Necromancer and Co., Book 3: The Underearth

Chapter 16: Renovation

[Alen]

People often don’t realize how painful it is to regrow an arm made out of keratin, and with what he was doing at the moment, Alen was made very aware of that fact. Sweat dripped from the side of his face as he looked at the twisting curling mess of bone that slowly inched its way out of his shoulder. Cell by cell, nerve ending by nerve ending, Alen felt everything click onto life as the skeletal structure of his arm crawled out from the cauterized stump of charred meat that was his shoulder.

Needless to say, the experience was agonizing. Trembling uncontrollably, Alen leaned against the far wall of the home, sliding down behind the remnants of the shattered table he had crashed into. Sounds of chaos and fighting rang out from outside, and Alen found himself ignoring it, paying more attention to the very attention-drawing sensations flooding his head.

Itching, burning, freezing—every single sensation his bones could possibly experience surged into his mind with every mana-crafted nerve ending that connected itself to his brain through the base of his shoulder.

Like bursts of light, every single sensation was akin to the crackling of fireworks; quick, bright, and very, very prominent.

Alen felt his vision darken once. He blinked and grit his teeth. No, he thought. He couldn’t pass out here. If he did, there was no telling what would become of his arm. Alen clenched his left fist tightly. The nails dug into his flesh, but the sensation of pain didn’t come. That was when Alen realized that Numb Senses had already been activated. The pain had been so intense that portions of it had slipped through his spell.

His senses were numbed, and a very dangerous kind of curiosity flashed through his head. If the pain was already this intense, what the hell would happen to him if he stopped channeling Numb Senses?

Alen quickly pushed the thought out of his head. Alen swiveled his head and looked towards the skeletal arm that had grown from his shoulder. It lay there, unmoving and limp by his side. He wasn’t done yet. Far from it. The worst of it had yet to come.

Carefully, he raised his left arm and pulled up Soul Editor once again. The strands of his soul were within it, his entire existence’s blueprint displayed within the screen. Alen sorted through the strands, familiar with each and every one. He skipped through the sensations, the memories, the reflexes, until he arrived at the blueprint for his muscle structure.

In the darkness of the home he’d crashed through, he visibly paled. He was right after all. The worst had yet to come.

He stared at the screen, and through his connection to the system application, he instantly became very, very aware of just how densely packed the nerve endings in the human hand were. Alen swallowed down the lump in his throat and began.

“Fuck,” he whispered as threads of keratin detached from his robes and plastered themselves into his regenerating arm. They merged with the flesh on his shoulder, cutting away the burnt flesh and sealing it just as quickly. Alen watched the strands of keratin weave and curl, growing taut, copying the way the muscles in his arm had been structured. The muscles made of hundreds of thousands of strands of keratin crept forward, inching down, connecting themselves to the bone inch by inch.

Muscle fibers, tendons, sensory nerves. Alen felt each and every one of them connect, snapping into place. Continuous jolts of sensation and involuntary jerking shot into his brain, and Alen suppressed all of them.

It was like every time his mind sensed a new connection, it instinctively wanted to move it, as if to confirm if it was really there. He had to suppress that, and he had to monitor his soul editor at all times. If any of the magic leaked onto the rest of his soul, then…

He inwardly shuddered. Alen did not want to think about what would happen if muscle blueprints surged into somewhere like his memories or analytical capabilities. Or worse yet, any other place in his body that he didn’t want an arm to grow out of. Especially when—

“Fuck!” he cursed. The first layers of muscle had reached just past his wrist, and the pain immediately intensified. Alen shut his mouth, and despite the danger it posed to his current task, he pushed his Mana Sense out. The door on the other side of the hall to his right rattled. He sensed the presence of four people outside.

Someone had heard him.

“Shit,” Alen growled. He stood up, staggering to his feet. He looked around, most of his mental capacity focused on managing Soul Editor. His eyes flashed past the furniture until finally, he found a set of stairs leading up. He turned a right and entered a room. A large bedroom. Alen pulled open the door to a closet and dropped a tooth inside. Then, he slid behind the dresser adjacent to the bed, away from the entrance’s line of sight.

