Book of The Dead

A person’s attributes naturally accumulated as they gained levels, and it was difficult to quantify exactly how much each number meant. Someone with thirty-six strength was indeed stronger than someone with thirty-five, but it wasn’t a critical edge. Someone with five hundred strength against someone with five hundred and one wouldn’t notice any appreciable difference.

But someone with five hundred strength against someone with four hundred and ninety nine… that was a hell of a difference.

Every hundred was a threshold that increased the effect of an attribute by roughly a tenth. Having crossed the threshold five times, a slayer with five hundred strength was significantly stronger than one at four hundred and ninety nine.

With the bonus attributes from reaching platinum, Tyron had achieved a threshold in every aspect except manipulation, and his intelligence now exceeded eight hundred.

After crossing the eighth threshold, he was starting to reach a tipping point where his intelligence had gained the momentum of a runaway boulder. Intelligence was the mental attribute affiliated with power, and as a result of his latest gains, his personal store of magick boomed within him like an ocean. When he had first been blessed with his Class, he had never imagined that it was possible for a single person to contain so much arcane energy.

If his body weren’t so robust, he doubted he could contain it without severe side effects. As it was, his constitution had crossed the fifth threshold and he felt as durable as if his skin were formed of hardened bone.

Even more stunning was the power that surged through him when he put his new abilities to the test.

Tyron had an immense amount of work to do. He needed to test and develop his new capabilities, he needed to rest and recover from what he had endured in the Realm of the Dead, and he needed to reforge his entire horde, make them all from scratch once more, better and stronger than they were before.

An impossible task for a single Necromancer to accomplish, but Tyron wasn’t alone.

For two days, he sat on the grassy field, eating wild vegetables and cooked game that his minions hunted for him. Fresh, clear water from the nearby stream washed away his thirst, and day by day he recovered, the Death Magick that had accumulated within his body dissipating over time.With proper food and rest, he rebounded rapidly, his superhuman endurance helping to improve his condition at an absurd pace.

Yet, Tyron didn’t have time to waste. Seated, with his back leaning against a stump, he was nevertheless exceptionally busy.

If his body was at ease, hands folded in his lap, eyes closed and shoulders loose, his mind was anything but. Conduits, invisible bonds formed of complex magick, thrummed with power as the Necromancer exerted his control over his undead. Anything he couldn’t do himself, he had minions to do for him, and he had the power to act through them.

Why allocate a portion of his own abilities to the undead when he could simply control them to do it himself? It was harder, much, much harder, but taking the easy road was never the path to the greatest results.

Teams of skeletal mages and his precious demi-liches worked around him, arcane energy crackling in the air as he conducted experiments, controlling the movement of their hands and speaking Words of Power through their skulls.

Splitting his focus in this way was difficult, impossible for a regular person, but with the power of the Unseen poured into him like never before, he was more than capable of the impossible.

Master Willhem was left to work on his own projects while Tyron took control of his other demi-liches, using them and his cadre of skeleton mages to enact several of his projects at the same time.

First and foremost amongst his needs was to understand his new Raise Dead ritual. Throughout all of his Classes and selections, he had never been offered an opportunity to improve the ritual into a new ability, but now it had finally happened, and he needed to master it as soon as possible.

Tyron had unbound a dozen of his own skeletons to provide the materials, and he concentrated hard as his minions stood in a circle, testing different sigil combinations as he dredged up the hidden knowledge in his mind. To one side, the former noble Lady Erryn stood, a leather-bound volume held in one hand and a pen in another, scribbling down the notes and observations Tyron instructed her to.

Of all his undead, she was the one who resented his control the most. He could feel her soul screaming and writhing, consumed with a fury that truly seemed endless. Most others were not able to maintain the rage for so long, succumbing to despair before finally accepting their plight as undead servants. Not Recillia Erryn. She fought against his control just as hard now as she had the day she had been raised.

It was almost refreshing.

Second in importance was mastering the improved version of the magickal thread that bound his undead together. This was the ability that made skeletal minions possible in the first place and was fundamental to their usefulness. Without muscles or tendons, skeletons relied on magick to move, with a woven fabric of energy acting in the place of regular flesh. Since his Awakening, Tyron had made many revisions to his designs and improved the quality of his threads ten times over.

Yet it still hadn’t been enough. Unless his skeletons could exert more strength while using less magick, he wouldn’t be able to create minions capable of going toe-to-toe with the enemies he needed to fight. Even now, after reaching platinum rank, he remained obsessed with taking the basic skeleton as far as he possibly could. After leaving the Realm of the Dead, he had begun to think there may not be a way for such basic undead to match against the ghouls or constructs he had faced there.

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With his ascension, his opinion had dramatically changed.

Two wights worked together, their skeletal hands moving in sequence, channeling power between them. In the air, a dense pocket of magick was formed, slowly taking shape as it thinned and stretched. Creating these new threads was far more difficult than the original version, requiring a great deal more power. Even so, he was confident the result would be worthwhile. Although he was still in the early stages of experimentation, the results were promising. The new threads were much more durable and capable of exerting far more strength, yet were far harder to weave.

Which meant all of his designs needed to be thrown out of the window and started again. For now he was still working on the best way to produce this new form of thread and hadn’t even begun to address the weaving issues.

