If someone were sent to search for Egro, they'd probably not be too likely to expect him to have died right outside their front door, so they wouldn't have their guard up then.
At least, Bokan sincerely hoped that was the case. He'd gotten unreasonably lucky with Egro, the only reason he was still alive at all was because of the horrendous inefficiency of this so called "last empire", which seemed to only be concerned about maintaining control over its own people and not at all about growing. Truth be told, he probably wouldn't be making a fuss at all if it were focused on raising powerful magic users and raising up the common folk, so it could be seen as a moot point.
Still, an important thing that was difficult to solve was the problem of Egro's smell. Blood and brains were exposed to the air, and already any investigation was likely to smell him before they saw him. Additionally, a search party was more likely to prepare properly with things like lights than Egro, who just thought he was going out to throw lightning bolts at lizards or whatever magic he used.
Unquestionably he had more powerful attack spells than Bokan, however death magic excelled at making things dead even just by making contact with them, something Bokan had guessed would be the case from how it empowered undead.
Skills could be thought of as tools, whereas spells could be thought of as blueprints. A skilled artisan could come up with their own blueprints, assuming they had the necessary tools, however they still would be unable to work without the tools they required. As a result, a skill was a lot more powerful in the long run than a spell, since a magic user could feasibly invent every spell that existed.
However, time was still a limited resource, even for the immortal dragons, and so purchasing spells was a common practice used to guide which path a magic user would take. No doubt Egro would have employed such a method, and likely had a high-powered attack spell.
If Bokan was skillful enough when he raised him, it was quite possible Egro would be able to use that spell to hunt for him, the thought of which reminded him of the hunger that had been plaguing him ever since his arrival in this hellish place. At this point, if someone offered him a glass of clean water, rather than having to suck the blood out of a mutated lizard in sweltering heat, in return for Egro's body, he would be severely tempted to accept.
Putting aside such weak thoughts, he crept up to the strange-feeling wooden door, and examined it with his magic sense. Holding his hand up close to the door, he pushed the smallest tendril of mana he could form slowly towards the door, to feel for any defensive enchantments. A field so fine it seemed like a flat plane appeared in his mind, and trying to find a hole in it seemed impossible.
However, that did not mean that an unorthodox approach was impossible. Remembering a remarkable siege in his previous planet's past, a powerful noble had been defeated when an attacking army had baited his cavalry out of his castle. Rather than fighting the more powerful heavy cavalry, the attackers had simply thrown a tenth of their forces at them, and rushed through the opened gate to take the castle and capture the noble. Those who were left outside were slaughtered by the cavalry, however the attackers were ultimately victorious.
All this is to say that Bokan was going to try his luck opening the door and diving through before whatever defenses struck him, hopefully. First, he consolidated death mana on his right hand, which he straightened, while his left hand prepared to grab the handle and rush through. In one smooth motion, he grabbed the handle, wrenched open the door and flung himself through the gap, death mana imbued hand first, straight into a truly shocked Frederick.
Frederick POV
Egro left me behind again, that bastard has been testy ever since the master punished him for failing to bring back his charge. Not that I had anything to do with that, but since I signed his stupid contract, I've been at his mercy.
Still, he knows that I don't have the same control over ice magic he does, I'll burn if I touch the rocks up there without his cooling aura spell, and yet he's left me behind intentionally, I'm sure of it. Especially considering the fact that he has told me to carry about thrice my weight in bags, as though we could even carry them back if we managed to full them with hunted animals!
The reason he did that is clear, when we return, it'll be with a few bags filled with game, and since his "useless apprentice" failed to manage the luggage, he'll have been forced to leave behind some bags that he could easily have filled with his "vast powers". How he expects that the master doesn't see straight through his tricks is truly beyond me. Too many points into poise and willpower, the fact that he's trying to strain against the bonds put on him has not escaped anyone's notice.
Once the rulers get your claws into you, theres no escape, he should know that. Anyone who has felt the weight of their geas should know that. Nevermind your own body, your own mind is...
What was I thinking about? Oh yes, I need to catch up to Egro!
