My hunting trip was going well, all things considered, I was making my way towards another squirrel and was taking advantage of the fact that my range for life detection had increased so much. I was purposely avoiding going near where I suspected the dungeon would be, considering I’m nowhere near 100%.

That combined with the sudden increase in speed I’ve gotten from having a dex score. Means that I’m officially fast, at least as fast as I ever went in a car at the bare minimum, a part of my mind did point out that I’m going through a forest so yea a car would never be able to compete in this type of off road driving.

Soon my flying skull had reached the next addition to my bones. This one was far older, his fur being less brown and more gray than the first one, as I looked at it I couldn’t help but remember my original goal was to kill that one hulking gorilla looking monster.. Well I missed my chance to kill it this time considering that it’s definitely been a long time for it to be still asleep. And now knowing that if I take my time I’ll be far better rewarded than if I went in without a plan.

Thinking this I drop from hovering and land with my spider legs then start sneaking around trying to see if a stealth attack is possible. I already know that I don’t have any stealth skills but that doesn’t mean that I can’t try my hardest to not make any noises. My dex score coming in really handy here all things considered. I'm already noticing a difference in how efficient my movement is now versus before.

In other words, I was able to get within striking range… Wait what striking range? Not leaving this up to chance but still wanting to get this fight over with so I could rectify this blunder of not having any melee weapons. I leaped towards the thing, my mana forming a club and slammed into it with both my body and the club.

And like that dead, not so much an issue now that I’m used to how they move. I then clambered on top of the corpse and absorbed it’s bones without further ado, I also finally took notice of the fact that I no longer had to use my knife like teeth to get LF but simply take it as soon as they die.

Using my senses I notice that these new bones have a similar issue to the bones I absorbed before, I almost grimace but taking trust in my new powers push the particles out.. I could actually see the black particles being pushed out at a rapid pace, gods I love getting new and better abilities, I need more.

With in 5 or so minutes my bones had gone back to their pristine state, and I started forming my first body parts since my legs, these rather than the 8 simple spider legs, I’m going to try using my abilities to make crab claws, but better, I have two reasons for doing so, one my legs can already be counted as stabbing weapons, two I distinctly remember crabs had two claws, one was a larger one that was used to crush, and the second one was used as a slashing and more detail oriented stuff. Meaning that I could deal with a wide range of resistances and other such bs that I’m sure exists in this world.

Starting off with the larger of the two claws, I start by adding the arms leading up to the claw, thicker than strictly necessary but I hope that that will pay off in the future, the claw itself I was stuck on, I started by planing how I could implement a claw that I wouldn’t need to replace anytime soon. I would need it to be able to deal way more damage than something this size should be able to cause, and I need it to be able to hold onto things so that I could use my small size to hunt larger creatures, because at this point I am quickly losing interest in fighting these things for the barely anything rewards.

Starting off with the dealing more damage I formed the rough outline of a claw, I slowly shaped it so that, the bottom half would be oval shaped and then I pressed the area near the top till it was almost a point, but I know with the amount of abuse this thing is going to be subjected to I can’t waste time and resources making something that’s going to break in one use. That means no dagger-like points yet, Then I start forming teeth on the edge making it so that the force of the blow would be more focused. I added a bottom and a top layer of these teeth so that if a few of them broke the integrity would stay at least somewhat. At this point I realized a fatal flaw with removing all those black particles, since the bones could be more dense without the added impurities.. I ran out of bones and had to stop making my claw, leaving it usable but still not done.

I need more bones then, ‘great onwards to my next victim.’ Sadly I know for a fact that I’m not going to like whatever this thing is, the reason for this sudden prophetic ability of mine would be the fact that one I wasn’t even aware the thing existed till I spotted a glimpse of it. And two I have a rather well developed sense of dislike towards snakes, why I have no idea but the point still stands. Or in this case slithers it’s way from around a rock that probably should have caught my attention if I’m being honest.