Third and final amongst his personal research teams was the group investigating the possibilities of his new Bone Forging abilities. Considering all of the armour and weapons his skeletons bore were created using these techniques, any improvements would directly contribute to the capabilities of his most simple minions.

Tyron had already found a way to transform the properties of regular bone by soaking it in concentrated Death Magick, which eventually turned it into Black Bone. His own armour was formed of this material, and though it wasn’t on the level of steel, it was far lighter and much easier to make.

As far as he was concerned, even that much was already a miracle. Being able to turn a regular human skeleton into swords, spears, armour plates and shields that weren’t just flimsy imitations, but truly viable equipment had been a welcome development. Now, he knew they could go so much further.

What was it about human remains that imbued so many possibilities? Not for the first time, Tyron was forced to ponder this question. Why was it so much harder to raise non-human undead?. Why were human bones so much more useful than animal ones?

He’d tried to form armour plates from cattle bones, and they had been less than half as strong as those made from human remains. Was it the influence of the Unseen? Perhaps the nature of humans and the amount of magick they pulled into themselves, far more than animals did, changed them somehow?

Whatever the reason, it seemed it was entirely possible to create an even harder material than Black Bone. The only problem was, it was extremely difficult and required an absurd amount of power.

His precious stores of spare materials were running low as the demi-liches and skeletons, under his control, continued to experiment. Filling bone with enough death magick was enough to transform it into Black Bone, but to go beyond that required a hundred times the energy, and incredibly strict control. Simply pumping in the magick and holding it there wasn’t enough, as the bone couldn’t contain it. Dust and shards from dozens of failed attempts already littered the ground as Tyron frowned and concentrated harder.

Incredibly dense Death Magick needed to be finely woven throughout the bone, creating a lattice structure that would support and strengthen the material, preventing it from exploding.

As he rested, ate and drank, Tyron worked on each of these three projects simultaneously, pushing his mind to the limits of its strength. If he were to focus on only one at a time, using his own body, progress on that single task would proceed much faster, but he couldn’t allow himself to be limited in that way, not anymore. With more practice, he would only get better at controlling his undead mages and splitting his focus. Time was rapidly running out, and he had to work as quickly as he could.

By the third day, he felt much stronger, no longer as sickly and frail as he had when they first arrived. That didn’t mean he intended to stop working through his minions, it simply meant he was willing to work in person as well.

After all, he had a rather valuable ghoul corpse that needed to be dissected and studied. Butcher’s tools in hand, he got to work, examining the corpse of the ghoul one piece at a time while also continuing his research. Although the process was mentally exhausting, Tyron found he was getting better at diverting his attention in so many directions.

His improved control over his minions certainly didn’t hurt.

By dawn of the fifth day, he was ready to perform his first test raising.

It hadn’t been easy creating an entire skeleton of the new material, which he had begun to call ‘noctic bone.’ Although his success rate was improving, he’d gone through a lot of errors before finally assembling a complete skeleton.

‘Complete’ wasn’t quite accurate, since it was formed from the bones of at least a dozen different people. That would weaken the undead, but this was merely a proof of concept. There was much to be learned by doing; studying and experimenting could only get him so far on their own.

Similarly, the weave was… simplistic. Although it had been made entirely of the new form of threads, Tyron had spent little time trying to create the optimal design. He wanted to see it in action and try to find its limits before he made any definitive decisions. As a result, the bones had been pulled together with a crude weave that lacked elegance and form. It would work, but poorly.

Finally, Tyron stood over the bones with his book of notes in hand. On the open page, freshly written in his own hand, a long sequence of sigils, each meticulously drawn and annotated, could be read. This was his initial attempt at the Raise Greater Undead ritual.

Looking over it once more, he nodded, satisfied, then placed the book into the hands of Filetta, who stood by his side, acting as a stand. Clearing his throat one final time, he raised his hands and began to speak.

His first syllable slammed into the air, and the world around him turned dark, as if light itself were driven away by the warping effect of his power. Ignoring it, Tyron continued to cast, his hands flicking from one sigil to the next as he gave shape and purpose to the arcane energy that thundered inside him.

It was a long ritual, almost ninety minutes from start to finish, and by the end Tyron had begun to realise he wasn’t quite as recovered as he had supposed.

Despite the challenges, he completed the spell, lowering his hands and watching as the final word crackled in the air around him.

On the ground before him, light began to bloom in the hollow sockets of the skull. The conduit formed between them hummed with power as the skeleton slowly began to rise.

Wisps of black smoke rose from the bones of the skeleton as it moved, as if its marrow burned with unholy fire. When it stood still before him, Tyron focused on its eyes. The purple light burned steadily within its skull, but more than that, he could see a hint of black right in their heart. A faint flicker of intelligence seemed to glimmer within.

Tyron smiled.

“The very first Ascended Skeleton,” he said, pleased. “What do you think, Filetta?”

His most loyal wight looked with interest at the new minion.

“Is that what we’re calling them? Ascended Skeletons?”

“No,” he mused.

The name didn’t seem to fit. Looking at the menacing undead before him, Tyron considered a little more.

“I’ll call them ‘ashflame skeletons.’”