I finally woke up, I have no idea how much time has passed since I'm still underground. A slowly start moving and begin clawing my way towards the surface, or at least I hope so, this kind of reminds me of the game minecraft where digging straight down will end with you falling into a pit of lava. How dumb would that be, "ah" I finally see some light means near the surface. After a couple more minutes I am out of the ground, I must have slept for a while because the sun is shining and the birds are singing. Its a nice change of surrounding to be honest.
Well now I decide to check myself out to see what all this evolution was about. After a quick scan of myself the only difference I have noticed is that I got a new paint job, apart from that I am not physically different from before. At least my new bones are nice and smooth chicks probably dig that. Since I hav eno physical difference I decide to check my stats.
HP: 100/100
MP: 20/20
Traits: Cursed skin, Backstabber lvl 1, Beast killer lvl 1
Skills: Soul forge, Raise skeleton.
Souls points: 15
Well I seem to have recieved a tougher body, and that skill raise skeleton looks interesting. Raise skeleton: Raise a skeleton from a corpse to fight for you. Note: Raised skeletons are loyal only to their creator and will die if he is killed, natural skeletons have wills of their own and may rebel against their master. Well thats nice to know, I can make my own little entourage without having to worry about betrayal. I wonder if this body is any stronger than the previous one, I decide to test myself by trying to break a log I found on the floor just like in those Kung fu movies. Dumbest thing I ever did, as soon as my hand slammed into the log my hand bent out of shape before falling off my arm. Although the log didn't break completely it did bend inwards a bit, so my strength seems to have increased but not tremendously and neither did my resistance.
Since it would be stupid to walk around with a missing hand incase I ran into more wolves and I seem to have a good amount of soul points I decided to take a look at what I can make with the soul forge. The only thing I seem to be able to make is armour made from leather since I harvested the wolf pelts, there were a lot of magic enchantements I could choose from such as ice resistance, fire resistance etc. However, the only one I needed was something to heal me, there was one enchantement called Darkness regneration lvl1 which grants a passive healing to an undead wearing the equipment while it would drain the life of any living creature that wore it slowly turning them into an undead. I decided to make myself a piece leather chest armor with darkness regeneration to recover my lost hand. The leather pelts dissolved into blue orbs that fused together making one large ball floating in the air, 15 small white spheres coming from my body proceeded to fuse with it.
Suddenly it simply "popped" and out came a fine looking piece of leather armour that I quickly equipped before anything else decided to take it. As soon as I put it on I could feel my hand slowly growing back, it would take time but it was better than nothing. Having no reason to stick around I continued through the forest, it was 2 hours later that the trees finally gave way to a bright and sunny plain covered in trees, bushes, flowers, rabbits. There was so much life compared to the forest to the point that I thought that I had stepped into another world. I felt a bit safer here than in the forest an quickly set about exploring, there were so many plants I had never seen before unfortunately the animals seem to be terrified of me and scampered off at the sight of me.
An hour later I fall upon a road, a very primitive road but a road nonetheless. It was just basically a long trail where all the grass had been removed and replaced with simple dirt. This could only mean one thing, civilization, of course I wanted to run down the road until I reached a town but thinking about my current appearence the occupants would probably freak out at the sigh of me. I decided to follow that road but be ready to hide if I encountered someone, after around 10 minutes of walk I come across a rather gruesome sight. On the side of the road laid 12 dead humans blood splattered across the grass, what seemed to be the remnants of tents could be seen lying around, at first I thought they might have been traders of some kind but after observing their weapons I discarded that idea. They posseded crude armor made from leather along with some shields made of would and some even had steel swords and maces, I did a quick survey of the area to make sure whatever claimed them was not wandering the area.
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After spotting nothing dangerous apart from the overly cute bunnies around, I decided to test out the raise skeleton skill. As soon as I cast it on one of the bodies, his flesh began disipating like a black fog leaving nothing but his bones, weapons and armor. The skeleton proceeded to stand up still clutching his weapons and looked at me as if waiting for orders. I had no idea how I was meant to communicate with him due to my lack of lungs, the first thing I wanted to try out was make him move forward. No sooner had that though been finished that the skeleton proceeded to march forward bumping into a tree and tenaciously pushing against it as if expecting it to make way for him to continue marching forward. I quickly sent a mental signal telling him to stop. Another suprise came to me in the shape of a skill window.
Skill earned: Lesser control lvl 1: Allows a being to control lesser creatures based on his wishes, higher levels allow for a more fluid control and allows the controlled to decide on a course of action best suited to fulfilling the given order.
Sweet, I proceeded to raise three more skeletons before the spell refused to work. I checked my stats and noticed my mana was depleted, meaning casting that spell costs 5 mana each time. I notice that my mana is slowly refilling, so I decide to continue to pratice giving orders to the already existing skeletons while waiting for my mana to recharge. I continued this process until I had raised all the dead bodies. In the end I had 12 skeletons at my command, 4 had swords and shields, 4 had maces 3 had a spear and a shield while one had two daggers, all of them wore simple leather armor on most of their body. Feeling a bit left out since I have no weapon I order one of them to give me his sword while the one with the daggers gave him one as a replacement. With my troop all set up I decided to check my skills and traits one last time before setting off.
Traits: Cursed skin, Backstabber lvl 1, Beast killer lvl 1, lesser control lvl 3,
Skills: Soul forge, Raise skeleton.
With everything in order I set out happy to be accompanied by 12 trust worthy but maybe not reliable skeletons.
To be continued
I hope you liked the chapter I tried to follow you're feedback by spreading out the writing and making it a bit longer than usual.
A little annoucement I have is I am going to be alternating between this story and a second story. However, I want you guys to pick which story you want me to work on and that is why I have set up a poll.