AN: Really quickly just want to explain the was his purification and mana increase. He had his mana pool, which could run out. It's max is, for example, 2,500. That means if he uses all his mana he will have 0 units of current mana, but his max will always be the same. If he absorbs something and gets the mana from it, he can choose whether to fill his pool or increase his max. Now for purification. There are multiple stages, ranging from un-purified, which in his inner self it will be a very dark liquid, to fully purified, which is a bright white liquid. Currently, he is 50% un-purified and 50% through the first stage of purification. So for now his liquid is still a very dark gray, but not as dark as the un-purified. Hope this helps you guys understand, as I've been wanting to explain this for a while now. If you have any more questions tell me in the comments. END AUTHOR NOTE
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A few hours had passed, and Klod had beaten some sense into the army by then. He split them into 5 companies, with 200 berserkers each. As they evolved he would slowly teach Klod how to balance the fighters, stealth fighters, and mages to balance the companies. Those five companies equated to a battalion, and he would need 4 more battalions to create a full brigade. From there he would create 2 more brigades and create a full division. But for now he didn't have enough bones. A full division would cost him over 750,000 corpses. Hopefully he could get that in the next week. After getting a full division, he would begin increasing his armies power by infusing the already made soldiers with more bones to increase their potential.
Luckily for him, though this city was the capital, it had a small population. Most of the people were either craftsman or merchants. Some of the cities in the Florent's lands had well over 300,000 people, and the largest city, that he knew of, had well over 1,000,000 people living in it. That city would be equal to over 10,000 units, which is over 3 times his current, which is at 2,919. He gained around 500 units from absorbing everyone in this city.
*Why didn't I do this earlier?*
Taking a loom into his inner self, he saw why it was a bad idea. The mana he absorbed was only partially purified. It seemed to stay with the percent completion. If 50% of his total was purified, then when he absorbed mana 50% would be purified. Leaving his inner self he went back to thinking about the city.
The only reason he didn't attack them is because of how strong the city is. There's a good reason why they are able to keep such a city without anyone taking it over. It was controlled by The Mage Theocracy, which was a large group of very powerful mages that believed that their power came straight from god.
While those "powerful" mages where actually quite weak, the city wasn't. The walls were made of reinforced iron and stone, each over 100 meters tall and 20 meters wide, created by earth mages. There was also a large focusing crystal, an object capable of absorbing large amounts of mana and unleashing it all together in one shot, at the center of the city.
Even without all of that, the city trained everyone to use magic. Even the peasants learned some magic. Now to mention the middle and upper class. Just thinking about the amounts of mana he could absorb from their bodies made him want to do it, but he knew he was still a bit too weak to do it.
As he kept on thinking about what to do next, he saw Ilodis.
"Do you have any news?" - Sear
'Yes my lord. I have found and excavated out a large burial site. There seems to be around 200,000 corpses there. Some bones are missing, but you still have enough to create an even larger army." - Ilodis
"Good. Summon the other four and tell them to meet me there. You go too." - Sear
Instantly, Sear's body vanished as he flew towards the burial sight. He had sensed it earlier, but decided to see how useful his men would be, and they seemed quite good.
As he arrived, he saw the pile of bones.
*Good, with this I should be able to create a full brigade. Too bad it will take up all of the corpses. Soon, he would have more corpses than he would know what to do with. But that would be in a while.
Concentrating, he once again created the berserkers. By the time he finished, the five had appeared behind him.
"I will be leaving to explore around a bit. For now, it is up to you five. Outside the city you will find a large arrow made of steel pointing towards the direction to the next town. I will be back in 4 days. By then, have the city destroyed. Take all of the corpses and bones out and stack them somewhere else. The city has a population of 150,000. It won't be enough for you guys to evolve once more, but it will slowly help. Now I will be going." - Sear
He suddenly launched off again, flying away.
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Pov Change - Ilodis
*My lord has told me and the others to go take over the city. It shall be done. For now I will bury this city.*
At the same time he went away, the other four also went. They all knew what they had to do. For now, Flint and Grev couldn't do much, but they would be useful once the army became more intelligent and needed to sabotage. Yrol and Klod went to go train the soldiers.
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As Ilodis appeared outside the city, he used his earth magic and began dragging the walls underneath the ground. After a few minutes, the walls were gone. As he continued, the houses all slowly sank, and finally the ruined palace and the streets were dragged down, leaving a massive patch of un-grassed dirt.
He walked over to where the others were. Now that they had a full battalion, Klod decided to give each of them control of a full battalion, which consisted of 1,000 berserkers.
As they all took charge, they began to run towards the next city. They all ran full speed, and due to be skeletons had no fatigue and needed no supplies. Within hours, they were there. It was around 1 AM currently, but luckily Sear also gave them near-perfect night-vision.
Looking up at the wall, Ilodis began to plan.
