Once again, the being surveyed its surroundings, searching for something that might help it find some answers.

I know some of these objects: swords, armors, shields, staves... These are tools for fighting... Maybe I'm here to fight?

The skeleton grabbed one of the many swords laying on the ground, it now had a weapon: a rusty sword that lost it's edge due to the time and lack of maintenance.

...Makes sense, I remember words related to conflict and fighting, this place is a battlefield, therefore I exist to kill.

Having found a reason to act upon, it now started its job: swinging wildly and violently the monster hacked and maimed any and every corpse in the vicinity, clouds of blood rose through the air accompanied by occasional flying maggots. Its hold on the sword was poor and more than once it lost its weapon due to a bad hit or bad grip, but over the time its action seemed to become more and more sharp, it started to understand how to swing a sword, it was learning, maybe this really was its purpose... and then it stopped.

Mistake... The bodies on the ground are dead, dead beings cannot be killed... Must search for a target

Realizing its mistake, the skeleton stopped its senseless violence and started wandering throughout the battlefield.

Hours passed and eventually it stumbled upon one of the encampments that, while devoid of life, it was relatively undamaged: all the tents were still standing and many of the weapons were still in their place, albeit covered in dust.

Oh, I know this place, there are weapons here. More weapons mean more killing

The lights in its sockets seemed to flicker with excitement because of this knowledge, and so it began to search the place in the hope of finding more, better equipment for itself.

And so it did, in less than an hour it managed to locate the equipment storage and cover itself in armor and various weapons: every piece of the armor it was wearing was different from the other, some pieces fit well enough, while others were either bigger, smaller, out of leather or chain resulting in an armor that looked like a puzzle put together by force made by a child.

As for weapons it just stuck what it could to its armor and dual wielded its rusty blade with another less ruined sword.

This setup would obviously hinder its movements, in fact, it was already having trouble moving because of the armor clashing with itself and the weapons strapped to the joints blocking the normal course of the various limbs.

But it didn't know: because of its limited and flawed knowledge the skeleton only knew that weapons would deal damage and armour would block it, therefore more weapons would mean more damage and more armor would mean less damage to itself.

Before stumbling outside the camp in search of a victim, a peculiar tent caught its attention, it didn't know why, but it could feel something emanating from it, and so it got closer and entered inside: the place was filled with books, papers and rainbow colored jewels of various sizes and intensities.

The arcana vol. 3: advanced magic, Parola, Military tactics vol. 2... I believe these are books... How can I read them? Weird, how do these drawings put together mean something...

Moved by curiosity, it started grabbing and reading the books, one by one... Or at least it tried, it knew how to say and read the words but it did not understand the meaning of many of them, it understood the ones talking about conflict, but none of the others.

As it tried to read more and more books, frustration started to build up inside it, until it found an interesting book: it didn't talk about history, nor about tactics and it didn't teach anything about magic, but in it where thousands of words with an explanation on their meaning.

Dictionary...

That was the title of the book it was reading, something akin to joy began to tickle its brain as it now started to learn the meaning of all the things it thought and said during the last hours.

Keeping the new found all knowing book by its side the skeleton excitedly started re-reading the books it threw away in frustration.

It was now acquiring knowledge, knowledge about many different things: about this "world", the place where it was currently existing, Somnium. About its lands and continents, Elvengarden, Altria, R'thum, Kt Kah 'Rah and Odun; about the many races that populate them, humans, faers, devers, dragons... Their languages and their biology.

Stopping for a moment while looking at an image showing the human body, specifically at their skeleton, it looked at its hand and body and compared it to the one on the image.

Similar... So I am a "skeleton", I have no claws and no additional bones, I am definetly not short so I'm either a human or an al'faer skeleton... From the moment I woke up, I never found a single al'faerian body, so I'm probably human.

Mm... so I really was a soldier? But how am I alive if I'm a skeleton? This book says that I need these "organs" to live, but I have none...

Shaking these questions aside, it resumed its studying, so far these books helped it answer many questions, perhaps they will also answer these new ones.

And they did, or they got it closer to what it was searching: a book about magic had a spell in it, the spell was a reanimating magic, something that could bring the dead back, dead like itself.

But the book was hard to understand, many words that did not exist in the dictionary were being used, symbols never seen in any of the other books appeared everywhere, once again it was being blocked by a lack of knowledge.

Once again frustration began to build inside it as the questions about its existence were denied an answer once more.

But then it noticed something that gave it hope.

...The arcana vol.3! It's like the others, it's not the first book, maybe if I can find the other volumes I can learn from those!

And close to the colorful jewels, it did in fact find the missing volumes, almost jumping in joy, the skeleton started studying these books.

It learned about this substance called "mana": something that exists everywhere and in everything, that it forms these things called "souls", about how it can be manipulated in order to create, change or destroy and how it by itself alone can change or create objects and beings such as monsters, mutants, curses, cursed objects and undeads.

