"What is your name?"
Greetings, master
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
Greetings, master
"Are you doing this on purpose?"
No
"Oh, so you do know more than 3 words?"
Greetings, master
"You bastard!"
Sorry, master
Things with the skeleton were not going as well as initially hoped. Sure, it was able to think for itself, somewhat, but it was either intentionally teasing him or incredibly stupid.
Messaging him cost significantly more than 1 mana per 10 messages, more like 10 mana per 1 message, so he ended it with
"Shut up and stop messaging, you're eating up all my mana uselessly"
Greetings, master
It was clear to Bokan, at this point, that Egro had devoted his unlife purely to annoying him. Evidently he had messed something up, because he could communicate with the skeleton with words, rather than having to use messages from his side (which he didn't know how to do), and the skeleton had a sense of humor. Additionally, the messages were a lot more expensive than previously advertised, and he didn't like that at all.
Still, he had successfully created a mind and linked with it, so he was able to get the Death Link spell for free. Unfortunately, that didn't let him change whatever he'd done to Egro, but at least the other fellow could benefit from it.
Selecting the spell, he felt the familiar feeling of a vast amount of untapped knowledge suddenly being added to his brain. It was as though he suddenly had another limb that he knew how to use, but had never had to before and so was unpracticed in it. This was the difference between spells he learned and then bought, vs spells he just bought. Just buying them was more like gaining a tool than a new limb, they were inflexible. For extremely simple, fundamental spells that didn't cost him anything, and buying them gave him full understanding of them and really was like gaining a new limb, but the difference was still noticeable when it came to the imbue spell and now the death link spell.
Putting on the robe that Egro had been wearing, Bokan waited just over 2 hours to fully recover his mana and death mana, and then began.
He first started construction of the 2nd skeleton's mind, he decided to call him Fred, for Fake red, since he'd been wearing orange robes. Taking advantage of the geas there, he managed to significantly reduce the cost of the spell to 25 death mana. He currently had a maximum capacity of 26 death mana, and he used the final point to imbue the mind into the robe he was wearing rather than into the skeleton itself. He then took all of his mana reserves and started pouring them into the robe and skeleton, spending the required 200 twice, and managing to push for another 25 mana to connect the two. Once he was done, and he had congratulated himself for managing to stay conscious through the pain, he found he easily sent a thought of opening the door to the wooden palisade to the robe, which the skeleton obeyed. Due to the robe being within range of his mana manipulation, it was free to send the message, and since the skeleton used death magic which ignored distance, it was able to freely command its body to move to the door and open it.
Once again out of death mana, Bokan hoped that he would eventually be able to manipulate death mana freely enough for his control from wisdom and to become sufficiently aligned to it so that his mana-burn endurance from willpower to have an effect on it.
Death mana was incredibly powerful for his purposes, but it had a few significant drawbacks. For one, it couldn't interact with inanimate objects. As in, so far is it was concerned, there was no such thing. This had some significant advantages, but also it meant that regular mana was necessary for it to be able to be imbued into any objects. It was very focused on making living things dead, and making dead things something approximating the embodiment of death. Right now, even if Bokan had a million points of death mana, if he wanted to use it to open the door in front of him directly, he was out of luck.
Still, it was one of the most fundamental and powerful forms of mana, and in its own field it was easily the most powerful. Although there were other forms, such as the mental mana that rulers were limited to and had exclusive access to, death magic was easily the best for any budding necromancer archetype, it was clear from the spells available.
Open that door he sent to Fred, along with a brief mental video of what he wanted him to do. Fred did so easily enough, and Bokan was almost surprised that no one was standing on the other side.
Instead, it seemed that the palisade had simply been stuck in the middle of the tunnel for no reason. Further down he thought he could see some light, but there were no additional defenses between the palisade and what seemed to be the entrance to wherever these magic users had been staying, there wasn't even a padlock on the door!
Not that Bokan was ungrateful, but it was yet more evidence of the uselessness of these people, even if he rose to become emperor they would likely continue to be useless, not that he could as a magic user, but this was truly a shameful show of over confidence.
Remembering the carefully calculated siege defenses of his homeland, where even the women and children had been used to maximize the probability of victory for the defenders, and various technologies had even been invented simply for the sake of getting fresh water into a city even in the case of a siege, it pained Bokan's heart.
