As it turned out, some very unreasonable people had expected for him to understand the so-called "implication" behind the fact that people with a higher rank could kill him easily as being that he should behave. Preposterous! At any rate, Bokan was currently being rather roughly treated in a basement by the third rank head of the academy of the first floor.
"Kill my students will you? I'll show you what for! Mark was the son of a wealthy merchant, how on earth am I supposed to explain to him that his son was murdered in his bed by some first-day student?!"
"Exactly like that should be fine, though I would like to point out that he wasn't in his bed, we were both standing at the time in fact." Bokan calmly replied, although a small part of him (the entirety of his magically reinforced wisdom) seemed to believe that such a response was unwise.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right now, before you rise up to rank 4 and kill every academy member from here to the 50th floor?" growled Otran, a tall man with typical magic saturated features (fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyes). He held an air of authority and calm around him most of the time, but for some reason his feathers seemed rather ruffled.
"Surely killing such a promising young student would be contrary to the will of our rulers?" responded Bokan, hoping the geas given to all who enter the tower would keep him safe from this raving lunatic, "Besides, Mark is right here and still capable of improving his skills."
Heavy breathing and a very unpleasant glare was all he received for his efforts, but it seemed that the geas inflicted upon Otran was sufficient. Based on the description Egro had given of the geas enforced on the "last" empire's tower magic users, Otran would not be allowed to think any thoughts against the geas or the rulers while it was on him. As a result, if he could just get him angry enough that he began to blame the geas for preventing him from killing Bokan, then Otran's geas would activate and change his mind, forcing him to be glad that he couldn't kill Bokan.
"You know, maybe I should challenge the other rank 1 students here to duels, we can all improve our skills and I might even be able to give them some permanent improvements!" Bokan used intentionally vague language here so that the geas wouldn't consider him intending to murder every rank 1 student on this floor, although he absolutely did intend to not leave behind a single potential new minion if he could help it, while Otran would easily pick up on the implication.
Another hour or so of back and forth and provocation was enough for Otran to finally lose control of his thoughts for a moment, at which point the geas activated. The result was as hoped for.
"Well done student Bokan, you are truly here doing us a service, preventing the slothful from taking advantage of our generosity and thusly encouraging all our students to grow and flourish." The change the geas effected on Otran demonstrated that his care was genuinely for his students, which was laudable but redundant so far as Bokan was concerned.
Bokan missed enchanting class, but the structure of the Academy day was such that he still had a second class to go to, an evening class on magical theory. He obviously brought his 3 skeletons with, and all of them learned as much as possible, each reading different things and using their mental links to send knowledge directly towards one another, without having to rely upon the inefficient mode of communications of writing and speech. Rather, it was as though each one of them had the memories that they had collectively gathered from the books available and questions asked. No one sat near him for some reason, but at least he had his skeletons to keep him company. Since he had preserved their minds, even at the cost of some enmity from Egro, Bokan could safely say that he was surrounded by genuine people. Albeit dead people.
Bokan didn't get sent to a different room, rather he was kept in the same room originally meant for him and Mark. No roommate for him it seemed.
An additional benefit of his class was that his undead were able to send him any breakthroughs they made in manipulating death mana. It had some fairly severe drawbacks, such as no obvious way to use in order to travel to his old world in order to enact his revenge, however he hoped that with sufficient break throughs he would find a way.
All of this further convinced him of the need for more undead minions, and for them to have stronger minds, so Bokan thought about how to maximize his growth.
Firstly, he would need to kill several people. Most people around him technically had more raw combat strength, thus far he had succeeded via quick surprise attacks. Mark had been somewhat hampered by Egro and Fred, but if he had not of been killed in the first death-mana reinforced strike, Bokan would have been the one dead.
Thus, he was faced with a dilemma. He couldn't expand his power without practice, he couldn't practice without killing a sentient, and he couldn't safely kill a sentient without more power. The only reason he had been so confident of getting away with it with Mark was because he knew that if 1 person killed another, the inhuman geas inflicted by the local rulers would determine the killer to be more valuable. However, if he went on a rampage, that defense would disappear.
Additionally, it had turned out to be his only defense, since Otran had clearly been pushed to a murderous rage by his actions once already, without the protection of that geas he would already be dead.
One possible solution would be to try and kill everyone in one fell swoop, hoping he gained enough levels from the deaths that he would be able to reach rank 3 and at least have a chance against Otran. He would put that aside as a potential plan B, but for now it could be considered an inferior path.