Within the wardrobe, the tooth silently began to bubble.

Steps began resounding throughout the empty house, the chaos outside oddly quiet in comparison to the footsteps that moved closer and closer. Slowly, Alen heard the door creak open.

“Stay in formation,” a voice said. It was female. Hoarse and rough, voice like a smoker’s. Then, almost in sync, a set of feet tapped against the home’s Stonewood floor, heading inwards. Alen tensed behind the dresser, his Mana Sense draped around the intruders. The four were aware of it, of course. They knew they were being watched. And so, they advanced carefully, shields erected. From the sensations Alen was getting from them, the four cultists should’ve been in their late tens to early twenties threshold wise.

He could take them if he was in his usual condition, but…

Alen cringed at the pain as the first layer of muscles snapped into place by his fingertips, transferring sensory inputs into his brain. His arm was akin to a thin mess at this point, connected in various places by thin, keratin cords. More would come, bigger cords to cover up and reinforce the bundled small ones. Like a rope, his muscles would form, cords within cords, twisting and knotting together until it became whole, all the while he managed the whole goddamn thing. If he was still in a condition to fight after that, then—

“Whoever you are, we know that you’re here. You were given the chance to become one of us, but you forsook our cause. Come out now, and become the seed to our salvation,” the woman said, once again.

Idiots, Alen thought. Why the hell would he show himself? Using the thread of magic that connected him to the tooth inside of the wardrobe, he had it grow a small, blunted bone spear. It knocked against the closet door once.

The cultists immediately whirled, and within moments, a crash had resounded throughout the room. Alen had only sensed a flash of magic before his Mana Sense detected the new hole that had been carved through the bedroom wall, shaving away the better half of the wardrobe’s upper body.

This, he thought, this is why I’ll never hide in a fucking wardrobe.

Alen reached into his robes with his left hand, locking a tooth between his thumb and index finger. He had already retracted his Mana Sense, so neither he nor the cultists were aware of each another’s movements. Footsteps did ring out however, and Alen risked a peek from behind cover to see what the cultists were doing.

Their backs were to him, staring warily at the now obliterated wardrobe that stood sadly on the wooden floors.

He let out a sigh of relief in his mind.

Seeing that nothing was going to happen if they kept staring it down, the cultists moved forward, reinforcing the front of their square shield-formation. Slowly, the lead cultist looked down at the wardrobe and found a single, unsuspecting tooth. It was long, sharp. Almost dagger-like in quality.

“Kavarith tooth,” one of the fanatics noted.

The lady in the lead frowned. “Lord Seith informed us that the necromancer that interrupted our gathering a while ago was a manipulator of teeth and bone matter.”

“Ack, I remember,” one of the male cultists spoke, disgusted. “Some of our members from back then were found without teeth as well. Do you think this is him?”

“He should have been disposed of by Lord Seith shortly after he escaped,” the lady replied. “Check the surrounding area. He might have escaped heavily injured. Hoju, collect the tooth. Last I heard, Lady Voluura was in the area. With this, she should be able to find him.”

“Understood,” said the cultist, reaching past the shield to pick up the tooth.

It passed the surface of the shield, bubbled, and as soon as it did, the fanatic stiffened. The world twisted and turned over. His face fell flat against something cold and grainy—the home’s dust-covered floor. His eyes looked up, and in the final second of his life, he saw the two-mouthed skeletal Kavarith tear the rest of his lower body to shreds.

“A trap!” the woman in the lead screamed, springing back. The Kavarith followed, and with a crackle, its claws raked across the surface of her magical shield.

She stumbled back, and through the gap in their formation, another tooth skittered onto the floor in the middle of their group. One of her colleagues pointed a hand at it, but he was too late. The tooth rapidly grew, then abruptly exploded. It was only an instant after that the Deathfire covered shrapnel of enhanced enamel blew his torso apart like a shotgun’s blast.