Frederick stumbled ahead slightly faster, still struggling under his many bags, which were tied together via rope and made him look more like a textile shelled turtle than a human. The path he was walking along was a pleasant one, with a bubbling brook to his right and trees on both sides, alongside the strange sand he walked on that both held his weight and was soft to the touch. His orange robes, clearly denoting his position as an adepts apprentice, were the main obstacle since they kept tripping him up. The large black "1", positioned just above his heart, informed anyone who saw him that he was a first floor tower mage, not that anyone outside the tower would ever see him, not until he'd climbed at least 20 floors.
The geas he was inflicted with grew with him, so right now he was at his most capable of thinking around it. That was also why Egro was being forced to hunt so much, the high stats in poise and willpower had resulted in him getting closer than almost any other at rebelling against the geas in hundreds of years, he had even managed to restrain himself from capturing the new arrival he'd been sent to "escort" back, and had managed to somehow warn him by writing up an even more unfair than typical document.
Although to outsiders it might not seem like much, such an effort against the rulers had not been seen in over 2 centuries, and Egro would suffer for it for the rest of his life. A permanent black dot was assigned to the center of his robes, and any new robes he would get in the future, and the weight of his geas was pushed far beyond usual, causing his mind to be in a permanent state of foggy pain from which he would not escape until the end of his magically enhanced life.
Not that anyone was capable of feeling sorry for him, the geas wouldn't allow them to react to anything the rulers did with anything but joy, Egro included.
Soon, the path began to curve upwards, the trees were left behind and he approached a dark tunnel in the cave wall. The rulers on this floor refused to be reminded of the severe discomfort of the world outside this idyllic, magically preserved cave that included forests, lakes and even a mountain, so the two exits were both somewhat camouflaged, with this one being blocked from view by trees and its own natural darkness, no lights being permitted within it. When he had first seen this, Frederick had thought how vulnerable that must make them to attack, but no creatures came down the tunnel so there was no need for security. The only reason there was even a wooden door and palisade was so that the hot air in the cave wasn't unnecessarily lost to the cold tunnel above, with an enchantment across it that blocked airflow between the two.
Soon, Frederick began his climb up the dark tunnel, and reached the door in question. As he reached out to open it, it suddenly flew open. Egro evidentally planning to scare him, Frederick's annoyance clashed with his geas, and he stood still waiting to see what his master had planned.
Bokan's POV
Thoroughly convinced that not a single magic user in the entire tower had any form of survival instinct whatsoever, Bokan looked with satisfaction at the two bodies he had arranged next to one another. With his super human strength, he had managed to carry both to a shadowy corner of the palisade easily, noting that the smell didn't seem to go through the palisade for whatever reason, he was beginning to suspect that the shimmering enchantment over the door was just there to prevent airflow, though of course such a thing would be totally ridiculous, even though he had to admit the other side of the palisade was pleasantly warm and the side he was currently on felt freezing cold.
At one time, he knew he would have been horrified at the notion that he would murder two innocents, but with his current understanding of the geas placed upon tower mages, he felt that what he had done was more a mercy to them, a release from an otherwise inescapable prison. Satisfied with his self-justification and ready to make more if necessary, he pushed aside such thoughts and focused on his magic. Firstly, he knew that he wasn't at the maximum death mana he could hold, so imbuement would be a waste at this moment.
Additionally, the appearance of the second mage had clearly confirmed that Egro had been sent to go and collect an enormous amount of something. Bokan was glad to have managed to kill Frederick before the man could respond, otherwise he feared that he likely would have been totally incapable of killing someone strong enough to carry all those bags filled with whatever he had been sent to fetch.
Whatever it was, Bokan was convinced that it couldn't be something that was expected to be retrieved instantly, on virtue of the sheer capacity of the collective bags they had brough. So, he had some time, or at least he was going at act like he did.
Using his saved up regular mana, he succeeded in putting as much death mana as he could at this point into boosting Egro. The result was that all of the flesh had melted off of him, and now only a skeleton with bones that had a slight hint of shadow on them were visible. It had cost a total of 15 death mana points. Doing some quick calculations:
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Max mana: (100*1.1)*1.2=132
Mana efficiency: 80*1.1=88
Effective mana expenditure: 132*1.88 = 248
Regeneration effect from willpower: 75*1.1=82 mana/hour
Resistance to magic from willpower: 75*1.1 = 82, this gave 82% increase to personal magic usage without dying, and meant he could ignore 7.9% of the damage from enemy spells (1-e^(-0.001*willpower))
maximum mana expenditure: 248*1.82=451
cost of death mana conversion spell: 10 + 5*time(seconds)
for instance, 25 seconds would cost 135 mana. Bokan could spend his full effective mana expenditure, however after he had spending any more would be possible but painful, and would ultimately be lethal if he went past his maximum mana expenditure.
