B5 Chapter 66 – Advanced State of Being

A person’s attributes naturally accumulated as they gained levels, and it was difficult to quantify exactly how much each number meant. Someone with thirty-six strength was indeed stronger than someone with thirty-five, but it wasn’t a critical edge. Someone with five hundred strength against someone with five hundred and one wouldn’t notice any appreciable difference.

But someone with five hundred strength against someone with four hundred and ninety nine… that was a hell of a difference.

Every hundred was a threshold that increased the effect of an attribute by roughly a tenth. Having crossed the threshold five times, a slayer with five hundred strength was significantly stronger than one at four hundred and ninety nine.

With the bonus attributes from reaching platinum, Tyron had achieved a threshold in every aspect except manipulation, and his intelligence now exceeded eight hundred.

After crossing the eighth threshold, he was starting to reach a tipping point where his intelligence had gained the momentum of a runaway boulder. Intelligence was the mental attribute affiliated with power, and as a result of his latest gains, his personal store of magick boomed within him like an ocean. When he had first been blessed with his Class, he had never imagined that it was possible for a single person to contain so much arcane energy.

If his body weren’t so robust, he doubted he could contain it without severe side effects. As it was, his constitution had crossed the fifth threshold and he felt as durable as if his skin were formed of hardened bone.

Even more stunning was the power that surged through him when he put his new abilities to the test.

Tyron had an immense amount of work to do. He needed to test and develop his new capabilities, he needed to rest and recover from what he had endured in the Realm of the Dead, and he needed to reforge his entire horde, make them all from scratch once more, better and stronger than they were before.

An impossible task for a single Necromancer to accomplish, but Tyron wasn’t alone.

For two days, he sat on the grassy field, eating wild vegetables and cooked game that his minions hunted for him. Fresh, clear water from the nearby stream washed away his thirst, and day by day he recovered, the Death Magick that had accumulated within his body dissipating over time.

With proper food and rest, he rebounded rapidly, his superhuman endurance helping to improve his condition at an absurd pace.

Yet, Tyron didn’t have time to waste. Seated, with his back leaning against a stump, he was nevertheless exceptionally busy.

If his body was at ease, hands folded in his lap, eyes closed and shoulders loose, his mind was anything but. Conduits, invisible bonds formed of complex magick, thrummed with power as the Necromancer exerted his control over his undead. Anything he couldn’t do himself, he had minions to do for him, and he had the power to act through them.

Why allocate a portion of his own abilities to the undead when he could simply control them to do it himself? It was harder, much, much harder, but taking the easy road was never the path to the greatest results.

Teams of skeletal mages and his precious demi-liches worked around him, arcane energy crackling in the air as he conducted experiments, controlling the movement of their hands and speaking Words of Power through their skulls.

Splitting his focus in this way was difficult, impossible for a regular person, but with the power of the Unseen poured into him like never before, he was more than capable of the impossible.

Master Willhem was left to work on his own projects while Tyron took control of his other demi-liches, using them and his cadre of skeleton mages to enact several of his projects at the same time.

First and foremost amongst his needs was to understand his new Raise Dead ritual. Throughout all of his Classes and selections, he had never been offered an opportunity to improve the ritual into a new ability, but now it had finally happened, and he needed to master it as soon as possible.

Tyron had unbound a dozen of his own skeletons to provide the materials, and he concentrated hard as his minions stood in a circle, testing different sigil combinations as he dredged up the hidden knowledge in his mind. To one side, the former noble Lady Erryn stood, a leather-bound volume held in one hand and a pen in another, scribbling down the notes and observations Tyron instructed her to.

Of all his undead, she was the one who resented his control the most. He could feel her soul screaming and writhing, consumed with a fury that truly seemed endless. Most others were not able to maintain the rage for so long, succumbing to despair before finally accepting their plight as undead servants. Not Recillia Erryn. She fought against his control just as hard now as she had the day she had been raised.

It was almost refreshing.

Second in importance was mastering the improved version of the magickal thread that bound his undead together. This was the ability that made skeletal minions possible in the first place and was fundamental to their usefulness. Without muscles or tendons, skeletons relied on magick to move, with a woven fabric of energy acting in the place of regular flesh. Since his Awakening, Tyron had made many revisions to his designs and improved the quality of his threads ten times over.

Yet it still hadn’t been enough. Unless his skeletons could exert more strength while using less magick, he wouldn’t be able to create minions capable of going toe-to-toe with the enemies he needed to fight. Even now, after reaching platinum rank, he remained obsessed with taking the basic skeleton as far as he possibly could. After leaving the Realm of the Dead, he had begun to think there may not be a way for such basic undead to match against the ghouls or constructs he had faced there.

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With his ascension, his opinion had dramatically changed.

Two wights worked together, their skeletal hands moving in sequence, channeling power between them. In the air, a dense pocket of magick was formed, slowly taking shape as it thinned and stretched. Creating these new threads was far more difficult than the original version, requiring a great deal more power. Even so, he was confident the result would be worthwhile. Although he was still in the early stages of experimentation, the results were promising. The new threads were much more durable and capable of exerting far more strength, yet were far harder to weave.

Which meant all of his designs needed to be thrown out of the window and started again. For now he was still working on the best way to produce this new form of thread and hadn’t even begun to address the weaving issues.

Third and final amongst his personal research teams was the group investigating the possibilities of his new Bone Forging abilities. Considering all of the armour and weapons his skeletons bore were created using these techniques, any improvements would directly contribute to the capabilities of his most simple minions.

Tyron had already found a way to transform the properties of regular bone by soaking it in concentrated Death Magick, which eventually turned it into Black Bone. His own armour was formed of this material, and though it wasn’t on the level of steel, it was far lighter and much easier to make.