I have created thirty of my drone skulls, one is near the dwarf room, at the end of the corridor keeping watch behind a large bone barricade, another two are right in the middle of the gigantic hole, one a few meters up and the other a few meters down the entrance to the lizard cave, with three more watching that hole in particular. All the other twenty four skulls have entered that forest. Half are high up taking a good view of the surroundings, the others are doing a more concentrated deep search on the area around the entrance. A few of the drones have leveled up, though none are level ten. They mostly got better flying or eyesight skills. I am hopeful for their evolutions.
For example, they got {Improved Life Sight}, life sight is something all undead have. They can see the living, it’s like an aura, a glow on the living body, kinda like heat vision. In the forest that was a little problematic, because the grass and trees all have that glow, the improved version now lets them differentiate and see the glows better, separating them, this also means they can see through foliage and trees. Though just like a human their sight gets better the closer they are. So from a distance most of the forest just seems like a giant blob of life.
Back in my base I am doing several things. First is pumping the dwarf room with mana, I cannot directly create the skulldwarves, I could push mana directly into the black diamond, except that I do not know how much it can take, my guess is a lot but I am not really willing to make that bet, so I am just upping the levels of mana inside the room and letting the diamond do its thing.
The reason why I want and am getting so many of them is simple.
I am going to dig a tunnel to the lizards, I could make all my troops go down there by scaling, they are undead, so they don’t fear heights, are a lot lighter than normal humans, well at least the skeletons are. Sadly I do not think that is a good idea, too many chances for something to go bad. So instead I am going to build a spiral tunnel downwards..
For this job I am using the skulldwarves, though the true lynchpin here is Asterion he’s even leveling up!
His past mole instincts are making him quite good at mining, he is basically making the holes and the dwarves are widening it and giving the tunnel the finishing touches. All of the stone around is suffused in mana, to frankly incredible levels, meaning it’s actually quite difficult to make cave-ins, you probably need to actively want that for it to happen.
There is one, well not a problem, just a… irregularity? Oddity? Asterion is eating rocks, sometimes, when it happened the first time I thought it was because he couldn’t just throw it to the side, or break it or whatever, but then he did it again, and again, and you get the point.
He even chews on them, which doesn't do much I’ve found, he has stone lips and normal teeth. He can't break rocks like that. Still it might be for the best, it does give him some weight, and it doesn't get in the way so...yeah I will allow it. He is working hard, I sadly can’t do much.
Now normally erasing rocks would be easy for me, and It was. When the excavation was closer to me. The farther and lower the excavation goes the less effectively and quickly I can absorb the rocks. This did make me understand myself better, meaning understanding my new body. I have three ‘things” that are me. First, I have my dungeon core, or heart, the truck sized weirdly colored gem vomit. Second, I have my mana, it is constantly being spewed from my crystalline body, and then I have my aura, which seems to be tied to my mana, and it is what lets me see and do stuff.
Now what is essentially happening is pretty simple. My mana is it’s densest and strongest near my core, the further from my core the more diffuse and weak it gets, I think you are starting to see the problem, the mana in the downward tunnel, my mana, is getting too thin for my aura to do anything, I can help but it’s a very minor thing. I have tried to get around this, like making small holes in the entrance down to the level of the spiral, connecting the loops, sadly it didn't really work, I am pretty sure that if it was a straight drop I wouldn’t have this problem, but that also comes with its own problems. So what I am doing is making a hole in the middle of the spiral, or rather a donut, I am leaving a large central pillar, that does help a bit. It would be faster if I had more mana, but I need that mana to create minions. I am mostly focusing on making soldiers and skull throwers. The skull throwers are being bunched up with regular throwers, these ones will throw spears mostly, right now they are training together, the skulls toss their extra durable heads up and the spears have to hit them. The tough skulls seem to enjoy this game quite a bit, their development has been…. interesting, they started to greet each other with a headbutt.
Right now I have forty skulldwarves, ten are on my core floor, thirty going down and making the spiral tunnel, I have ninety soldiers, though the majority are low level, it’s pretty easy to make a skeleton become a soldier so I will probably have more by the time I reach the entrance of the lizard cave. Actually I should probably get another name for that, greenhouse? It seems like it’s what it should be, an underground greenhouse, it even has a cyan blue ceiling and walls.
