Walking through a barren land, the sound of crunching bones under his foot made the world even more eerie. That said he was used to it as it was his home.

This person was none other than Bargo, Milo’s most developed and intelligent skeleton. He was also a pretty weird skeleton and it could be seen because his bones looked rough like there were growths all over especially his back which had large blocks of bone matter without use as if his bones had become infested with cancer.

This was a direct result of Milo altering the skeleton to produce bone matter so that they could use it. Of course, even with bone supplement and enhancement pills he had only reached the limit of his form and it was not limiting his body's growth.

That said, he was Milo’s representative in this world and had long since entered undead cities to represent him and obtain knowledge for him.

Don’t underestimate the ability of powerful undead, they can easily feel the servant brand on all the skeletons coming in and within this is the vitality of the master. Because Milo is a mortal and living, they naturally know he is the servant of a living necromancer and are only vaguely more lenient on him because no one knows when that person will gain the capacity to summon any of them with their bodies and destroy and humiliate them.

One minor benefit is being able to enter the city as a simple skeleton soldier where a normal skeleton soldier would not even be able to pass the gates.

He reached the top of a bone mountain and found before him a massive wall forged of powerful bones. The gates were protected by Bone fiends, creatures composed entirely of bones and were extremely dangerous while their leader was a black bone armor wearing death knight who commanded them under the order of the lord.

Each bone fiend was over 6 meters tall while the walls were easily 20 meters tall. Amazingly you could see a massive castle that was hundreds meters tall very far into the city and at the very top was one of the most dangerous beings in the netherworld, a bone dragon.

Unlike Scar, who was a lizard with wings, this was the skeleton of a real dragon from a world with such creatures.

This trip was important because Bargo was carrying a huge bag with many jars and was something Milo had spent the last two month's preparing.

At the gate the death knight stopped him and just checked his bag.

“What are all these pills for?” he asked.

“Trade.” Bargo said and took out a piece of white nether paper with a trade offer. He read it and nodded and returned it, “Go in.”

He was allowed in.

This trade was for a very important but singular pill recipe extremely vital for low rank undead. Undead contain a certain form of development but there is a limit to one aspect and that is their souls. Skeletons in particular face a lot of trouble with this, the way to fix this was making a special pill which speeds up the formation of a special thing in their bodies called an undead crystal. The pill helps gather death power and blend it with the undead’s soul, while enhancing it and making it grow, both energies are blended and crystalized causing a lot of soul development and growth.

If things were done properly and they underwent a large development at this moment they would transform into a higher ranked species and they would cause a huge feedback to Milo himself allowing him greater combat potential.

He walked through the large city without looking at the countless powerful undead and their servants because he could easily be crushed just for looking and preceded to the large death alchemist pavilion where the offer came from and handed the trade offer as a means to get in and was lead to the room while the person that gave the offer was called.

By the time the person arrived, Bargo had already properly arranged the offered items. Each jar contained 50 pills. Which pills and how many were they? Well, 300 Bone Supplements, 300 Bone Enhancement pills and 300 Bone Growth Supplements.

“I have brought the requested pills for the trade of the recipe of the Soul crystal congealing pill.” Bargo said without looking up.

The creature looking was a cold skeleton wearing a ragged robe and holding a staff. This was a dangerous undead mage, they are the lowest rank of magic using undead but they are extremely dangerous for anything in their own rank or lower. Above them are Death Mage, then Lich and finally Elder Lich.

He sat down while Bargo remained standing and opened the jars and looked at the pills before closing them, “Your master is quite skilled, these are quite good and contain the breath of life from a living world making them higher quality.” He said simply and reached into his cloak and pulled a piece of white netherworld paper and tossed it to Bargo’s feet. It was a rolled up piece of paper and looked to be at least two or three meters in length, unfolded.

“The trade is concluded, you may leave.” He said.

“I thank you for your mercy.” Bargo said bowing and taking the paper and left.

He didn’t spend any unnecessary time here, until he was at least able to enter with his own strength, he had only the status of the servant of a necromancer as his only safekeeper and it wasn’t much of one if he did something offensive.

His body was not his own, he would not be even as strong as he is now if not for Milo so he had to make sure to preserve it as best he can.

He ran far for almost half a day but time in this realm was different from the mortal worlds, even if several days passed in this one it would only be a much shorter time on earth.

When he reached a certain valley the scenery changed as white bone trees began to appear more often and at their roots were parasitic plants.

Most of the trees were still young and the plants were equally very young sprouts and although they were parasitic plants, they helped each other to survive in this land of death.

A growling could be heard from a large body that was sucking up death energy to heal large damage that had formed from the battles, scar was in the middle of this tiny bit of woods while many other common but white boned skeletons were carefully watching over a large field of herbs while the ground was completely littered with crushed bones instead of random loose bones.

