I let my attention wander for a moment, failing to program my skeleton once again. Complexity-wise, it wasn’t difficult. It’s just like regular programming. With the small caveat that you can’t backspace or interject code at prior points, and it’s using a text-to-speech program of your thoughts. So every time an idle thought crossed my mind I had to start over from the beginning.
I’d flubbed the lines for my youngest boney baby a dozen times before succeeding, releasing him into the wilderness between Terdri and the forest. There was some primitive AI in its head, so hopefully it could learn fast enough to avoid trouble. I didn’t have time to see him off, since I wanted to keep ahead of Tagalong Girl’s troop.
Pulling out a few more bones, I programmed another. After all, with the two girls constantly by my side I had very little time for necromancer shenanigans. I think I needed to be an ex-necromancer, or at least somehow reformed. Having a few habits while I taught her would be fine too, after all, there needed to be hints in retrospect.
This was all putting the cart before the horse, since I needed to become a proper necromancer before quitting. So aside from creating assistants and keeping an eye on my little protege, I wanted to prioritize the other task I couldn’t do with her around. Aside from the necromantic experiments, examining the neat body I found, or riling up the local disciples.
I needed space to run wild and level grind.
Experience grind might be more appropriate, since Terdri hunters frequented the area, it was unlikely for there to be any worthy opponents. Overall the energy level seemed rather low. Still, enough grains of sand can build a mountain.
Alas, I needed to put away my trusty hammer for this task. While I could locate the Green Huntsmen, subtly altering their trajectory wasn’t possible from this distance. It wasn’t a day I felt like cleaning up after a hammer rampage either, so best make a massacre of minimal messiness.
So leisurely using my Handy Qinggong, the woods lit up with the aura of death, as tiny silver wisps shot out of my sleeves. Focusing on predatory animals, they glowed with a quaint bloody aura amidst the dim trees.
Ambush style creatures were dispatched one after the other. Constrictors that tried to blend in stood out clearly and receiving a blade directly into their spine. With a
An interesting aside, one of these creatures quite unlike any I’d seen before; a sort of tunneling porcupine that behaved like an antlion. Considering the pit dropped straight down like a burrow, a larger creature would just sprain its ankle, while the pitfall didn’t cover enough area to reliably catch squirrels and the ilk. There must have been some hidden mechanism to make up for its apparent ineffectiveness.
Well, I’m a necromancer, not a druid. Let’s leave the mysteries of nature to those that appreciate them.
The apex predators of the woods were lacking. Punching the head off a bear might be beyond me, but farming mode was not the time for a slugfest. With no scent, traveling above the ground, gently moving foliage out of the way, I flew like a silent missile with sword held in two hands before suddenly impaling the skull.
The force dislocated my arms and did a few points of damage once or twice, sure, but that usually healed up even before finding the next target.
All said, uneventful, and none felt particularly strong.
The only thing to be truly thankful for was the abundance of pack animals, so long as they didn’t flee, or fled as a herd, they were the fastest way to accumulate power.
Groups meant territory, and territory meant they kept a distance from each other. Plentiful prey meant those ranges were smaller, but even so I could only clear out a few dens before feeling as though I was straying too far from Tagalong Girl.
My soul didn’t even stretch over half a mile, and one pack of wolves covered several miles of radius. Reaching the point emergency measures were needed was unsatisfactory; I moved fast, it wasn’t teleportation.
Left lacking levels, letting lacerated lupines hemorrhage, I hummed. Hoping my hapless heroine humanely handled her helpers honorably, mayhaps I falsely constrained myself overzealously.
In the tale of a hero, a mentor has some room to show arrogance. Even simply scraping some pieces of power, together I could cobble creations that ensured easy enough travels. Paranoia always settles down in the crevices, but for the moment I wasn’t uncomfortable with blatantly prioritizing her growth.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
In all earnestness, the only use for power in this role was in serving as her teacher, so it would be putting tool above trade. Besides, I was getting stronger faster than we traveled.
I crunched off the end of another long bone and spat it out, cleaning the marrow with magic and testing the tune, before tossing it on the ground unsatisfied.
Aiya, my hands still felt itchy, I hadn’t fully settled into the role as teacher. Alric the Mentor was a reformed necromancer, he shouldn’t be out having a grand time slaughtering whenever he could get away with it. He also didn’t need to practice his necromancy.
Surely Alric liked music, but that wasn’t something that took up all my time. I liked people, no I happily tricked people in a friendly way, but again that wasn’t a way to spend this extra time. I overprepared, but as stated remained arrogant and unshakeable.
Another creature’s remains turned to bone meal. Pitch wise some could suffice, but most lacked a perfect exterior.
I was a perfectionist? No, I would certainly be forgiving of any mistakes Imira made. I would also playfully dote on my creations. How similar is that to how Tagalong Girl is treated— too close?