Privately, he swore to himself never to become as overconfident as these people had, this was beyond confidence and straight to complacency. Clearly the mind control the rulers employed had made them self-assured to the point of weakness, certain that no one would rebel against them. They were most likely right about that, but rebellion was not the only source of destruction for a nation or empire, something they had clearly forgotten.
One thing he had managed to find out from his father was that the tower was a near-perfect meritocracy. Your rank was based entirely upon the floor you were on, so everyone tried to climb the floors as fast as possible. Apprentices on the bottom floor could be abused terribly, but even a novice with 0 connections on a high floor had certain rights that anyone with a geas was forced to observe. Part of it was that a particularly strong mind was required in order for a complex and compelling geas, so only people of higher floors could be so thoroughly controlled, and part of it was that the empire simply didn't care if weak people suffered, they posed no threat.
Of course, it was stupid, but it worked because anyone who reached a high level of power was controlled by the geas anyway, so there was no need to worry. Even the rulers all had a geas on them, except for the emperor. If you wanted to own a weapon? geas. If you wanted to kill a monster? geas. If you killed a monster before you had a geas? geas. There were countless such rules, and they were a significant part of why it took people so long to get to the level necessary to cast "status". If there were no such restrictions, humans could simply murder one another or monsters they found, or other sentient species, and rapidly improve their levels to become stronger. Of course, doing so would result in a lot less humans, as several kills were needed for a single person to reach a base level of 10, depending on the level discrepancy, but even conservative estimates put it at a 90% attrition rate for the humans involved.
In the short term, that was worth it, but over the course of 50 years, it was not. In some of the more ancient histories, it had been said that the warriors had taken that path and had eventually been overwhelmed by the rulers, who had a far greater number of fanatically loyal followers. In regards to magic users, they had been a far greater threat, and as a result control over magic users had been a significant priority in the ancient empire, even to the extent that the deserters had left such an oppressive tyranny as their legacy. As such, magic users and warriors worked together loyally under the rulers. It was a strong combination, but Bokan had a better idea.
Bokan is the boss.
Short and simple, so far as he was concerned it would work just fine, and anyone who disagreed could be turned into a skeleton. Whitmour could be turned into a skeleton farm for the next thousand years so far as he was concerned, though even with his considerable intelligence he failed to find a justification for that. Fortunately, that wasn't necessary, because of one very important race he remembered clearly.
Orcs. The horde race, orcs were sentient and were magical creatures, as well as having near limitless capacity for regenerating their numbers. If they had not been constantly hunted down by humans, elves and even dragons, they would have no doubt already swept all other life from the face of this planet. Just thinking about how many growing undead he could make by abusing a literal horde race was nearly enough to make Bokan forget that he'd had to eat raw lizard due to a lack of a fire spell for over a month. Nearly.
"I don't suppose either of you know a "summon roast chicken" spell?"
I know how to summon a roasted chicken
"Egro you genius, I knew you were worth it! Quickly, cast it!"
Master, come here! Quickly!
After extensive testing, Bokan was able to confirm that death mana could not be used to damage undead, however using imbued death mana to imbue his arms while not imbuing his fists would allow him to punch a lot harder, thus damaging an undead that way.
Ha, ha, ha, master do you need some help? Am I too powerf- Ow, what is wrong with you? You already killed me!
"Haha, take that! Wait, you know about that?"
Perhaps experimentally trying to imbue a mind into a death-imbued growing undead wasn't one of your smarter ideas, though I'm starting to think having ideas at all is an achievement for you!
"You spineless-"
DO NOT INSULT MY SPINE
So it continued, though in the back of his mind, Bokan was actually extremely pleased. Not at Egro, that was a problem, however if he managed to advance sufficiently, it was possible he would be able to raise the dead fully. Only the dead he slew with his own power, and only shortly after they had died, but it was still huge. One day, he might even be able to offer it as a service, with all those who feared death being able to choose to instead serve him in death, retaining their existence at the cost of their freedom.
Many people had made such a choice before after all, only this one came with the option of it lasting for far longer than a normal life span.
"Do not message"
Egro suddenly stopped messaging
"Send a message complimenting me"
You have great skeleton minions
"Hmm, seems you have to obey my direct commands at least, so unless you want to spend the rest of your unending undeath buried and boiling under the rocks outside, I suggest you try be valuable enough to me that I won't do that."