This is the difference that Milo had discovered, crushing bones into bone meal was many times better for the herbs so within 500 meters all around, for nearly 5 meters of depth, the entire forest was planted in white dirt formed purely of bone meal and the higher quality of the plants showed it.

As he arrived, Scar opened his eyes and saw Bargo and knew it would soon be time. Bargo stopped near an area of extremely faint death energy which is a special connection zone to Milo and the only area he could send a signal to his master. Every necromancer has something like this but only someone with their servant brand can actually find it.

Bargo walked into that space and sent a signal.

A moment later he felt a pull and he was summoned by Milo and walked out into the life filled world while the dead world’s connection was cut and connected to Milo.

“Master, I have finally obtained it.” He said and took the paper from one of his gloves where he had hidden it.

“Great.” He said and Milo started to read it and asked what the unknown materials were.

“Are they easy to acquire?” he asked.

“Some have naturally grown within the small grove we have cultivated with much effort.” He said.

“Good, actively plant them since it would mean I can constantly get feedback from many skeletons when experimenting. Get the material and call me when you are ready.” Milo said and sent Bargo back and after a bit making the skeletons gather the material he was pulled out once more.

Milo happily took the items and began to process everything while being extremely careful with timing everything and for over an hour he cooked, ground, boiled then cooked again and purified before finally using the final ingredient in a pressure cooker with the nearly finished solution and it produced a huge pressure that was only sustained because of the thick metal pot and the special filtered pressure valve which didn’t released the internal substance, only steam. He had to get it custom made so that he wouldn’t lose anything and after almost an hour of nearly exploding pressure he finished and slowly relieved the pressure and opened the pot to see if they succeeded or not.

“This is so weird.” He said with a smile as he carefully grabbed it with a tong like gripper and what came out were rounded crystal like pills. Bargo curiously looked into the pot and was shocked to find ten of these while a backed dull white substance surrounded everything showing it had gathered up in these ten while the rest became waste.

Milo broke the baked solution and removed the ten pills and carefully stored them side by side in confirmed medical containers made from clear quartz glass containers. Quartz glass had an ability to keep energy substances inside. Of course, normal pills didn’t need it but something like the vitality pills needed at least a thin layer because it produces a certain amount of vitality which is a form of life force.

“Let’s see…” Milo said taking the jar and slowly examining the recipe slowly examined all ten and nodded, “So there are 9 low quality and 1 middle quality.” He said.

“How is such an analysis confirmed?” Bargo asked curiously.

Milo opened the jar and took out two pills.

“This one on the right is the middle quality, if you look close, at the center it looks like there is a small flame.” He said.

Bargo walked close and looked and surprisingly a flame was actually there and very similar to the soul flames undead had.

“High quality pills would have a red flame with a purple crystal. Alright, this is good enough for several attempts.” Milo said storing the low quality one before taking out a few other jars with pills.

“Are you doing an experiment?” Bargo asked.

“Yep, we are upgrading you.” he said.

“Already? My bone growth has not grown.” He said.

“We don’t need to wait.” he said as he took out six pills, two of each bone growth pill and finally the middle quality pill.

“Eat them all, your bones will grow rapidly as the defect I gave you will improperly distribute your bone mass and we will use that while your soul evolves. I will help you evolve for sure.” He said with a smile.

“I understand, master.” He said and took the seven pills and put them in his jaws.

Coming in contact with his bone, it began to break down and get absorbed but most of all the soul crystal congealing pill.

He instantly shouted as his body began to react instantly, the bone supplement and bone enhancement would normally just strengthen but when combined with the growth pill it has another effect, the bones are growing and normally they would help the bone grow normally and with equal strength but in this same situation the bones began to thicken and everything until different bones began to meld.

Milo watched as even the bone armor began to expand as the bones melded with it and even the bone sword was getting affected.

At the same time his soul flames were getting stronger and began to gather to his head and Milo finally moved. He activated undead biology and the natural image of bargo appeared and he pulled all the armor off and began to add pieces and the real one started to move. Death energy began to appear from his body and he started to levitate as his bones began to crack and fall off and slowly grind down into grains.

Soon the soul flames began to burst from the crack zones and started to melt the grains as they gathered towards the pieces but unlike the first pieces the armor was starting to get more advanced and forming piece by piece of the armor but not building while the bone matter was breaking and slowly returning to normal but floating all over the body were slowly forming pieces and the first piece to form was chest armor.

It should be said that Bargo still did expand to 190 cm tall through all this and his armor was matching his size.

The front and back piece of his chest armor connected and his bones released soul flames inside. The pieces began to burn even more and turn even better as death energy and soul energy blended and connected the pieces which were turning shinier.

