As Seth watched the monster slowly plod its way into his view, he couldn't help but feel like his expectations were betrayed.
'I was expecting some vicious fiend for my first fight as a skeleton, not a dopey looking pig!'
Indeed, it was a pig, it wasn't pudgy like you would expect but leaner with dark grey skin, its most defining feature was the hard bone helmet like structure around its head, however the blank eyes that seemed to be staring in to nowhere gave it a funny appearance.
However, appearances can without a doubt be deceiving, Seth fully understood this so as the pig steadily plodded towards him, he took a combat stance with the bone club he picked up ready to swing.
The pig however, seemed entirely oblivious to his presence and continued walking straight past him eventually reaching the pile of bones in the back of the cave.
'What's it doing? It just straight up ignored me… did it even realise I'm here?'
He watched the pig stare into the bone pile for a good minute or so having no clue what it was doing, little did he know this monster was known as a Bone Swine, they loved to collect bones and were incredibly possessive over the collection; It actually did entirely ignore him because it wasn't interested in the undead, that is however until it realised something.
One of its favourite bones was missing.
As if some switch was flipped, its dopey expression turned in to that of a vicious beast as its eyes darted around before laying them on the bone club in Seth's hands, it really is unfortunate, if he had left without taking anything he wouldn't have to fight but touching the pig's collection designated him as an enemy.
'Huh? Why do I feel like I'm being unfairly blamed for something?'
"SCREEEEEEEE"
"Wha-?!"
Letting out a surprisingly loud screech, its body seemed to grow a size as its muscles bulged through its pale skin and it reared its hooves in preparation to charge.
'No idea why it changed its mind, but it doesn't make a difference to me, time to see how well I can do!'
"Come, pork chop!"
And with that the battle begun, immediately the pig set off into a crazed charge heading straight for Seth with no sign of any other plan.
'In the end a pig is a pig, now let's see how well this body can perform'
He waited until the pig's charge reached a couple meters away before dodging to the left, unfortunately compared to his old body this one had a measly 5 agility causing him to be struck on the side as he was too slow to dodge fully, sending him tumbling around into the distance.
"Fuck, I didn't realise I'd be this slow!"
[Health – 79%]
'Just a graze did this, I'm more fragile than I thought'
*Crash*
The pig didn't even turn after grazing him colliding straight on with the cavern wall
"Hah, stupid bastard"
'Anyway, lets test some skills'
[Lesser Reconstruction]
As he mentally turned on the skill, the few cracks in his bones slowly mended restoring his health over 20 or so seconds, meanwhile the pig started bucking and shaking its head after retreating from its unfortunate accident.
"What are you, a horse?!"
[Health – 100%]
[Mana – 68%]
'Not too bad, about 1.5 percent mana for each percent of health, and this is only the lesser version'
Skills that had prefixes like 'Lesser' or 'Weak' can be improved through continuous use eventually granting the user the better version.
'Aside from that, fucking ouch that hurt now that I think about it, I thought I wouldn't feel pain being undead and all, but I guess that's out the window, somehow this didn't occur to me when I had a sense of touch before, but I guess my bones aren't as simple as they look'
Before long, the pig re-aligned itself sending its body on another one-way track to pain with no remorse.
'Of course, I can't expect something so dumb to change tactics, now then [Core Overclock] is out of the question I won't get myself killed by being stupid in testing, the only other thing is…'
[Reinforcement]
Immediately after activation a familiar sensation filled his white bones, giving them a blue lustre as power filled his body.
"Now that's more like it!"
[Reinforcement] was a basic skill for anyone that wanted to fight monsters, the best thing about it that the higher one's mana stat, the more powerful the reinforcement; not only that it used the base stats as a base rather than giving a flat bonus, thus it will get increasingly more useful as you get stronger.
[Stats:
Strength – 10(+10) Perception - 5
Intelligence – 10 Vitality – 10(+10)
Agility – 5(+5) Stamina - 20
Dexterity – 5 Mana – 50]
'Whew, double, guess I have to thank my high mana stat for that'
[Mana – 67%]
[Mana – 66%]
[Mana – 65%]
'Of course, it's a mana guzzler, 1 percent a second, I can barely keep it up for more than a minute'
While Seth was relishing in the feeling of power the pig once more approached at breakneck speed.
