Ter is rather enjoying her new, albeit unofficial position, Arbitrarily, Queen Sera decided that the mortals under her rule needed guards just as much as the Glorious Leader and Queen Sera’s domains do, so the ‘barn’ as she’s been so helpfully informed it is called, has been added to her patrol route. Also, Ter is still a part of Dragon squad, but unless the Glorious Leader or Queen Sera command it so, Ter spends most of her time training all of the spearmen skeletons and zombies and patrolling.
She’s not sure why, but the members of Dragon squad aren’t considered fully essential for defending the dungeon anymore. In fact, Ter even got to experience something Queen Sera called a ‘rest day’. She’d decided to spend that ‘rest day’ learning various things from the Glorious Leader, primarily by watching him doing his research and pestering him with questions. Eventually, Ter had been handed a notebook, and instructed to learn to read and ask questions there. Whenever Ter’s usually trainees are commandeered by the Glorious Leader or Queen Sera or she is not otherwise occupied, Ter writes questions in the notebook and occasionally, the Glorious Leader has written answers for her.
She firmly believes this is the reason she feels so much smarter than she was when she initially evolved. Her growth in the intelligence stat had been drastically less than her fellows in Dragon squad, but Ter feels as though she’s catching up. Her modest intelligence score of eight is only one below Woi’s, the smartest of the group. Ter also chose her class first of all her peers, fighter, chosen for its ability to better optimize Ter’s skills. [Guard Stance] and [Spearwall] Ter merged into the moderately more efficient [Sentinel], plus the addition of the [Hold Ground] skill she got on level up, if her teammates in Dragon squad don’t team up on her, they can’t move her from wherever she decides to defend.
The Glorious Leader had, admittedly, helped her make the decision to focus on defensive skills, but Ter likes fighting with a spear either way, so fighting defensively makes sense. She certainly feels more unique in her archetype, Kai, Poa, and Mel all have literally the exact same skills, and Woi and Jyu haven’t picked classes yet.
Ter stiffens in place as the Glorious Leader walks by her wordlessly. How long had she been standing there thinking to herself? Probably an hour, at least, she thinks. Admonishing herself for her self-distraction, Ter grabs her spear and heads off towards the entrance hallway.
--
Vey sits down at the top of the snowy hill the battle with Sera’s father had been so long ago, it seems. Winter wasn’t a concept he’d been fully prepared for initially, and more and more he feels like Sera is taking over the management of the dungeon and its occupants. He’d been shocked to find her building structures for the villagers she rescued. He’s happy for it, though, even if it means they have less time to spend together.
After reminding himself he didn’t come up to the snowy hilltop to introspect, he focuses on the latest of his attempts at his current project. After succeeding in making a spellcasting focus with Sera’s help, Vey began wondering if he could make other objects to help him use magic. Scrolls were an obvious start, and each one he’s made worked exactly as intended. Scrolls being single use and rather expensive for it means that Vey doesn’t like them though. His current creation?
Vey looks down at the stone rod he made using [Stone Shape]. After taking a moment to prepare himself and stand up, Vey settles on his choice of test. With a shout of ‘[Greater Evocation]’, Vey watches his MP go down by 16, within expectations, and then looks at the effect of his ongoing spell.
The snow around him in a thirty foot radius rapidly melts and rises into the air, forming a ring of slowly boiling water orbiting the skeleton mage. Vey holds the stone rod in his right hand like a javelin, winds himself back, and throws it with all his might. As it leaves his grip, the ring of water follows, and once the rod is over forty feet away down the hill, his control over the [Greater Evocation] ends, and the boiling water falls out of the sky onto the snow below.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
The stone rod probably broke on impact with the ground, but Vey is too busy feeling proud of himself at his success to care. A magical item that can serve as a substitute for a spell that ordinarily must target a living creature. A perfect addition to his repertoire.
