Carrying the bastard sword in his left hand, Joker stepped out of the apartment building, located in the town center. The sword was sheathed, yet Joker was ready to pull it out as soon as necessary. The first step out of the building seemed surreal to him, the peaceful scenery he had watched from his window sill last night was gone. Like a blank white canvas, which had been splattered in red and black. There were many corpses lying around, which were mainly human, at least Joker couldn't see any other races among the corpses.
The sight of slaughter and destruction would shock every normal human being, but Joker wasn't shocked. He had already seen so much death and destruction that everything he saw now, was nothing special to him. Entering the next street, he looked around and he saw nobody in the streets, while he also couldn't see anyone looking from the windows. What he was going to do now should better be unseen by people. At least right now.
"Raise skeleton!", he said, directed at a completely smashed body. The corpse used to be a man, before being smashed until he wasn't recognizable anymore. Whatever had killed this man was strong, he would guess on either trolls or ogers while watching the skill's effects.
The corpse was twitching, while the flesh slowly melted from the bones as Joker's first skeleton rose.
"SKREEEEEEE!", it screamed, while standing in front of Joker and facing him. It was a terrifying scream, which gave Joker goosebumps. Joker thought that this sounded like the scream of someone being dragged into hell. Or in this case maybe out of it? He quickly looked around but there was still nobody watching from the windows.
"Can you speak?", Joker asked, while raising another three skeletons, also from completely smashed corpses, but in these cases he couldn't recognize if the corpses had been men or women. The first one was the tallest out of them, at 1.94 metres it was a bit taller than him. It didn't react. All the skeletons were now standing in front of him, naked as not just the flesh but also the clothes melted away from the corpses when he raised them.
"Skill info: Raise skeleton!", Daniel said and a window appeared in front of him.
[Raise skeleton]
Beginner rank level 1
Raises a skeleton from a corpse (4/4)
Mana cost: 10
"Ok, so I can right now raise up to 4 skeletons. Let's see what happens if I try this. Raise skeleton!", he said, looking at the nearest corpse.
[Maximum summon capacity reached, skill failed! Release on of your summons first!]
"Hm, I thought so.", he said while walking on. The four skeletons were following him without him having to say anything to them. He was interested in the abilities these summons had, so he raised his speed a bit until he was slowly jogging. The skeletons were keeping up with his speed, so he raised it a bit more until he was running. Again, the skeletons were able to keep up with him. Now he was going to challenge them some more. In the past, everyone had used the movement skill [Mana Walk], which raised ones speed and at the same time reduced the stamina people lost while running. It was a beginner's skill which was actually pretty easy to learn, if you knew how. The first thing you had to do was gather your mana in your feet and then release it from the foot you take a step with. That was the beginning of it. Gathering your mana in your feet shortly before releasing it would be more effective and a better way to save your mana too. Learning the skill itself wasn't the problem, anybody could do it, it only required knowledge about ones mana circulation and how to control it, which right now, probably nobody knew, except for him. Joker knew that this was a huge advantage and as he used it, it happened.
*Ding*
[Skill - Shadow Rush - created]
"Huh? Shadow rush!?", Joker said.
"Skill info: Shadow Rush!"
[Shadow Rush]
Intermediate rank level 1
Gathering dark mana in your feet makes your steps quicker and lighter.
Effects: Running speed +21%, Stamina use -10%
Mana cost: 20 mana/minute
"Darkness element? What is this?", Joker thought. The skill [Mana Walk] was just a base skill, which would evolve when people got an elemental affinity. In the past, his [Mana Walk] had evolved into [Flame Rush], after Joker had learned to add the fire element to his regular mana. That was also one of the ways to evolve your character class, which only worked for classes below 3 stars. After gaining the flame element, his class [Sword Knight] had evolved to [Knight of Flames]. And all his skills had evolved into their fire type version, which boosted their power. Now it seemed as if he already started with an elemental affinity, which was darkness. He guessed it had something to do with his new character class, as necromancy was one path of black magic.