Another possible idea would be to try to kill as many people as possible, but then to run away, using his undead and his own strength to transport the corpses to the next floor. The problem with this was that he wasn't sure he'd be able to get to the next floor that way, as he would still need to pass the trial. Also, it wasn't the best possible outcome.
Due to the lack of communication between floors, Bokan aimed to kill every person on every floor of the tower, thus taking away a major source of strength for the empire and making it his own. Ideally he could then defend the tower as his own home, and use it as a power base from which to get to his old planet and enact his revenge.
Something told him he wouldn't have thought of this plan even in this situation 6 years ago, but he supposed he'd just gotten wiser with age.
An important part of his path would be getting new professions and levelling them up, in order to improve his stats and abilities. Professions passively improved competency with doing a particular behavior, imbuing any related work with a bit more magical oomph than it otherwise would have had. A master enchanter could even do a bad job of enchanting something and it would still be a lot more powerful than a novice enchanter who had done it perfectly, magic was truly unfair.
The professions available to be gained on the first floor were:
Novice alchemist (the reagents available were not powerful enough to improve to the next tier for free. Gave +1 to wisdom and willpower)
Novice enchanter (he already had this profession, it gave +1 to intelligence, wisdom and willpower per level)
Novice farmer (wasn't worth the time investment, and he could always learn novice farming later if needed. +1 to stamina per level)
Novice clerk (at least it improves intelligence somewhat... +1 to intelligence per level)
Novice warmage (Gives +2 to intelligence, which is an exceptional amount for a novice class)
Novice researcher (he had already unlocked this profession, but he had yet to purchase it since he hadn't been doing much research to level it up, +1 to intelligence and wisdom).
Professions worked opposite to skills, they could never be unlocked for free but if he excelled in them, he could upgrade them for free. In the short-medium term, this made them a much more efficient purchase than skills, although in the long term having more powerful skills was generally better.
Something that was worth taking into account, however, was the fact that true growing undead could learn professions. None of his current minions were strong enough to pull that off, but perhaps one day his minions could do everything for him. As a result, spending precious skill points on getting several professions, and then spending a significant time investment of the 40 years he had available to him levelling them up, was a questionable decision.
That being said, due to the knowledge sharing he had with his minions, his ability to improve his professions was likely far above average. Additionally, from what he had read, the old archetypes were the most skilled enchanters, smiths, researchers etc, so perhaps it would be a good idea for him to get as many professions as he could?
It was obvious to Bokan that 100 levels was not enough for his current class to be anything special, so perhaps he had far beyond a normal tier 1 classes max level, which was 100. After all, he was an archetype that grew in all 3 magic stats, he had to be powerful! If his max level was really 100, that would only give him 1800 stats from levelling. Although that was a lot of stats to some peasants, aforementioned peasants referred to themselves as the "last empire", so he definitely wasn't going to roll with their standards.
If he did have a much higher max level than that, then it made sense that he could afford to spend 10 or 20 skill points on buying various professions and levelling them up, particularly those that boosted his magic stats. If he couldn't, he likely wouldn't be able to become powerful enough to get his revenge anyway, so it didn't really matter.
Thusly deciding, he resolved to gain everything he could in terms of valuable professions from this floor, and every floor after. He wasn't going to waste his skill points on stupid things such as "novice farmer" professions, but so long as a profession boosted his magic he would accept it.
After he had upgraded all of those professions to level 5, he would be at 255 out of 400 to getting to the next rank, still far below what he needed. Still, perhaps he could orchestrate an "accident" during combat training, or challenge someone to a duel to the death over a girl or something, and through that get some more levels.
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In the meantime, he would continue to improve his "death mana conversion" skill and gain levels through that. Every level to his main skill gained him 10 progress to the next rank, so 15 levels and the professions would be enough to release him to battle against Otran, at which point he would be ready to absorb the Academy of this floor and then advance to the next.
All this assumed that the floor above would not be aware of what he had done, which was a risky assumption to make, however Bokan had a firm belief in the overconfidence of the local rulers and decided to take advantage of it. Ideally, taking the tower from the humans of this planet would encourage the elves or dragons to invade, thus giving the orcs enough time to recover their numbers somewhat. He had plans involving them, and their remarkable capacity for reproduction.
2 weeks passed.
Through consistent effort, Bokan managed to unlock the novice alchemist, clerk, warmage and researcher professions, and the knowledge he gained from his minions helped him level up his death mana skill to level 8. His reward was another level up, thus putting him at 130 intelligence, and 105 wisdom and willpower. He spent the 3 free stat points on intelligence, raising it to 133, and decided to get it to 150 as quickly as possible.