The pieces slowly formed and even pins formed to connect the pieces and they fit the spots all the way to the hands.

Bargo shouted as his body was covered with armor and as the last pieces formed the energy was pulled into each piece and were contained releasing only from his exposed skull and looked like the picture of a burning skull as he roared in pain while around his head, pieces of helmets finished forming and began to connect from the neck slowly concentrating the flames until the finally piece connected and all the power was sealed but the changes were not done. Above were still burning bone matter and the bone handle formed first and unlike before, a true blade formed from the get go and fell down in front of him while the rest of the matter turned into a flat face and was large enough to cover his upper body and it dropped right next to the sword. It was a kite shield.

Milo watched all the changes and finished when he looked back at Bargo’s DNA and grinned as he saw all his defects that he had created being broken down completely. He would not be able to do this to Bargo again but he didn’t intend to. The skeleton soldier was upgrading and his bones and armor began to grow under the mystical force of the energies until he was just over 210 cm tall.

Finally all that power gathered in his head and at the center a small crystal orb formed and was flooded with all the power and kept breaking until all the power was gathered and it finally completely formed before it released its power through the skeleton.

When it succeeded, Milo was watching when suddenly a large feedback came smashing into his head and he instantly grabbed his head as he felt the change in the spiritual energy.

It wasn’t any tiny growth, it was proportional to the time Bargo finally formed conscious thought when it finally became a skeleton soldier, he felt his head hurting but all this spiritual feedback was forcing his power to grow.

He suddenly thought of something and gathered his power into his head, right on the forehead and shot the energy into the area where the third eye acupoints.

The force of the energy was so large that the barrier didn’t hold and the spiritual energy began to flood into the upper dantian and fill his entire head but the feedback wasn’t hurting his head and instead was being consumed and transformed into spiritual power at an amazing rate almost twice as fast even as more energy rushed into the containment and he felt the immense growth.

He grinned through the pain as he looked at Bargo, opening his eyes, which were like two red lights and grabbed the sword and shield before dropping to his knee, “I am at your service my lord. You have granted me the power of a skeleton knight and now I will follow you to death.” He said.

“Good, I will keep you to that.” Milo said. “How much stronger are you?” He asked.

“I cannot compare myself to what I was before. My power is that much greater.” he said.

“We will soon see if that is true then.” He said but didn’t try anything. He also didn’t try to do Scar, the feedback was big enough from Bargo and he still had his eagle, scar and a few other skeletons that he felt important but thinking of something he asked, “What is the difference between you and a death knight?” he asked.

“Death knights are a higher form through the development of my soul crystal. I must train my mastery of death energy and grow my crystal. However, to truly grow I require a steed bonded with my soul.” he said.

“Does it matter if it is a zombie or does it have to be a skeleton?” he asked.

“Skeleton.” he said.

Milo nodded and began to think about obtaining and then start the process of strengthening it and building a warhorse armor for the entire body. He wanted to make the most fearsome death knight.

He had no plans to make a dragon knight out of Scar and Bargo, he doubted that was possible either since he asked for a horse.

“Once your feedback finishes filling we will change Scar as well.” he said.

“I must warn you master, there is a reason skeleton dragons exist and zombie dragon’s are immensely rare. The flesh of an undead does not grow without immense nutrition injection.” He explained.

“That is fine.” Milo said as he pushed a shelf which revealed an entire stock of still untapped pills he has been preparing in private for a while. “The feedback you guys will give me will allow me to make my own soldier force, now come help me move some things.” He said and with the skeleton knight’s expanded capacity they started to work.

***

In another house, Lola was smiling as she finished playing with her own Digital spawn which was a much better newborn than glop since Tristan’s life force was stronger when it was made. It looked like a little chick and it hopped about. The feed took the form of seeds that it would stuff itself with.

After it ate, it would spend a short time before it leaked the waves of life force which returned to Lola and flowed through her hand heating her body where it passed as it was more pure until it reached her heart and fell in going deeper as it was denser.

Lily was next to her watching, “That hero sure was smart in the way to unlock this strange container. I had not thought such a thing existed even in myself.” she said.

“Yeah but it was painful, having 50% of my life force suddenly pushed into that spot was really painful but my life force is getting denser just by filling it and the rest is also gathering over time.” She said.

“You should probably train it like the hero told you too.” She said.

“Okay.” Lola said and sat cross legged and began to actively spin her life force in the acupoint just over her own heart and spinning it in a peculiar method, the walls of that space began to get more energetic while the life force was stretched and blended and got compressed.

She continued for about ten minutes until she frowned when suddenly she felt something new in her life force and it dropped down and began to gather a huge amount of life force as it grew.

“Lily.” She said.

