POV Egro2.0

The combat had been over rapidly, though Egro couldn't help but worry over how much of a risk had been taken. It would only take a few high level warriors to defeat Bokan at his current strength, something that the last empire could easily raise. They were on the clock, and he wasn't entirely sure Bokan was aware of just how short that time was.

He had a feeling Bokan felt he had months left still, but that was not the case. The second a mage didn't appear to retrieve the food sent to the tower, it would be investigated and the massacre would be found.

A rebellion of this order against the rulers would be a catastrophe to the emperor, as he would no doubt expect that someone had learned how to reject the ruler's power. Bokan's method of fighting expressed more power than he really had. On one hand, it meant that almost all victories were near-total, even if they were in reality quite close to defeat. The long range silent attack using death mana worked great, until they ran into an opponent with plenty of HP who could handle it.

Bokan, for all his strange knowledge, had still refused to understand the arrogance of the rulers for what it truly was: fear. From birth, the rulers were under threat of death. The importance of hierarchy was beaten into them, and they got to enjoy a positioned of nearly unrestricted privileges in return for their authority.

However, they could do very little on their own. They relied almost entirely upon the power of others to achieve their luxury. If those others were to ever rise up against them, particularly considering the amount of abuse of power that had occurred...

This was not something Egro could have even dreamed of considering while alive, but now he could see clearly the problem that the rulers were facing. If there was ever a crack in the façade, if they ever lost their powerful servants, they would most likely die a terrible death. Realistically, the death of these nobles had not been painful, but no one would feel that way when nothing but blood stains remained of over 300 magic users and a castle of rulers. Especially when the only sign of struggle was a minor amount of damage in the village and a few destroyed buildings in the academy.

If an entire army was raised, Bokan might be better served, since his minions could scythe through the weaker humans and Bokan could raise them. However, this sight would not be permitted for the common soldier to even see or hear about. Rather, an elite force of warriors would be sent to hunt down whoever had done this.

Perhaps, if more damage had of been done, then it could have been passed off as the rulers losing control over their magic users through poor storytelling, who immediately killed themselves and their ruler overlords. If so, it would simply be an incident swept under the rug. The possibility of achieving that, however, had never been high to begin with, and by now it was lost.

For all his power, Bokan could not cast even a single fireball or lightning bolt. Trying to make this appear as though the magic users had simply killed one another off would take time they did not have.

At the very least Bokan could possibly leave behind the challenge to the 1st floor as a way of delaying pursuit, yet the conversation Egro was having with him about that was not going well.

You told me its a giant who can't move outside his little box? We can easily kill him from afar.

Indeed master, but please, consider him as a potential guard against pursuers!

Such a weak guard, the emperor will no doubt send the royal poniard, they could easily kill him by using mundane ranged weapons.

Consider his recovery rate!

If 13 little undead can kill him with a few tier 1 and 2 spells, he'll not delay a thing.

Technically, master, its 20 now after a few improved from the last battle. Also, he will delay them since he's much harder to kill with mundane attacks, his strength gives him the ability to move extremely rapidly.

I know the basics of what a giant is, and I'm killing it. I want its historical knowledge and I'll get it by raising an undead from him and asking it.

Master please, look at the bones!

You're made of bones, what are you so worried about?

They are giant bones!

Indeed, as Egro and the few other more powerful undead stood around Bokan and surveyed the entrance to the second floor, the presence of giant bones was quite apparent.

To the right of the castle there had been a large section of grey stone. Mercifully it was not burning hot, although the light from the sunset-like lake of memories barely reached this section as it lay in the shadow of the castle.

In the centre of it, there was a large section of shattered rock and giant bones. The rock itself had clearly been thrown about, since there was clear sign on the floor of where flying debris had damaged it.

The giant bones took varying forms, some from arms, some from legs, some from heads. The bones themselves were broken into several pieces, however occasionally a more complete one would appear, and it was very obvious that the damage to the bones didn't come from the rocks.

