The next day, Alaster woke up with a smile on his face. He was warm, rested, and surprisingly comfortable. But even more than that, he no longer had to worry about hiding his Undead. He sat up and began cooking more of the Snow Ape meat. At this point, he was beginning to run out. He only had enough for a few more meals.

‘Hopefully whatever is in the Dungeon is edible.’

After a quick meal, Alaster suffocated the fire using a bone dome and took down the tarp, putting it in his Ring. Owen certainly wouldn’t be using it. Alaster looked around the area. During the night, it had lightly snowed, piling up on the tarp, so when he took it down it all piled around. Stepping over the snow and out of the pit, Alaster saw that the Undead had done a wonderful job keeping the Monsters away from both their master and the corpse.

‘Huh, now that I think about it, I should have checked my EXP before and after I killed him. I wonder how much it was worth?’

It had been the first human Alaster killed. He would have expected to feel something such as grief, like the Guards usually said. But Alaster didn’t. He didn’t feel anything. And not like he was numb. He simply treated the kill as yet another obstacle removed from his path to saving his Sister. Treating it like that, Alaster had no issue moving onto the next thing. Which, in this instance, was the ring of dead weasels around his camp.

The Undead, in their increased numbers, had not allowed a single weasel to get within ten meters of the shelter. And they had come in numbers. The giant weasels had climbed over their fallen to attack, and there they died. Alaster would have been impressed if the Weasels were powerful enough. As it was, he suspected even Owen would have been able to kill a few himself. The impressive part was the numbers they had managed to kill, but that was mitigated because the Undead didn’t get tired.

After a quick survey, Alaster didn’t spot anything other than the weasels, so he ignored the mounds and moved on. He could have butchered a few of their corpses, but they actually had very little meat on them. He was only interested in their bones. At Alaster’s command, the Undead knelt down and began to extract the bones.

Alaster could have done it much quicker if he used his magic. He could have pulled the bones out of the bodies, a dozen at a time, if not more, but he was focusing on the corpse before him.

‘Owen was a Fire Mage.’

He pulled up the relevant Ability.

[Raise Mage

Level 1: 0%

Raise the skeletal corpse of a mage

Max Minions: 0/1

Mana Cost: 200]

Grinning to himself, Alaster mentally selected the corpse of the mage and cast the Ability. His sickly green mana leaked out of his outstretched hand and coated the remains, gradually seeping in as more and more mana covered it. After a single minute, the last of the two hundred mana points soaked into the body, and Alaster was greeted by another notice from the System.

[Select ten Mana Cores]

‘The Spell didn’t mention anything like that.’ Alaster grumbled to himself, but pulled out ten of the Mana Cores he had gotten from the last Dungeon.

They were all identical to each other, coming from the same Boss Monster. Low Quality of a Mana type Alaster was not able to identify, which was not surprising. Alaster didn’t know much of anything about the actual use of Mana Cores.

‘Apparently they can also be used in Spells.’ He noted.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

[Consume Cores?]

[Yes/No]

Alaster made his choice. The moment he did so, the Mana in the cores began to stream out and similarly seep into the body. Alaster had piled the Cores in the snow next to him and when the streams of Mana ended, the Cores crumbled into dull, fragile, shards. He wanted to look closer at this, but his attention was caught by the corpse. It was melting. Or at least the flesh was.

Out of the half melted flesh, a Skeleton sat up, before standing up, bits of wet flesh falling off. Owen had not been a particularly tall boy, unlike Alaster. He looked his age, and his Skeleton emulated that, standing nearly a full head shorter than Alaster, who was just beginning to grow as tall as the Black Guards.

The blood soaked and frosted clothes hung off the Skeleton’s body, having been made to fit around the flesh of a living boy. Alaster used [Death Touch] and melted them off, after all, the clothes were made out of organic material, and they weren’t good clothes anyway. Alaster wasn't worried about losing out on money or materials, as they were ratty and pathed.

With nothing covering it, Alaster was able to study the bones themselves. And he learned a lot. While making the Black Guards, and then the Minotaurs, he had simply made the bones however he wanted to get the desired height and functionality as a human. He did not actually know how the Human Skeleton looked. Now, after nearly half an hour of study, he at least knew the general shapes and sizes, as well as locations, of the larger bones.

Not that it would change his current designs for his Undead. The way the Black Guards and Minotaurs were built did not hinder them in any way, and without organs or blood, their bones were allowed to be more durable and protective. He was simply curious.

And after sating his curiosity, Alaster looked at the Skeleton’s Status.

[Novice Skeleton Mage

Health: 100/100

Health Regeneration: 5/min

Mana: 300/300

Mana Regeneration: 5/min

Abilities: Necrotic Bolt, Bone Crafting

Strength: 15

Dexterity: 20

Constitution: 10

Wisdom: 50

Intelligence: 50]

‘Impressive. Kinda.’

It was, in fact, pathetic. Alaster wasn’t expecting much, but this was just weak. Even an ordinary Novice would have no issue defeating this Skeleton Mage. However, Alaster wasn’t discouraged. Because it had Abilities, two of them. Which, for a Mage, was an abysmal amount, but for a minion? The Skeleton Mage also had one of Alaster most used Spells, [Bone Crafting].

After a quick check, Alaster learned that the Skeleton Mage was unable to level up any of its Abilities, and after a similarly quick test, learned that the Abilities were base Level. No Bonuses of any kind. But once again, he wasn’t discouraged. Alaster was going to make this Skeleton Mage his factory, giving it all the time-consuming and brainless tasks, such as repairing the other Undead’s Armor and weapons. It would be slow, because it was stuck at level one usage. However, Alaster was able to see that the Skeleton was able to replicate the properties of the Bone it was working on.

So the Mage would have no issue repairing the armor and weapons, even if it wasn’t able to get the Bone to that level of durability itself. So Alaster would still have to make the items, but the repair could be handled by the Skeleton Mage.

As for the [Necrotic Bolt], It was similarly level one. But it was a ranged attack regardless, so Alaster just took it in stride. Unfortunately, the Skeleton Mage wasn’t very accurate. It could reliably hit a target within ten meters, but anything past that, Alaster wouldn’t count on it. However, Alaster was already imagining a group of fifty of these Skeleton Mages casting [Necrotic Bolt] en masse and just showering the enemy.

Alaster quickly gave it a mind worth one thousand Mana and gave it its first actual task. Gathering the Bones, the other Undead were extracting. As he generated his Mana and Health, he watched the Skeletal Mage go about its work. As he expected, it was slow. It consolidated the Bones into cubes, but it wasn’t able to condense them much. So Alaster had to do it. He had one of the Night Children run the white cubes from the Skeletal Mage wherever it dropped them, to him, where he would condense it, and have the other Night Child stack the Black Cubes next to him.

It was a smooth process and was quickly completed.

After storing all the finished cubes, Alaster had the Undead throw the Weasel corpses into the pit he had spent the night in. It quickly overflowed, but he didn’t care, and neither did the Undead. They continued to pile the corpses there. When it was finished, it was a wide pile, roughly up to Alaster’s waist.

Alaster smiled to himself, and raised his hand, casting [Fire Bolt]. The Spell was not very powerful, especially at level one, but Alaster didn’t need it to be powerful for the current purpose. He just needed the fire, which caught very well. Alaster would not have expected weasel fur to be so flammable. And within moments, the pile was burning.

Alaster turned away, facing the Dungeon Entrance. It was time he saw what he would be slaughtering.