In the end, Alaster ran through the Dungeon four more times, bringing his Core up to ten. Each time gathering all the bone he could and using it to build his expanded Minion Limit. He actually only needed to run through three times, but he wanted to test a new type of Undead he made against the Boss. It did not go well for the Skeleton.
So he reentered the Dungeon and gathered enough bone to rebuild it, making a few changes from the previous performance.
In the end, Alaster only made one new type of Undead. The Night Child was designed to be quick, lethal, and stealthy. The Black Guard was designed to be a soldier, capable of fighting on the front line of a prolonged battle, if needed. This new Undead was designed to be the front line.
The Black Guard stood almost two meters, a little over six foot. Alaster had done this so he could take cover behind one of them if needed. But for this new type? It stood comfortably at seven foot, not because Alaster wanted it to be tall, but because it needed to that tall to be strong, heavy, and durable enough.
While the Black Guards were designed as a jack of all trade, this new type was designed to take a beating. It was slower than the Black Guards, noticeable, but surprisingly not too slow. Its armor was massive and thick, strengthened to the limits of Alaster’s Abilities, which improved after becoming an Adept.
The thick chest piece was segmented at the stomach and waist, allowing greater flexibility while retaining the durability. Thick segmented plates of bone curved around the waist and ran down the legs, ending just above the knee and providing near complete protection. The legs themselves were armored similarly to the Black Guards, but the ‘boots’ of these Undead were thicker and while it ended just below the knee to preserve moveability, the armor expended past the knee into a sharp spike. Alaster imagined that, if needed, the Undead could knee an enemy.
The arms had thinner plates of bone protecting them, similar to the legs, but Alaster suspected that it would still be enough to protect against a glancing blow from most Adepts. The Gauntlets were incredibly thick and had sharp edges, similar to how the Parasite’s Gauntlet looked. Alaster would not want to be backhanded by it, as it would no doubt shred his face.
However, despite that, the defining characteristic, was no doubt the pauldrons and the upper armor of the chest piece. The Pauldrons were truly massive, even for the sheer size of the Undead. They were over six inches thick at its thinnest and slightly curved to wrap around the shoulder. The back of the chest piece was higher, creating a lip around the back of the neck and part of the head. The pauldrons expanded up past the shoulder itself to protect the sides of the head, which in conjunction with the back of the chest piece, created a form of nest for the head to sit.
The helmet was a square great helm. Alaster recreated it from his memories while he was at Onigas and saw some of the Guards use them. But after finishing it, Alaster could not help but feel like it was taunting something to challenge its durability.
While the most noticeable aspect of the armor was the pauldrons, the most distinctive aspect was the two horns that looked like it came from the helmet, but was in fact part of the armor itself. Alaster had added that part because he could imagine that a lot of things charging this Undead. And if all went right, the Undead wouldn’t budge, it would hold its ground. So the horns were designed to strengthen the collar bones of the armor, while also dampening the impact. And if the enemy was large or unlucky enough, the points of the horns would dig into them.
All in all, the armor was massive, taunting, and a symbol of durability. If it had been made out of metal, Alaster would be surprised if any Adept who didn’t specialize almost entirely in strength being able to move in it. But it was made out of bone, and while still being a heavy material, is nowhere near the weight of most metals, at least not until Alaster strengthened it.
That was just the armor itself. Which, while built into the Skeleton, was in fact separate. Standing at seven foot, it was massive in its own right. However, since Alaster did not have any actual human bones, he had to make it up. Just like he had done with the Black Guards. But while the Black Guards had to remain flexible and quick, this new Undead was designed to hold the ground and stand steadfast.
It would never be without its armor, but regardless, Alaster designed the Skeleton to have its own ‘natural’ armor. Its ribs were remained flexible, but were made much thicker and stronger. The arms and legs became one, very solid, bone. The Skull was made thicker, with barely enough space to accommodate the Necrotic Mana. The eyes were made narrow. This would limit its vertical vision, but would also make it much harder for an object to get through to the Necrotic Mana.
Alaster did not actually know if anything would happen, but he would rather not take that risk.
When the Skeleton was in its armor and standing, even Alaster felt a chill. Its sheer size was imposing. The armor itself seemed to challenge others, but once the Undead was built into it, that feeling intensified many times over. It almost felt palpable. This Skeleton wanted something to beat it. It wanted the enemy to try to break it. And even more so, it wanted the enemy to fail. It wanted to watch the hope drain from the faces of those before it before they died.
None of Alaster’s Abilities hinted at this. There was nothing for Alaster to identify why this was. This Skeleton felt cruel and arrogant, but even more than that, it felt protective. The moment it was situated and free to move, it began to examine the surroundings of the Dungeon and placed itself between Alaster and wherever it expected a threat to most likely come from.
“Now what to name you?” Alaster thought aloud.