In his current situation, he was not able to force himself through the pain of using his entire maximum mana expenditure, and he needed to maintain his fighting form if he wanted to be safe. At the same time, there wasn't any real way for him to be safe, and having some minions to fight for him was likely the safest he could possibly be, so he decided to just focus on making the strongest minions possible as fast as possible.
At this moment, he had reserved 3 death mana for his eyes, and spent 1 death mana each on killing the two corpses in front of him. His total death mana capacity was 132*0.1 which was 13, and he had 8 left.
He had still 248 mana he could easily spend, and if necessary he could push beyond that, probably as far as 300 mana safely, 350 if he assumed no one would hear his screams. He decided to aim to spend 360, thus leaving 350 for exchanging into death mana, which would be converted at a rate of 1+1*skill level per 5 mana per second.
This would mean it would take him 70 seconds total to recover 140 death mana. However, that was only assuming he only had to cast the spell once, which he would only be able to do if he could simultaneously cast the conversion spell while imbuing Egro's corpse and learning more about the raise dead spell. For a creature like a dragon, which had access to the intelligence evolution when its intelligence reached 250, such a task would be simplicity itself. For Bokan, it was not even remotely possible. Humans were not really capable of multi-tasking with their conscious mind, perhaps if he could make imbuing death mana and converting mana to death mana both muscle memory tasks, he would be able to do it, but every task was one that required constant attention and considerable computation continually in order to manage.
As a result, he cancelled his eye imbuement, used his feeling of touch and smell as well as his memory to locate the corpses, and started spending and recovering his death mana.
First, he imbued Egro with a total of 39 death mana before the corpse stopped accepting it and the mana just seemed to sit there, refusing to interact with the corpse any further. Then, he did the same for the other corpse. He then raised the second corpse, used his status spell to collect the level up he received to his raise dead spell, and then was able to further imbue Egro to 52 death mana, after which he raised him also.
He was able to tell intuitively that each corpse could be raised using death mana or normal mana, 2 and 10 times the amount of death mana imbued into them respectively, with a minimum of 10 mana. Bokan tried his luck spending both a full mana reserve and full death mana reserve on each, and was rewarded with it working. At least, he assumed that was a reward.
By the time he was done, 6 hours had passed and he was becoming to seriously become nervous. However, he also had 2 new skeletons standing before him, neither of which had any flesh on them, and one of which had some clear darkening in spots on the bones. As he had no idea how to communicate with them, and had hoped somewhat that it would become clear once they were raised, Bokan was presented with something of a conundrum. Still, he cast his status ritual again and was pleased that he had managed to level his raise dead spell again, putting it now at level 4, just 1 level away from being upgradable.
"Open that door"
"Fight each other"
"raise both arms above your head"
"cast a death bolt"
"use your magic"
It didn't matter what Bokan said, the skeletons remained totally inert. He tried focusing on his consciousness connecting to theirs, tried to sense a mana connection between them, however there was nothing.
Reasoning that perhaps the minds had atrophied through death so severely that he had to teach them basic things, Bokan hoped that they retained at least the learning ability that was typical of the living.
So, Bokan started doing basic things and explaining what they were called. Then, he had the undead copy him, pushing limbs into the correct positions to help them understand. Fairly rapidly, they started following his commands, and after about 3 hours of this, they were able to follow basic instructions, even using their death mana to imbue punches and kicks. From his estimation, they each had about 6 death mana, half of what he had invested into them, and 40 into every physical stat. He had pushed himself and poured in 400 mana into each, he was getting tired of torturing himself but his desperation to make this work was stronger, so he was able to estimate that each point, divided by 10 and multiplied by his raise dead skill level, had been invested equally across the physical stats of the undead.
He had a strong suspicion that he was doing things the hard way, but for now he was struggling to determine how to improve. His death mana, on the other hand, was doing excellently. It had levelled up twice, thus putting it at level 3 and giving him 4 death mana per 5 mana while channeling the spell. Additionally, he had managed to figure out that the skeletons were storing it in their bones, and after trying it on himself he managed to increase his storage capacity for it to 2/10ths of his maximum mana capacity.
