He was crouching behind an overgrown bush. He realized he didn’t really need a line of sight to see as mana vision and mana sense let him see the seamless flow of mana further away from him and in the monsters. He waited until a nearby kobold turned his back to him and then slowly approached through the bushes. His approach went unheard due to breeze wavering between the trees, causing leaves to dance and give cover to his footsteps.

He made a jump on his target and at the same time placing the left palm on the target head from the left and pushing right, and index finger on his right arm stabbing into the kobold head from the right side. Cracking sound could be heard as his whole finger poked through kobold's skull. There was a twitch, followed by a few more and then it died a moment later.

Killing his target, he took a hold of the body, not letting it fall to the ground and slowly dragged it back through the bushes. There, he laid the body so it wouldn’t be seen and turned around to see if he alerted the others. Sound of a notification alerted him and made him take a few steps back on instinct . He crouched, turning his attention to notifications. There were a few of them...

Combat experience gained

Additional experience gained for the first kill

Achievement unlocked: First Kill

Level up!

Congratulation, you are now level 2

+1 STR, +2 VIT, +2 INT

Taking another metaphorical breath calming himself down, he thought of a status.

Status

Status

Attributes

Name: Bones

Race: Undead Skeleton lvl 2

Class: ???

Profession:???

Hp - 70

Mp - 70

Sta - ∞

STR: 6

AGI: 5

END: 5

VIT: 7

INT: 7

WIS: 5

Free points:

“Did I seriously just get rewarded for killing a kobold? I even got a level. No perk from the achievement this time.” He murmured…

Physical attributes

Strength - a measure of physical power and carrying capacity and in small portion health points.

Agility - a measure of agility, balance, coordination and reflexes. Controls attacks, movement speed and accuracy.

Endurance - a measure of body threshold to endure, stamina capacity and reduces fatigue.

Vitality - a measure of how sturdy the body is, increases resistance to poison and bleed damage. Increases lifespan and influences health points.

Mind attributes

Intelligence - a measure of a character's problem-solving ability, ability to comprehend and improves memory. Increases mana points and increases effects and damage done with related skills.

Wisdom - A measure of the character's mental resistance. controls a character's ability to cast certain spells, communicate to mystical entities, or discern other characters' motives or feelings. Increases resistance against crowd control effects. Increases casting time and mana regen.

I see, focusing on each attribute is giving me details on what attribute does what and from what i can tell, everything seems bloody important!?

No wait, I'm a skeleton now, how do attributes affect me? What did it say again...NOT all attributes apply to the skeleton?...”Am I supposed to guess which ones do??”

As a skeleton I seem agile enough. Endurance? I’ve yet to feel pain or tiredness and stamina? I don’t think that will be a problem either. Is that infinite stamina? That’s definitely a sign for infinite.

Vitality, I can’t imagine how that would work with a skeleton? Do I have any life force at all as undead? No no, it said health points?

Hp - 70 (0.7 hp/s)

Right, the numbers on the status screen and mana points?

Mp - 70 (5.7)

So 1 point in vitality equals 10 health points. It’s the same with intelligence and mana points. Number next to it applies to regeneration? Percentage based I see, so health regeneration is at 1% of max hp and mana...5%, 6%? No...making some quick calculations he figured, either mana regeneration is some odd 8 % of mana or it was calculated differently. Seems like a rather potent regeneration either way.

Racial level ups gave 5 points per level which were distributed automatically. One in strength, two in vitality and intelligence respectively. Bones felt the increase in mana but also felt something else. He felt a bit stronger feeling mana coursing through him. As to why? He wasn’t sure. Time will tell, or in this case, levels will tell. Spending more time than he wanted in his own thoughts, he focused again on the camp where the kobolds were middling about.

Not even a minute has passed since he killed his first kobold and now he's prowling for the second victim. He found one, or more accurately, it found him. One of the Kobold’s had noticed the 4th kobold was missing and was nowhere around, so it came searching for him. Luckily, it came and stopped almost at the exact same spot the first one did. After looking above, below and around the bushes surrounding the camp, it turned its back and was about to move away. As with the first one, Bones slowly appeared behind but instead of poking the side of its head, he placed both palms around the kobold neck in strangling motion and gripped as hard as he could, making any sounds impossible when fingers penetrated the throat and crushed its windpipe. He then pulled back, through the bushes where he laid the bleeding body on the kobolds back and waited until it died. Once it died, he laid the kobold on top of the first one. As with the first one, notification of a kill came but without the level up this time.

He was wondering how the experience gained worked and how much he needed to level up. He noticed he was gaining experience during the combat and not just for the kill. “Is experience awarded per attack? Per my action?” Something to take note of in the next combat!.

He opened up his status screen and started looking carefully where the experience stat was. He found it at the race tab where it said he was now an Undead skeleton lvl 2. There was a small bar indicating how much xp he had and how much he needed for the next level up. With some calculation done he came to a conclusion...

Ah I see, my level went up after the first kill because it was a level higher than me. The target of the same level now gave reduced experience because the level gap between us was reduced. Experience value wasn't a fixed amount. Makes sense. otherwise it would be easy to exploit. One more kobold to kill to level up and then five to the next level I presume? I can see it requiring quite a bit later on.