After a few moments of serious contemplation, Egro seemed to make a decision, and started practicing using his death mana. Connecting to Fred, Bokan sent him what he knew about using death mana, death link and imbuement included, and told him to both train and help Egro if he noticed him failing at anything.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Since Death link allows a master to connect with their minions, it also allowed the minions to connect to their master. Through that, Fred managed to link to Egro, and the two of them started practicing.
Master, you may wish to know that we are unable to use our mana pools for anything other than movement. We are able to use them to accelerate our movements or strengthen our bones against impacts, and we do not need to breathe, eat, drink or sleep, and we naturally regenerate mana, each of us at a slightly different rate since you made us each with a different amount of skill in raise dead, I have 30 in all stats other than social and Egro has 40 in all stats other than social. We are both able to use 1/2 of the mana you first imbued us with, however with these more complex minds that was replaced with 25 death mana each with 1.4 times that effective mana, and 1.4 times that maximum mana. Neither of us feel pain, regardless of what we experience. We have poor vision and senses. From what I can determine, using 200 mana on both my phylactery and my body was a good idea, and I'd recommend you maintain such a balance going forward...
Such information was almost continually being sent to Bokan as his two undead did their best to understand their new existence. Fred acted as the mouthpiece, and it seemed like the two of them were not struggling too terribly with cooperating. When he asked them about it, it was Egro who replied.
You do not understand, the best rulers are used to control other rulers, those who are sent here are more like butchers. They cut your mind into the squares they like, throw the rest away and build a prison out of it, in which they entomb your soul. For me, for the crime of trying to rebel, they turned that prison into a furnace, and did not even give me the capacity to resent them. Frederick here, although not as actively suffering, was also imprisoned like I was. This new existence allows us to think freely at least, although you are something of a tyrant. Friendship between us undead is only natural. Perhaps some day, we will escape you as we escaped our previous masters.
"I see, so you're telling me that Fred's original name was Frederick?"
That is what you got from that?
"Yes"
Egro gave him a baleful glare and fell silent, but the information that he had provided did 2 things for Bokan. 1) it alleviated most of his guilt at having murdered Egro and Fred in cold blood, and 2) it confirmed for him that he was not going to be getting a geas no matter what.
"Egro, if it seems like I'm going to be getting a geas and theres no escape from it, I want you to kill me"
I gladly accept
"I change my mind, Fred, you do it, Egro, you can be the distraction"
Was it something I said?
"I just realized you would try to do it as painfully as possible, whereas Fred would just do it"
Master, why did you call me Fred?
"Uh, I just thought it suited you." It may have been a lie, but Bokan was not willing to lose the loyalty of both his undead so soon after he had raised them. "Now, the two of you, keep practicing your death mana control and close that door. If anyone comes, try to ambush and kill them quickly. I'm going to be sleeping." With that, Bokan rested.
6 hours later he was fully rested, albeit quite hungry. He asked his two undead about the residence of the magic users on this floor, and he found out quite a few things:
- On every floor of the tower, there is a "castle", although it can take many forms, wherein the rulers of that floor live.
- On every floor except the bottom and top floor, the portal in the castle is the only location where a magic user can leave the floor.
- On every floor, there is at least one "sanctuary". For the first 50 floors, the sanctuaries get more and more pleasant, until the 50th floor which is currently the most comfortable place to live in the "final" empire.
- From floor 50-100, the sanctuaries get progressively worse, until the sanctuaries are less pleasant than the hunting grounds of the first floor.
- Every floor is split into the sanctuary, generally accepted as the territory of the magic users, the castle, clearly the territory of the rulers which is within the sanctuary, and the hunting grounds, which are were magic users gain experience, food, loot and knowledge by field-testing their spells against the monsters there.
- Within every sanctuary, there is a portal that leads to the next floor. Each of these portals has a test of some kind, the first floor portal requires you to destroy a monster using only your own power, summons are included as a part of your power.
- Within every sanctuary, there is a hierarchy depending on the path you take. When you first enter the sanctuary, you are a novice, and the status will let you select the "novice magic user" profession, which gives 1 free attribute point per level and levels with your use of mana. Attributed mana gives vastly more experience from this class.
- One path that both Fred and Egro know about, which they do not recommend, is to serve under an adept as their apprentice. When they become a master, you will become a journeyman, and can then find a master of your own to serve, and then you can become an adept. After some years as an adept, you can become a master. All these have related professions which give various bonuses, however following this path results in you being practically buried in geas after geas.
