Name: Skeleton King Morte - Maria’s Undead Familiar Level: 50
HP: 50,250/50,250
MP: 10,000/10,000
SP: 2,365/2,365
EXP: 0/500,000
STR: 760
AGI: 500
VIT: 1005
INT: 100
Skills: [Chaos Bolt Lv.1], [Immolation Lv.1], [Regal Aura Lv.1], [Ultimate Skill: Undead Legion Lv. 1] Promotion: Level 60 Evolution: N/A
Maria’s eyes widened when she saw the [Status] menu of her new minion. The Skeleton King’s stats were pretty high for its level and the best part was definitely the 4 skills it possessed. From what Maria knew, Undead familiars generally had only 1 or 2 skills. Even the Death Knight had 3 skills at most and none of them were Ultimate Skills like the one her Skeleton King possessed.
Skill Name: Chaos Bolt Level: 1 Rank: B Description: Launches a bolt of chaos energy at an enemy, stunning them for 3 seconds and inflicting (STR*2.0) Chaos DMG Cooldown: 15 seconds Cost: 1000 MP
Skill Name: Immolation Level: 1 Rank: C Description: Engulfs the user’s body in flames that burn enemies for (INT*2.0) M.DMG per second within a 5-meter radius of the user. The user’s Mana will be consumed until the skill is deactivated Cost: 50 Mana per second
Skill Name: Regal Aura (Undead) Level: 1 Rank: B Description: A King’s unique aura. It will boost the A.SPD and M.SPD of all allies within 10-meters of the King by 10% and increase the HP Regen of all Undead beings by 20%
All 3 of the normal skills were very useful. 2 active skills with one of them being semi-passive while the last one being a passive aura skill. It was a really well-rounded skill set.
“Okay, please don’t disappoint me, [Undead Legion]!”
Skill Name: Ultimate Skill - Undead Legion Level: 1 Rank: S Description: The Skeleton King can use a corpse to summon an Undead minion and induct it into its legion of undead. The quality of the corpse will determine the rank and type of undead that is summoned. The summoned undead will be stored within the Skeleton King’s undead space when they are not active. The summoned undead do not have a duration. They will only expire if they are completely destroyed. Summon Limit: 100 Cooldown: 60 seconds Cost: 1% - 100% of Mana
Note*: The amount of Mana used is dependent on the quality of the corpse
Note**: If the corpse has too high of quality and uses up all of the Skeleton King’s MP, then HP will be used to compensate for the lack of resources
Note***: If the resource compensation exceeds 100% of the used Mana, the summoning will fail
Note****: The amount of mana used to summon the Skeleton King’s legion is dependent on how many minions it has. Each minion summons costs 1% MP
“I hit the jackpot!” Maria squealed in excitement when she saw the skill’s description.
Maria's gamble on choosing this unknown evolution path had succeeded and the gains were immense. Her new undead familiar could actually spawn more undead minions for her so the restriction of having only 10 undead minions was practically null. She noticed that the Skeleton King’s Ultimate Skill was similar to her subclass skill [Imperial Army] though the recruitment cap was significantly lesser.
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“Alright, Morte, start recruiting some undead into your legion!”
Maria said as she ordered the Skeleton King to start using its unique skill on the piles of corpses around them. The familiar stood up before moving to a nearby monster corpse and used its Ultimate Skill. The corpse exploded into a mess as a skeleton rose up from its remains.
*DING*
Your familiar, Skeleton King Morte, has summoned a Skeleton Soldier!
The undead that was summoned wasn’t much different from the Skeleton Soldiers that Maria was controlling but this was to be expected. If her own familiar could summon undead of higher rank than her, then Morte would just be a completely broken unit. With the cooldown being 60 seconds, Maria waited in the area for around an hour and a half or so before continuing on.
Thanks to the numerous corpses around, Morte was able to completely fill its Undead Legion. Most of the undead that was summoned were Skeleton Soldiers but a few Skeleton Mages and Skeleton Monsters of various species had actually appeared. With its legion being full, Maria began raising the rest of the unused corpses into shadow puppets with her [Unholy Raise] skill.
“We shouldn’t waste them~”
After evolving, this skill of hers had many of its constraints released, particularly the constraint to her resource expenditure. Now she didn’t need to worry about sustaining her shadow army with her DE because after the skill evolved, it only required her to spend DE when she first summoned a shadow puppet.
Once it was summoned, the shadow puppet didn’t need to feed on her DE to remain in the material plane, unless she wanted to heal its injuries. So, with this upgrade, Maria could indefinitely spawn as many shadow puppets as she wanted as long as she had the corpses and DE for it.
Of course, most of the shadow puppets she summoned were weak compared to the ones she properly summoned using high-quality corpses so her shadow army wasn’t entirely broken or anything. At best, these low-tier puppets summoned using random corpses were only there to fill in the numbers of her army and act as cannon fodder for her truly powerful shadow puppets. Even Maria didn’t expect them to do much besides swarm an enemy and overwhelm it with their sheer numbers as well as to act as an intimidation factor.
It took another long while before she finally finished amassing her army but when everything was over, there was now a black sea of shadows undulating around Maria with a few undead creatures present here and there.
Maria thought that such a sight was truly magnificent but for her enemies, this was a very despairing and skin-crawling spectacle to behold. The more prominent units in this vast army of shadows and undead were located at the center where Maria was at. Naturally, Skeleton King Morte and the high-tier Shadow Puppets Maria had raised using high-quality corpses stood out among the rest of the black sea.
The army of death was waiting for Maria’s orders and once she saw that everything seemed to be ready, Maria jumped onto Morte’s shoulder and raised her hand and commanded,
“Go.”
With that simple command, the army of the dead and shadows began marching. There was no set direction Maria had for this army since she didn’t have a map of the planet and even if she did, she wouldn’t be able to read it. The best thing she could do was just move in a random direction and hopefully encounter another densely populated area that had creatures in it for her to exterminate.
Her army’s marching speed was much slower than her flying speed but Maria didn’t care. She felt a sense of excitement from personally commanding this large army so she didn’t mind their slow travel speed. Of course, it wasn’t like they were moving at a snail’s pace or anything. The marching speed of her army of death was rather fast but compared to her flying speed it was indeed very, very, very significantly slower.
While they marched, Maria encountered a few monsters along the way and they were immediately dealt with by her army. She still needed to level up her undead familiars so she sent them to fight while her shadow puppets would become meat shields.
Many of the skeletons in Morte’s undead legion leveled up and the monsters that were killed were used to replenish Maria’s army. There were a few undead and shadow puppets that died in the skirmishes, but Maria prioritized her undead legion’s replenishment over her shadow army. Her shadows couldn’t level up so they weren't really a priority to raise again while her 10 undead familiars and the Undead Legion were the very important ones that needed to be kept alive and groomed.
Maria had given Skeleton King Morte a set of equipment so it was actively participating in the battles, leading the undead to kill their enemies. As she watched her cute skellies do battle, Maria felt extremely happy just watching their progress even though she hadn’t been getting any action at all. She would periodically check the levels of her undead familiars and noticed that the next one that was eligible for evolution was only 2 levels away.
“Ohh, this is so fun! 2 more levels and I’ll be able to evolve another skeleton! Yay! I can’t wait to see what I’ll get this time! I won’t expect another Skeleton King like Morte, but please be something awesome!” Maria prayed.