'Better end this quickly, I may not have the skill, but I might as well use one of my favourites'
As he watched the incoming disaster on legs, he took a formal stance with his legs spaced apart, slightly crouched with his hands steadily gripping his club raised in the air like an executioner's axe.
'I give my thanks for being a good training dummy, now…'
"Die! You shitty swine!"
The moment the pig entered his range his club swung in an almost uniformly beautiful arc before crashing square into the pig's skull, easily breaking its external bone helmet and landing a crushing blow to its brain.
The force from the swing was so great that the momentum of the charge was entirely counteracted, and its body came to a lifeless halt immediately with its head almost buried in the ground looking like an over tenderised piece of meat, blood leaking everywhere.
"Phew…"
[Level up – Stat points gained]
[Level up – Stat points gained]
[Level up – Stat points gained]
[Skill – Crushing strike has been learned]
[Crushing Strike – A powerful overhead blow, performs the best with a blunt weapon]
"And there it is"
If he had skin, he would have an almost lonely smile on his face, that strike was something taught to him in his early adventuring days, it's overly simple but incredibly effective against a lot of enemies so he ended up using it a lot, memories flashed of an old man that taught him it but they quickly dispersed.
'No point reminiscing now'
He shook his skull before refocusing on the other notification.
"Level up huh, guess that pig was a bit stronger than level 1 since it gave me three of them"
[Level – 4 (6 points remaining)]
Levels were self-evident, defeat something strong enough or a number of enemies to gain a level and each level you're granted a couple stat points to invest wherever you want; however levels weren't the only way to increase stats, everything in the world naturally got stronger as they matured and at the same time they can get weaker if they start to decay in old age, along with that, consistent training and gaining titles can grant points in to specific stats, this is one of the reasons why you'll occasionally find an adult in the low single digits yet they have surprisingly high stats, they never fought much yet have done a lot of training or performed feats outside of combat.
'First things first, I have to get that atrocious Agility stat up; I have no intention of being a walking punching bag'
[Agility – 5 > 11]
"That should be a lot better, now then- what should I do with this?"
He glanced at the now dead still corpse of the Bone Swine, frankly he had no idea what to do with it, from what he could see the only thing valuable would be the head carapace but that's long broken.
"I'm an undead so I don't really need to eat from what I know, I basically just run-on mana- oh right speaking of mana"
[Mana – 85%]
'It's already that much?! It regenerates way faster than when I was human, I would need a couple of hours to refill it before, but why?'
"Hmmmmm?"
He scratched his solid chin with his bony index finger in though, until he realised it created a horrible scraping sound making him stop.
'Ah, right!'
Bonking his hand on top of his other palm(?) in realisation, he remembered the message from when he first revived.
"It mentioned the creation of a mana core! Of course! I'm a monster so I don't have a heart… let's see here…"
He took a long look at himself for the first time since revival, other than him being a skeleton one thing stood out, he couldn't see too well but in his chest underneath his ribcage, around where his heart originally was, an almost perfect orb was there that glowed with a multicoloured light, it was 'almost' perfect because it was embedded in some weird fleshy substance that connected it to his bones, when he took a closer look at the surrounding area and all his other bones he could almost see tiny veins running through all of them, seemingly originating from the core.
'What an odd feeling, before I'd see a monster orb as a valuable item however what I see now is my actual self, my entire conscious exists within that small orb I can just feel it!'
"Wait a minute, if I remember correctly didn't monsters…"
He glanced at the corpse of the pig next to him.
"Eat other cores?"
He had no idea what effect it would have on him but the interesting thought of experiencing something like that overwhelmed his fear of the unknown.
He quickly used his hands like bunch of tools along with reinforcement to tear open the pig's body, making a gruesome mess as he threw flesh and blood alike out of his way as he dug deeper before finding another core.
It was a bit smaller than his and red in colour, from his knowledge red was usually the colour of any living beings' core, it acted as a heart and infused their blood with mana, circulating it around the body for passive reinforcement.
He stared at the small pulsating ball in his hands before gulping with his non-existent throat.
"Well, what have I got to lose, I'm already a skeleton what else can happen that would be worse, I could become a ghost? Bahahahahahhaahaha- Actually never mind that would be terrible please don't let that happen god."
'Well, here goes nothing'
In one fellow swoop he popped it in his jaw, not even considering the fact he didn't even have a digestive system.