Chapter 19
I awoke the next morning to the sound of insects and other wildlife. While nothing had disturbed me through the night, in retrospect it was a little reckless resting out in the open like I had. Either way, I got up and got moving, making sure the coals in my fire were well and truly out before continuing up the valley.
The stream I followed wound lazily through the widening valley. It was a large stream, almost a river. Many tributaries fed into it, and I came upon one that led off in the general direction I needed to go.
It let out of the wide valley and I found myself climbing up a steep hillside. It was a tiring climb, taxing even on my undead endurance. Reaching the top, I came across my first monster. A lone wolf waited, as if expecting me to come up the trail. It snarled, and I froze. This wasnt just a wolf; it was a dire wolf.
They were significantly bigger and meaner than regular wolves. They also had large patrol areas. Which is no doubt why the temple had heard of them. Fortunately, it looked to be a weaker one.
It lunged, but I was able to roll to the side, its claws just barely scratching me.
Scrambling to my feet, I lashed out with my blade-staff to buy myself time. The tip caught the wolf and it yelped in pain, jumping back.
Now on my feet, a simple beast-creature like this stood no chance against me. The wolf predictably lunged again.
Meeting the charging lone wolf with my blade, it impaled itself, the razor-sharp blade driving deep into his chest. Twisting my blade, I ripped it to the side and stepped back. As the wolf recoiled in pain, the slash I opened in its side spilled its guts, and the creek ran red with blood. The wolf didnt live long after that, bleeding out. Like I said, it stood no chance.
I investigated its dead body, and was gratified to find a death core, which I absorbed.
Taking one calculating look at the wolf, I made a decision. Dropping my illusion, I used a different spell. Necrotic energy swirled around my hand and then infused with the wolf. The corpse twitched and got back to his feet. I winced when the guts remained hanging out of its side. Id forgotten how much these low-level undead spells sucked. At higher levels, the damage done by killing the creature would often be somewhat restored.
I gave the undead dire wolf an order to follow me and headed toward where the quest was leading me. If I was right, I was going to need his help. We came across another pair of wolves, and with the help of my undead minion, they fell with little trouble. They did not stay down long, as I brought them back to assist me.
This was the power of a necromancer. Once we started killing and bringing creatures back, our power amplified.
The path brought us to a cave guarded by five dire wolves.
Charging out of the woods, I sent my undead minions in while I held back and targeted one wolf with a barrage of necrotic magical blasts. I ran out of mana before I could bring it down, but the point had been to weaken it. My undead wolves lacked the strength of their living counterparts, but their ability to ignore pain and damage meant they fought at a similar level.
When I joined the fray with my blade-staff, I carefully brought down the already wounded wolves, a mana potion allowing me to raise them in the middle of the fight to join me. By the time the skirmish was done, Id lost two of my wolves, but gained five more.
Casting magic to heal the undead minions, I glanced at the two fallen ones and shook my head. It was too bad I couldnt raise them againwith this weak spell, anyways.
The cave was deeper than I expected. And before long, it also proved stronger. The dire wolves grew in power and size the deeper we traversed. That being said, the dungeon was fairly easy, and I reached what I thought was the boss in no time at all, a massive alpha dire wolf.
At this point I had a small horde of dire wolves Id slain and raised. Many of my thralls fell throughout the battles getting here, but enough survived for me to still use them as cannon fodder.
Giving a mental order, my undead dire wolves lurched, rushing at the boss. The alpha let out a vicious snarl. The dire wolf pounced on the first undead dire wolf to come within range, ripping it in half with a shake of his mighty head.
Id gained another level, which opened access to a spell I had learned a long time agoan undead enhancement I would normally cast on my minions. It provided an incredible buff to their speed and strength, and for the first time, I cast it on myself. Being concentrated on me, the effects were greatly amplified. It was also a mana hungry spell, using up most of my mana bar.
Lichs could truly become quite powerful if they were able to utilize spells like this on themselves more often.
As my minions distracted the boss, I rushed into the room, vaulting into the air with my blade-staff leading the way. I landed a deep cut in the bosss side, cutting through some of its ribs. Upon landing, I whirled, extending my weapon and cutting deeply into its haunches.
My minions were falling fast before the powerful dire wolf, but that was okay. Their sacrifice enabled me to land deepcuts.
Ive grown in strength along with my weapon, and one of the abilities it had gained was to leave behind festering wounds. These wounds wouldnt do a lot of extra damage, but they hurt, and the pain distracted the boss. My minions began to pull it down, and before long, they were dog piling on top of it. Restrained, the boss succumbed to his foes, and a well-placed blow between his eyes put him down.
