The next day, a slight pain was in my cheek that I couldn’t quite place, touching it revealed no wound anymore but a green sticky ooze. Rubbing it between my fingers, it was very granular under the ooze and had many small black dots throughout all of it. Wiping it on one of the soldier's pants, I slowly made my way to my feet my clothing feeling rather restrictive after being mostly naked, or in highly baggy clothing since my first awakening. Grabbing my cloak from the snow, I looked to the woman in the ooze she still wasn’t awake but her lips were turning blue, it took me a moment to figure out she was cold not having the same feeling myself. Wrapping her in my cloak was harder than I thought, not wanting to wake her in the middle of the actions and misunderstanding the situation.

Repeating the process with the same numbers on another soul crystal produced another countdown for three hours, and forty minutes this time. My fourteen soul understanding seemed to speed up the process for creating my creatures, at a hundred percent it might almost be instantaneous. Starting into a process of breathing exercises, then starting the summoning for another elf, five of them were in the process of being created when the first one I sat down that day turned into an ooze creature like the elven woman had. Reaching the ooze, I ripped it open to find a man looking up at me, his eyes seemed to be fixated on me in anger.

When he pounced, it wasn’t a surprise, his arm being pulled out by his hand as I kicked him through the shoulder blade causing his arm to be ripped off in one swift motion. As it turned to run, I threw its arm at its back the elf falling over quickly from the impact, I wasn’t going to let precious resources run away so I ripped out the core from his body to examine it. If I was to guess this was a ‘feral’ elf, with the feral variant it seemed to lose any chance to gain intelligence unless I was just very lucky that the ten percent chance at it not becoming intelligent was chanced upon at the same time. I’d need more ferals for any definite answers, luckily I didn’t have to worry about my study sample as three out of the five were feral elves, one of which got away surprising me by running as soon as I ripped open the ooze cocoon.

I stopped once the count got up to ten regular undead elves, the count of ferals getting away didn’t increase after the first, two of them saw a display of my power and joined the ranks of the regular undead. They’d be used as the front line since their loyalties seem questionable, their darting eyes seeming to size up everyone around them, since both of the ferals were male they seemed very subservient to the two female elves I had raised into regular undead. Looking to my bag, I could summon around twenty more of the elves but I was looking more into quality rather than quantity so I fused the rest of the crystals together to make a rather large crystal in my hands. Taking a risk, I pulled out other crystals that I had found under the carcasses of trees, and other places that the elves’ corpses were not around.

The crystal took on a brown tinge to it, but otherwise looked mostly unaffected by the change to its color or structure. “Tutorial, I’d like to spend some skill points.”

A cheerful voice came out of nowhere, the voice made me smile as it was my first companion on this journey, “Yes, what skill would you like?”

“Something that increases how much mana I have to spend.” I didn’t know if being vague here would help, so I chanced that she might offer me choices.

“How many skill points do you wish to spend?”

“All of them.” I said without a thought, I wasn’t likely to need many other skills that I couldn’t develop myself, and if I did I could always gain more skills. As I stated before, the skill system, other than give me some bonuses to stats or mana seemed to be pointless because I wasn’t limited by the skills provided. There was a long pause from tutorial, so I started to prep for more mana by starting my breathing exercises.

Skill Gained!Mark of an Oracle

The soft blue glow came over me from the menu, as I looked to it, “Mark of an Oracle?” I reached out to click on it for a more detailed description of the skill before a white line started crawling up my arm. Before I could start to admire the moving of the symbols a deep pain went through my arm and I started to scream out in my suffering. Mr.Fly, and two of the more intelligent elves came up to me worriedly, they seemed to have loyalty imprinted onto their very souls if they weren’t feral. As my body collapsed under the pain, rolling into the snow it turning quickly to water, than to steam as more touched my body, Mr. Fly tried reaching out to me but pain shook through his body as he got close.

Strips of white patterns started to converge around my chest from every part of my body covering me in swirling patterns before creating a unicursal hexagram made out of white before a flower bloomed in the center out of the white tattoo. My body hissed as the last of the tattoos formed themselves around my abdomen creating a series of symbols around my stomach that reminded me of a seal from anime that I watched in my youth. With a final flash my body convulsed one last time, a white smoke coming from my mouth, which made me believe that the process happened inside my body as well as on the outside. Tears rolled down from my eyes, that I hadn’t noticed before, blinking them away, I sat up to begin my breathing exercises again which the energy seemed to be mixed with white tendrils of energy.

“Did you have to pick the most painful of the skills for me to gain?” My body throbbed in pain between my deep breaths, which made it hard to fully activate my breathing skill.

“I only used a quarter of your skill points, there were very few skills that directly affected mana without touching on your wisdom or intelligence which you never specified you wanted to be changed as well. Sadly this skill has other effects as well, but none of them will directly change you.” Tutorial explained in her usual cheerful attitude.