In one case, a splinter of a bone had passed through a large boulder, leaving behind a clean hole, and embedded itself into the ground sticking up by about a meter. The skulls were the size of mansions, and they all appeared like they would be of a similar size when completed, though it was hard to tell.

In the centre of the rampant destruction, the stone had been dyed a dark red colour, as mostly dried blood covered the floor in a radius of about 50 meters. In the centre of all this destruction was a large stone sphere with stairs to a what appeared to be a small door, though they were too far away to see it clearly.

Standing what appeared to be roughly 200 metres high was the giant. It howled and screamed endlessly, occasionally it would cough up some blood but it then soon recovered its voice and continued its wail. The entire stone area seemed enchanted with a certain stillness in the air, such that the sound could not travel very far, not that that was a problem for Bokan's communication with his forces.

Its head appeared extremely similar to that of a human, in fact its entire body was, although it was covered in muscles and its head appeared slightly squashed. Also, it seemed to be trying to kill itself.

It tore off its body parts and threw them away, but as rapidly as they were torn off they grew back, sometimes even faster such that he tore off his left arm, caught it with his newly grown left arm before it struck the floor and flung it away.

The force it was flung with instantly stripped the flesh away from the bones, and often cracked and splintered the bones, however the durability of the giant was clearly extremely high as its discarded parts easily struck through the stone surrounding it.

Ironically, flinging them with such force turned the blood and muscle into a red mist that slowly settled down again, in parts it was so thick that it was impossible to see what was beyond it. In this strange place, the wind never blew, and thus the mist simply settled in the aforementioned relatively small area of a diameter of 100 meters.

It was so small the giant couldn't even lie down without curling up, which it was prevented from doing by the sphere in the centre of the place. Rather, it circled the sphere and roared. If they continued watching it, Egro expected to see it sit down and fall asleep, but Bokan was not intending to spend that much time here.

From his perspective, this was madness. The giant was clearly powerful, and killing him would certainly gain them some experience, but they could equally gain that experience through the floors above, or freely from the world outside once they gained enough power to defend themselves from the last empire! However, it seemed as though Bokan had no intention of staying his hand for even a single person. It was as though life itself had become an affront to him, something Egro had shared with Fred and Mike, both of whom had agreed.

I can see the bones.

Then you can see the giant has a rapid rate of regeneration that something like a bow and arrow would struggle to combat?

Yes.

Then we can spare the giant?

No. This conversation is over. The giant dies, I gain knowledge, I and several of my minions gain experience points, and everyone is happy about it. Including you.

*sigh* yes master...

How did you manage to sigh via a mental link?

POV Bokan

After Bokan had reformed Egro's mind, he had put some effort into improving the death link connection to himself, thus allowing Egro to speak with him directly mentally. He had preserved the strange separation that still prevented the two from directly sending memories to one another, limiting them both to verbal communication, in the interest of studying how he had managed that in his desperate first attempt at death link.

He also felt a significant amount of thoughts he had yet to properly ruminate on after the previous tier improvements to his skills. He knew he was only a fraction as powerful as he could be, however he decided to focus first on reaching a higher floor level of the tower, to ideally put some space between him and his pursuers.

Leaving behind the challenges would be fine normally, however this challenge took the form of a potential minion with potentially useful information, assuming that its mind could be pieced together enough. Hopefully, combining that experience and the knowledge he had of the link he had to Egro would help him make a break through in his death link capabilities.

For now, it was time to focus on killing the giant. The maximum amount of damage his forces could do at one moment took the form of 20 highly empowered death bolts. It would have to be enough.

Based on the giant's regeneration, he strongly doubted that shooting 100 death bolts in 2 seconds would be better than shooting 20 in one instant, so he used the speed of thought to simultaneously send a command to all his minions capable of throwing such attacks at once. Since the weaker minions couldn't support them in this in any meaningful way, they likely wouldn't get any improvements, however they could at least allow them to absorb their death mana for a second attack just in case.

The host of roughly 250 undead got into formation and prepared themselves for the battle ahead. A few moments later, 19 empowered death bolts and 1 empowered death lance, all filled with as much death mana as possible, struck out against the giant. Silence reigned as it instantly stopped its movement, the more powerful undead rapidly pulling death mana from their lesser companions in preparation for a second strike.