Snakes are far more dangerous than they have any right to be, but they do have the tools for it, they are mostly if not completely compact muscle they have good defence against the majority of things that live near them and they can kill you even if you killed them first. I was immune to that last one thankfully, but the pure speed and aggression that a snake is capable of is way outside of my abilities. Leaving me with no choice but to flee.. I really can't, can I? I could see just with my limited vision how large the snake was, it had to be at least 14 feet long and wider than my head at least one and a half times in fact.

I know for complete fact that snakes can move over half their entire body length in almost an instant when they are striking. That means 7 feet, I would have to move over that in as little time as it’s taking for me to think this right now. I have no chance of avoiding that, and considering the size difference it’ll be able to swallow me whole, not even leaving me the chance to use my immunity to it’s venom.

I could use my ability to fly like I would have been doing if I wasn’t trying to get used to the new weight of my body, new weight that was only on one side of me making the situation that much more tense at least for me. The snake probably hasn’t even the foggiest clue about any of my thoughts, feelings, or goals. But if I tried to fly it would definitely attack me and I have zero confidence in flying when I’ve added all this weight.

I have to survive but how am I gonna pull that feat! Using any number of my abilities would most likely get me killed, guess I need to figure out how this is going to work, as it happens unfortunately. Then as if I was the dumbest thing in the world, worrying about nothing the snake took one lick of the air, and started moving away from me.. Oh wait I’m not a food source am I? Snakes normally only kill when they want to eat, and I’m literally the size of a kind of almost large crab, with no flesh.

I’m still here and not going to die from a giant snake anytime soon. But knowing that and fully believing that and walking into any type of larger creature who’s too stupid to understand that I’m not food. Like the horned rabbits, and squirrels I think but I’ve been the one to hunt them down rather than the rabbits who seem okay with cannibalism and hence must hunt at least somewhat.

With a quickness, that I will make every attempt in my unlife to never have to use again. I find myself using my bone manipulation to lift parts of my body up, since I’m too heavy to actively fly with any speed, then propelling myself forward, using all 8 of my legs, and in the opposite direction the snake went in.

I soon find myself back in the clearing I spent the last 2 weeks, taking this as the first moment I’ve had when I was even slightly confident that the snake wasn’t just behind me, around every tree, playing with me letting me go just a little bit only to come from some obscene angle and eat me whole without me being able to fight in any way. I fall to the ground, while my race stops me from being mentaly or even physically tired, after that my entire being is in some other world of adrenaline high, not the actual thing, just the extreme exhaustion afterwards.

Unlike many races who could stop, after that and start making steps to put what happened to me behind me. I couldn’t do that, I had no way to do that, all I could do was to take but the briefest moment of silence for any other beings who were going to die from that snake. Then stand up and start making my way towards greener hunting grounds, this time making sure to not let even a single detail pass me by as I make yet another dash into the world, for glory and the betterment of my ability to survive if I play my cards right.

And soon I make contact with an enemy, also new but far less seemingly dangerous than the snake, a fairly large animal who seemingly is able to stand on its hind legs almost like how a bear would, but it is far too small to be even the smallest of bears. At most it's about 5 feet 7 inches tall when it’s standing on its back legs. And by the grace of all that is unholy and holy, I didn’t just throw myself at the thing, I’ve been watching it for the past hour. And now while I could use observe to find out far more in less time, I’ve started to feel odd whenever I use it, like I’m missing obvious things that I normally wouldn’t.

And for testing purposes I had my halves combine into one, making a copy who is incredibly close to my level of intelligence, that being the case while I was running over here I was keeping a very close eye on anything around me, while my copy was using observe to do the same. Once we got to the target I climbed a larger tree directly to the left of the bear wanna be. And me and my other half compared notes about what we saw when we were running. This gave me an idea on how observe actually works. Normally a creature has a lot of senses telling them a huge amount of stuff, the brain filters and combines this information to make it usable to said creature.

