“So how does it feel to have a legion of mindless slaves at your beck and call once more?” Dove asked.

Tyron blinked. He was tired. Very tired. Constantly emptying and refilling his magick to use the Annoint spell, as well as casting a long and complex piece of ritual magick twenty times, was draining, to say the least.

But he’d done it.

Almost a full day of constant spellwork. His mouth was as dry as a bone and his head pounded, but it was all worth it. He greedily gulped down water from the canteen he’d left on his bench and nibbled at the biscuits he’d brought down for the day.

Twenty skeletons stood to attention next to their slabs, totally motionless, the only sign of their unlife the flickering purple light in their eye sockets.

“Feels good,” Tyron said finally, almost gleaming with pride as he cast his eyes over the finest skeletons he had ever made.

“You aren’t supposed to admit you feel good having mindless slaves….”

Tyron snorted.

“You’re the guy who was desperate for me to enslave ghosts and create Reventants. Now I’m supposed to believe you’re all squeamish about ‘enslaved’ artificial minds.”

“Good point.”

The two skeletal hands on the bench danced about on their finger tips for a moment before they both pointed at the Necromancer.

“But you’re back at it finally. Making undead. Necromancing. Now you just need to work out if any of the insane shit you did was actually worth it. For the time and expense, these skeletons better be capable of punching holes in brick walls.”

“Unlikely.”

“Then it was a complete waste of time. Scrap the whole project, start again.”

“Also unlikely. How about you shut up for a minute and I’ll actually take a look at them? Then we can discuss if what I did was worth it.”

Putting Dove from his mind, Tyron stepped to the closest skeleton, eagerly rubbing his palms together. He could feel the connection between them, the conduit for magick to flow through, as well as the deeper bond that bound the skeleton to his will. Excitingly, the skeleton was drawing nothing from him, just standing there. The ambient magick it collected was enough to power it.

“The first thing I need to determine is the effectiveness of the Reservoir and the conduit work I’ve done,” he said, mostly to himself.

“And how are you going to do that?” Dove replied anyway.

“Slow and painful repetition.”

“The way of the Mage,” the former Summoner said approvingly. “Better get some paper ready. I sense measurements in your near future.”

Using the Mage Eye, it was possible to see the flow of energy in a general sort of way, but for Death Magick specifically, Tyron turned to his Lens. After drawing up some tables and settling himself on a comfortable chair, the experiments to determine the efficacy of his enchanting and conduit work began.

Walk to there, he ordered the skeleton with his mind.

It did so. He carefully peered through the lens, sensed the link inside him, scribbled something down.

Walk back to that spot, he ordered.

It did so. He carefully peered through the lens, sensed the link inside him and scribbled something down.

And so on, and so on.

For five hours.

When it was done, Tyron was grinning broadly, staring between the paper in front of him and the minions around the room.

“This confirms it, Dove,” he whooped, “look at these numbers! And it’s so efficient. There’s almost no leakage at all, the amount is so tiny I can barely measure it. This is why it’s important to strive for as close to lossless as possible!”

“Yeah, yeah. Congratulations, kid. You worked hard for this.”

So many years of effort, all for this. What he’d done was relatively simple, enchanting-wise, especially since a lot of it was based off the repository ritual he’d learned from the Unseen. Even so, what he had done was executed to an absurdly high degree. The flow of energy between the minions was flawless, or as close to it as he could manage. Every skeleton drew in power of their own, and fed a portion of it to the locus, who then stored it and distributed that power to the others based on their need.

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Marching one skeleton up and down the room had drawn on none of Tyron’s magick. None. In fact, the skeleton was almost able to sustain that much activity purely on the energy it absorbed itself! A small trickle had been drawn from the Locus to sustain that movement, almost undetectable.

Two skeletons marching, same story, there was zero drain on his energy. Three? Same. Four? Same.

It was only when ten skeletons were walking at once that he had to pay any magick at all.

“It’s a successful test. But I don’t think these bony boys are going to be walking around all naked-like that often, right? You still have to give them weapons, shields, armour maybe. The additional weight will increase the magick drain. Also, this is just walking, moving quickly, fighting, digging a fucking hole in the ground, all of that is going to take a ton more energy.”

“Of course,” Tyron nodded impatiently, “but think about it. Having the minions exist and move without me having to pay any price for it is astounding on its own! Will they draw more power when fully equipped and fighting? Yes, of course. At the same time, I can expand and develop this system to pull in and distribute more magick. There’s no reason I need to stop here.”

