Crack!

A rib bone flew through the air, spinning in multiple rotations before smashing into the dark wall. It shattered into two large chunks and a scatter of smaller fragments.

“Another!” a voice called out.

A small rattle echoed in the room.

Snap!

The sound of a sturdy twig breaking filled the air.

“Okay… and…”

Crack!

“Aaaaurghhh!”

Yet another rib bone flew across the room, striking the wall and crumbling into a pile of tiny bone pieces. A frustrated sigh followed immediately.

Walnut shuffled down the stairs, clutching a small blue mana potion. He glanced over at Enya, who was slumped over the table with her arms outstretched and her head resting on it, eyes turned sideways to look at him. He approached and handed her the potion.

“Thanks,” Enya said, her tone unusually flat. She accepted the blue mana potion and braced herself for the taste assault.

“Bleh…” she mouthed weakly, the potion’s awful taste making her grimace.

Enya had vastly underestimated the challenge in front of her. Half an hour slipped by unnoticed as she worked on what she sarcastically dubbed her “pie” or "cake"—or rather, her attempts at engraving magic circles. Turns out that carving spells into bone wasn’t as simple as she had imagined. Either that, or making something ‘easy as cake,’ had been a cruel joke—something seemingly easy but deceptively hard.

With the small steel spike-knife Walnut had given her, she carefully etched the outline of a spell circle onto the rib bone. At first, it seemed manageable. The line she carved wrapped neatly around the rib, forming a full circle. But keeping the line straight? That was another story. She overextended, then had to awkwardly backtrack, resulting in something more akin to a wobbly square than a smooth circle. She had basically drawn a circle with corners—a true marvel in geometry.

By the time she realized the mess she’d made, her magic circle was already a clunky, crooked design. Still, she pressed on. Perfection wasn’t the point, she reasoned. It was about learning. Practice. Probably.

But then came the patterns. The first attempt started off okay—until her hand twitched, carving a diagonal line where a smooth curve should have been. She kept going, determined to push through, reminding herself again that experience was everything. Ten seconds later, she made another mistake. Five seconds after that, an even bigger one.

Soon, every other stroke seemed to bring a new error, and frustration bubbled to the surface. By the time she finished, the circuit looked nothing like a spell and everything like a chaotic scrawl. Disheartened, Enya sighed, setting aside the botched attempt.

“Walnut,” she called, her voice flat with exhaustion. “I’m gonna need another bone.”

The complications only multiplied as she went on. She began tossing the unusable bones against the wall, where they accumulated in a growing heap of shattered fragments. During one of her attempts, she even snapped a rib in half, the small bone cracking from being engraved on too heavily and with too many repetitions.

Walnut’s supply of ribs was dwindling. Fortunately, Enya devised a solution that spared her any additional costs: Dummy D. would now serve as her test subject. It was becoming quite cumbersome to say his full name, so she opted to shorten it to just “Dummy D.”

"Another!" she barked, and Dummy D. obediently stood beside her, offering up more bones for her relentless experimenting.

“Okay… that’s one pattern…” Enya murmured with a hint of relief.

As she worked, she noticed her Absolute Focus skill activate on its own, the glowing shine in her eyes reflecting off the bone she was carving. But before long, the skill would flicker out just as suddenly, her mental exhaustion creeping in. She wasn’t stressed—yet—but her body was making it clear that she needed to take a break.

“Okay…okay… second…” she muttered.

She had initially planned to spend no more than half an hour on this intriguing side project. The notebook detailing Sable’s studies had captivated her, and learning that even the great necromancer had struggled with similar tasks only fueled her curiosity.

“Man…” Enya sighed in frustration.

Crack!

“Why is engraving so hard?!” she exclaimed, slumping over the workbench after hurling the bone across the room in exasperation.

image [https://i.imgur.com/ZiLMGqb.png]

Another hour and a half passed by.

“Come on…” Enya muttered.

She knew she was wasting time, trying to learn something irrelevant. However, she felt progress, a sense of accomplishment that was knocking on the door, and that all she needed to do was just to open it.

Spell circuits comprised an outer, circular spell frame. Within the circle, is where the different patterns are drawn. That essentially encapsulates what makes a circuit. However, the outer frame can be slightly manipulated, as long as it still resembles a circular shape.