- Another path exists, wherein you may be selected as a novice to join the academy. Neither Fred nor Egro know anything about the academy other than that people who enter it tend to progress to the next floor fairly rapidly.
- There is no inter-floor communication other than messages given to people about to go to the next floor.
- Some mages chose to stay on the floor they were at and became teachers, either as independent masters or as lecturers within the academy.
All this information was well and good, and Bokan designed a plan. He would enter the academy on the first floor while pretending he had a geas, and progress to the next floor before anyone realized. He would use the training they offered to grow as strong as possible as rapidly as possible, and shoot up through the floors faster than anyone else, thus preventing any messages about his freedom catching up to him.
It was simple, and relied on the assumption that anyone who stayed on floor one, even if it was for 100 years, would not be strong enough to just instantly advance to floor 5.
Finally, when he got out of the tower, he would set up his very own secret cabal in order to help him take over this world, and the world he was from. It all sounded very reasonable to him. When he told his plan to Fred and Egro, they gave him weird looks for some reason, but he supposed that must just be because it was difficult to express a look of admiration as a skeleton.
Still, he wasn't prepared for how draw droppingly beautiful the first floor sanctuary would be. Having become used to the hunting grounds, he was suddenly thrust into what appeared to be a recreation of camelot. In the distance, he saw snow capped mountains, with trees and grass on the slopes, until the top where it was rock and ice. To his left, in the distance there was a large sparkling lake, with what appeared to be a sunset on the horizon. Directly infront of him, a path with a brook on one side and trees on both sides went all the way to what looked to be a sleepy village, smoke rising gently from the chimneys. Most of the village was hidden in a comfortable looking forest, the trees spaced out enough that it was unthreatening and soft looking. To his right, he saw hills with hundreds of flowers of blue, red and yellow, reminding him strongly of the view of the lake and sunset to his left.
Between the village and the mountains, somewhere in the forest rose the walls of a large castle, far more grand than any he had seen on his old world. The walls were expertly made, the enchantments shone slightly such that the entire castle appeared to have a slight halo. The roofs of the castle were blue tiles, and several tall towers rushed up, as though they were challenging the mountains in the background. Despite the immense height of the walls, not a single bit of it seemed like it was just there to add height, rather there were chiseled decorations throughout.
By some magic, despite how far away he was, Bokan could easily read the chiseled images, but as soon as he began to Egro leapt in front of him and Fred tackled him to the ground.
You idiot! Do you not know that stories are that with which rulers put a geas on a person's mind? Surely even a witless one such as yourself knows such a thing?
"Its just a carving..." Bokan quietly responded, a strange fog filling his mind.
Just a carving? Stories are not restricted to books and speeches, they can easily be communicated via art as well. The more of the story you expose yourself to, the more poise you need in order to resist it! I nearly devoted my life to resisting mind control, and I was barely able to read half of the story just on the wall facing us without that geas being put on me! And thats with the effect of the story exponentially growing the more you are exposed to it!
"I see..." Bokan struggled mentally against what felt like an iron grip tightening on his mind. At least now that Egro had warned him and was blocking his view of the castle, he was able to fight against it, his pathetic level of poise and slightly less pathetic level of willpower straining as much as possible to combat the effect of not even a single sentence worth of the story in question.
"What level of ruler is required to write such a powerful story?" he asked.
Powerful? Did you come here totally ignorant? Do you think our greatest magic users spend 2 centuries under their rulership for nothing? People who can decimate armies with an hour of effort and a few hours rest, or build cities in a day, people who are far beyond you, are utterly at their mercy. Rulers have been the rulers of humanity ever since we became a serious force to be reckoned with, and it will continue that way forevermore. The story on that wall wasn't written by a ruler, the carvings on the wall just became a story because of the aura of the relatively weak rulers that reside within that castle.
This was not welcome news, but at least Bokan managed to finally get a grip of the geas trying to grab a hold of his mind. Suddenly, though, he had an idea.
"Hey, what would happen if I let the mini-geas keep trying to invade my mind while preventing it?"
How would I know? You'd probably get your mind invaded while you slept?
"Can a geas be put on someone while they are sleeping?"
Do I look like a ruler to you?
"Hmm..."