Realistically, getting willpower to level 250 was more important than getting intelligence to 250, but that would come with time, right now he needed to learn as quickly as possible to upgrade his professions.
It took him all the way until his birthday to finally get all his new professions to level 5, at which point he had 153 intelligence, 115 wisdom and 110 willpower, not including the level ups he got in that time. He also managed to advance his death mana conversion skill to level 10, with the jump from level 9 to level 10 taking the longest time to manage. He advanced it to a tier 3 skill, which cost 4 skill points and put the max level of the skill to 20. Additionally, he managed to level it up to level 5 after that. In total, he got another 4 level ups from this.
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: 15
Intelligence:178 (The power of your mind is a thing to be feared, and your mana capacity is respectable for a human magic user.)
Wisdom: 152 (Your wisdom is likely well known amongst those who know you, you would make a fine leader of a community.)
Willpower: 135 (Your willpower is sufficient for you to be recognizable as a low level magic user.)
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)
Skills:
Fine magic control (Level 5)(MAX)
Spells:
Display status (Level 5)(MAX)
Raise dead (Level 0)(0/10)
Death link (Level 2)(2/5)
Death mana conversion (Level 5)(5/20)
Masteries:
Wraith's wrath (Initiate) +5 wisdom, +5 willpower, +5 intelligence
Available skill points: 17
Available attribute points: 0
Updates:
Level up! You have grown in your mastery over death mana and thus levelled up.
Level up! You have improved your knowledge of death mana and thus levelled up.
Level up! You have grown in your understanding of death mana, and have levelled up.
Level up! You have formed...
...
Congratulations! By advancing your death mana for the 3rd time, you have unlocked the Death mana manipulation skill in the skill shop!
Skill shop:
Death bolt: Select a target and activate the skill, they will immediately receive damage proportional to the skill level and mana used (Cost: 10+ mana Damage: (10+ 1/2 mana spent)*skill level
Death aura: Both passive and active options. Passively, it will deal damage only to those harboring evil intentions against you proportional to the skill level. Actively, it would deal damage proportional to both your skill level and invested mana to all living things in a radius of your choice (Passive: Cost: 0 mana Damage: 1*skill level Active: Cost: 1 mana per target or 5 death mana total Damage: 10+1.5*skill level Active/Passive Range: 1+1*skill level meter radius)
Grimoire: Stores memories that will then slowly be absorbed into your long term memory over time (The rate of knowledge acquisition is exponentially linked to the skill level)
Summon skeleton: Uses a remnant of a recently defeated mind to summon a skeleton. The skeleton can do a range of tasks but cannot improve in any way, and required you to be continually controlling it. (Cost: 10 mana and 1 mana per day sustain Summon power: 10 points in physical stats, 0 in all the rest)
Summon ghoul: Uses a remnant of a recently defeated mind to summon a ghoul. The ghoul can only be used for combat oriented tasks, however it does not need you to continually control it (Cost: 10 death mana and 1 death mana per day sustain Summon power: 30 points in physical stats, 15 points in intelligence)
Death Lance: Select a target and activate the skill, they will immediately receive damage proportional to the skill level and mana used(Cost: 2+ death mana Damage: (10+ 2.5*death mana spent)*skill level
Death Rain: Summon tiny water droplets that are imbued with death energy to rain down around you. Cost: 20+ death mana Radius: 10+2*skill level meters Damage per drop: 1/2*death mana spent Rate of droplets falling: 1 droplet per 10cm^2 every 3 seconds Duration: 10 minutes
Pocket storage: Store items inside of a pocket storage to be perused later Cost: Free Capacity: ((1/2*death mana capacity)*1.1^skill level) meters cubed
Summon Skeleton Warrior: Uses a remnant of a recently defeated mind to summon a skeleton warrior. The skeleton warrior can use a range of melee weapons to fight your enemies. (Cost: 1 death mana and 1 death mana per day sustain Summon power: 50 points in physical stats, 0 in all the rest)
Summon Skeleton Archer: Uses a remnant of a recently defeated mind to summon a skeleton archer. The skeleton archer can use a range of ranged weapons to fight your enemies. (Cost: 2 death mana and 1 death mana per day sustain Summon power: 10 points in stamina, 40 points in strength, 100 points in dexterity, 0 in all the rest)
Death mana manipulation: Causes death mana to obey your will. Your wisdom and willpower will now both apply to and strengthen your death mana. As you level this skill up, it will increase your death mana capacity by the skill level multiplied by your current death mana capacity, divided by 10.