--
Sera buries her face in the book she’d been pretending to read as a way to escape the reality of her current duties for a moment. She’d been the one to take on the other mortals, she’d been the one to do most of the work preparing for their survival. She’s been consistently ensuring they’re happy, loyal, and alive, and she’s managed to do just that while keeping up with her training and with a reasonable level of training for the new undead.
The problem is Vey. Sera is very upset that outside of when she sleeps(which isn’t very often at present), her time with Vey is extremely limited. Granted, they never really did much together before, but existing near each other was the point, helping each other with magic was the point, or there was always something else they could do together.
She doesn’t blame Vey for not wanting to be near the kids or the caretakers. In fact, she thinks it is absolutely for the best that they don’t have to worry about an undead wizard smarter than anyone they’ve ever met, that’s the sort of thing cautionary tales get written about, so Vey would probably be pretty terrifying as part of your daily life. They seem relatively fine with most of Dragon squad as well as Sheo in terms of the currently intelligent undead, and the unintelligent kind they seem afraid of, but satisfied with the explanation that they can’t hurt them without orders to do so.
Blacksmith squad, so named because Vey animated them with the sole purpose of becoming metalworkers, are not training up well. Not for lack of either trying or instruction, but lack of tools. Zombie squad has successfully made numerous pieces of tailored clothing, not the least of which being the shirt Sera is wearing at present. Farming squad, who exist to help the mortals grow food, hasn’t had a chance to do that because of the current amount of snow. Sheo squad hasn’t ascended to intelligence as a whole yet, but Sheo himself most definitely has. He didn’t evolve, but he did start speaking and even chose a gender. He also appointed himself to a bunch of miscellaneous tasks Sera had been doing, which she appreciates.
Still, Blacksmith and Farming aren’t the only squads that haven’t been bearing fruit, a fact that makes Sera angry. Not at them, but at her inability to produce results as their ‘Queen’. Fortunately, Vey considers the militarized undead his purview, and Sera hasn’t disputed that, but it doesn’t change the fact that all of the intelligent and non-militarized undead have been under hers, and also largely unproductive.
With another year, some new equipment and facilities, that can probably be fixed. She’d really like to fulfill the image in her head of a city scale blacksmithing and tailoring effort, but that’s still far, far off. Pulling the book off her face, she sits up and cracks her neck to the side, before grabbing her sword and walking out.
“Ter, gather Drone squad, Smallfolk squad, and any zombies that aren’t currently busy, as well as any of the axes and shovels that aren’t in use.”
--
Vey lost track of time some time ago. He’s currently just theorizing and belting out various spells from the top of the hill, testing the capabilities of his second stone rod. Spells that only affect living creatures don’t do anything to it, but they will cling to it. It also doesn’t transfer spells like Sera’s [Spellblade] does, it only ‘holds’ them. [Ghoul Touch] doesn’t attempt to paralyze him if he puts it on the rod. Rather, it seems like the spell is trying to paralyze the rod. He found that mildly amusing.
Vey also managed to cast [Sleep] on the rod. It didn’t do anything, but it is final proof that it works as a substitute target. Ultimately, his plan for the ‘Targeting Rod’ as he’s starting to call it is to have hostile magic that would target him or Sera harmlessly target the rod instead, though it definitely needs more work.
For starters, he needs to go out of his way to target the rod, what he wants it to do is to draw the targets of spells that weren’t specifically cast at it. Basically, he needs it to keep the property of being a valid target for a spell like [Sleep], but also to force a hostile [Sleep] to target the rod.
Vey marvels at how much of a boon [Greater Evocation] has been in regard to his testing. The ability to conveniently cast any evocation spell he’s ever made, and quite a few he hasn’t, contained to a single spell slot led to him discovering several new useful spells while testing, and he makes a mental note to write them down properly for documentation’s sake.
He wonders if maybe he could ask to study Sera’s [Foreverqueen’s Shroud] as a touchpoint for making his Targeting Rod better. Though, given what her shroud actually does, observing it might be rather difficult. Still, he figures it’s better than nothing, and sets off down the hill towards the cave entrance.