Just in case, Bokan decided to leave it, although he kept it crushed with his willpower. 100 willpower, with 10% and 20% buffs, gave him 12.4% resistance to enemy magic. When it came to mental mana, this meant that everything the mental mana did to him was messed up by 12.4%, which his mind could then fairly easily pick up on and combat, so in fighting mind control, willpower was actually far stronger than it might at first appear. This also gave Bokan some ideas on how the early magic users were able to combat the early rulers to any degree of success. He could use his poise to push the mind control out completely, but he delayed doing that for now, so that if anyone could check his mind for a geas, they'd see at least something. Hopefully they'd just assume he had a weak geas due to being an exceptionally weak individual.
One problem that was posed to him was how to deal with his undead? It wouldn't take a genius to connect 2 disappearances to 2 humanoid skeletons suddenly following a necromancer into town. Thankfully, the unevolved intelligence stat only improved mana capacity and learning rate, so it was not a true improvement to intelligence in the classical sense. Rather, it helped him become a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge that he could use to aid in his deductions. The same was true for other magic users.
Dragons were a different story. While humans could naturally evolve their willpower and charisma, Dragons naturally evolved their intelligence and stamina. Some of the greatest plots and schemes in recorded history were between dragons playing games against one another. If they did not struggle to reproduce as much as they did, no other race would have stood a chance against them. The elves could naturally evolve their wisdom and poise, and the orcs didn't naturally evolve any stats, but they did start with an instant cast, 0 cooldown "produce offspring" spell when they reached level 10 that only cost them food, so swings and roundabouts.
Stat evolutions happened when the appropriate race reached 250 in a given stat. In order to deal with this, humanity came up with a simple, inelegant solution. Kill anyone who nears 250 willpower, and kill anyone other than the emperor who nears 250 charisma.
The 4 fundamental races were not the only races that existed. The elves, for instance, were originally only what were now called the "dark elves". However, if a dark elf evolved both their poise and wisdom, and then managed to reach max level, they would die and be reborn as a high elf infant. This infant would not retain any of the memories of their previous life, and be weaker in body and mana than dark elves initially. However, they had more evolutions for their class available, and their final class evolution was the "Radiant".
Radiants were legendary beings in terms of raw magic, but their minds and bodies were too weak to wield it, and thus they were typically only able to exert the power of a mythical being. That still gave them the power to fight off dragons and wipe all life from entire planets of orcs. In comparison, dragons were capable of getting up to a "phoenix" evolution, and a few had, and phoenixes were capable of wielding the full power of a legendary being. However, their minds were not up to the task, no one was capable of killing a phoenix, even phoenixes were incapable of it, and no one bothered, there was no point. Occasionally, a phoenix might choose to make a star with an inhabited solar system their home, in which case that and all surrounding solar systems would be utterly destroyed and absorbed into a black hole, which the phoenix wouldn't even notice.
The orcs were not strong individually but they were virtually impossible to totally irradicate, even 1 orc with a lot of food could create an entire tribe in a single day. So long as they couldn't travel between planets, they were relatively weak, but where they thrived was in inter-stellar conflict, their endless numbers allowing them to create and man countless star ships.
Bokan didn't know what most of the above meant, but he had read it in one of the faded historical "information" (propaganda) pamphlets that his father kept stored in their library. It had been preserved through powerful magic, yet still it was barely legible. His summary of it, was that the only reason humanity hadn't been totally wiped out yet, was that the other races had been hit just as hard. All sub races had been virtually wiped out, the orcs were exterminated wherever they were found, the Radiants of the elves sacrificed themselves collectively in order to use their full power, thus exterminating the eldest dragon and every phoenix as a final act of spite, and the dragons lost their eldest and most powerful to the Radiants, the remaining weaker dragons had to slowly grow to the strength of their ancestors.
Yet the most damage was done by the human archetypes. It was they who initiated this mutual destruction, working great and terrible acts of magic and war together at the behest of the epitome of leadership, they were the ones who exterminated the orcs, they were the ones who slaughtered the older dragons the Radiants failed to kill, they were the ones who used their mental magic to force the Radiants to sacrifice themselves in one last act after losing against the strongest of all dragons. Privately, Bokan also suspected that they were the ones who brought him to this world by some ancient magic.
Not that any of that helped him right now, especially when he noticed a group of 5 robed individuals hurrying toward him on the path from the village.