Bokan was extremely pleased with the new Death mana manipulation skill, which he had immediately bought. However, if he had waited until the end of his preparation period, it would have been in his skill shop, so he could easily imagine such a thing. In reality, he had already had it and been using it, and had even managed to gain a level in it, putting him at currently having Death mana manipulation (Level 2) (2/5) under his skill list.
His current raw mana capacity was 178*1.1*1.2*1.1=258.
wisdom was at 152, which meant 152*1.1*1.2*1.1=220
willpower was at 135, which meant 135*1.1*1.2=178
So, he would have to spend 258*3.2*2.78=2305 mana to guarantee killing himself with it. In practice, he could spend about 2000 of that, and doing so would likely knock him unconscious in the end. He could comfortably spend 828 mana without relying on his willpower at all, and could avoid any severe pain until he had spent 1600 mana, however 1600 to 2000 would take a lot out of him if he had to push that far. Going beyond that would be impossible until he gained a greater degree of mastery over himself, which was not something that he could boost with a stat, at least not until willpower evolved.
His death mana no longer seemed so pitiful, due to the incredibly leaps and bounds it had taken. Just a short time ago, he had had a maximum of 13 death mana, now he had a maximum of 52*1.1*3.2*2.78+52*0.2=515 death mana capacity.
Due to the base having exceeded 50, he gained a 10% boost in it, proving his soul stone counted it as one of his stats, even though it didn't appear under "stats". The boost from wisdom and willpower was immensely valuable, and his new skill was already proving its worth.
Additionally, death mana didn't cause the same pain that normal mana caused when he used too much of it, rather he just stopped being able to use it. That allowed him to easily tell when he had run out, though he had a feeling that if he ran out while casting an attack spell with it the result would be a very rapid death, for him rather than his target.
Still, this was incredible progress. He was 87 points away from rank 3 in the academy, which meant Bokan was 7 levels away from rank 3 if he didn't improve any of his professions.
There were 2 options available to him. Either he could pursue the remaining 7 levels and possibly waste a lot of time on the first floor, something he arguably had already done, or he could push to the 2nd floor and accept not completely wiping out every tower mage. Considering the fact that he was limited in the range of what his powers could accomplish, at least for now, leaving some humans alive was potentially a good idea...
No, that was utterly ridiculous, they would simply assassinate him! Bokan was well aware that a single lightning bolt from a rank 1 initiate could easily fry him, and 2 or 3 would probably kill him. He could not afford to become overconfident, he had to eradicate all his potential enemies.
A quiet voice that almost didn't exist anymore struggled vainly against this, and for a moment Fabien considered the possibility that his logic wasn't quite as it used to be or he expected it to be.
At about that moment, however, Bokan suddenly was distracted by another thought. His calculations were wrong. Annoyingly, he had no indication other than his stats on what his mana or death mana reserves were, and telling how much mana he had spent on something was remarkably difficult. He had forgotten to take into consideration his synergy buffs.
The way synergy worked was that, for every 50 levels in 1 field of stats, you got a 5% bonus to all of them. So, at his current stats, Bokan got a 1.05^2 multiplier to all his magic stat's effects.
Thus, he had 3090 maximum mana and 625 maximum death mana, and was likely able to comfortably use about 2150 mana and at a push could use 2700.
Additionally, he would recover mana at a rate of 196 per hour, and resist 17.8% of an opponent's magic.
By the time he was finished recalculating everything, that voice had been forgotten as he set about planning how to enact his "efficient" tower climbing plan.
His 3 skeletons were still around, and they had grown stronger as time had passed, improving their control over death mana. Each of them were now capable of casting a death bolt, and could summon undead made entirely out of magic, although they enacted a constant drain of their magic reserves. At maximum combat potential, he could have 9 lesser skeletons led by his 3 growing undead. It was time to strike.
He positioned his minions strategically in the accommodation building his flat was located in, such that each would have the most efficient path through 1 quarter of the building, which would be their responsibility. He took his own quarter. They began at about 3 in the morning.
Killing mages was difficult, killing mages who were sleeping was less difficult. None of the magic users on this floor even knew how to make a basic ward (Bokan included), and so it was not too complicated a plan. The 9 lesser skeletons were used in teams of 3 to support the growing undead by restraining anyone who woke up. Bokan would use his death mana imbuement and his enormous death mana reserves to instantly kill everyone he attacked.
The plan went off without a hitch, and by the time the sun rose, one of the 3 accommodation buildings, each designed to hold 100 students, held just 1. Bokan's work had just begun.