Waiting for my mana to recover, I was happy to see Id gained another level and that the boss dropped a powerful death core. I didnt absorb the powerful core right away, instead adding it to my stash. After absorbing the first dozen, I decided to save them.
The new level put me at level 20. This was incredibly important. When I initially made the transition from being a regular player to the more fully immersive experience, I did my best to not procure experience after level 19 while searching for as much knowledge on necromancy as I could. Skill books in particular. Once you hit level 20 you gained the option to go through the transition process, the catch was any knowledge gained after that point would not be integrated during the process. My guild had helped me, despite being filled with a general bunch of assholes. Our goal was to make each other as powerful as possible so we could be assholes to other people. Through that common ground, they helped me acquire a powerful necromantic tome of knowledge of mythic level rarity.
It had been an amazing find, but came at a big cost. Most of the knowledge I gained from that skill book hadnt been useful until after level 150. Disappointing at the time, Id still gained a lot of knowledge, especially after making the transition, that enabled me to understand more in my current situation.
Being level twenty meant I just barely made the requirements to cast a very powerful spell. The catch was I didnt have the mana. This is why Id been saving the death cores, hoping to find a way to use them to help provide the power for the spell. In the past, it allowed me to create unique and powerful undead creatures to serve me from an early level.
Selecting the spell, I read its description.
Undead Construct
This is a scaling spell that allows the caster to create an undead construct based on the materials available. Materials must be things that were once alive, not including plants.
I fished in my bag and pulled out the rest of my death cores and gave my dire wolves a command to go out and collect all of the bodies of the other dire wolves left behind. As they did, I began to draw a spell diagram.
I could cast the spell without a drawn-out diagram, but I found if I had the time, working with a spell diagram increased the spells effectiveness. The floor of the bosss room was relatively smooth, providing a good workplace to draw on. The knowledge of how to draw a diagram was something I gained from transition, and as I worked, I placed death cores in strategic places around it. The idea was that the death cores would provide the extra magic needed to create a truly powerful undead creature.
Normally when using the spell, its ideal to custom design the creature before casting. Since I was unsure about how much mana I would have available, I needed to make it more adaptable. By the time the wolves dragged in the last body, I had completed the diagram, which formed a doubled-banded circle around the dead. I ordered my remaining dire wolves into the circle, where I pulled the magic out of them and returned them to corpses.
I was impressed by the size of the pile of bodies in the center of the room, having lost track of how many wolves were felled on the way in. Including the ones from outside, I figured there were at least fifty dire wolves.
Stepping back, I began to cast the spell.
Dark magic flowed out of me, flooding into the diagram. The circles, made entirely of dark energy, rose up out of the ground. Simply activating the spell had taken a large portion of my mana, and as I hoped, the death cores began to bleed, filling the spell with dark energy.
I began to sculpt the magic.
First, I separated all of my material. Aided by the magic, the dire wolves bodies were pulled apart. It was a grisly task. Soon I had four orbs floating before me. One was a collection of bones and teeth, another of flesh, the third contained skin wrapped around itself, and the final was an orb of congealed organs and blood.
The mana provided by the death cores was enough for me to work with ease. First, I focused on the bones, creating the skeletal structure of my new creature.
My creation was going to be a true monster. Id created something similar to it before, when I was a much higher level.
Once the skeletal structure was completed, I moved on to the orb of organs and blood. Blood drained from the organs until they were nothing more than desiccated husks that littered the floor. Infusing the blood with dark magic, its red sheen turned black and started wrapping through the skeletal structure. This would serve as the power conduit to make the undead creature work. The remaining blood was compacted into a dark orb centered in the middle of the creature, condensed until it became almost solid.
Then it was time to wrap the monstrous creatures body in flesh, filling it out and giving it its final form. I was running low on mana, and had just enough to finish suffusing the flesh with as much mana as I could, turning it dark.
Lastly, I wrapped my creation in dark skin, adding extra layers to defend both the core and its vulnerable places.
A splitting headache was pounding in my temples, blurring my vision as I neared the end of the spell. Though the death cores Id used allowed me to create this monster, it was far more than I should have been able to do.
Working quickly, I ended the spell, solidifying my undead creature. I collapsed to the ground gasping for breath, even though I no longer breathed. As my vision cleared, I smiled. Standing before me was something that looked like the merging of a Cerberus and a centaur.
Extending out of the chest, rather than a neck, was a section reminiscent of a centaur. Two powerful arms extended off the base, and above that were the three heads of the Cerberus, complete with razor-sharp teeth and glowing eyes. The arms ended in wicked hands with long black claws that leaked dark energy.
I couldnt see the level, but I could tell it was powerful. Even more powerful than I was. And since it was my creation, it would always be under my control. If I created a regular undead more powerful than me, it would be harder to control.
Undead constructs were always loyal.
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