The Kavarith followed up right after, pouncing and smashing one of the cultists against the far wall with its massive body. The lady in the lead turned her back and was about to jump out from the hole in the wall when she felt something pierce her chest from behind. She looked down.

It was a simple black spike, burning with hungry, fuming flames the color of obsidian and ivory.

It retracted, and she fell, her dying vessel of a body softly making a thumping sound as it fell into the bluegrass on the house’s front lawn.

Alen stepped out from behind cover, panting as his face contorted from the persistent agony screaming into his arm. He looked at the mess and resisted the urge to slap his forehead. He was a dumbass. Vexed, he pulled teeth out from pouches in his robes, throwing them to the ground in handfuls. The first to form were humanoid skeletons, nearly two dozen filling up the now cramp bedroom. Alen pointed at the corpses as the rest of his undead formed around him.

“Take their teeth and give them to me,” he said, ignoring the wet, crunching sounds that followed as he walked past the corpses and stared out at the upper district stretching out to the horizon. A large gathering of cultists, nearly twenty, stood outside, rapidly gathering together to face him.

He threw more teeth to the ground floor. Undead began forming rapidly. Tens, twenties, there seemed to be no end to them. Alen watched the morale of his foes rapidly deflate in the foreground of the still-glistening City of Pillars.

Ignoring them, he continued on. More shards of teeth and bone spilled from his pockets, and his legion only grew. Kavariths, Gorebats, Cave Trolls, Amethyst Scorpions, Rock Dogs, Boulder Crabs, every single tooth and shard that he had collected since his stay in the Underearth was making an appearance today, and they were going to make these cultists fucking regret coming after him when he was as pissed off as he was. At that point, over a hundred undead had already gathered, but he was still far, far from done.

Seeing that, Alen felt exceedingly stupid. Why the hell was he worrying about fighting? He didn’t even have to. He was a necromancer, and like all competent goddamn necromancers, he had a whole legion of undead to fight for him. All they needed was a command.

Alen looked over the corpses of civilians littering the streets and pointed towards the cultists standing in front of them. Teeth.

“Collect,” he said, his horde moving even before he finished.

—o—

The fight that came after the whole thing was anticlimactic, to say the least. The cultists had set up a defensive formation with their spells, and before his undead could get close, they were able to take out a few, but in the grand scheme of things, it did little to deter him. Twenty something cultists couldn’t really do much when assaulted on all sides by nearly four hundred undead. Over half of which were Gorebats, but the impact they made was undeniable.

He walked past the horde of minions that collected teeth from the corpses and came to a ledge in the upper district, where small plumes of smoke were just barely visible as they began to rise up from the chaotic mess that was the middle district. Flashing lights and crumbling buildings were visible below, but from what he was seeing, it was mostly civilians and Hunters from the Lodge doing the fighting.

What the hell were the city’s military doing?

Alen watched the forms of his humanoid summons pick apart teeth from the fanatics’ mouths. He frowned at the sight, but pushed down the disgust he felt. It wasn’t the right time to be acting reluctant about what he was doing. If he was going to take on Seith, he’d need a lot more summons to help him.

Luckily, he knew just where to get them.

“God, I hope Youno’s alive,” he muttered, staring down at the middle district. The Hunter’s Lodge was most definitely still intact. Judging from where the plumes of smoke were rising, the cultists were targeting residential areas and marketplaces, areas where they could easily reap lives and harvest life energy.

Suddenly, a grunt left his mouth. Alen glared down at his right arm as the last of the muscles went where they were supposed to. He stopped the process there. Growing a skin-like layer would be extra work, and right now, that wasn’t what he needed. He clenched his right fist, feeling the sensations run through his head. The new arm would serve its purpose for now. No blood flowed through his new limb so it wasn’t messy, but from the outside, it still looked quite ugly. Alen’s face fell at the sight of it. He sure hoped there was a healing spell out there that could regrow his arm back.