He had also levelled up 5 times, likely due to the significant level difference between him and the magic users he had killed. The final result was the following:
Name: Fabien
Level: 10
Intelligence: 125
Wisdom:100
Willpower:100
Available skill points:16
New spells available:
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
Imbue body: Reserve mana in order to improve parts of your body Cost: 2 mana per part Effect: depends on body part (Note, this can be taken for free as you have already successfully performed this feat)
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 link: Learn to connect your mind to your minions, allowing you to easily give them details instructions and communicate with them. The first time to link yourself to an undead, you are required to spend 50 death mana and 200 mana in order to give them a complex mind with which to communicate. Once the link has been formed, it will cost 1 mana per 10 messages, or 1 death mana per 100 messages. When your minion messages you, the mana and death mana cost will be paid by you also. If the mind was affected by a geas when it died, the cost to create the new mind will be reduced to 25 death mana and 200 mana, as the structure of the geas will be used to accelerate the process.
For reaching level 10, Bokan had unlocked the tier 2 spells in the spell shop. The Death link sounded a suspicious amount exactly like what he needed right now, though that did make sense considering the fact that the soul stone, which guided his growth, was designed to allow him to pursue a particular build. None of the new summons were particularly tempting, although Bokan was seriously tempted by the pocket storage, as it could allow him to always have whatever he needed on him.
All the same, he had already decided to focus on his maximum potential, and having the stuff he needed was a simple matter of logistics when his class was taken into account, so pocket storage would be a waste.
Death rain and death lance both sounded like things he could figure out himself, which brought him to imbue body. A free spell! At least, free for the first 5 levels, after which further improvements would no doubt cost him skill points. Still, it was free, so he selected it.
Finally, Death link. It certainly looked like it would synergize very well with his growing undead, however there was one thing that was holding him back. It was perfectly feasible for him to make a mind for them on his own, and if he did he likely could make it suit his particular desires far better. For instance, he might learn how to attach the mind to a rock, and then let the bodies of his minions be controlled by those minds from afar. They certainly didn't work like normal bodies, considering their ability to move without muscles.
If they only could move until the mana he had invested into them ran out, that would make sense, however they could live indefinitely, so they clearly weren't using up his mana every time they moved. Well, possibly they were, but the mana he had invested had clearly turned into some kind of mana pool they used similarly to how he used his stamina to move. Likely, the more mana he gave them the more their physical movement was strengthened, and the more death mana he gave them the more their magical powers were strengthened.
Both would be improved by having a mind, however whether or not he got the spell for it right now was the question...
The problem wasn't that he could make a better mind on his own, he would definitely make better minds with the spell for it. However, if he could learn how to do it on his own first, he would have a greater degree of freedom. For example, he was able to imbue 3 death mana into his eyes, but had he of simply bought the spell for it and learned it that way, he likely would have been able to only imbue 2, unless a later upgrade improved it.
He had made his decision, maximum potential power, and he would have to stick to it. Sighing, he decided to delay getting death link until he could get it for free, and continued. He didn't regret purchasing raise dead or convert death mana, as both were simple enough that it was obvious that even if he learned them on his own, he wouldn't be able to come up with new ways to use them. They were already in their simplest forms, so buying them didn't block him from reaching any of their potential derivatives. However, when it came to creating an advanced mind for an undead, or telepathic communication using death mana and mana, that was absolutely not the case.
He had invested his attribute points to reaching 100 in both wisdom and willpower, as it seemed that reaching 100 had gives his intelligence related buffs an extra 20% strength, and 50 had given 10%, so getting everything up to 100 was a better idea than getting 1 to up to less than 150. Had he of had the possibility of reaching 150 with his intelligence, he might have chosen differently, but that was neither here nor there.
Bokan spent another 3 hours trying to give the undead complex minds, carefully watching them with his mana sense as he taught them new things, and eventually figured out that their entire body was being controlled by effectively a sub-consciousness, which kept them obedient but failed to truly comprehend anything. It was enough for movement of body and magic, but not enough for planning or spell casting.
After 12 hours of testing with his death mana, something changed. Egro's eyes suddenly flared with a flickering dark flame that somehow stood out from the rest of the darkness.
Greetings, master.