The latest squad of undead is a squad of eight, on account of Vey’s increased level. Sera hasn’t named them all yet, but she did tell Vey that she wants him to try naming them. He’s struggling to come up with names for the group of skeletons, though. Mostly because he’s pretty bad at being creative in general. Magic is one thing, but as he learned with his solo attempt at making a staff about a month ago, crafts aren’t his strong suit, and apparently, naming isn’t either.
It’s probably not helped by the fact that the latest batch is a group of rats. Rat Skeletons? Skeleton Rats? Skrats? Skrats, Vey decides. They are the same abnormally large rats from the barracks room, his improvised rat farm(floor covered in corpses) has produced all kinds of products as of late. For one thing, the rat skeletons are essentially free undead, since he didn’t have to go out and kill anyone for their bones and flesh. Secondly, the Skrats have made excellent scouts, making use of his new [Senses Link] spell marvelously. He may not have a map, but he’s pretty confident in the topology of the first five miles or so in every direction from both dungeon entrances.
The Skrats do lack combat power, but that’s not something he thinks is strictly needed right now. He’s more than doubled his spell repertoire, the advent of a focus and access to 4th tier spells had made that considerable amount of a difference. Sera’s also much stronger, too. Vey’s not sure of all of her new spells and abilities, they haven’t been spending much more time than their nights together. Not for any particular reason, Sera has just been spending a large amount of time in the workshop preparing for what she called ‘winter’. When he was told what winter was, he didn’t understand why she was preparing for it so fervently,, but it is getting colder outside of the dungeon, and Sera did say it would snow soon, so maybe the village girl in her is just worried.
Thinking of his spell repertoire reminds him of his plans for the day. [Stone Shape], [Fire Trap], [Warding Glyph], [Skullwatch], and [Poison Ward], all together he plans to drastically amp up security at both the primary dungeon entrance and the barracks/cave entrance. [Stone Shape] in particular he wants to use to smooth and edit the structure of the barracks and cave. He hopes to eventually turn that area of the dungeon into the ‘visitor’ entrance, as it were. The original primary dungeon entrance is too convenient to be locked up all the time, he thinks. [Skullwatch] is a spell he’s quite proud of, even if only because the system had said it was a truly unique creation.
It uses a skull as an alarm, except instead of notifying the caster when the alarm is tripped, [Skullwatch] skulls have a cone of sight, and when someone enters it, they scream. Other skulls scream when they ‘hear’ another screaming, meaning he can use them as a sort of cascading alarm, alerting the defenders and hopefully disorienting attackers. A devious plan, to be sure, but one even Sera had approved of.
A couple hours later, Vey is almost completely satisfied with the quality of his perimeter. Six [Fire Trap]s, all on door handles and the like, [Warding Glyph]s just absolutely everywhere in the barracks room and tunnel, [Poison Ward]s at the cave entrance, and [Skullwatch] skulls forming a chain from the cavern to the barracks chamber to alert the defenders when a potential attack might be coming. He’d [Stone Shape]d the collapsed tunnel into more of a proper looking entrance, complete with a metal door stolen from the former chapel chamber. He’s pretty happy with how that looks, too.
The primary dungeon entrance doesn’t have nearly that much security, but by contrast, it’s actually probably worse for attackers to come in from there. He’d hollowed out sections of stone on either side of the tunnel, and shaped archer slits into them. Now, if one wants to walk into the dungeon from its intended entrance, they will be greeted with a volley of arrows from both Dragon and Sheo squad, and that’s even without mentioning the quadruple [Poison Glyph] and double [Warding Glyph] placed on the door. All told, the only way to pass that door safely is to be an undead, or a creature like Sera which counts as undead.
The utility of [Stone Shape] has been truly unsurpassed by anything else he’s ever made. Sera had even had him remodel her chambers to be more spacious and comfortable, which had been a multi-day process, but one Vey took to gladly. His lab had also been expanded, and all of the previously unused rooms have now been completely gutted and smoothed for future use. The ramp corridor now has proper stairs, all of the battle damage has been fixed in all the various rooms, he even made shelves for organizing things better in the expanded storeroom. Truly, if Vey had any way of expressing delight beyond a generally improved mood, he’d be expressing it all the time now.
His evolution is still on hold, the mystery of those magic tendrils coming from the altar remains unsolved, and the idea that retaliation for their raid on the soldier’s camp might be coming soon are all still hanging over his head, but those are all problems, and problems can be solved.
What very much can’t be solved is the way he’s been feeling recently, as if a hunger has begun building in him. He’s never felt hunger, but the way Sera describes it, hunger is the word he feels matches the sensation. Vey’s not sure what the hunger is for, either, since he can’t eat food, and doesn’t have any idea what it is just from the sensation, but if he had to guess, it’s probably something he’ll find out soon. He checks his status, thinking maybe it might have some answers.