Hell, they needed a goddamn healer in the party if they were going to keep getting injured like this. Alen strode past the minions gathered and threw a tooth to the ground.

Another one of his summons began to form. The Matriarch Gorebat spread her massive wings wide, and Alen nodded, before taking another tooth from his robes. A mere shard, but already as large as his palm. Alen poured his magic into it, feeling the sea of mana in his body deflate as it filled the enamel in his grip. He didn’t think he’d have to use it again, so soon, but…

The tooth clattered down. It expanded, twisted, churned—took form. He backed up as the rest of his undead near the tooth were forcibly pushed away. The massive head of the skeletal Stone Drake looked down at him, before lowering itself in front, offering itself to him. Alen hopped on, and it rose, standing up to its full height. Alen looked out over to the sea of rooftops and nodded, sending an order to his undead. His horde began to move.

Gorebats took flight, Matriarch at the lead. Huruks—the cave trolls—mounted Kavarith and surrounded themselves in packs of Rock Dogs as the Boulder Crabs took the front, massive right claws held up like shields in front of them. The Amethyst Scorpions dug into the earth, burrowing deep into the ground of the upper district and following the mass from below. All in the center, Alen stood atop the terrifying Stone Drake, nodding as his undead fell into formation as planned.

“I should really give you a name,” he idly mentioned, glancing down at the Stone Drake. It didn’t respond. He shook his head and pulled up the party comms.

“Hello?” he asked, motioning his undead to spread out, “Is anyone nearby?”

“Yo,” a voice called out, sounding breathless, “it’s Sam. I can see your undead from where I am. I’m coming over, but I’ll take a while—“ His voice stopped as a crashing sound resounded, along with the shattering of ice.

He frowned. “Sam?”

“—Fuck, man. These guys are everywhere. They’re trying to kill people, but I have a couple Hunters from the Lodge here with me. Let’s meet up at the top district’s branch.”

“Got it,” Alen nodded grimly. “I’m sending my undead out to rescue people around me. I’m gathering everyone I help at the Lodge. See you there.”

“Yeah—“ another explosion resounded, and this time, Alen looked to the side in shock as a massive glacier of ice smashed through a house in the distance. Sam’s voice came back into the comms. “Bye dude,” he said, before cutting off completely.

Alen swiped the blue screen away, looking out. Fires roared over homes and the bluegrass beneath reflected the light, forms morphing into a bright, flame-like hue. He marshaled his undead forward, spreading the ranks thin into small groups. Every bit of sight and sensation that could be considered noteworthy was transferred from his undead to him, granting him an almost omniscient view of the area within a kilometer radius.

A radius that only continued to expand further and further.

One of the benefits of raising Control, Wisdom, and Intelligence to such absurd heights was that he could handle this influx of information, and not only manage and absorb it, but also be able to finely control and manipulate his army as he did. Through the strings of mana attached to his summons, he sent his magic through, his massive mana pool regenerating even as he pulled resources from it.

Six hundred meters away, Kavarith riders ambushed a group of cultists, saving a family of five who were locked in their homes. As the skeletal riders coaxed the family into joining them on their way to the Lodge, Alen sent Amethyst Scorpions out from under the earth to grab onto the bodies of the cultists, who were deposited in an alleyway for collecting.

He directed a swarm of Gorebats over to the area, channeling his magic through them with fine control. Seconds later, skeletons grew from the collected teeth, snapping off bone swords that grew from their limbs. Rock Dogs came to pick them up, and they mounted, adding more to the growing force of undeath. Alen directed any excess over to his front line Boulder Crabs, where skeletal archers stood up on the craggy shells, looking over the slowly growing number of infantry beneath.

Alen jumped down from the Stone Drake and mounted a Kavarith. He exerted his control over it, and the summon leapt, jumping onto the backs of one of the massive boulder crabs. There, over three dozen people stood, rescued by his efforts.

