I continued my search for almost half an hour, but all the skeletons I encountered had formed groups with at least two of the stronger undeads. I didn’t dare engage them and in some cases I barely avoided being discovered.

I got the impression that my general situation was just getting worse and worse every time I took a step forward. The groups of undead became stronger every time I did something that caused a stir.

At this point it was clear to me that I would have to gather as many crystals as possible before the necromancers rearranged their minions once again, otherwise I might not be able to keep up with them next time. Assuming I could even struggle through it this time.

Of course there was always the possibility of simply leaving the castle if things became too complicated, but the chances of meeting undead that had spells I could learn and mana capacity I could absorb, such as the spectres, were far lower.

And if I ever wanted to use any of the other bodies in my hideout, I would have to return anyway. Therefore, I wanted to avoid this course of action if possible. Besides, leaving because I couldn’t beat an enemy just didn’t feel right.

But at this moment, it wasn’t time to worry yet. With the addition of the new spells I had plenty of potential ways to combat the undead. There was no way I would just give up until I had exhausted all possibilities.

The next group of undead I encountered consisted of seventeen skeletons and two spectres that were currently facing away from me. Considering myself lucky that there were no fighter-zombies among them, I initiated my attack.

First was an ice shards shot towards one of the spectres. I made it longer than usual and increased its speed. The combination of more mass and more speed would hopefully ensure that it could pierce the air shield without losing too much of its effectiveness.

Just before the ice shard was about to hit, I used sound manipulation to create a loud noise in front of the undead. This noise covered the impact sound of my ice shard and caused the second spectre and the skeletons to move forward with the intention of investigating its source.

Meanwhile the first spectre had been hit and turned towards me to retaliated with an ice shard of its own. I quickly evaded and began running from the group of undead, drawing the single spectre away from them.

When the distance was wide enough to prevent the main group from hearing the sounds of out fight, I stopped running and faced the spectre that was alone now. What followed was a prolonged fight in which I experimented on how different combinations of mass, speed and shape influenced the ice shards ability to piece the air shield.

During the tests I noticed that the spectres rate of fire had slowed down considerably compared to the beginning. Thinking about it I realized that the continuous use of air shield had most likely drained its mana reserves. This gave me an idea.

In my next attack I got close to the spectre and then, instead of a single shard of ice, I created a large number of smaller fragments and shot all of them off at the same time. Their mass and speed were incomparably smaller than that of a normal ice shot, but when they made contact with its air shield, the spectre shook shortly before falling to the ground.

As expected, the large number of impacts had used up the last of the spectres mana, causing its flight spell to fail. Unluckily this version of ice shard, which I arbitrarily named ’ice burst’, also burned through most of my own mana and it required a bit of preparation time to create the fragments.

Just when I was about to smash the spectres skull, it rose into the air again. I could only grab onto one of its arms before it got out of my reach. Burdened with this new weight it couldn’t ascend any further.

I realized that, at this moment, it used all of its mana to try to fly upwards and quickly shot an especially strong ice shard towards its head before it could escape my grasp. The spectres skull was shattered by the shard and the rest of its body went limp.

I avoided the falling bones and collected the crystal as fast as possible. Having collected the crystal, I checked the difference in my mana capacity as soon as possible. As it turned out I was capable of shooting 28 standard ice shards in a row.

The difference was around two shards worth of mana, disappointingly little compared to the spectres original capacity. But considering how many spectres were wandering the castle, the combined effect of all their crystals should still be considerable. At least it would be enough to never again worry about running out of mana because of firing a few ice shards.

Motivated, I began searching for the rest of the undead group the spectre had belonged to. While I was fighting the first spectre they hadn’t moved too far from their last position. This time I just openly attacked the spectre and drew it away from the other slower skeletons by having it follow me around a few corners until I could be sure they wouldn’t be able to find us.

The fight itself wasn’t very spectacular. I simply bombarded the spectre with ice shards until its skull cracked. It took a long time, but I got some important targeting practice out of it. The ice burst only worked on close targets because the force with which the single fragments moved was rather small. Being able to accurately hit a moving spectre further away was essential.

After absorbing the crystal, the last task left was to destroy the skeletons. I considered using the same method as with the last group of skeletons, but decided against it, since there was still something I had to try. I wanted to test how much offensive potential the ‘push’ spell had. For this purpose, I took a metal rod from a nearby room and grabbed it with two of my claws before returning to the remnants of the undead group.

I approached the skeletons from behind and quietly climbed the up the left wall to around head height. Then I shot an ice shard to gain their attention. As expected, soon all of them staggered towards me. Just before they reached me I raised the rod and used ‘push’ behind me with full strength. The rebound catapulted me right through the rows of the skeletons, smashing a few skulls in the process. The momentum caused me to hit the wall behind the skeletons with considerable force.

Luckily my body didn’t take any damage. Since I had confirmed the effectivity of push, I release the rod and began drawing the skeletons behind me while slowly wearing them down with ice shards. The process went without any difficulties and. Afterwards I quickly collected the crystals and moved on.

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There won’t be a chapter next week, because I have to learn for the last tests of the year.