Not only did he already gain an element, his new skill also started immediately at the intermediate rank. Every skill, except for some special skills, were ranked with one of five ranks. The ranks were beginner, amateur, intermediate, advanced and master. Joker was already very proficient in it's use, so he guessed that this was the reason why the skill immediately jumped to the intermediate rank. Every time a skill was raised to the maximum level of it's rank, the skill would jump to the next rank. The max levels of each rank are beginner 1-10, amateur 1-10, intermediate 1-20, advanced 1-20 and master 1-20. This didn't look like much, but Joker knew that completely mastering a skill was very hard and it would also take a very long time to do so. In the past he had only mastered a couple of skills and none of them had been a movement related skill.
"Nice!", Joker said, smiling as he realised he gained another advantage. After using [Shadow Rush], every time he made a step forward it seemed like black mist came out of his soles, which was not an unusual sight for him. In the past, [Flame Rush] had made small flames appear, so the only difference now was the black mist that appeared instead of fire.
He looked behind him and saw that the skeletons were not able to keep up with him when he used [Shadow Rush] and while there was a rather large distance between them, another thing he wanted to test came up in his mind.
"Stop!", he whispered, the distance between him and the skeletons should make it impossible to hear him, but the skeletons stopped moving.
"Ok, now get over here!", he thought, concentrating on the skeletons. They immediately started moving again and ran over to him.
"Great, so I can command them with my thoughts!", Joker realised. He wanted to test their fighting abilities, to see how useful they could be and he knew that he would soon get the chance to see them fight. He already had an idea on which creatures to fight first, he also knew that he could find many of those creatures where he was right now. He reached for the right pocket on the back of his jeans and took out his cigarettes, slowly lighting one of them up. Most of the creatures in this area, humanoid and monsters, had sensitive noses and smells could give away one's location, but Joker knew that the smell of cigarettes was something most creatures, who were new to earth, didn't know. The ones who would be curious enough to search for him, would probably be inexperienced ones, with a low level. Experienced predators, or high leveled creatures could appear too, but Joker was confident that he could beat one or two, if their level wasn't too high, or if it was too dangerous, he could outrun them, using [Shadow Rush] and the advantage of him being in a location he completely knew.
He slowly walked towards the location of the first treasure chest, which was hidden inside of a bush. The treasure chest was wooden, with metal parts that looked like they ware made out of copper. Regular Treasure chest could be measured with one of five ranks, regular (grey), bronze (like the one he stood in front of, silver chests, gold chests and black treasure chests. The quality of the treasure chest determined the quality of the amount of items gained from the chest and the items' qualities. He held the cigarette between his teeth and reached for the treasure chests' lid, but before he could touch it, one of the skeletons made a noise.
"Skreeeeee!"
It was the tallest of them, the one he created first and it was pointing somewhere. Joker looked into the direction his skeleton was pointing and could see what the skeleton was pointing at. He smiled when he saw what would become his first kills after the reset.
There were five small creatures, with big noses and long pointy ears. Their sharp teeth, goat like eyes and green warty skin gave them an appearance that one could only describe with one word. Ugly! Each of them were naked, except for the dirty piece of cloth each of them wore around their waists. One of them held a crudely made, rusty sword in his hands, whose blade looked so dented, Joker thought it would hardly be able to cut anything. Another one had an one handed axe and a third one held a dagger, whose conditions were just as bad as the sword's. The remaining two each held onepiece of wood, which they probably used like blunt weapons.
The sight of these creatures was nothing new for him. He knew exactly how strong they were and that he could definitely beat them. After all, during his past life he had fought so many of them, he couldn't guess the exact number. The creatures he now walked towards were goblins, their levels probably ranging between 3 and 5.
As he walked into their direction, the cigarette still in his mouth, he unsheathed his sword and smiled.
"Go kill them!", he gave the command and his skeletons immediately rushed forward, towards their enemies and Joker's first prey..