They looked out over at his army with a mix of shock and awe, and as he approached, he went unnoticed. Alen walked up to a Kivotl man and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” he said.

The man stiffened and almost jumped in reaction. Slowly, he glanced back, and upon seeing Alen’s face, he visibly relaxed.

“H-Hello,” the man managed to say. “Who might you be..?”

“Alen,” he answered. “We’re headed to the Hunter’s Lodge to set up a defense there with my summons. Do you have any idea where the city’s military is?”

“…No,” the man deflated, the visibly turned upset at the mention of the military. “The top district was supposed to be the most secure! My family has been working for generations to build up a reputation that deserves to be up here, and—“

“Okay,” Alen interrupted him. “You can complain to them later or something. For now, it looks like the Lodge is the only group really trying to fight this off. Tell the rest of the people here that if they have other people they know of who might be in the area to report to my summon. I’m sending a Gorebat here, so you can all communicate any of this information directly to me. I’ll send undead to rescue them as soon as possible.”

By the time he’d finished speaking, the entire group of people were already looking at him. Alen nodded and raised his hand, and a Gorebat swooped down from the sky to circle around him. He sent it towards them with another reassuring nod. “I’m here to save as many people as I can,” he said. “The Lodge is also moving. You’ll be safe with us.”

With that, he leapt off the broad, craggy exterior of the Boulder Crab with a pike from the bottom of his boots. Alen felt the air on his face as he approached the back of his Stone Drake. It lowered its head as he approached, and without any problem, he landed on its head.

“West,” Alen said, and the force of undead turned, heading towards a tall hill in the distance. Atop it, the true headquarters of the Hunter’s Lodge stood, taller and more imposing than everything else. Fires burned in the surrounding area, spell formations creating rain and storms of dust blanketing the adjacent parts, but never extending into the range of the building itself. Alen’s undead began to gain speed as his Gorebats scouted ahead.

He closed his eyes and fully focused his senses on theirs. Parts of his undead, Kavairth Riders and Amethyst Scorpions, separated from the herd, gathering and rescuing anyone within his control’s massive range. Many killed and raised cultists had joined the infantry at the front, holding blades and bows as the marched in formation with his Boulder Crabs. Alen’s Gorebats were a sonar—collecting information and funneling all of it to him. Battles, struggles, skirmishes. He was aware of almost everything within an expanding area of three kilometers.

A large battle was being waged in front of the Hunter’s Lodge—but it wasn’t for the purpose of defeating the Hunters within. It was a diversionary tactic. Through his summons, Alen saw the cultists darting through alleyways and within buildings, harassing the Hunters and limiting their movement as the rest of the congregation reaped the lives of the surrounding population.

“Surge,” he said, and his undead followed his will. They broke into a frenzied sprint—an impassable wall with the might of an unstoppable force.

The riders were the first to meet the clash outside of the Lodge. They climbed the roofs, combed the alleyways, and sprinted through the streets, flanking and catching the cultists by surprise. Some tried to flee, and Alen responded to this by surrounding the cultists, assisting the hunters as he herded them together.

His eyes surged with an emerald light in the darkness of the City of Pillars, the colors of his undead contrasting with the bright flame-like lights of the torchstones scattered all throughout the city.

“Gorebats,” he whispered. The bats followed his command. Headed by the Matriarch, small, fingernail-sized pieces of bone grew from their chests, filling up with deathly mana as Alen channeled his magic through the strings of mana that connected him to his minions. The shards of bone and enamel popped free, and the Gorebats caught them with their feet, the mass of nearly two hundred and fifty congregating above the fleeing fanatics.

“Bombard,” Alen commanded, and the bones dropped, clattering to the ground like a hailstorm, pelting over a group of twenty seven foes like rain. He raised his hand in the direction of the bone pieces, feeling every single string that connected them to him. Alen smashed his fist to a close.

Skeletal Detonation.