His first two victims fell easily but Bones had a feeling it won’t be as easy with the other two. Two other kobolds got closer to each other and they noticed their brethren had disappeared. His stealthy approach won’t help him this time.

Having fire would be nice. Could I use fire? Maybe I could? “C’mon baby light my fire?!”

Wishful thinking. I would’ve felt something by now. In my past life I could barely create a spark let alone a fireball. I just wasn’t gifted with a talent for elements.’

Seems here, my “talent” lies somewhere else too. I could probably be a decent rogue. Master thief maybe?

*chuckle*

I should probably search the bodies to see if there’s anything useful on them.

There wasn’t anything useful really. Animal parts covering kobold were useless to him, too small and same with trinkets made of wood and bones. Only things he could use were weapons. Crude spears with a shaft made of wood and stone at the top with a sharpened tip.

*sigh* My fingers were sharper than this…

Then he got an idea. Picking up bone trinkets from the two bodies, he took a step back, and then a few more until he couldn’t see the camp directly anymore. Foliage and trees blocking the sight. It wasn’t stopping him seeing mana within kobolds though and roughly locating their position. He could see them panicking now.

After he was sure he wouldn’t be disturbed, he sat cross-legged against a tree and placed bone trinkets a meter away from him. Trinkets were what appeared to be, arm bones of a small creature based on the size or perhaps children's bones. He threw such a notion out of his mind immediately and hoped that wasn’t the case.

He started first by sensing the mana around the bones. Concentrating harder, he started sensing mana from within the bones. Now that he sensed the mana, he tried manipulation. It was harder, of course it was harder but it shouldn’t take him too long. It wasn’t his first time moving an object by telepathy. His goal now, of course, was to make bone trinkets move by mana manipulation. It started with a nudge and soon he was levitating a bone a few centimeters off the ground. His success was rewarded with another notification.

ding

Skill: Bone Manipulation learned

It wasn’t telepathy but regardless, he grinned widely and *clack clack* noises, what was supposed to be laughter, could be heard. He didn’t waste a moment and immediately started manipulating mana in the second trinket. A minute later he had two bone trinkets levitating around him as he wished. He noted slight mana expenditure, but nothing his mana regeneration couldn’t cover. Now was the time to make a weapon out of those bones by shooting them at his targets!

Two kobolds at the camp were searching around for the reason their brethren disappeared. Panic has settled down by now and they had their weapons ready for whatever might come upon them. That whatever jumped from the bushes into the clearing in front of them and started charging. Kobolds spun around and confronted the odd running skeleton that was coming for them. Both got into a fighting stance and the first one charged to meet the skeleton head on. As it got closer, the kobold prepared to thrust forward at its target with a spear. Unfortunately, its target saw it coming and side stepped the spear, grabbed hold of it and pulled the kobold with its spear forward, making it lose balance. Its vision turned dark the next moment as a bone trinket pierced its head from its blindside. Second kobold, in rage, charged right after. As it charged, it was met with a flying bone to the leg, making it lose footing and fall face first to the ground. As the kobold looked up, it saw a skeleton two meters away with its arm extended, pointing at the kobold and the bone levitating in front of it. One blink after, it wasn’t seeing anything anymore.

Level up!

+1 STR, +2 VIt, +2 INT

Looking around at the corpses, Bones moved further away from the camp to avoid the possibility of another encounter. He stabbed his fingers into the nearest tree, barely penetrating bark, and started climbing. First branch he deemed usable was around 20 meters from the ground. High enough not to draw any accidental looks his way and a branch was long and wide enough to sit or even lay comfortably.

He sat down cross legged and relaxed his body and started to breathe in and out, slowly and steady in…and then out...

“I don't breathe…” *chuckles* “Well, let's try something else.”

Instead of breathing techniques, he skipped right to the part about drawing mana to himself, encompassing him and letting it flow naturally with the mana from within. He felt the two flows fuse into a stream that was coursing through and empowering him. It was quite the rush but not the point he wanted to make. He slowed down the flow and made it more steady. After a while, he stopped controlling the flow and let it flow naturally while he entered a trance, a meditation.

He knew it wouldn’t be long until he was granted a skill, at least he hoped he would be. Meditation was something every mage learned and did often when out of mana or when pondering on new ideas and simply needed to clear their mind of useless thoughts.

I could probably guess what meditation skill did.

He did guess right but meditation did so much more. By meditating a person would slowly and steadily draw ambient mana into themselves, slowly tempering their body, boosting regeneration, calming the mind and nurturing a core by filtering the impurities from the mana absorbed. Something our main character has yet to find out about himself. The core in his body is his main source of power that constantly provides mana at a steady rate and makes it possible for him to move a body at all. All living beings are blessed with a core since their birth, courtesy of the system, starting from the seed and growing to the core. As they grow older and more powerful, so does their core. At a higher level, a person wouldn’t die from the “fatal” injuries. As long as the core was intact, it would be even possible to regrow body parts. Something Bones wouldn’t have issues with.