Yeah sure let’s go with that. Anyways, there’s three squads of thirty squire skeletons, these have larger shields, each shield and in the hollow of the shield they carry 5 small bone javelins, which they will give to the soldiers to throw.
I have also made use of the leathers that I had to make straps to bunch normal spears together for them to carry, they won’t carry it in battle though, they will only carry one, a spare for a soldier. Yes, these are just normal skeletons, straight out of the necrotic oven. Also I have decided, one of the soldier squad won’t have squires, these are the higher levels one. Instead I want to try and create a lead among them, I got the highest level one and had someone on rotation do things like care for their weapons and armor. I also created a drone and taught the skeleton some commands for it, simple stuff like “Point in a direction for the drone to go”, or “spin your finger means you want to see what’s around you”. The drone obeys the skeleton, and then I relay the info, The skeleton then decides where to go.
It’s all to see if this does create a type of “leader” position.
Bone armor, pretty simple stuff honestly. Honestly after a bit of testing the leather isn’t good for armor, so I just started using it for other things. I should have a large supply of it soon enough.
Another thing I will have supply of will be skinless zombies.
Ghouls. I have one ghoul. Bob the ghoul , I think you’ve met him. I like Bob, but I would also like more ghouls, they seem pretty strong. Sadly Bob seems to be very special.
In a pit in my core room lies a big zombie, bone scales coming out of their extremities and mouth, this zombie is very corpulent, like an inflated balloon, and I mean that, this zombie is not fat, at least not like a human being would be, there are no fold or pouch belly on them, instead they look literally like they have been inflated like you would a balloon. Unlike Bob who looks like a sexless bodybuilder.
The plan was simple: replicate the events that made Bob, namely beat the shit out of a zombie and then make it eat its brethren, simple right? Well, apperently, fucking not simple!
I probably went through at least seventy of these rotten bastards and the best I’ve gotten is this thing.
Rotten Gorger LV15
{Bite}
{Strong Jaw}
{Sharp Teeth}
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
{Dislocate Jaw}
{Swallow Whole}
{Strong Bones}
{Corpse absorption}
{Minor bone scales}
{Stretchy Skin}
{Rotten Odor}
{Rotten Blood}
Cult Initiate LV4
{Cannibalism}
Gain extra benefits from eating your own kind, small chance to gain a skill from the meal.
Squire LV1
Quite a lot of skills, as many as Bob. But here’s the thing, Gorger got his ass kicked by Bob, quite easily too, the worst part is that in comparison to the others, Gorger is a shining child.
I’ve tried to ask Bob to explain something, at least to give me a small clue about his transformation , but sadly, Bob is not the sharpest tool in the shed, or as my mom would’ve put it “Not the brightest star in the sky”. I might send Gorger down to the greenhouse, probably better than nothing, and probably better than several zombies. I could maybe get Gorger to be a zombie leader?
Right onto more promising stuff. Merlin has actually succeeded in teaching skeletons magic, extremely basic magic that I could do at 5 years old, but hey most of these skeletons are days old so in that aspect they are far ahead of 5 year old me, they don’t cry don’t throw up, don’t need diapers, and don’t do all the other shit babies do. I actually don’t think I was a difficult child, maybe I was kind like these skeletons, I couldn’t tell, my mother never spoke much about my baby self. Child and teen me were probably keeping her so occupied that she could barely have time to think, much less reminisce about a handful of years back.
Sigh, this might be a problem of my current body: The inability to sigh. I can do something kinda like it, pushing mana around like a sigh, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Shit, I really can’t get sad now, I am about to start a war on lizardry. Back on track, back on track…
Right where was I? Magic, yeah. Merlin is a pretty good teacher, already doing good on his name. The eleven skeleton group all became [Casting Skeletons], just casting skeletons, no spell squires or whatever. They all know necrotic wind, it’s literally just concentrating necrotic mana and then puffing it out like wind, they can’t even concentrate it into a beam or something similar. It’s a start, at least they know enough that they can channel energy into objects, which may help them fix or strengthen bone items.
This is it for now, I will have more when I reach the greenhouse and…oh, would you look at that. Through my skull drone vision I can see a few lizards getting out of the tunnel to the greenhouse. They come out, and it’s actually a higher number than before, at least 10 lizards of different kinds.
I am prepared for this, I wait for them to go up the walls, and I wait a little more, I tell Kaiman and Bob to prepare, they both share a look and a little smirk, then begin to laugh silently. These two have gotten closer recently.