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The giant began to fall, but before it reached the floor, it woke up. Crashing to the ground, it moved with an unnatural speed that somehow refused to harm it and stood at the edge of its field of blood, staring at them with something akin to hope in its eyes.

It was entirely unsettling, and however what was far more unsettling to Bokan was the fact that the creature had died, and something at overcome that death.

Up until now, nothing had been able to overpower death, which was good since death mana was what Bokan mostly relied on. The only power he knew of which could achieve such a thing was life mana, however that hadn't been seen in equally as long as death mana.

It did, however, tell Bokan 2 things about the giant. 1) Something with extremely powerful life energy had put a lot of effort into keeping him alive and 2) that something intended it to be a punishment. He knew this because, in that short instant that the giant had been falling down, dead to Bokan's death sense, a very tiny flare of life had appeared in its core, around its heart.

He sent a second set of instructions, this time the 19 death bolts would be fired as normal, however the death lance would be fired right after. Before the stronger undead could recover their death mana fully, though, and indeed just a moment after the giant had been staring at them with hopeful eyes, it moved in a blur and several arms were launched at them like javelins.

Bokan saw now that beyond a simple restriction to the wind, something prevented the blood and flesh of the giant from leaving a 100 meter radius circle. However, it did not restrict the bones, which mostly exploded into long shards.

Fortunately, Bokan had stopped his force far away from what seemed to be the maximum range of the giant, roughly 2 kilometers away in fact. Had the giant of been using something that didn't destroy itself on the air resistance, he could doubtless have easily thrown the thing 10 kilometers away or further. However, what he was throwing turned to pieces the moment it left his hand, resulting in significantly reduced range to as little as 1.5 kilometers.

500 meters was not enough to completely mask the earth-shattering thuds of the bones striking deep into the stone though. Already some previous damage to the landscape had been recovered, and some bones and rocks had disappeared, with the rock seemingly reforming back in some kind of structure where the giant was. However, his relentless assault meant that a permanent state of destruction surrounded him. Bokan shuddered to think how many times he had torn off his own head simply out of boredom. Truly the giant was a monstrous beast.

In response, the silent army of undeath simply continued its preparations as Bokan studied the movement of death mana. It seemed to interact with the mana around it strangely... but how? Where did it come from? How was it created?

It took under a minute for the second attack to be fully prepared, at which point the giant fell. 200 meters of bone and muscle somehow succeeded in hitting the ground with surprising force, the giant's skull even causing a deep crack in the stone ground. Regardless, it was dead, slain first by the 19 death bolts and then its recovery prevented by the final death lance. In the end, leaving it alive to delay pursuers might have been a wiser choice, however that was now water under the bridge.

Still, the fact that he had killed the seemingly trapped creature for no other reason than knowledge and power reminded Bokan that such things were supposed to trouble him... no matter, he could spare time for those thoughts when he had it, which right now he did not.

Walking up to the strange spherical structure, he saw that it was enchanted. Every part of it, every rock, likely in the interest of being as efficient with space as possible to minimise the decreased effects from further away.

While he longed to stay and study it, he knew that there would be more on higher floors, so he resolved to push on for now. If he thought he could adapt it to teleport to his old world he would gladly do so, however he didn't know how long it would take and failing his revenge due to running out of time was unacceptable. Furthermore, the higher floors called to him. He had gained so much from this first floor, who knew what power he would wield by the time he had reached the top of this place?

First things first, raising the giant.

Considering his slightly-super human stamina and strength, Bokan could easily travel to the giant in 15 minutes if it was a straight journey, however the path toward the giant had been totally destroyed by the arms that had been thrown. In total, it took 20 minutes to get to him, at which point Bokan laid his hand on his arm and began to pour in his death mana.

Expertly manipulating it following his roughly 300 successful attempts in a fairly brief period of time, the skin, then fat, then muscle and flesh of the giant began to melt off. Then the bones also began to melt. After a few minutes, all that remained was a small, almost entirely black skeleton.