Undead who were formed in roughly the same area at roughly the same time already spread Death magick between each other. The more undead created at once, the more total Death aligned energy was generated every minute between them. Tyron was effectively piggy-backing on that natural system with his enchanted artificial one. He could network more than twenty minions together if he wanted to.

Or he could bind the locus from different groups together and have them share energy between squads of twenty….

Ultimately, he would need to find a way to draw in more magick to fuel his minions, but with this alone, he had dramatically cut the cost of maintaining his undead horde.

“Their movement is so smooth,” he noted as he commanded a skeleton to show him its full range of motion. “Look at the articulation on these fingers! I could get them to hand-cast magick, I think….”

“Isn’t that fucking obvious? You did these nifty digits, after all,” Dove wiggled his fingers at him.

“I really did get a lot better at weaving. The mobility of my fingers has made a huge difference.”

“You didn’t think it would?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

The early signs were good and Tyron was immensely pleased with his new minions. When he got weapons in their hands, he was confident they would be able to wield them better and more efficiently than his previous creations, simply from the quality of their musculature.

“So how are you going to arm them? It’ll look a bit suspicious if you go and buy a heap of weapons. Smuggling them into your basement without anyone knowing is going to be another trick.”

Without saying a word, Tyron walked to the corner and withdrew a femur from an open topped box. He turned and waved it in the skull’s direction.

“You’re going to make all the weapons from bones?” Dove exclaimed. “By the sweet melons of mercy, how much work do you have to do to get a single fucking skeleton in fighting condition?”

Tyron shrugged.

“There are advantages and disadvantages to the Necromancer Classes, just like every other.”

“Not Summoner. It’s flawless.”

“Uh huh. How many of those Astral creatures could you bring out at once?”

“Four.”

“I can maintain hundreds, and I’m not even Silver ranked yet.”

“Yeah but yours are shit. They don’t sparkle with ethereal light.”

“True.”

It was a lot of work… but the reality was, Tyron had time on his side.

“I’ve got the leasure to slowly amass my strength right now,” he said. “I get twenty fresh corpses every month along with a shipment of bones. When I have a decent number of minions, well armed and maybe even armoured, then I can advance my Class and take my next steps from there.”

“Sounds like you’re getting a little complacent,” Dove warned him. “You think you’re so safe that nobody will find you. The powers that be around here have been in charge for a very, very long time, for a good reason. They don’t fuck around. The second one of the Divines notices you, you’ll be snuffed out like a candle.”

“You think a god is going to reach down from the clouds and smite me?” Tyron laughed.

“No. They’ll tell a noble or a priest and a gold ranked slayer will pull your face out of your arse ten minutes later. Don’t forget the Magisters. They monitor the city like fucking hawks. One whiff of Death Magick and they’ll come down on you like a lightning bolt.”

“I’d like to see them try,” Tyron snarled.

“No you fucking don’t,” Dove said. “Twenty bony boys isn’t going to protect you from them.”

He paused a moment.

“I’m just trying to warn you that you’re still on the clock, even if you think you aren’t. Every day that passes brings you closer to the inevitable moment of discovery.”

“Fine,” Tyron breathed out slowly. “Maybe I do need to be a little more purposeful with my research.”

He’d been investigating in so many directions. Perhaps it was time to narrow his focus.

“Well, for the time being, I need to learn how to make shields, swords and spears out of bones.”

“How in the shit are you going to do that?”

“Well, I can already mould bones into bows. I’ve been trying to replicate the technique to make other weapons.”

“Trying to grab Skills without having to purchase them? I like the way you think. Let’s see what you’ve managed so far.”

Tyron brought out one of his attempted swords and held it in front of the skull to inspect. Dove studied it carefully.

“This is… terrible.”

“I know.”

“It’s supposed to have an edge. I’m no blademaster, but I’m sure that swords have an edge. You know… for cutting.”

“I can’t get the bone to compress properly,” Tyron explained, exasperated. “You can’t make a sword out of just normal bone, the material isn’t strong enough, it’d shatter in an instant. It stands to reason you need to compress it somehow, but I haven’t been able to figure out the trick.”

“Same for a spear tip, I guess.”

“And for the outer face of a shield.”

“Well, explain to me how you’re trying it and I’ll see if I can think of something.”