Alaster sat in his bone chair and thought for several minutes, while his other Undead continued to exterminate the Apes in the Dungeon and bring the corpses to him. However, in the end, it was its nearly black armor practically begging for a challenge, and its horns, that decided it.
“You will be called Minotaur.”
Minotaurs were creatures of legend, even in this land of Goblins and Dragons. The stories were of ancient Alchemists and Flesh Crafters working together to create the perfect soldier to conquer the lands. Together, they created a Minotaur, half man, half bull. The Legend stated that Minotaurs were arrogant creatures that were extremely territorial and violent.
Alaster thought that matched this Undead perfectly. He almost couldn’t wait to see it in action after fixing the mistakes he had seen during its last fight with the Ghost Ape. The young man almost pitied any one foolish enough to take it on in a straight fight, so he made another.
It had taken Alaster almost the entire day in the Dungeon to make the first one, and the second was only a little faster. By the time he was done, Alaster was exhausted. Even with the help of his second mind, automatically taking care of the more simple things, his head was pounding, and his eyes were heavy. The two Minotaurs didn’t even have equipment yet, but in the relative safety of the Dungeon, he didn’t care.
He currently had twelve [Horde] Skeletal Apes active and hunting down their still breathing counterparts with two of the Black Guards and the Night Children, leaving him with just two Mana Regeneration. Not a lot, and with the high mana cost of [Skeleton Creation], he quickly ran out numerous times. However, that's where [Blood Price] came in.
Every minute, he sacrificed twelve Health Points in exchange for sixty Mana, and his natural Regeneration would recover it. It was easy and covered the cost of [Skeleton Creation] with a little left over for him to make other changes as he saw fit with [Bone Crafting]. The System was a bit finicky over what it registered as [Skeleton Creation] and [Bone Crafting]. Making the Skeleton taller and strengthening the bones were counted as [Skeleton Crafting], but making the bones thicker and the eyes more narrow were [Bone Crafting].
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
In the end though, Alaster was able to create both of the Minotaurs without running out of mana. However, he was not used to working with Mana so intensely for so long. His head pulsed and pounded, and it wasn’t alone.
[Blood Price] didn’t just take the points from the System. It actually damaged his body. At only twelve points out of his four hundred and sixty total, it was very minor and the pain easily ignored. However, doing it for every minute for several hours still took its toll. Alaster’s body was sore. And not just in one place. His entire body ached.
As much as he wanted to create and experiment with equipment for the Minotaurs, he made a small bone lean-to, raised out of the snow, and quickly fell asleep.
He awoke several hours later, feeling much better. His body felt fine, and his head only ached when he moved it quickly. He ate some ape meat, drank some melted snow, and got back to work.
To match with their design as being frontline defenders, the Minotaurs needed large shields. That would be first. After he finalized a design and made two of them, he would work on picking a weapon.
Alaster already had an idea in his mind for the shield. A tower shield. A shield designed to protect the entire body, leaving only a few centimeters of the foot and head exposed. Some of the soldiers in Onigas called it a board shield due to its appearance. But for the Minotaurs, it would probably look more like a wall, which ironically, was exactly what Alaster was going for. When they raised their shields next to each other, he wanted it to look like a wall had formed.
The shield was simple to make, just tedious, time-consuming, and just as material exhaustive as the Minotaurs themselves. When it was finished, it was just as black as the armor and had no design. That kinda bugged Alaster as he felt like the shield, which would kinda be the ‘face’ for the Minotaurs, had no design. But he did not know how to create a design without compromising the durability of the shields.
The shield was slightly heavier than the shield Iris had gifted Alaster. The failed shield designed for an Expert Warrior Type Class. So far, it had remained in his Ring, untouched. He had used it more as a chair than as a shield. The Minotaurs were strong, even for their size. And while they could have wielded the shield with enough proficiency to be useful in battle, the shield itself was too small compared to them.
So yet again, Alaster left the shield in his Ring as a memento until he could create an Undead strong enough to use it. However, even being a failed shield, it was still designed for an Expert. Alaster was confident in his ability to make the Tower Shields durable, but he was under no illusion. He knew that even as a failed project, the steel shield would still be many times more durable than his own.
As for the weapon, Alaster chose to make two spears. They were just as simple as the ones the Black Guards used. He considered giving the two Bills to the Minotaurs, but he thought better of it. The Minotaurs had plenty of strength to use the Bills, even one-handed. But it was that same strength that worried him. Alaster could repair and recreate weapons made out of bone. He could even repair the Bills with the tools he had purchased at the same time, but his ability to repair the Bills was limited.
He was also tempted to add a crossbar on the spears. This bar was usually designed to prevent a charging enemy from going too far down the shaft of the spear and still harming the user. An excellent addition when the users were living people who had to worry about shock. But for the Undead, especially the Minotaurs who were designed to take said charges head on, he wanted the spear to go as deep into the enemy, causing more damage, as he could.