"Undeads": dead creatures that act like living beings, the answer it was searching for.

"There are two types and ways in which these creatures can appear: the first one is artificially by using an incantation or a spell, this requires a corpse to inject mana in, and create a "soul" that will move and keep together the body, this way cannot be done without a body as the mana requirements for creating body parts or bodies in general are equivalent to the power of several souls and almost impossible to obtain, this creates an unthinking being that will only act upon orders by its maker or instructions given to it at the moment of its creation, this undead can only accept mana coming from its creator and will never attempt to heal itself in case of danger;

The second way is more natural and can happen with or without a corpse, if the mana is highly concentrated in a space it can start developing a consciousness, this mass of mana can then find a body to reside in or, if the amount is high enough, create a body itself by using part of itself as materials, this type of undead is dangerous as its instinct seems no different from that of other monsters and will attack other living beings for no apparent reason, furthermore it is able to absorb any type of mana, aside from light mana, to strenghten and heal itself resulting in dangerously powerful beings if left unchecked for long periods of time."

At this point the skeleton stopped reading, it got all the answers it needed, it was an undead probably given life by the souls of the dead soldiers on this battlefield.

That meant that all it thought was right: its "soul" comes from that of soldiers, people employed to fight, and so its purpose was clear, just like the one or ones that held its soul before it, it had to fight.

Happy to have found ts purpose, the undead stood up and began walking toward the exit, from the brightness of the cloth of the tent, it was clear that it was now day, and as he opened the tent's door...

"AAARGH!"

A sharp pain ran through its body and a ghastly, deep scream escaped its mouth as the sunlight seemed to burn its body from the inside out, in panic it threw itself back in the tent, the pain was lessened but it was still there.

Checking its limb the skeleton noticed the exposed parts of its hands either missing or slowly fading, it quickly rid itself of its armor and checked its body: panic rose higher as even the parts covered by the armor were slowly fading, burning away in a strange azure mist, it didn't understand why, but it remembered that undeads can have bodies made of mana and if its body was made of it then perhaps it could rebuild it.

Rapidly flicking through the book it was reading, the skeleton searched for a way to manipulate mana, the book was not truly helpful: only showing and teaching methods to learn this ability through practise over long periods of time, time that the undead did not know if it still had, but it was better than nothing.

Suppressing its pain, it concentrated its senses, trying to perceive the mana in the air, slowly, calmly, listening to the quietest sounds in the surroundings and looking at the smallest ripples in the air.

Minutes that felt like eternities passed and then...

Its arm fell off, it wasn't working, it wasn't hearing nor seeing anything, the pain was getting stronger and it burnt it enough to detach one of its limbs.

At that moment it remembered what made it enter the tent, it looked all over the room searching for that strange energy that caught its attention earlier.

Its vision fell on the colorful jewels on the table, it noticed some strange ripples emanating from them, small and almost invisible to the sight.

It grabbed one of them, it didn't know what they were, but the effect they were giving was similar to the one described in the book.

Hoping for the best, it concontrated on the invisible ripples coming from the gem, since its body was made of mana perhaps by trying to control it like a body part it would work, with all its willpower it tried to control the ripples using the fading parts of its body as some sort of connection, and at long last, one of the ripples twitched, then another one and another one and another one once again.

Whatever was flowing outside the jewel was now being controlled by its will, and without wasting anymore time, it moved this energy onto the holes in its body with an image in mind and an order to recreate it.

It stopped fading but it wasn't regenerating, that was when it noticed its own "ripples" moving in strange ways: the energy it was sending to itself was still, following its orders, but its body or the mana that composed it was moving erratically, changing shapes, dividing, colliding and escaping.

Once again it concentrated its thoughts, but this time trying to calm its own body.

Through the ever growing pain and the burning sensation, slowly, gently, part by part, one by one.

The movements grew slower and slower, and as they moved closer and closer to a stop, so did the pain, weakening until it stopped hurting all together.

At this point its body started regenerating thanks to the energy given by the jewel.

...aah ...aah ...aah ...The... Sun... Was it..? What a horrifying thing...

The slowly regenerating skeleton thought long about this experience and came to conclusion that this happening was the result of its ignorance and lack of knowledge: had it known the sun could do this, it wouldn't have ventured outside like that, and had it learned how to manipulate mana, it wouldn't have risked so much.

After all, there were still many books in this tent that would've probably told him about the risks it just took, had it followed its "purpose" blindly it would've probably burnt away the moment dawn broke.

Killing? That would just put me in danger, and danger is really scary, I don't have to follow the purpose that my soul had before me, it says in the book that a mass of mana can gain consciousness.

If I truly am self conscious then I want to choose another path.

The undead looked at the books with fire in its eyes.

Knowledge answered my doubts and knowledge can protect me from dangers, I want to know everything, so that nothing will be able to hurt me anymore...

"To acquire absolute knowledge, that, will be my purpose."