Pressing the menu finally so I could read it between my painful breathing, I pulled up the description of the skill in front of me.

Mark of an OracleYou are now a center of all micro, and macrocosmic forces that revolve around you. This will cause you to be the center of attention from many factions should they find out about your status as an oracle. Grants the title: Oracle if you did not already possess it, an additional 20% of mana from your stats, and a familiar!

A blue glow came up beside me as a small woman appeared out of the air, her body only half there completely see through. She wore dark lines of blue around her body, the same dark lips as her clothing, and her hair she reminded me of a hologram from years ago without the lines of electricity going through her body. Subconsciously I knew she was a sprite, a being made of pure magic that was both mischievous as it was intelligent about a little bit of everything. My sigh came out deeply as I looked at the Sprite, knowing exactly who it is, as her voice spoke up, “Hello!” Tutorial’s voice as as cheerful as ever as she spoke.

Nodding my head a moment, it was to my expectation that she’d be my familiar after reading the skill itself Mr Fly tied to shoo her away. My breathing started once more as I ignored tutorial, her sprite like body flying around the hurridly annoyed Mr.Fly which tried to swat her out of the air, “Why won’t you just die, flying things are not around master other than me.”

Pouring my new maximum mana inside of the crystal it gave an indication that it was be done in four days, it also marked that due to my complete understanding of the elves’ souls my summon would be an additional twenty percent stronger. I had thought that understanding the soul would make the timer go down a lot but due to how big the crystal was, and how much I was modifying the actual creature down to the soul crystal itself.

Letting the crystal form, I went back to Red pouring mana into it hoping something would come from the experiment as I had already spent so many resources on Red’s core to begin with. Ribs were blocking my way a little so it wasn’t as easy to have my hands on the core while I sat there, but the mana flowed through my friend as easily as it did before and I sat there for over a day before I noticed my body heat was slowly rising the longer I stayed in the sun melting the snow around me even more than it was previously. I didn’t feel uncomfortable in the cold, nor did I feel any sort of comfort or otherwise from the warmth that was going over my skin.

Mr. Fly gave up after the first eight hours of trying to kill Tutorial, and went back to the Elves instructing them about their new undead bodies, many things he had learned over the time he watched over my unconscious body. Tutorial sat back down on my shoulder, next to my head watching over the experiment I was doing. “You know you’re nameless now right?”

“That doesn’t matter, I just want to know if you did that on purpose.”

“What on purpose master?” She gave me an innocent smile before shaking her head, “What I told you was true, the skill was the best for the purposes you specified. There was no other skill higher than it that gave mana in your skill point range.”

“Then the familiar thing, was just an outcome which benefited you as a side effect.” I didn’t know how far I could trust Tutorial, but I also didn’t have any way of checking over the skills myself so I was stuck with her whims. “What is she Tutorial?” The loosely clothed elven woman with feathered hair, turned a bit in her sleep as if she knew she was being talked about.

“She’s one of the variants, one of the most interesting ones that had the lowest chances of getting the feral being the most common. Most necromancers consider ferals to be failures when they use their necromancy.” She nodded over to the lady once more, “She’s an immortal elf, congratulations, you’ve created a monstrosity that hasn’t been seen for hundreds of thousands of years.”

“What’s so bad about being immortal?” Being undead obviously made me a bit biassed in this area, but it was a worthy question in my mind.

“Being immortal isn’t important, it's how they are immortal. Stories of other undead originated from them, would you believe that they actually thought that these creatures were undead? No, vampires were never undead, they have always been elves before they started relying on food instead of blood.” Looking to the woman, she seemed more of an angel rather than the embodiment of a vampire that I had grown up learning about, at most I could see her as a succubus with how she unknowingly wrapped the cloak around her body showing off enough to make the imagination go wild. He had to admit, that part of his mind was still intact from when he was a human despite trying to deny that by looking away from her body every time he had stared for too long.

“How long is she going to sleep?” I turned to Tutorial who seemed quite amused by my changing expressions. Annoyed, I looked away from her too to look at Mr. Fly, his buzzing around telling the Elves grand stories about me very much exaggerated made me think of a loyal dog if it was about to talk.

“I’d give it another day, immortals were known for their bad sleeping habits. They made a story about it a long time ago named sleeping beauty, sleeping through pregnancy is a bit much even for their kind but their deep sleeps are a thing of legend.”

“Pregnancy? Didn’t the prince just kiss the woman?”

“What naive translation is that sleeping beauty from?”

Titles Unlocked:Naive Lord of UndeadUnconfirmed PervertOracle of Calamities

“Oracle of Calamities?” A flash of light went through my vision as everything turned black, like someone shutting off an old TV. “Why is that the only one you’re surprised about?” Tutorial chimed in as the world faded around me leaving me in a sense of vertigo.