Besides, if the spear broke, the gauntlets of the Minotaurs had spikes at its knuckle. Alaster wasn’t sure which would be a better death, the spear, or the fist. Luckily, because the Minotaurs were larger, so were their hands. Which meant that the shafts of the spears could be equally thicker.
And yet, despite all that, he was not done. He couldn’t do anything with [Raise Mage] currently, as he didn’t have the corpse of a Mage present. But he still had two other new Abilities.
[Death Aura] had immediately proven its worth. Once activated, an incredibly faint sickly green fog expanded out from Alaster in a two meter radius. As he moved, so did the fog, and outside forces, such as wind or terrain, didn’t seem to effect it. Undead who entered were slightly, but noticeably, faster and stronger. And they slowly healed from any damaged they sustained. The healing was much slower than if he used [Necrotic Heal] on them, but it was present.
Alaster had only had one opportunity to see it affect living creatures, such as the Apes, and it had only been for a moment before the Black Guards butchered it. But while it was still alive, Alaster noticed that it grew sluggish, the effect was so minor that it could have been a trick of the eye, but Alaster chose to believe it was the effect of the Aura.
All accounted for, [Death Aura] was well worth the somewhat pricey Mana Cost. [Flesh Crafting] was strange to Alaster. He experimented with it using the corpses of the Apes, but it was beyond weird. Alaster could feel that if he worked on it, that he could push his Undead past the limits of simple bone, but it would take time. Time that he chose to push to later. He had enough new things to worry about at the moment.
The changes to [Raise Undead] were simple. Just more Undead. A great change that Alaster loved, but one that didn’t really need any thought. [Necrotic Bolt] was slightly different but still pretty simply, and he used the Apes as test subjects. Just as he suspected, he could slightly change the shape of the bolt. If he made it thicker, it would have more physical impact and the Necrotic Mana would melt the flesh in a wider, but more surface area. While if he made the bolt more narrow, it would dig deeply, having almost no impact force, but melting the flesh in a smaller, but deeper area.
However, the change that cause Alaster’s attention was to [Bone Crafting]. It had gained the change of being able to craft Living Bone. In truth, before he started experimenting, Alaster had no idea what that meant. But after several hours, he learned that it too was simple to learn, but exceedingly difficult to master. Basically, it was enchanting bone.
Alaster could feel that he enchant the bone to do all manner of things, but after nearly an entire day of experimenting, he had only managed to figure out how to enchant it to be slightly harder and self repair, in a sense. In actuality, the self repair enchant was more of a ‘return to previous state’ enchantment. Functionally, it did the same as self repair. The enchantment would slowly return the material to the same state that it was in when the enchantment was placed.
This enchantment was pretty simple to learn, as the vast majority of physical objects actively resisted change. So it was kind of hitching off that. The hardness enchantment was so minor as to be pointless, but out of the two, it was much more complicated.
When Alaster used the Living Bone aspect of the Spell, his vision slightly changed to see the Mana of the Object. Everything had Mana in and around it, that was one of the ‘facts’ of magic. Enchanters took that ‘outline’ of mana and changed it slightly, directing the Mana in certain directions.
In truth, Alaster only knew these two enchantments, or patterns, in Colius’ Lab. His drawings of the patterns had been extremely complicated, but after all this time, Alaster still remembered the general shape, which allowed him to make an extremely weaker and more costly version of it, but even that seemed to be pushing the limits of his personal ability. He needed to practice it. But the possibilities made Alaster promise himself that he would actively improve.
Regardless of how weak they were, Alaster still put the self repair enchantment on all the armor of the Black Guards and Minotaurs. He tried to enchant the Skeletons themselves, but something seemed to be blocking it. He couldn’t change the mana at all. But that didn’t discourage him. Alaster also put the hardness enchantment on the Minotaurs’ shields, though he doubted it would do much. And though he was done, he could feel like he wasn’t able to enchant the shields any further, even if he knew any other pattern.
By the time his Undead had cleared out the Dungeon for the twelfth time, the two Minotaurs were almost ready, but they were missing one thing that Alaster believed to be critical. Their Minds. Alaster ordered them to kneel before him, because otherwise they were too tall for him to reach their skulls. He placed his hands on the first one and began the process, but it felt much easier. He simply chalked it up to becoming an Adept. But when he reached five hundred Mana, where he would normally stop, he felt that it was only half way full.
Exchanging even more health, Alaster pumped more mana into the mind, watching the Mana in the Skull become thicker and brighter. However, the limit was soon reached once more, but instead of five hundred Mana, Alaster had used one thousand Mana. Five hundred Mana had made the other Undead with the intelligence of a child, without the immaturity. Alaster wondered what a thousand Mana would do. How intelligent would the Minotaurs be?