A thundering roar echoed out from the area as shrapnel tore at the buildings and bridges, scissoring through flesh and bone as thousands of bullets burst out of the individual bone pieces. They were much weaker without the support of Necrotic Blessing, but the quantity more than made up for the lack of his buffs.

Gorebats flooded in from the sky and covered the prone bodies, tearing into and killing any survivors as they severed the soul strands Alen required from each of the cultists. When they disappeared, only bone-stripped bodies were left. They gathered towards him, and twenty seven teeth clattered to the ground before joining his ranks as newly risen undead—holding bone weapons the previously living bodies were familiar with.

Alen gazed at them once before looking away. He didn’t care anymore. He was going to stop whatever the fuck this mess was, and he was going home, army of undead or not. That was it.

Two screens popped into his vision.

System Message!

Congratulations! You have passed your twenty-ninth mana threshold. You are now at your thirtieth. This threshold will require an exponentially higher amount of mana to pass.

Sy̸̨̥̜̘̩̭͒͆̆̐͋̃̔̃̈́̓̏̑̽̚͠ŝ̵̢͎̠͂̑̌̇͑̿̑̀̾͝teṃ̶͓̥̩̅̆̃͌̿͘͘͘͝ͅ Mess̶̢̧̡̘̥͍̖̠͖̘̰̠̭͓͛̈́͂̂͑̃ͅȧ̸̢̙͔͕̝͔̣́̋͒͗̆͛͋̒̆͘͝͝͠ḡ̵̛̪̲̳̳̓̊̎̋͝ḙ̷͎̙̜̲͓̻͔̙̱͖͙͐̒̈́͝ͅ

Ŵ̴͓̜̗̣̫̼͎̠̓̇͑̓͐͊͜ͅatch̷̢͉͎͔͔͙̘̯̣̒̀͐̑̾͋̚͜͝͠ì̴̠̭͈̤̘̻̹͉̼̺̟͇̬̌̀͒͗́̆̈́̚̚͜n̸̖̥̻̋͂̿̅̏̾͛g.̸̝̭͇̈́͘

Alen frowned. “Uh… Selerius?”

“I do not know,” came the simple reply.

“Well, fuck.” Alen swiped away the screens. He looked out at the army of undead in front of him, and the wildly flashing lights of the Cloud District above. “Any chance that this is the world telling me that it’s going to screw me over in the near future?”

A pause, “It is very likely.”

“Excellent,” Alen laughed despite himself. He had enough shit to worry about, and whatever was fucking with the system, he couldn’t do anything about it. He pointed forward, and his army began to stop just in front of the Lodge. Alen sent his drake to the front and jumped off to stand in front of the wary hunters.

“Uh, I’m not in the top district all the time, but…” he reached into his pocket, took out his nav device, and threw it out far ahead. One of the hunters caught it. Alen smiled at him.

“I come in peace,” he said.

The Arineian man approached and held out a barbed hand. “I’ve never heard of Necromancer and Co. before. How come I’ve ever heard of you? Your methods are very… conspicuous.”

“We’re new to the whole party thing,” Alen said, taking the hand. “That, and I’ve never really had a reason to be conspicuous before.”

The man nodded. “I am Zidash. Welcome to the top district’s branch.”

“Alen,” he said. “Uh, I have some people I rescued on the back of those crabs back there. My undead are taking more from the city as we speak. You have space in here for them?”

“Absolutely. Each of our branches as a portal to safehouses. Send them in and the ones inside will handle the rest.”

“Right. Thanks,” Alen nodded. “You mind if me and my undead set up?”

Zidash raised a brow. “Set up?”

“Just a little renovating. On the outside of the branch, of course. Oh, and if you can, can you ask someone inside to retrieve the pouches inside of my private storage?”

“If it can assist in keeping this place safe, do as you will,” Zidash said. He looked to the line of hunters, to the people at the back mounted on what looked like cannons. “Emery! You heard him. Go!”