When using observe the longer you keep it active the more and more senses are redirected towards trying to figure out only one goal. And is the nail in the coffin so to speak, a good part of my senses are being used solely to focus on one thing rather than a bunch of smaller things that make up whether or not a situation is dangerous. Like the scars on the back of the mini bear. The raised white flesh maring the deep brown, making up the majority of its body, and almost redundantly white that marked the center of its chest and other oddly specific body parts, its paws, mouth, and on each of its knee caps. Why am I getting fist fighter vibes? The thing literally has boxing gloves hard coded into its paws, or I could be crazy, only one way to find out.. That's to spend more time watching the thing..

3 hours, in those not tense persay, but annoyingly interesting to say the least, hours I had learned only 2 things, one don’t ever trust observe unless you take a second to just look at something, because within the first 45 minutes I had been sitting there, another mini bear walked up into the area already standing up, the first one stood up at this point and started to.. Do nothing the second bear walked into the circle that the other bear called home with no issue, it even stopped standing up, then when they were at opposite sides of each other the second one stood, silence for all of 0.5 seconds then the two bears, it was almost like they were in a blood rage they started attacking biting kicking till they both were so damaged that I was almost about to jump in and get two free kills, thankfully I didn’t, because they at this point stood back up almost like they hadn’t been trying to kill each other just a second ago made their way over to the center of the, at this point I have no choice but to call it an arena, they stood eying eachother down.

Then the second bear who I only just know was able to tell was slightly smaller than the first one threw a very human-like right hook slamming into the first bear's jaw. I could hear the crack of bone all the way from a tree on the other side of the clearing. The first bear seemed to take no notice of the fact that it’s jaw was pointing in two separate directions, as it was already making a counter attack against the smaller bear leaning out of the way of the follow through of the smaller bear then putting it’s entire weight into a kick towards the smaller bear's knee. As the smaller one was falling the larger one used this chance to make an uppercut shifting the fall of the smaller one from onto it’s front to a fall to it’s back.

The larger one seeing it’s enemy one their back attempted to slam it’s claws into the smaller ones neck, the small one slipped under the strike standing behind the larger one, reaching towards it like a vice, the small ones armes snaked around not only the neck but also under and over the larger ones arms pinning them to its sides…

The larger bear lost consciousness, but the smaller one clearly had no experience with choking something to death as it soon let up it’s choke hold. I could see it even without the help of observe the larger one’s eyes opened before the small one could even pull it’s arms away, without further ado the large one grabbed its shoulders and chucked the smaller one to the ground. And forced the smaller one into what I imagined a bear doing a judo hold would look like the upper portion being completely pinned by both the weight of the larger one and the arms, and the lower portion being in the same situation except legs instead of arms. Then I noticed that the larger one had its arms around the small one's neck.. I now understood why the larger one had so many scars it had earned each and everyone of them, and now there would be another victim added to the list. I understood that the larger bear would not make the same mistake as the small one had, that being letting go before the enemy’s entire neck was turned at a horrid angle and you could both hear and feel the spine completely lose structural integrity.

I got to hand it to the smaller bear though, before it’s neck did the aforementioned actions, it had one final burst of strength and cut a huge claw mark from right under the larger bears hip all the way to the top of the knee, sending it roaring and forcing it to make a sudden pull causing the smaller ones existence to be snuffed out like it never existed.

Using my life detection ability I could tell the larger one wasn’t long in this world due to I’m assuming the smaller one cutting the large ones femoral artery. That was only the first thing I learned, the second thing would be something I hope to never witness again in my life.. Other things could level up. The bear was surrounded in a ball of pure black energy then like magic the sphere disappeared after 2 hours. Leaving in the place a bear 6 feet 2 inches tall with long shaggy brown hair and the patches of white had turned black, the bear also seemingly no longer had to even walk on four legs instead it could walk solely on it’s now very developed hind legs, this is when I saw something even more odd, the scars that laced it’s back now made black lines, including the newer gash in its leg.

