jack - what in hell we're you thinking . why did you suddenly cut my head off. didn't you say you would use magic .
me - how else did you think that I was going to save you . I can barely use corpse levitation on myself how do you think I can do it for others .
jack - leave it be , how do you propose we get out of here .
( presently we we're stuck on tree inside the pit or to be more precise Jack's and mine head and my two hands were on the tree.)
(after making jack read the incantation , as I hoped the world will was provoked and almost all the the wolves had chased after us . naturally the net could not handle that much weight and collapsed at the last moment making all of us fall . but at that moment using my blade I cut of Jack's head and used a spell on my body to make my head and one of my arms , which had Jack's head float and move to the tree. )
me - my death Mana was almost depleted due to using a simple corpse levitation . I am recovering and in roughly half an hour I can use the same spell to gently drop us down.
jack - just use the spell now .
me - you want fall in the middle of your descent , if that's what you want but I don't want that so wait .
(WHILE THIS WAS HAPPENING , SOMEWHERE DEEP IN THE PIT . )
(one could see a wolf . one of it's legs was badly broken and something seemed to have Impaled it bodies . half of it snout was missing as if something had bitten it off . but all of these all weren't the weird thing , the weird thing was that the wounds on the wolves body were smoking as if something was burning it.
the wolf was limping at a slow pace and seemed to be looking for something
after a while the wolf paused . in front of it were bones which completely broken . upon looking at this the smoke in the wounds intensified . but this time the smoke seemed to gather and form a ghostly figure . the region around the ghosts eyes seemed to become more clarified as it looked at the bones . meanwhile the wolf underneath the ghost seemed to have caught on fire as parts of it was quickly becoming ashes .
mysterious voice - an undead dared to enter this holy Land .
( saying this the ghost exploded as the wolf beneath collapsed . )
(AFTER HALF AN HOUR)
jack - how long before we reach the end of this cliff.
me - about another five minutes
jack - until then just stop speaking . first you cut of my head and then torture me with your blabber for half an hour . I swear that if I have to remain in this bodiless state a bit longer I will start spewing blood .
me - just calm down , just a bit more and we will reach down .
(after a while .)
jack - next time I am making the plan . this body is already pretty weak , now it's weaker .it definitely can't handle your plans
( naturally , after we reached the end of the pit . among groups of bodies of giant wolf , we naturally found our bodies . the bones were completely damaged , most of them were cracked and few split into two pieces . but the rearrangement , didn't take whole lot of time as we neared our bodies . the parts flew on their own and reached there respective parts. the split bones recombined and some of the cracks closed in on themselves . )
(seeing this I was bit shocked , but calmed down very quickly . the scene just now was very similar to undead regeneration , a skill that only undead could possess . but the skill was sometimes present sometimes in possessors too . it was like a subconscious reaction of the soul . the same thing happen when wounds are healed , the flesh grow in a specific way returning the body to a specific shape . the same thing was happening to us , but in our case it was soul rather than the DNA which decided the shape of our body .)
Me - you heal up , I have work to do .
( saying this I went to the nearest wolf body
even my body was under going the same process as Jack but unlike him I had a lot of work . I stood right next to it and began to chant , as my Mana filled the body . after five minutes of manipulating Mana to form complex structures in the dead bodies . I managed to wake this undead up . five minutes was bad especially for such a spell . now I had to use a really long time to reanimate all these bodies , but I had to do it .)
( you know what the most irritating work in the world is , repeating the same thing a thousand times though In my case it was fifty two times . so right now I had army fifty two undead giant wolves. now came the biggest problem of them all , levitating them all out of the pit . )
( just levitating my arm and head nearly drained all my Mana , naturally the cost of levitating them all was ridiculous for the present me . so naturally I had to increase the amount of Mana I had . )
(Mana was a source of energy in this universe . nobody knows for sure exactly what Mana . some believe that it is the life force of the world that they live ,some believe it is by product of our own life force .while nobody knows what it is , it is one of the most sought after resource in all the world .
naturally there were techniques which could modify our body and allow us to store more. these techniques would also change the nature of Mana . there were many types of Mana death Mana (mine) ,holy Mana , dragon mana etc. .
the technique I practice is know as "the Phoenix skeleton" .I had no idea why it was named as I only basic chants in it .as I got more skilled at it I would learn other parts of it . if I tried to learn more advanced chants without having a foundation in the basic ones I could go mad . )
(using the basic chants I was filling my body with Mana . my body was like a empty bottle which I was filling with Mana).