“Keep doing it.” The demon said and unsummoned her self sending her life force into the heart and Lola instantly felt a large pressure as the denser energy began to suck up all the life force growing until it filled about a tenth of the space but it released a great deal of heat but then it released a suction force through her heart and the loose life force began to gather faster and faster and pulled in at the heart until all the life force was sucked up by this new energy and when it was done, Lola finally regained some control and was able to move it just like life force and instantly summoned Lily with 1% of that energy.

To her immense shock, the demon that was supposed to be only 10 cm in height appeared almost 40 tall and she had more of her own features.

She looked at the form she had and grinned, “You actually achieved it!” She said.

“What happened?!” Lola asked.

“You’ve obtained Life Essence, it is a compressed form of Life force with almost 4 times more energy but many times less mass. For us Demons obtaining life essence means we gain the capacity to evolve into an even higher race. Most of the time we need countless centuries to reach even our current form and even more to produce the first bits but now we can use this to evolve. Furthermore you can now obtain minions.” She said.

“Huh?” Lola said.

“In the demon hierarchy there are ranks, in your contract I am your first contract, the four others are servants under me and are naturally weaker than me. Finally under them are minions, demons greatly weaker than them. This system is called the lord system, I am the lord, the four are servants and the minions are civilians. The contract for minions allows them to earn 0.05% of the life force generated in this world but it allows you to have hundreds of dimwitted minions that can help you do a lot and they require very little power to reach their peak capacity.” She explained.

“I see… Do I need to go into hell again?” she asked.

“Yes but the only minion demons take are imps, they can grow up to be useful but they are numerous and easy to train.” She said happily.

“Alright… but will the small bit I have be safe to go in?” She asked.

“You won’t waste as much, the equivalent amount you used the first time only and you don’t need to go out in the world because we have plenty of imps under our command already. We will just have to see how many minions each of the four servants can command.” Lily said.

“What about you?” Lola asked.

“Nope, I command the direct servants, sadly I don't feel the expansion of servant capacity yet. Maybe it is the limit of my own strength limiting that but we will definitely change that from now on. My power will definitely grow from now on.” She said.

“Okay… let me get ready because the cave is still really hot.” She said and went to prepare for the hot hellish landscape before opening the crack into the demon realm and they began to work and bind the imps. After a few hours all four servants were in full command of 100 imps each forming four small armies.

She retreated to her home and they began to try out to see if there were more abilities and how to properly use imps and how much life force to get them to their peak strength and how strong that actually was.

***

Shoji sat frowning as he replayed the video that Chasm Might had left him showing the physical manifestation of power he had used to teach them how to process their energy in the way he did. Most of the processing was done inside the dantian so it didn’t matter to them which one but it needed to be inside.

That said, Shoji has naturally done research into energy. Mental energy is a psychic energy but going in deeper, it is the most primitive form of psychic energy, in other words, it is a very non concentrated and weak psychic power which cannot even be used for psychic abilities directly.

The problem in this is that because it was weak, it was also dispersed and opening the dantian required pressure.

He could only sigh as he picked the acupoint next to the mind's eye, the one in the center of his forehead, and pushed that energy that was loose in his brain into that. It still was very hard because there wasn’t much pressure and he instantly felt a headache as the energy eventually got enough pressure to enter but it was extremely painful as it moved down towards the upper dantian but the barrier, despite being thinnest here, held on until the connection was nearly bursting with nearly all his mental energy before finally letting it through.

His head was sweating but as it began to fill up his forehead started to get hot as all the openings were opened up and the mental energy spread naturally and formed a flow.

“Finally.” he said before he calmed down and then began to spin the tiny bit of power which barely filled the space and with that it almost gathered everything at the center.

He kept going but in doing this he also noticed that everything was getting compressed. He hoped that it would work.

He had started at 8 pm after dinner meaning he would be undisturbed and he had turned off the lights like he had gone to sleep. He had shut his phone to remove disturbances and just sat there through the night. His mind naturally generated mental energy which gathered and was constantly compressed and the faint morning light appeared in the early 5 am sky as the sun started to approach the horizon, all that power was spinning nearly in a tiny point and finally everything was squeezed and that tiny drop burst releasing a puff of concentrated power of true psychic energy.

When it happened, Shoji fainted and fell backwards completely out and that tiny bit of energy began to flow and started to spread through his brain causing it to light up and slowly produce more energy.

When his family noticed his lack of presence they went to find him unconscious but he had assumed something might happen and wrote a note saying that he was training his mental energy in a test and might remain unresponsive.

His mother just carefully covered him and called the school to justify his absence today and left it like that. Through the day the energy slowly grew and the previous mental energy produced was slowly converted into psychic energy until it became natural for his brain to produce that force instead and it began to gather and he slept peacefully the whole day.