However, Bokan frowned. The mind of the giant had been ravaged, it was as though it had first been torn into several pieces and then those pieces were thrown far away from one another, scattered thoughts and tortured memories. Unsurprisingly there was a mental construct on the giant, however it was far more impressive than any he had seen before. Subtle yet utterly invasive, it seemed to infuse every part of the giant's mind. Where the modern rulers created prisons, the work of the ancient rulers seemed rather to create something almost-natural. Similar to how the giant had been unable to leave his small circle despite nothing blocking his way, his mind seemed to work as the restriction of itself, tiny barbs and stiches preventing it from moving in some slight ways but no more. The enduring control over the giant spoke to their success.

Still, Bokan lacked the skill to recover this mind. He needed slain enemies to practice his death link skill, his own minions couldn't count as enemies so killing them didn't gain him anything other than a small explosion of freed mana and death mana that he could absorb for some slightly faster death mana regeneration. He had tested it only once on the way from the village, and it had been so disappointing he hadn't repeated it. He lacked practice, and lacked time to really think over his skill to reach a break through, even though he had unlocked more than one for death link alone.

For now, that time investment didn't seem worth it since he was winning his battles, but when he faced a foe that might defeat him that would change. Unfortunately, he was going to face such a foe as soon as the empire sent their elite warriors.

Egro had told him that apparently his chances of getting away with just leaving a few undead behind to take any food that was dropped off wouldn't trick anyone. Apparently the only reason he hadn't told him that is because he "should have known". That was true, but it didn't alleviate Bokan's annoyance whatsoever. Regardless, what was done was done, he would simply have to move faster than his enemies.

Still, he played around with the mind construct of the giant until he began running out of death mana, and which point he started absorbing death mana from his minions. After a bit of time, he realised what he was understanding: the mental construct wasn't holding together because the only thing that had been holding the mind of the giant together had been its soul.

Strictly speaking, the mental construct that Bokan created was not a soul of a creature, but rather a short cut that allowed him to create a human-like automaton, based on a modified version of the previous inhabitant of the body's mind. If a mind was truly shattered by absolute insanity, at a certain would it would start affecting the soul.

The soul of the giant had taken some damage, likely due to his millennia of imprisonment, and different parts of his mind had clung to different parts of his soul. As a result, with the soul being removed, there was no longer a connection for the different parts of its mind to use.

Still, Bokan was able to learn a lot about how he could possibly make his own construct based on seeing the effect of the mind, broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces. Additionally, seeing the mind of a non-human helped him see what things were essential and what things were simply human-sentience. Though he got a feeling that at one point, this creature might not have had a mind too different to humans.

After a few hours of experimentation, Bokan stood up and walked over to one of his weakest undead. He ripped into the mental construct, shattering it into two pieces, and tried storing the two into 2 different rocks on the floor. It failed, and the minion was destroyed. He repeated the experiment on the next weakest, and so on and so forth.

By the time he had 204 minions left, he finally succeeded in making it work. In theory, so long as the two rocks and the magic constructs they were imbued with survived, the minion would come back from any amount of damage, no matter how catastrophic. If he were more skilled, Bokan had a feeling he could even allow 1 to be destroyed and still be regenerated by the other, but for now he wasn't able to do that.

It took him 5 hours to do the equivalent for all the rest of his minions, although by the end of it he was able to store the constructs in much smaller rocks, some more like pebbles that were smaller than the size of his palm.

Then, he had all the rocks gathered up and taken to be thrown into the lake of memories. It was another expenditure of a couple hours of time, but it allowed Bokan to take a quick nap and recover some of his energy. Normal magic users couldn't locate death mana, and magic constructs didn't seem to be deleted by the tower, so hopefully it would give his army some level of recovery, although it had cost him over 2 score minions, several hours, several unused tier breakthroughs in death link and the mind of a soul-damaged giant. Still, it was the second step on his path to making lich minions, so he was glad to see it.