Level and Hit Die:
8, 8
Current HP/MHP
64/64
Armor Class
14
MP
141/141
Class:
Wizard
Name:
Vey
Race:
Evolved Skeleton[Human, Male, Adult]
Subrace:
White Evolution Path
Alignment:
Lawful Evil
Height
5’9 ft
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Attributes:
MHP
STR
CON
DEX
INT
WIS
CHA
SPD
LCK
NAC
Base:
64
12
11
10
13
10
10
30ft
2
10
Race:
0
2
2
4
2
2
4
5ft
0
2
Study:
0
NA
NA
NA
4
3
0
NA
NA
NA
Total:
64
12
13
14
19
16
14
35ft
2
12
Proficiencies
Skills(Passive)
Skills(Active)
Magic Effects
Pacts and Curses
Simple and Martial Weapon
Proficiency
Undead Endurance
Alacritous Cogitation
Positive Energy Weakness
Pactbound(Sera)
Simple Tool Proficiency
Death Blow
Overcast
Negative Energy Healing
Light and Medium Armor Proficiency
Preparation Spellcasting(Wizard 8)
Layered Augmentation
Evolved: Innate Arcane Sight
Spellcraft(Wizard)
Arcane Strike
Evolved: Emotional Expansion
Undead Leadership
Flesh Guise
Lifetime Achievements
Titles
Total Kills(All creatures): 213
Awakened One
Magical Breakthroughs: 22
Arcane Thesis
Purges: 1
Elffriend
Bandit
Warmage
Evolved One
The ‘Total Kills’ achievement replacing all of the individual types was surprising exactly once, but now, he kind of likes being able to just check how many people he’s killed instead of having to do math for it. There’s not a single visible change in his status compared to the last time he checked it, so it’s probably either unrelated to his status, or is hidden. Though Vey wonders why he hasn’t gained any titles or skills recently, and decides to consult the system help about it.
System Help
Subject; Acquiring Non-Class Skills
Skills, both active and passive, can be acquired through a multitude of means, the most common of which being repeated practicing of the activity the skill enhances or rewards. For example, your Overcast skill is the result of your repeated attempts to force spells to function by expending more MP than necessary. Individuals also have a limit on how many skills they can have at a single time, unique to the individual. This limit is always at least three, to account for the potential for up to three racial skills. As an addition, individuals with very few non-class skills will gain non-class skills more easily. Skills can also be [Merged].
System Help
Subject; Merging Skills
Merging is when a skill becomes part of a different skill or effect, or when multiple skills are combined to form a compound effect. Notably, skills and effects used to feed a merge are permanently lost, with the exception of racial skills, which remain the same. Merged skills unilaterally contain their children's skills as components, in addition to a new effect. For example, your Bondmate’s Appendage Crusher is the Merged Skill of Butcher and Elven Dexterity. Skills can be merged at will, through the same methods that would cause one to acquire a new skill.
While very informative, Vey does silently curse himself for not looking this stuff up earlier than now. Honestly, he hadn’t expected the system to be so forthcoming with information like that, considering how vague and ill-defined some of its help menus are. That’s all experimenting for another day, though. The idea of combining his skills into different skills is intriguing, but he just doesn’t have any ideas yet for what he’d want the combination to do. He probably should share that information with Sera, though.
--
Sera has successfully taught zombie squad to sew and knit. The process took most of her attention for the last week and a half, but some of them are even reasonably good at it now. Squish in particular(probably on account of being Sera’s favorite rather than through any actual talent) is capable of making mittens, something Sera is very proud of. Sewing and knitting are just two of the laundry list of things she’s been teaching them, with the goal of turning zombie squad into… Artisan housewives is probably the best term.
She’s a bit embarrassed to admit it, but if she and Vey are going to be openly attacking kingdom soldiers, she doesn’t want to just hack and slash people to bits, she wants to look good doing it. That desire paired with her dwindling supply of wearable clothes on account of both wear and her growing body produced her doubled efforts to teach zombie squad how to act like proper all-rounder village housewives. The humorous fact that only Squish is visibly female is not lost on her in this regard.
The Skrats, as Sera also independently reached the conclusion to call them, are a little bit creepy to her. As a former village girl and an enthusiast of pest control, rodents of substantial size as those are unwelcome. However, the Skrats are skeletonized rodents, and are as such both more tolerable and creepier. She did tell Vey to name them all though, since it was his idea to raise rats instead of people with his skill this time.
Sera has also been spending substantially more time with Dragon and Sheo squad than Vey does, on account of her taking an active interest in trying to figure out how the undead evolve into sentience. None of Dragon squad is smart enough to help much, but they can communicate with Sheo squad, and they have evolved before, so she’s been able to deduce a couple things. Firstly, Sheo squad is probably pretty close to evolving. Secondly, evolving isn’t really about killing stuff and escaping danger like levels are, it seems to be more related to fulfilling whatever the monsters perceive their purpose to be.
After all, what prompted Dragon squad to evolve was Sera’s assurances that doing so would help them better ‘serve’ their queen, and Ter’s was apparently a fluke. Under this notion, she’s reasonably certain that Zombie squad will probably evolve sooner than Sheo squad will, since Woi seemed to imply that in Sheo squad, only Sheo itself is even remotely close to evolving.
The third thing she learned is actually the most useful, the scale of non-sentient undead to sentient undead is just that, a scale, the closer the undead get to evolving, the clearer and clearer their thoughts become, and then their personalities and minds fully solidify on evolution. She supposes that’s why Vey was so unbalanced in terms of knowledge and sense when she first met him, he’d probably been the closest to evolution of all of those undead, but got ‘reset’ by the spells used to awaken him.
The fourth thing she learned is more unsettling than useful, though. She mentioned the presence in the altar, and all of Dragon squad immediately understood what she meant, and the archer trio had even offered her the knowledge that whatever that thing is, it would make good crowns for her and Vey, whatever that means.
Regardless, she plans to share the knowledge on evolution with Vey over her dinner tonight, as well as the dungeon stuff once the useful topics have been exhausted. Sera does wonder if maybe she’s going a little off her rocker as of late, with wanting a more fashionable combat outfit and actually acting like she’s some queen of a bunch of undead, but then again…
Sharing a crown with Vey does sound… Enticing.