Hans crawled out of Inventory to help think. A former necromancer wouldn’t keep his minions would he? Well I certainly wasn’t getting rid of Hans and Clavi.
It was just difficult trying to figure out where Alric came from when I knew so little about where he could come from. It’s unpleasant to say Derriad is too big, but even after chatting up merchants they only gave out rumors of Kallahall and Mensk. Of course I didn’t want our journey to be over too quickly, however Tagalong Girl needed more events in her life at the moment. Traveling across what sounded like primarily uninhabited plains for several months would be akin to having her train in seclusion.
She already acted so withdrawn.
So with as little interference as possible— ah, that was quite in line with my character, wasn’t it! I think my character resulted from this sort of past.
My decision to try and settle down in a hamlet associated with Medean cemented. We’d push the limits of trying to make friends(or at least associates) before inevitably being driven out. In doing so, Tagalong Girl would refrain from feeling bitterness when receiving harshness for her good intentions.
Not to mention, something big was stirring in this area. Perhaps I could play the oriole and grab a few levels.
No, no, Tagalong Girl needed to grow first. While I could absorb the essence of those slain directly, she lacked such a direct method to increase in power. My first instinct was to do some experiments, but even given a willing test subject it was hard to imagine any results I would be willing to try and apply to her.
If no other magic systems crossed us, the church had its own ways. Their power structure was obviously reminiscent of cultivators, so with intuition I could begin acquiring resources. Alchemy begat pills, there just needed to be a nucleation point for my knowledge.
Unfortunately, while eating random herbs and materials could be identified quickly through the Status Effects I could intuit, ultimately this arbitrary body of mine refused fundamental changes in its composition.
As an upside, pill toxicity and such meant nothing.
With no room in my Inventory for more herbs than I already possessed, anything that looked like it had a particularly dense cloud of mana received a cursory cleaning with
before popping it into my mouth.
Alas, if I altered the flavor that would reduce my accuracy in identifying components. This bitter root saponified the exterior of my gums after a slight delay, and I controlled the urge to retch.
As expected, it was quite difficult to find strong affinities aside from earth. The delay of the reaction, the fusion, the regularity in the mana field— but the transformation made flesh a little brittle. That last point varied depending on the type of plant consumed, an excellent area of study.
However a more fundamental problem is it hardly affected more than my palate. Another tragically bitter vine, and slightly sour(but also still bitter) flower more or less confirmed a limited penetrative power. For full body tempering I would need to either increase this, or alternatively give it a way to travel through the meridians— although the bloodstream was a tentatively tenable target. Turning these plants into a sort of simple nutrient supplement could theoretically get the same results, but that would be a much longer biology project for the future.
I needed a stronger catalyst than my shade beans.
With the forest vacant of such things, I did happen to have an alternative.
Pulling out a translucent yellow marble I frowned. There were only 15 more of these things, parting with non-renewable treasures always brought pain.
Ignore the fact that since its acquisition this was the first time I touched it.
Staring at it, I wanted to mull it over more. Imagine mercilessly wasting treasure. Of course before Hans could even crawl down from my shoulder to try and ‘inspect’ it, I’d already thrown it down my gullet, with a chaser of, you guessed it, some bitter stones.
How could Alric hesitate in finding something good for his apprentice? I couldn’t treat Tagalong Girl so coldly. Even if a garden might be forming in my stomach.
All of a sudden, I started to feel like I should feel hungry. Upon destabilizing the marble to try and provoke it, the mana field in my stomach began churning, turning difficult to distinguish. I gained some [Indigestion], an entirely superfluous status effect when I didn’t have any status boosting meals on hand.
Barring any truly esoteric elements, I felt confident in declaring it related to the air element. Again it’s hard to truly express magical experiences through mortal senses, but remember the world is made of these elements in a way completely non-analogous to one built off of quarks.
It’s not simply a matter of alchemy, just knowing how to mix reagents. It is air. These are fundamental properties of air, the reason we need to breathe, how things can rust, something that can be moved through with little resistance.
Hmmm, I just want to stay lost in these thoughts for a while, if air is supplementing blood with a physical property, how do the undead work? Magic, obviously, but these intertwined mechanisms were just ripe for investigation. If only I could construct a vacuum chamber, would energy be conserved in some way and degrade the construct’s condition? After all, while my flesh had a perpetual gamified nature to it, those rules didn’t fully extend to my minions.
If only they didn’t lack metabolisms, they would make for excellent test subjects…
I should keep the testing restricted to myself.
Yes, I can feel the alteration of elements just fine, deducing the proper ratios is just a matter of tedious calculation— testing on others would just be self-indulgent. ‘Others’ also includes goblins and knife-ears, if I’m going to teach Tagalong Girl properly, which I am.
Drearily— no, diligently, I cleared away some debris from the forest floor and set up an array of goblin carpals to help list out the numbers more clearly. So while my protege enjoyed the vicissitudes of life, I got to do math.
Aiya, so goes the supporting role.