When Enya performed her summon skeleton spell, or her bone spear spell—she formed a flat circular frame in front of her palm. However, the create light spell that was engraved on the altar was not laid flat. Instead, it revolved around the base of the altar. The inner patterns would then be created or engraved right above it. It was like a multi-layered cake, with each step stacked upon each other.

“Hold still!” Enya berated.

Clatter Clatter.

Dummy D. Was now sitting criss-crossed on the floor, with most of his ribcage missing. Well, everyone in the room knew where they were—in a pile at the other side of the room.

“Okay… almost got it…”

Enya carefully slid the pointed knife across the white surface of Dummy D.’s skull. She had abandoned her attempts to engrave the more complex revolving circuit and had settled on carving a simpler, flat version onto the largest bone she could find—Dummy D.’s skull.

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“Alright…” she murmured as she stepped back. “Just… don’t move, Dummy.”

Rattle.

Enya held up her hand, channeling a small portion of her mana. She brought her hand closer to Dummy’s skull and began to power it. The channels she had engraved lit up, and her mana flowed into the patterns. In an instant, the entire circuit glimmered, followed by a bright flash.

“Ah!” Enya yelped, instinctively raising her arm to shield her eyes from the brightness. A notification message flashed in her mind, causing her to jump slightly. As the light settled, she lowered her hand and looked at Dummy D. His skull was glowing.

Dummy D. slowly stood up and faced her, his entire skull illuminated. The light wasn’t as intense as the spheres from the Create Light spell. Instead, it was more like a torch, casting a warm glow that highlighted the features of his skull.

Enya exhaled in relief. “Finally! Take that, Sable!” she said with a triumphant grin, hands on her hips.

Dummy D. began to clap slowly, as if acknowledging her achievement.

Enya opened her status window to review the notification that had pinged earlier.

System Notification: You have unlocked a new class ascension: Necrosmith

Would you like to view more information on [Necrosmith]

[Accept/Decline]

Enya stared at the screen, stunned. There it was: the necromancer class… or rather, the necrosmith class? What the heck was that?

“Uh… accept?” she muttered, more to herself than anyone. The unfamiliar term weighed heavily on her mind.

Dummy D., who was standing right behind her status screen, tilted its head, confused at her words—and unaware of the status screen.

Class: Necrosmith [Limited]

Description: A necromantic craftsman who specializes in the augmentation of the dead. Instead of raising and commanding hordes, Necrosmiths focus more on artisanry, meticulously analyzing and perfecting individual creations by recycling and reforging the remains of the fallen.

Would you like to ascend with this class?

[Accept/Decline]

The necrosmith class seemed to be some type of necromancer variant class. It still involved the undead, but it also emphasized crafting or possibly smithing, given the name. If a blacksmith was someone who forged weapons and armor, then a necrosmith seemed to be someone who crafted… the undead? Or perhaps they created weapons for the undead?

“Well, Pell did say to become a necromancer…” Enya murmured. Reading the description, it seemed like the necrosmith class was essentially a type of necromancer but with some added flair. Even if it was more of a crafting-oriented class, there was still the potential to gain abilities for enhancing her skeletons. As long as something could fight—whether it was her or her minions—it would help her achieve the same goal: defeating monsters and taking down the dungeon boss.

Enya pondered over the decision for a few minutes, her thumb and fingers pressed to her chin as she paced back and forth. What could the “Necrosmith” class offer her?

First and foremost, it was a form of necromancer. It might not have the exact same abilities or specializations as a traditional necromancer, but surely, it had to provide some benefits. Plus, she still had two books upstairs filled with spells to learn to help her out regardless, even if the necrosmith class turned out to be, as Pell usually put things, “utter garbage.”

Second, there were the conditions for the regular necromancer class. All classes had some sort of rarity associated with them. According to Pell, a farmer was quite common. A necromancer, on the other hand, was extremely rare, as most people never encountered one, but that wasn’t its official rarity. The necromancer class itself was uncommon, as noted by Sable within the books. The “Limited” rarity of the Necrosmith class, however, had to be something special, right?