It still wasn't enough for him to create a phylactery though. It worked for his minions as they were just a mental construct, but a phylactery needed to connect to the soul, and he still wasn't able to actually affect the soul at all. Annoyingly, the soul seemed to have complete immunity to physical and magical damage, though evidently it was not immune to immense, prolonged suffering in both. Bokan would need to take into account that such a fate was far worse than death, as death would simply be an escape for his soul, whereas this spoke of potential annihilation.

Finally, he was ready to cast "field of bones". His level had increased from the previous combat, in the village, castle and against the giant. As a result, his status now looked like this:

Name: Fabien

Race: Human (tier 2, +2 to every stat every year)

Class: Dark mage (necromancer) (1) (+5 to all magic stats every level) (The ultimate magic archetype, grow by creating a powerful undead army.)

Profession(s): novice enchanter (5) (+1 to all magic stats every level) // novice alchemist (5) (+1 wisdom and willpower) // novice clerk (5) (+1 intelligence) // novice warmage (5) (+2 intelligence) // novice researcher (5) (+1 intelligence and wisdom)

Level: 75

Intelligence: 52.5 (Your intelligence is... acceptable. For an ancient dragon overlord.)

Wisdom: 49.5 (Your wisdom is sub optimal. There's simply no other way of putting it. If you are an elf of immeasurable age and wisdom. Otherwise its beyond impressive.)

Willpower: 52.5

Strength: 25 (My grandma's stronger than that!)

Dexterity: 25 (You are more dexterous than any humans who have never been reinforced by magic)

Stamina: 25 (You would make a great punching bag, for grandmas maybe!)

Charisma: 25 (Peak human charisma. Still less than that scaly car salesman, I'm convinced he was an alien.)

Manipulation: 25 (For humans unreinforced by mana, your manipulation borders on mind control.)

Poise: 25 (Peak human poise, the super human element being so insignificant it isn't worth mentioning)

Mana: 0 (0/hour)

Radiant mana: 536 (266/hour)

Death mana: 400348 (19972/hour)

Damage resistance: 40.8%

Skills:

Fine magic control (Level 5)(MAX)

Wall of despair (Level 1)(1/5)

Spells:

Display status (Level 5)(MAX)

Raise dead (Level 17)(15/40)

Death link (Level 18)(18/20)

Death mana conversion (Level 6)(6/20)

Death mana manipulation (Level 14)(14/20)

Soul stealer (Level 1)(1/5)

Field of bones (Level 1)(1/5)

Masteries:

Wraith's wrath (Initiate) +5 intelligence, +5 wisdom, +5 willpower

Magic incarnate (Initiate) +5 intelligence, +5 wisdom, +5 willpower

Available skill points: 53

Available attribute points: 0

Finally the time had come to create the field of bones. However, Bokan had an idea to improve it even further.

If his minions relied upon normal mana to have their own physical effect upon the world, then why should his field of bones be any different? Surely radiant mana could improve the spell even further?

He began the casting, relying upon the soul-borne knowledge he had inherited through his soul stone for the complex spell. Immediately the drain upon his death mana was beyond anything he had felt before. He grabbed onto his death mana to try and slow it down and alter the spell to include radiant mana, however it felt as though he was grabbing a burning sword blade with his bare hands as it was pulled by an entire team of horses.

Still, for an instant he endured, and it was enough. Pouring so much radiant mana through that he felt his body breaking from the strain, he completed the spell with all of his radiant and death mana invested.

It immediately shut off, leaving him somewhat perplexed. All around him stood his minions, nothing had changed to the stony, blood soaked ground below him, and yet all his mana had to have gone somewhere.

After a few minutes of searching around, he tried testing inside of his own body, and found a very tiny piece of magical construct within his core. A single look at it made him want to stop, it was terrifyingly dense considering its size, and it took the form of a tiny orb, only about the size of his fist. Certainly not large enough to travel through.

However, as he focused on it and imagined passing through, his will sent an instruction to what felt like a limb he did not know he had. Darkness enveloped him, and he knew no more.