“*Oookay! Let’s work hard everyone!*” Clapping my hands in the late morning, I released the undead from Inventory into the forest. As for food, it mostly became a matter of acquisition, as Inventory held a theoretically infinite amount. According to Ychk, Longhand, or rather, Khtraal, was doing some sort of chikan hunt. From what I’d heard, there are both chikans and chickens, where the former is a more aggressive variant. It’s still basically a chicken and shouldn't amount to much, so I decided to send my minnies hunting.

The six hand spiders would work in pairs, scouting the area, while Zog would do most of the fighting. Chikans may just run away from the undead, so I placed a bit of fish on the back of each hand spider, not enough to attract larger predators though. If they really were aggressive they should be drawn into a fight.

However, the order of going out into the forest as a unit, surveying the area and reporting to Zog who would then undertake action, collect the chikan and then return with it was far too complicated for simple undead. Instead, I divvied up the orders into three primary sets. One in each hand spider pair would walk to Zog, then 100 meters out, and then return. If they encountered a chikan, it would return immediately to inform Zog. The other hand spider’s orders were to follow the first hand spider, unless they encountered a chikan, where it would then attempt to grapple it. If the chikan was killed by Zog it could return to prior orders. Zog functioned as the center, and moved out on the path I determined for him through the forest, and the hand spiders would have to move to follow him, changing the center of their search area. If a hand spider informed him, he would go to its partner to fight the chikan and return with it, before resuming his path.

Ordering simple undead was just like programming, complex things were just made of simpler subroutines. As long as they weren't destroyed, even if they got lost I could use the spiritual connection to find them, or order them to return. On that matter, the range at which they could be controlled had increased to a smidge under 120 meters, but that was still far too short.

Having faith that the bugs that cropped up wouldn’t be terminal, I sent them on their way into the forest. If disappearing made people worry, I should probably be sure to spend some time in town. The efforts of that day would be focused on the river; and so Saturday peacefully passed.

On Sunday, I decided to return to the depths of the forest to try and check up on the goblin situation. The forest concealed more than I originally realized; considering its size, it wouldn't be strange to find a goblin kingdom within its borders. There didn’t seem to be any major historical interactions between whatever resided amongst the trees and Derriad, but considering the scope both in time and size, perhaps they’d been forgotten.

When getting water and food for Ria in the morning, I spotted Ralph and made a bit of a detour to inform him I was going to be checking up on the monster population for most of the day. Before actually setting off, he had me magic away a bit of fish he’d already caught and cooked for breakfast. If anyone deserved a fishing skillcape, it would be him. 

Traversing the forest, I ordered my minnies to return while on the trail, I did have to slow my pace a little for them to catch up, but I spent the time practicing forming Negative Energy outside of the game skills. Compared to using spells, it took a great deal less concentration to use; and as a foundational Necromancer ability, a Necromancer should know it inside and out. I forwent actually practicing on Zog, and merely put all the undead in my Inventory save Hans. If I wanted to get to the goblin area any time soon, they were too slow. Instead, I carried the first hand spider and repeatedly enhanced it on my journey.

“*Uhhh, Hans, why are you starting to glow?*” Almost draining my mana, at some point Hans began emitting wisps of negative energy from his body. He looked very content, and was exposing his belly(palms).

In Underworld, the {Negative Energy} buffs had a soft cap that could be raised by perks, after which, further enhancements cost exponentially more. Not possessing the perk at all, the effectiveness of the buffing should have quickly gone down. This seemed to happen at first, but then hit a plateau, and the enhancements stopped costing more and more. Seeing this, I used the Negative Energy enhancement until I was drained.

More shocking than a mere plateauing cost came from the base cost. While it should scale with level, buffing Hans was too cheap no matter how I looked at it. Compared to the cost of enhancing Zog, Hans only used about a third of the mana! Madness! Combined with the limitation of diminishing marginal utility, this was exploit material without a doubt! Who knew how strong Hans could become in the future?

This inevitably was an exploit only meant for a future me, as even with the reduced costs, my current mana regeneration rates still couldn't keep up. Looking into Hans’ roiling soul, he truly experienced a surge in his physical prowess, however his mental capabilities did not have the same benefit. You can’t really expect that in a creature without a brain I guess.

With my mana nearly depleted and unable to keep up with the rate of stat point decay, I decided to put Hans away.

I smiled once again, pondering on how exactly Inventory’s time stop nature worked. Hans was happily eaten up by a portal of darkness. Almost instantly I detected something amiss. 

“*What? No! Why? How does any of this make sense!*” Groaning, I could feel my mana regeneration begin surging upwards. It only lasted for a short while, and Hans quickly popped out so I could check on him. Indeed, putting the enhanced Hans inside my Inventory recouped 20% of the cost of imbuing him, and he returned to being a normal hand spider.

