For the next hour or so, I continued slowly picking apart groups of undead. Altogether I killed 7 Spectres and 68 Skeletons. Using all of my tricks I could defeat them without facing any larger problem.

Still, there was a dangerous situation when I was hunted by a fighter-zombie. I managed to escape by climbing out of a window, but this encounter only made it much more clear just how superior these zombies are compared to me. If I hadn’t used push to increase my speed every few seconds, it would have caught up to me in no time. There was no chance to beat one of them in my current form.

During the hunt I also continuously practised the use of spells. At this point, I had a hit rate of almost 100% when shooting ice shards. I had also become more adept at using push to aid my movement. During this practice I also noticed something strange. I couldn’t use ‘push’ on any of the undead.

It would have been good if I could have use this spell to interrupt enemy attacks or throw them off balance, but it seemed like the spell just couldn’t get a grip on them. I had considered if it had something to do with the fact that their bodies were controlled by magic, but, as with so many other things, I couldn’t be sure. It’s just depressing.

Anyway, since my mana pool had increased quite a bit, enough for 41 consecutive ice shards, I decided it was time for me to begin another project. To be more specific, the project of creating my own spells. Previously, I had already recreated a fire spell from its fragments as well as heavily modified the ice shard spell. Because of this, I figured that by just rearranging and readjusting parts of the spells already known to me, it would be possible to create something new.

But because I would have to test out every one of them, I wanted to get a sufficient mana supply before starting my research. Otherwise, I feared, too much time might be wasted waiting for my mana to regenerate. And since this requirement had now been met, I began this project of mine after returning to the area near my hideout. Being there gave me a sense of safety, probably because there never were any undead around.

During the past hour I had already identified most of the spell components, so I was able to instantly start off with constructing new spells. My first target was the ability to create ice that was part of the ice shard spell. From it I created a new spell that would allow me to create ice according to my own wishes. It was slower than the ice shard though, because it didn’t have a definite formula. Despite this disadvantage, I could already imagine many uses for it, such as creating a new blockade or freezing a skeletons joints.

I also began to experiment with the possibility of using Push to increase the destructive power of my ice shards. There was a limit to how much force I could put into the ice shards just by using the spell itself and if I wanted to use it against one of the zombies, it would have to have a far stronger penetrating power than that. I must know, I had tried it when one of them was chasing me. My attacks only caused superficial damage. The bodies of these things were clearly far superior to those of normal humans. Explosion was also useless, because they were running too fast to let me set it up properly.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I needed a stronger offence if I wanted to compete with them, and I hoped this combination would provide it. And to some extend it actually did. The ice shards gained an incredible amount of speed.  But even without much testing, I could already see a large problem. If I didn’t hit the ice shard from the perfect angle, it would fly off into the completely wrong direction, spinning like crazy. How depressing. Just when I had mastered aiming with the ice shard, this crap had to appear. In fact, it was even worse this time, because the slightest error would greatly alter the trajectory, while an ice shard might still hit the target. After a bit of internal rambling I managed to cool down. After all, I had plenty of time. At some point it would certainly work. A bit of patience and it would be alright.

Postponing the matter to another time, I continued my work. My last creation, that I completed after a lot of tedious testing, was the snow veil. This spell created a large amount of small ice fragments and blew them towards a target with a gust of air. It had no offensive potential, but the many tiny pieces were pretty good at obstructing ones’ view. Of course I would also be affected, but I was confident to handle it better than an undead that can only act according to patterns.

For the moment I couldn’t think of any other useful combinations. I might have been possible to temper with the air shield, but it wouldn’t help against the zombies anyway, so I didn’t consider it to be important. Instead I returned to hunting the undead, but not before checking on my current body strength at the stone tablet. The incredible number 569 was the reward of my dedicated work. If my strength were to continue rising at such a rate, changing to a new body might really be possible in the near future.

Actually, I wasn’t as urgent about body exchange as before, because I had already found a method to defeat one of the zombies by utilising my new spells. But for this plan I still wanted to increase my mana a bit, so I hunted for another half an hour, focusing on killing spectres. I didn’t dare investing any more time since I couldn’t know what the necromancers would do next.

By now they had certainly understood that the problem that was me couldn’t be solved by just letting their minions wander around in groups. In order to improve my chances, even if only by a little bit, I had to inflict as much damage on their forces as possible. And since the zombies were the only ones that could seriously threaten me, I would naturally concentrate on them. Therefore, after I had killed six more spectres, I began preparations for my plan.