And seeing as this thing has just gained a level I felt compelled to gtfo, considering I would have gotten my entire universe handed back to me after trying to fight that “martial bear?” I obviously have so far past zero chance I don’t want to even try. So I moved away slowly considering that I had no idea if it could sense me. Soon my tactical retreat was met with meeting something I could only describe as a god sent a normal, if not above average health, horned rabbit this could be considered a godsend because I could actually kill this thing, and because it was just a little different from the other rabbits.

Looking at it just that little bit closer, he has some similarities to the bear in the sense that it has a few scars and even seemed to hold itself with just a little bit of confidence and intelligence. I know I can handle this, so before I have any time to sike myself out of attacking the rabbit, I lunge towards his side.

Now a normal rabbit would have been dead, but this rabbit who seemingly was so close to leveling up was able to completely dodge, also a normal rabbit would not be able to even understand that I’m not your average skeleton, this one was able to at least be confused about me being a walking corpse.

I used that flash of confusion to make another attack, this time landing a clean hit on its foot, the bones of the rabbit just barely stopping me from cutting straight through the offending appendage. The rabbit was able to collect himself from the damage very well considering, and broke his foot out of my claws grasp by slamming his other foot into my claw, I was very quickly met with the sensation of the bones in my claw gaining new hairline fractures through out the claw portion of it. I thankfully let go of him and his attack pushed him away from me.

Taking stock of my conditions I can tell that my claw can handle taking one more of those kicks before I lose all ability to use it. I also notice that I can create another assistant so I decide to do that before the rabbit makes a counter attack towards me. I also needed to make note of how said rabbit was favoring that foot considerably. I doubt that he’s going to be able to out pace me if I need to run.

I tried to use my undead healing ability and soon the hairline fractures disappeared, and with it so did 90 of my mana, meaning that I had a very large advantage as long as I could last long enough for my mana to regenerate. Because I have a feeling that my little rabbit will be able to heal from any damage I cause.

Soon an imaginary smile was spreading out across my skull as I officially can do the favorite undead tactic, battles of attrition. Something can’t heal and I can, something can starve I definitely can’t and so forth. Then my concentration is interrupted by the rabbit leaping at me clearing the 6 or so feet between us in an impressive show of agility even with it’s maimed foot, I would rather not have to discover how expensive it is to repair my entire skull so I attempt to dodge under the rabbit. Only to be met by the rabbits good foot slamming into my side, throwing me sliding 3 feet away from the rabbit.

‘So your not dumb enough to let me gut you is that it?’ I stop myself from sliding any further and stand. ‘No real cause for concern, at most I took 8 damage.’ I leaped into action using a less energy intense version of the life or death running from earlier, my speed caught the rabbit off guard and I made a single snip towards their good leg. ‘The universal flaw with intelligent enemies, they can see damage coming they can also see that your trying to cripple them, I wonder if your smart enough to sacrifice your already wounded leg to save your good one, or do you have some trump care, one that would allow you to take advantage of my mistake.’

The obvious answer to a question like that was no, other than the accepting of new damage to their last good leg they tried to perform the same actions as earlier slamming their foot into my claw in an attempt to get out of my grip, unlike last time where it’s attacking limb was in good working order the current sensation could be likened to being slapped by a wet noodle, then said noodle not being able to bend any further because it wasn’t cooked all the way through.

The rabbit who I at first thought might be fairly intelligent, now is lying on the ground with a useless leg, and its other leg very quickly being sawed through by the semmi sharp teeth on my claw. I could feel the life force leaving at a brisk pace making its way upwards into a sprint. I held on no matter how non threatening it could seem, it was still a monster, I’m still a monster too and I won’t show mercy to another of my kind.