Inventory decided to cycle my mana back to me. This thing, it doesn’t understand! Perhaps it was just too different from the natural world to be carried over normally. Maybe being part of my spirit it wanted to troll me. It didn’t really matter; all that could be done was put up with its absurd behaviors.

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Sadly, I gently placed Hans back within Inventory. Perhaps a day will come when my hand spider becomes unstoppable, but today is not that day. Time to proceed to the goblins, and forget the tragedy of finding another strategy that remains out of reach.

Approaching the area once infested with scattered patrols, it seemed to have turned into a forbidden ground. The corpses had more or less completely scavenged, roughly eaten by the surviving hordes of goblins. They weren’t the most efficient or tidy of eaters, as there were plenty of fleshy scraps scattered about. Clouds of many types of bugs formed over the bodies left behind, and even I could detect a malodorous stench forming, though it had yet to reach the smell of pervasive rotting.

Such wastefulness you guys. I would have taken more bodies if I knew you didn’t value every bit.

The mess extended for at least a few miles, and I decided to spend some time in the area waiting for Iyrkraal or Khtraal to show up. Time wasn’t of the essence in this case, and there was simply too much waste. My minnies were getting a real workout, and I brought them out of Inventory again.

A crisp layer of dried blood covered a great deal of ground, and I shoved it and the leaves beneath aside, creating a smooth patch of dirt. Sitting down, I spread my legs as if making a snow angel and cleared another large area in front of me. Ordering my minnies, they set out to begin cleaning up the area. The hand spiders brought back bits torn off and detached from mannerless eaters, and Zog brought back corpses that remained mostly together. Giblet by giblet, a pile started to form before me.

With a combination of , , , , and good ol’ fashioned manual labor, the remnants of the battlefield were processed. Stripping away excess flesh into a pile, I would magic the bone clean and place it in my Inventory. When the flesh pile built up too tall and slopped towards me, I returned it to earth. Since more than a day or so had passed, between the goblins and other scavengers, there wasn’t any plain flesh usable. I didn’t mind, because once I could use {Skeleton}’s Amalgam skill, I would be able to have so much fun.

Again with Inventory’s strange nature, the bones began filling up my slots quickly, before suddenly stopping. It seemed while there were three broad quality levels, there were only nine types of bones. Upper arm and leg bones both went into the same category, and skulls and jaws were combined, yet ribs and spines went into different categories. There also seemed to be a catch-all category for any bone smaller than a kneecap, with the exception of the digits. Inventory, it’s great you can consolidate these, but why? How?

On top of that, my minnies built up a pile of rags, as well as finding a few weapons that had been missed. I kept them both after a cleaning. Extra cloth has a lot of ways to come in handy, fire starter, patching clothes, bandages...that’s about it, but those are good uses. 

Moving about every 15 minutes or so, we cleaned out a large enough area it became more efficient to move. The pile built up too fast for my mana regeneration to keep up, so as time went on, I had to use my hands more and more, saving mana for the final cleaning. While maximum mana might not increase even if used to 0, casting the spells became easier and easier. in particular went from being as easy as scratching my nose, to merely breathing. In fact, while using to manipulate a body to make it easier to dissect, at the same time I unconsciously used .

Egads! Prior to that point I had only been cleverly casting spells in serial! required constant control, and though it became incredibly simple for me to do so, it had been impossible to cast another spell at the same point in time! Shocked, I tried replicating the scenario, while still processing the bodies of course.

Picking up bones and cleaning them at the same time, it seemed that could reliably be used concurrently with . Testing my limits, not only could be cast during a spell’s duration, but at the same time as another as well with slightly more effort. If only casting , three could be done all at once. It was a greatly exciting matter for me to be able to use more than one spell at once, but I didn’t dare get my hopes up too high.

As expected, the ability to cast an additional spell at the same time was limited to , the magic I was most intimately familiar with. I had better luck forming the spell shapes of and at the same time, but my proficiency with those two was still nowhere near as high as with . That great spell was what cleaned me and and my clothes, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, shaved me since Glaucen, occasionally flavored my food, helped get rid of fish guts around town, and now had been used en mass to process bones. Much of its uses could be omitted, but as leaving my mana topped off all the time would be wasteful, I cast it over and over, likely making it my largest expenditure each day.

The other spells lagged behind in familiarity, however progress could still be felt compared to the ones that fell by the wayside, such as . If I devoted more time each day, it would definitely be possible to cast even more spells simultaneously.

For the moment, I focused on processing bones. Tossing them in, one by one, eventually I sensed movement within . Looking over I gave a wave, and a toothy grin was returned to me.

A/N:AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

There, I'm pretty sure that's the right number. Unfortunately that means I missed the chance for a HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH reference.

The setup for the forum game is nearing completion. I got sidetracked by figuring out how weather patterns work.