly glowing two handed sword, it looked at the symbol drawn on the knight's armor and panic started rising in its head.

A knight of the holy lord's religion: a religion entirely based on the light, the sun and their supposedly holy, immortal and all powerful god, the Holy Lord.

"An undead, and going around while the sun's still out!? You're getting too powerful, I shall cleanse your heretic existence right now, for the Holy Lord!" [Knight]

The knight rushed at the skeleton with a downward swing, it once again barely dodged as the human was faster than it looked, trying to put some distance, it jumped backwards only to be met with a sword handle in the face as the man brought its sword back on his shoulders, preparing for another slash.

The sound of a blade cutting the air and breaking through something woke the undead back from its daze as the sword cleaved through its left arm separating it from its body.

"Aaargh!"

"Oh? So you speak, you're more dangerous than I thou-!?"

"THEY'RE EVERYWHERE, MY LIMBS"

The knight flew backwards after feeling an impact square to his chest, a translucent, almost invisible fist was were its body was located earlier, thankfully telekinesis and all of its spells had really short chants.

What am I doing, I have to concentrate, I'm going to die at this rate, I better finish this quickly

"...Magic, is it?" [Knight]

As it was thinking this, the human, got back up almost undamaged and stared at the undead in rage.

Without wasting a second, the skeleton started chanting as fast as it could, there was still another human in the tent, and it still hadn't come out, it had to finish this fight before it became one against two.

Countless magic circles started appearing and imploding on the undead, it was buffing itself using all the spells it knew, but it had to be careful, the sun would set in the next hour or so, but it was still up so it still had to keep its body from burning out.

The knight got closer and started unleashing a barrage of hits, but it was now just as fast and could see them coming, it could dodge all of them, using this, it started chanting once again, this time it was a powerful spell, one strong enough to destroy him.

"Prepare yourself... Listen, my voice is the truth, and my will is the law, let the cold mist hug you and burn."

Two magic circles appeared in front of each other, one of them hit the man and surrounded him in some sort of cloud, the circles imploded and...

Before it could happen, the skeleton heard a magic word coming from the direction of the tent, it was the last word of a chant, the chant of a light spell: [Light Sanctum], a spell that creates an anti magic dome.

From between the two a sphere of light expanded and cancelled its magic, at the same time, an incredible pain ran through its whole body as the light started burning it from inside, its magic was disabled and its will was focused on keeping it from fading away, using this to his advantage, the knight prepared himself for another downward slash.

The undead, threw itself as far away from the enemy as it could, but the blade still made contact, this time cleaving through its right leg, feeling the abnormal pain compared to the previous hit, it noticed that the sword was glowing brighter than before: it had probably been enchanted with light mana and the culprit was obviously the other man.

"Be more careful, you were almost killed back there." [Mage]

"Oh, yeah, sure thanks about that, been a while since I last fought an undead that could use magic." [Knight]

The other human exited the tent, holding his staff out, it was obviously keeping the spells up.

That meant that as long as he disappeared, it could use magic again, but how could it do that? It was missing an arm and had a ruined leg, it had to somehow get to him.

The blade slashed down and hit the place where its head used to be, in a last attempt of survival, the skeleton dodged another hit and threw a handful of dirt into its attacker's face, it used his momentary blindness to get back on its feet and sprint toward the human mage, in those few seconds it ran as fast as it could, throwing away its dignity it ran like an animal, using its remaining arm as a substitute leg to support the ruined one.

In those few moments it managed to almost reach the edge of the light dome, just another step, as it got closer to it, it threw its hand out, hoping that it could get outside and be able to control that mana...

But it fell before that: a wave of light almost parallel to the ground cut its legs away, looking back, the skeleton saw the knight in an after-swing position and the light on his blade was once again weak.

"That really surprised me..." [Knight]

No...

"Well now, you tried, but the light will always prevail..." [Knight]

The man began marching toward the undead, to the dying creature, the footsteps sounded heavy, it could hear them getting closer and closer, with only its right arm remaining and using what remained of its willpower to keep it from burning away, it felt something that it forgot during the last month: fear, the fear of dying, the fear that made it change its purpose...

No...

The skeleton cried in its mind, looking at the mana moving erratically inside the dome.

I do not wish to die yet...

It cried once more, the fire in its sockets started burning more intensely.

Stop...

Abandoning its body it concentrated its will on the mana moving in the dome.

Listen to me...

It ordered, while its body burned.

Listen to what I say...

The mana kept moving, only half its body remained, while the rest already dissolved into nothing.

LISTEN TO ME...

Anger was boiling in its guts, the man was a step away from it and only a torso, a head and its right arm remained of it.

"I ORDER YOU TO STOP"

And everything stopped.