All too slowly the rabbit made its way into the afterlife, its last vestiges of strength coming and going in waves, some strong enough that it almost escaped and others only speeding it’s death. The first of those becoming more rare, and the second considering that it's still pinned to the ground, any struggle that doesn't get it out of my vice like grip brings it closer to death.

After seeing the bears final struggle I’ve been preparing for the rabbits considering the only way the bear survived was due to leveling up, and I’m quite far away from doing so myself so I would rather avoid taking that type of damage. All of my prepping both mentaly and physically were soon put to the test, felt my arm being ripped almost cleanly off of my body but used my healing to hold it steady and out heal the rabbits struggles. And like the rabbit didn’t just cause the second most damage I’ve ever taken in my life it froze then I saw the last of its life force be drained into me.

Taking this opportunity to open my profile

Name: N/A

Race: lowest undead Lv1, Single body part (Head) variant, HP 93/100, LF100/400, MP 500/500: +20 per second, U.MP 60/60

Str 10(+2)

Con 16(+5)

Wis 20(+6)

Int 20(+6)

Dex 10(+2)

Cha 12(+1)

Free points: 0

Abilities: Life detection*2-3/20, Observe-15/???, Bad aura-9/???, Bone Manipulation*2-3/100, Mana manipulation-30/???, Undead healing-10/10, Mana craft-14/50, Life force manipulation-12/??. Undead energy-6/10, Mask of unlife-???/???, Meditation*2-1/10, Split mind-5/????

Upgrades: You have maxed the level of an ability, you can upgrade them into a more powerful version, this will drop your level in them but you will keep your effectiveness in said skill.

Limitations:

Undeath- You have no normal negatives of being undead, although you find your strength, speed, and mana abilities increased during the night and day,

Undead- You have no stamina, you have no need to sleep, and any desire to do so is magickly influenced,

Hunger for life- Your body has no life in it, you must take this life from somewhere lest your unlife ends.

Head variant undead- You have forgone the use of your body in search of some greater goal, your mental abilities are more powerful, easier to upgrade and you gain new mental abilities far easier, your mana pool is now larger and is much more responsive to your wishes than before. You still have no body of your own, but you can make limbs to use, this has removed the negatives of this trait.

Mana Blessed- Somehow you have gained the attention of mana itself, your mana has gained increased awarness, and mental abilities are exponentially more powerful and easier to use.

You have unlocked a skill normally only available for high ranked undead, it allows you to heal from damage.

Life force user- Now that you have such fine control of your mana your life force is now completely under your control.

Blessed by representative of undeath mana- You were blessed by the origin of all undead mana, you find mana of the same or similar type are much easier to use and when ever a being less to or equal to in strength to the representative tries to see your status/ affect your mind they will be unable to do so. You also gain access to higher level undead abilities sooner, they are much stronger that they should be at your level.

As an undead blessed by pure undeath mana all limits on having stats vs. not having stats. Are removed as long as it was caused by your being undead, and your stats are slightly higher.

Life force cultivation- you have compressed your life force into a higher purity than an undead would normally have access to, this has made it so that you are quite capable of using your life force to heal and strengthen others. You now have a bonus to how fast you heal, how effective your Con, Str, Dex, Int, and Wis are and will be able to heal even as an undead due to your blessing from a representative of undeath.

Bone purifier- Your bones had a natural inclination for earth mana, you have removed that, leaving your mana to be able to freely move through and outside of your body. You will find a bonus to Con, and that now you can fit far more energies inside of yourself. You also will have a far easier time doing this again if you so choose. Your Str and Dex also get a bonus.

I noticed several things such as my LF hasn’t gone up even though I absorbed that entire rabbit, looking inward I see that the additional LF can’t join my current pool of LF because it’s not high enough quality. Then I noticed my skill undead healing is ready to upgrade now so that's pretty cool. But I can’t be doing nothing for another 2 weeks so better get a move on with purifying these bones and finishing up my main claw.