(after a while l managed to levitate the corpses up . as I had expected the chants had managed to boost my Mana storage capacity by a lot . right now I could cast three spells. one was the 'create undead spell ' ,second one was 'levitate corpse ' and the third was ' death bolt ' though using it consumed fifty percent of my present Mana storage , it had a pretty terrifying effects , at least at my present level. )
(I would need to recharge my Mana twice to complete the levitation . so that would mean that it would roughly take six hours to levitate the body . it had already been half a day since the summoning and with this most of the first day was over . we we're expecting an attack or at least the scouts in roughly a week , so we had roughly five days to build an army . if my luck was nice I would be given five days , with one day in reserve in case of emergencies. it was nowhere close enough to build a proper army . )
( FOR THESE FIVE DAYS NOTHING INTERESTING OR IMPORTANT HAPPENS .SO WE WILL SWITCH TO A LOG FORM WHERE ALL THE KEY POINTS OF THE DAY WILL BE SPECIFIED )
DAY 1 - after levitating fifty wolves upwards , we left . I forgot that Jack was still in the pit . remembered after an hour of roaming ,had to run back and her him out . he actually tried to attack me before being attacked by four wolves . then he calmed down ,we continued roaming , we found nothing .
DAY 2 - we encountered the sting wolf pack . known for their sharp teeth and very fast speed , but loss of flesh was not a big deal for the giant wolf . we managed to deal with a clan of roughly a hundred sting wolves , with quite a heavy losses we list almost thirty giant wolves . raising them was pretty tough , though . they happen to be one if the tough species . the tough species were the beings who's body was not receptive of mana . raising them was roughly two times harder , so it took most of the second day to summon this beings . .
DAY 3- today we had managed to get two clans of undead . one was of bone poison snake . there were not many snakes roughly twenty of them . but I had to sacrifice about twenty five of my giant wolves and twenty sting wolves . this was due to their bone poison which could corrode even the bones .
the second clan we met today was of a sting wolf pack which were roughly forty five in number . with them I had to five giant wolves , roughly one twenty sting wolves and twenty bone poison snakes . the bone poison snake was a welcome addition .
DAY 4 - on this day we found nothing , except the position of a few blood iron trees , which we had a lot of them by now . but my familiarity with the basic chants had increased a lot more , I had a feeling that I was about to break through into the next level. my body was almost full of Mana and was ready for the first layer . if I entered the first layer , it would be possible to have smooth sailing till the ninety ninth layer.
(I SHALL GIVE MORE DETAILED INFO AT THE END )
DAY 5 - we found nothing today too , it seemed as if the animal clans have been warned somehow . it must have been the world will . but our gains were pretty good , so I was still pretty happy . we would be leaving for the altar . with my army we could at least have a small fighting chance , I was hoping that whatever army would come at us and would have only a few first layer attackers.
(on the way back to the altar the next day)
me - what's the problem jack
jack - someone is following or to be more precise a group of someone's have been following us .they don't know that we know where we are . do we launch an attack now or later.
me - let's wait now and head towards the pit , we will use the pit as our battleground .
( while saying so , I willed the vipers to be alert . and we set of again gradually changing our direction to not arouse suspicion from our followers . )
( this gives me some free time so I will explain to you of how an undead is raised . you there two popular methods to create an undead . one was to summon a soul from another realm and fuse it to a dead body . this method was Mana efficient and summoned a pretty strong undead . but there was no room of growth for the undead . but it was the most popular method due to it's low cost and the high benefits. the second was an almost extinct method . it involved manipulating a special type of death Mana known as emotion Mana . it was a Mana that was like a solar panel , only in this case it was not sunlight that was absorbed but emotion . it could catch in emotion and refine in to a special kind of Mana which we called soul Mana. if enough soul Mana could be condensed it could act as a actual soul , a kind of pseudo soul . I was one of the few practitioner left of such kind of Mana. that's what ' phoenix skeleton ' meant maybe . it maybe meant that skeleton(it any other undead) could gather enough emotion it would be reborn like a phoenix. but that is only my thoughts . I can't even confirm it until I reached more advanced chants . )
(by the way during my explanation , we we're travelling to pit . if my plan worked , our enemy would not touch the altar for a very long time . )
( after a while , at the pit )
me - jack , you take the giant wolves and take care of the enemies left side .
bone snakes and sting wolves will take care of right side , you just keep holding them of for now .
( meanwhile mentally I commanded my wolves to attack )
(EXPLANATION FOR THE LAYER SYSTEM )
after any being , managed to fill his body with Mana there were too many methods after that . some will try to strengthen their body using Mana , others will try to condense it into cores . there were way too many ways that were followed but mages followed the condensation of core . this is known as the layer system and depending on the cultivating process number of layers would be varied . the Phoenix skeleton had 99 layers .