*15 meter high walls. 25 drum towers(AN: circle towers built into the wall) spaced apart around 500 meters apart from each other. Battlements on the entire wall. A 100 meter long portion of the wall can be submerged in 10 seconds, but Yrol can destroy it in less. So I shall simply kill as many as I can.*
As he told his ideas to the others, they agreed. Within a minute, Yrol was at the wall. Swinging his sword in a 270 degree arc, the men stationed on the wall could do nothing but watch as a portion of the wall at least 30 meters long got blasted away. He quickly moved and soon 250 meters of the wall were destroyed. With Yrol, Klod, Ilodis, Grev and Flint at the lead, they 5,000 berserkers blasted into the city.
As alarms rang out, all that could be heard was the crunching of bone, blood-curling screams, the sound of wood splintering and stone being crushed.
Ilodis would simply cause spikes of stone to shoot out of the earth and impale people, other times collapsing houses on top of them. Very rarely did he actually hit someone with his staff, but whenever he did their body would fold in half before being launched into any nearby person with enough force to break the walls once more.
Yrol would simply swing his sword in circles, sometimes even deciding to just walk around as he span around. His sword would cut everything in half, whether it be swords, buildings, or people.
Klod was going around cutting and shield bashing people. Grev and Flint would move so skillfully and quick that before people knew it their heads had been cut off.
The other troops were all basically doing the same thing, swinging their sword and using faint magic at any opportunity. In their minds all that there was was one command, kill.
By the end of the hour since the attack began, everyone had been killed. Now that everyone was dead, Ilodis had created an area that everyone could stack the corpses they found.
*Now that everything is done, I shall wait for my lord to arrive.*
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Pov back to Sear
As he launched off from the city, Sear oriented himself towards the town he had ownership of. He intended to deal with the lightning elemental now. By now he was sure that he could kill it. He would put all of his mana into creating a shield around him. He would then begin to purify himself for as long as the shield holds out against the elemental.
Hopefully he would be able to fully purify this first level so that he could move on and see how hard the next level would be. At this pace, he should be there in two hours. He took this time to figure out how to configure the runes to allow him to create a shield that would work for as long as he had enough mana to sustain it.
When he arrived to the town, he saw what was left. A crater.
The area around had been completely destroyed. Luckily for him, he would now be getting revenge. During the two hour trip he had been able to find a way to make the shield. He would use 7 glyphs to make it, and in the end it would be almost unbreakable as long as it had mana to sustain itself. Once it runs out of mana it will collapse.
He drew it on the ground by him and then infused his mana into it. The shield sprang up around him and he immediately began to purify. After 5 hours he had gotten to 68% purification.
After 10 hours he was at 90%. After 24 hours he was at 99%. After two full days, he was still at 99%. He could feel himself on the very brink of finishing. For some reason, this very last piece of mana wouldn't purify as quickly as it should have. Not only that, but the elemental appeared a day ago. It had a strength of 600 units. The highest he's seen other than himself.
By now, the shield had a spiderweb of cracks on it. He could tell that he barely had an hour left. After an hour, a few seconds before the shield broke, he broke through the first stage. He suddenly felt as his mana cap exploded to wondrous heights. It kept going, before stopping at 4 times its original. He now had an amazing 22,000 units.
Looking around with his mana sense, he was surprised. Without knowing, he had absorbed a huge amount of mana from the land. He was currently in a crater 5 kilometers deep. All life within a radius of 25 kilometers of him was dead, and he could feel that the mana density in this area was barely 1/100th of its normal. No wonder it took so long, this place was already running dry. Another thing he felt was that he was about to change again. Just like the past 2 times where he fell asleep and changed drastically, he was about to do it again, but first the elemental.
As he kept looking around, the shield finally cracked. With it came Sear. He launched out of the remains of the shield are barreled into the elemental. He suddenly remembered one thing. Though his mana cap had increased, his body was still the same as it was before.
The only thing he could count on now was how much stronger his mana would be. Since his mana was now purified once, it's raw energy went up. The same amount of mana used to create a ball of fire 1 meter across could now create one with triple the ball's mass.
The elemental quickly sprang away from him and coiled itself back as it did that last time. The only difference now, was that Sear was prepared to fight it. Creating a glove of his black and purple-type mana he punched forward. As the two collided, the crater beneath them grew even more.
Pieces of rock over 1 cubic kilometer in size were floating off of the ground. The ground beneath them cracked and ravines hundreds of meters deep and thousand long formed. The clouds above them began to spread away from them. Lightning over a meter thick formed from their fists and flashed about in the air.
The air near them trembled and quivered as if to try to run away from them. Sadly for the elemental, Sear's strength was too great. Suddenly, The glove exploded forwards towards the elemental, surrounding it. Mist appeared where the mana was and ate away at the elemental and its core, and soon nothing was left.
With that extra 600 units with him, Sear was happy. He could now consider himself the strongest person in the planet, hopefully.
As the rest of the debris fell from the sky, Sear created another shield with his now overabundant mana and fell unconscious, about to undergo a change for the third time in who knows how long.