“Excellent,” Alen grinned, then turned his back to face his horde. “I’ve been waiting fucking forever to do this,” he murmured.

“The cultists are gathering,” Zidash said as he handed Alen three pouches filled to the brim with clattering material. “If the far-seers are correct, they will be here to mount an offensive soon. How quickly can you do this?”

“Watch,” Alen grinned. He tossed one of the pouches up. The keratin make burst, scattering dozens out teeth out into the air. Gorebats swarmed in and caught each one.

“Walls!” Alen commanded. The summons followed. Bubbling teeth and bone matter, mana pre-stored within, dropped all around the Hunter’s Lodge. Low rumbles began to echo out throughout the area. White pillars began to rise. Higher, higher. Three meters, five, eight. The walls rose up, surrounding the area and linking together. Two meters thick, they stood. Ladders led up as the skeletons wielding ranged weapons ascended, mounting positions on the wall. Boulder Crabs stood outside, a horde of infantry around them as the Amethyst Scorpions dug out beneath empty houses, collapsing them and creating pits in the ground.

Gorebats swooped in from the sky and dropped hundreds of pre-charged bones onto the soil, ready to burst and explode into shrapnel at any second. A gust of wind blew Alen’s hair into disarray as with a flap of its wings, the Matriarch Gorebat landed in front of him. He mounted it.

“Impressive,” Zidash said. “I suppose you wouldn’t mind if we set up as well?”

“Go insane,” Alen said, before his mount took flight with a mighty beat of its massive wings. He ascended, the majestic City of Pillars burning with flaming lights just below him. Specters were beginning to form, ghostly warriors made of pure magic that normal weapons could not touch. He waved his hand, and dozens of streaks of dark mana snaked out to fill the corpses of fanatics below. They began to rise. He nodded and looked to the front. Up ahead, two kilometers away, large amounts of cultists were getting ready to mount an offensive. To take the Lodge and slaughter the people in the safehouses, no doubt.

He’d like to see the bastards try. As bad as the situation seemed, at this point, Alen really just wanted to see what would happen when he finally let loose. He opened up his status screen.

Status:

Name: Alen

Race: Human

Type: Necrotic

Current Threshold: 30

Health: 84%

Stamina: 79%

Mana: 67%

Strength: 70

Dexterity: 72

Agility: 60

Constitution: 70

Vitality: 74

Resistance: 57

Intelligence: 142 (+)

Wisdom: 224 (+++)

Control: 180 (++)

Skills:

Mana Programming, Dominate Undead, Necrotic Blessing, Numb Senses, Numbing Mist, Summon Greater Skeleton, Rotfire/Deathflare Blast, Deathchill Grip, Deathchill Pulse, Conjure AutoBone Design, Skeletal Detonation, Vitality Manipulation, Drain Vortex, Blightwater/Darkwater Surge, Raise Greater Undead, Skeletal Vajra, Magelight, Create Specters, Mana Sense

System Applications:

Soul Editor, AutoBone, System Notepad

His mana was a bit low, but his supply was massive, and the rate of which it regenerated was even more astonishing. He pulled the necrotic stone from within his robes and placed it into his artificial right arm. It merged into the keratin and sent electricity surging up his body. Alen raised his arm and watched as the army of undead below were lathered in Deathchill are Rotflame as Necrotic Blessing took effect.

Alen grinned. The cultists were moving. They were coming closer and closer. Any closer, and they would be triggering the first of his mines. The Kavarith riders were also ready, mounted on rooftops and positioned in alleyways, ready to flank and strike.

Just a little closer and—

Something dropped from the sky. A thunderous boom rang out, and suddenly, it made the rest of the world soundless in comparison. A crater formed within the center of his frontline, crushing one of the Boulder Crabs to the ground as its carapace caved in from the impact. From within the dust, a figure stood and looked up at him.

A wind blew, the dust cleared, and Alen locked eyes with Slayh the Diviner, who stared back. He bit his tongue.

“Fucking hell.”