The enemy group approaches my entrance. I give the signal, which is just me telling them what to do, then both Bob and Kaiman drop large rocks, right on the edge of the drop. The rocks are about the size of a human head. I see them coming down through the skulls, I see it missing, the rocks hit the wall and bounce, screwing the trajectory.
It did, however, spook the little reptiles, well not so little, they are the size of alligators but you get my point. With them not only stopping for a few seconds but also slowing down, it gives me the perfect opportunity to get more rocks to drop at them, which is what I tell my little brutes to do. This time it connects, two are hit, they lose their grip and proceed to fall right on top of the ones below. This causes a chain reaction that causes all of them to plummet down. I watch them sink into the darkness below, the edges of my vision and I hope whatever’s at the bottom of this abyssal well likes lizard meat… and scraping food off the floor, cause I am pretty sure this fall will fuse them with the ground or liquify them.
…
Well I didn’t hear them hitting the bottom so, I can only hope it’s not an endless hole or something.
After a few more seconds everything returns back to normal, I return to what I was doing, namely creating bones, not for skeletons but rather weapons and armor made of bone.
I confess that I feel somewhat like a dehydrated person next to a gallon of water. I have that black crucible, it can create ingots of steel, which is, currently, useless since I have no way to turn those into anything. I can’t really melt them effectively, especially not now. I have no mold for a weapon, I am pretty sure I could rough it out somewhat, I could create a heating magic circle with engravings, or well have one of the dwarves do it, one that would melt steel, then I would only need to have a mold for the sword, or have a dwarf use a bone anvil and hammer to make it, it could be a stone anvil. But then why would I spend effort to do all of that, multiple times, when I could arm and make more skeletons, or armor for skeletons.
The crucible’s helmet and shoes can barely work for my skeletons, a dwarf’s foot is shorter in length and wider than a human’s, so the boots don’t fit well. The helmet is also designed for someone with a thicker head. Anyway the feet problem is a little more irritating, but the head thickness? Not so much. While creating the soldiers I have given two groups squires, one group without, now I plan to have another one with squires too, the basic idea is a group of very heavily armored skeletons, this is how I will deal with the steel helmet problem, I will just make a thicker skeleton, and then create a helmet that can combine with the steel one, simple. They will also have significantly more armor, they will probably need a squire's help to put on swiftly. Their weapons will be large two handed warhammers. The hammers will be based on the femur, they will be modified so as to have the shape of a hammer.
This is not really easy, I have already created a few and had Kaiman and Bob test them in their spars. My ability to create bone things is sadly not like some 3d building software, it’s somewhat difficult to do smaller things, combining the helmets in particular was a pain, but it's possible. The squires' will help the heavy soldiers and with their shields will provide support in battle.
Speaking of Bob and Kaiman, they sadly can’t help in the excavation, nor can they help training the others, unless the training is “how to not die” in which case most of my minions will fail. Instead they are sparring with each other, granted I say sparring but the only rule is not going for an actual kill. They are both very similar fighters at the end of the day, both are tall heavy bruisers with claws that have special effects. This did have a good effect.
Ghoul LV18
{Enhanced Smell}
{Elongate Claws}
{Durable Claws}
{Thick Skin}
{Enhanced Hearing}
{Strong Jaw} to {Tough Jaw}
{Hard Teeth} to {Ghoul teeth}
Squire LV3
{Sharpen}
Bone Horror LV12
{Rot Claws}
{Tough Bones}
{Sharp Teeth}
{Grasping Jaws}
{Maiming Roll}
{Rot Claws}
Creates claws of concentrated rotten miasma.
The spars were honestly pretty brutal, but they paid off, although Bob is stronger and won more times, it definitely feels like Kaiman had the last laugh. Kaiman got beat to shit sure, but Kaiman also blinded Bob once, with a well timed {Rot Claws} right through the eyes, and then another time, after I told him about the spinning tactic crocodiles used. when he bit Bob’s arm right at the elbow and rolled and tore the arm off. Also I have paid some attention to Bob’s claws, his new skill {Elongate Claws} does exactly that, his claws grow to about a large knife size, after breaking they are still sharp and durable so it could be used to make weapons, maybe.
Overall everything is going smoothly, hopefully the greenhouse won’t know what hit them.