The third reason Enya was leaning towards accepting the class was the time she had already invested. She had spent a couple of hours in the workshop, trying to engrave the light spell. In that time, she could have made significant progress learning another spell from the books. But if she accepted the class as a reward for her efforts, then it wouldn't have been all for nothing.

The conditions to becoming a necromancer should have been much more involved with the undead. Simply summoning a skeleton or two and learning a single necromantic spell wouldn’t have ascended her, as far as she knew. Anyone could have done this, just by learning some simple spells. For instance, she needed to know much more about corpses, as that was an area she lacked. The skeletal system was becoming vastly familiar to her, but things like muscle groups—that was a no go.

It was possible that a necrosmith also required some rudimentary knowledge of the dead to a lesser extent, but also of knowledge of crafting or enhancing things—judging by its description. So that meant, because Enya had engraved something onto Dummy D.’S skull, then it fulfilled a condition for the class in its entirety.

Perhaps there was another reason she was offered the class. Some hidden requirement that either unlocked it, or prevented her from unlocking the regular class. Regardless, she now had access to a necromancer class.

Every reason she considered was followed by a reaffirming question, urging her to justify her decision. She should take this class. Who knew how longer it would take before she managed to unlock the regular necromancer class? If at all? She had already learned a few spells, had her own undead minion, and spent days around the undead daily—yet none of that was enough to become a necromancer yet.

She stopped pacing and stared at the status screen that had been floating in her view for the past several minutes. Mentally, she accepted the offer, and the screen changed.

Before she could react, a wave of confusion, nausea, and sheer suffocation crashed over her. She screamed in agony, clutching her head as if her very soul were being ripped apart.

Enya fell to her knees, her entire body wracked with pain. It felt as if every limb was being shredded, and her mind was overwhelmed like her absolute focused had given her the strongest backlash she had ever suffered.

Her eyes squeezed shut, and her face dropped forward from the pain, her forehead slamming against the cold gray stone floor.

Within her own body, Enya felt a swirling darkness, a tempest composed of everything that made her who she was. At the heart of this storm, she sensed two… entities. A powerful force was compressing the storm, drawing everything toward the center. One of the entities, already faint, split apart and dissolved into nothingness. The other remained, and the storm gradually closed in, condensing and absorbing it.

After a few moments, all that was left was a perfect sense of herself, a clear image within her mind, standing tall and serene. The black storm had vanished, and the pain slowly ebbed away.

Tears fell from Enya’s eyes as Walnut and Dummy D. stood by her side, their hands gently supporting her shoulders as they helped her up. The pain she had just endured seemed to have evaporated completely, as if it had never been there at all. She felt no lingering effects, either physically or mentally. Though her imagination and memory of the ordeal made her jittery and on edge, she knew it was merely her nerves playing tricks. She was not just okay—she felt rejuvenated, as if emerging from a cocoon.

She wiped a tear from her cheek as Walnut and Dummy D. helped her to her feet. Her status window flickered into view before her.

Class: Necrosmith

Unlock conditions have been met.

You have ascended and gained a class: Necrosmith

You have unlocked the title: Limited Holder

Skill: Bonecarver’s Quill [Active][E+] has been obtained.

Summon a personal bonecarving quill within your hand. This quill can be used to etch magic-based runes, or spell circuits. This quill can also absorb soul-energy from a target upon direct consistent contact. Any inscriptions created by this quill can be enhanced by using soul-energy during the inscription process. Soul-energy can be substituted for mana at 1:2 efficiency.

[Soul Storage: 0/100]

Skill: Transfiguration of Soul [Passive] has been obtained.

Harness soul-energy as a power source to forge, mold, or refine materials. You can also use soul-energy to help assist in the bending, shaping, or restructuring of materials with enhanced precision.

[Soul-Energy Cost: Variable]

Skill: The Grim Pullet [Passive] has been obtained.

Summon a personal crafting book with limitless pages. This book contains recipes and designs of unique items and artifacts, all of which have been previously recorded by other Necrosmiths. Any recipes logged into the book are permanently preserved, accessible to all future or current Necrosmiths. Wielders of The Grim Pullet may also communicate with other wielders by writing within its pages, regardless of time and distance.

[Mana cost: 0]