Thinking this I draw in the bones of the rabbit, taking note of the higher quality of these bones in comparison to other creatures, ‘these bones are much higher quality than any of the other ones, even higher than the bones that make up my body in fact.. I can’t very well accept that can I?’ I start the process of removing the impurities in my new additions then once I've done that I begin replacing the bones that make up my skull for the higher quality stuff. Making sure to add in certain features and taking note of a few oddities about my skull that I guess didn’t make much of a difference till I started messing with the general shape and design of my skull. First I expected to see a large hole on the underside of my head where my jaw is located and where my spinal column would have been. I saw neither of these two things and I honestly don’t know why I lack those, another interesting little factoid that I will be making good use of, is that the one of my traits makes it so that the size of my skull doesn't change how much of any energy I can store meaning that my new form is quite entertaining and efficient. I firstly abandoned all pretenses of a human skull because it was limiting how many attachments I could have. And it was too costly to retain a skull meant to contain a brain that never existed.

My new form consisted of an almost spider shaped body, but I added a shell onto it similar to a crab then I added segments to keep my agility, I added four more smaller legs towards the center of my body, that I could keep tucked away till I needed them, that rather than being pointy like my original eight, they were rather sharp little knifes. This was made solely from the bones of the new rabbit, I ran out before I could make myself the bases of my claws out of this higher purity bone. But now I had a swirling cloud of liquid bone that I could, and was going to, use to make my claws. I started by re-adding the base of my claw more towards the front, but offset so that it could defend a larger section of my body when I turned it. Then I made the claw in a similar fashion as earlier but this time I added armor plate-like structures at the base and the connection point for the claw. Looking at the shape the only upgrade I could think of was to lower the sizes of the teeth so that I could have a more saw-like effect when I grabbed things, I still left a few teeth that were the original size for grabbing but I understood the value of bleeding damage.

And for my smaller claw I felt like the whole cutting thing was handled by my knife legs and I could now apply a bleeding effect to things using my large claw. I was almost tempted to make another large claw but by comparing the cost to make one I was just that little bit short so this new.. Why didn’t I grab the horn? I stopped focusing on my claw and made my way over to the rabbit husk, I no longer was able to remove the horn via a rock, but I did have a shiny new claw needing to be put through its paces. So the process to remove the horn was about to begin.. And that's when I realized that the horn was attached by the skull and I had not moments ago been using the bones to make a new skull for myself. Being ever more thankful that I couldn’t blush I grabbed the horn and pulled it out with a sickening plop.

I then tried to use my bone manipulation and for the first time since I leveled it I experienced resistance from a bone. If I had eyebrows they would have furrowed in confusion and budding anger, but alas I didn’t have those so I was forced to keep my emotions inside my skull plate. I was unable to stop myself from sitting down in quiet acceptance that I might be here for a good long while, thankfully I have 20 years before my fellow reincarnated join me in this world so in the grand scheme of things what's another couple of weeks? My honest answer is nothing, less than that even. Because if I survived by spending a week or more sitting down grinding my skills to ever greater heights then so be it. But I also was unwilling to not have my other minds doing something productive. I had as few as I could get away with start purifying my LF, this expense in processing power lead me to discovering the new limits on the split mind skill since it leveled up, I could make a grand total of 5 barely faster than basic level intelligence, the number of them I gain per level up seems very random but it could be based off my stats and because my stats are high I gain more helpers? But the good news is that I could now make a single helper who was in every way my equal intellectually and then add in a single slightly better intelligence.

So I went for mid-maxing and put the bare essential intelligence required to keep the function of purifying my ill begotten LF running, then I had the remaining two semi smart helpers start using some of my skills because having a higher level of any of them couldn’t hurt in any way. I also upgraded my undead healing so that I could at least say that I had done something with it. After taking care of all the more menial tasks I went back to focusing on getting this horn under my control.