"And this place is?" Seth decided to ask immediately, he had a good idea but wanted to make sure.
"It's the core of the capitals array formation, as long as it stands and is functional the entire place will be protected to a degree" Lloyd said before letting a slight grimace crawl up his face "At least most of it…"
'As I thought, only a monstrous place like this could have kept the castle in at least a few pieces like it is…' Having confirmed his thoughts Seth was still amazed.
While Seth was talking to Lloyd the two spirits communed to the side.
("So, you realised we got rid of that 'thing' already I see, so eager to see us go?") Silva said in a slightly teasing tone towards the small dragon.
Azula sighed before replying ("Yes, we could tell immediately; Frankly, we didn't expect it to happen so fast, even Lloyd had his doubts about whether you two could do it, yet it happened in the end, he's way too eager to let his family resurface after all this time so he jumped in here as soon as he heard the news")
She turned her head and stared at Seth's back with a meaningful look and asked "How did you get rid of it that quickly? It didn't seem like something that could just be brushed away with no effort"
The capybara just shrugged with his little arms ("I have no idea honestly; I didn't do a thing; I couldn't get near enough")
("It was that bad? But that means it was spiritual in nature like I thought…") Azula said, starting to try put some pieces together in her mind before she asked another question ("Did he tell you anything?")
("Yes, but… I'd rather not say much right now actually") Silva said with slight reluctance.
("Hmph, you always do this; Fine then don't tell me but don't come crying when you need my help because of it in the future") Azula said while poutingly coiling up and turning her head away, the picture of the mighty azure dragon from before was seen nowhere now.
('You have enough to deal with considering your situation, Azula, this is between me and my partner so we'll deal with 'it' ourselves') Silva said in his head, he knew stating it out loud would just earn her ire, so he held his mouth shut.
Silence ensued while in the background all that sounded was the tapping of fingers on keys from Lloyd working on the terminal, soon that ended and he finally turned around.
"Right then, that's all set up now we just need to sort you out" Lloyd said clapping his hands to move everything along.
"Me? What do I need to do?" Other than take the teleporter he thought he was ready.
"You want to go to the surface looking like that?" Lloyd replied with one eye wide open showing doubt.
'Like that? Oh right, skeleton, somehow forgot that.' He quickly reminded himself how a walking skeleton would be attacked on sight by any normal person "So what do you have in plan?" Seth thought of what he would do the only thing he could think of was wearing full body armour 24/7 which wasn't very practical in the end.
The king stroked his beard in thought and said "Well I had a few ideas but I think this one will work the best, but we'll still have to test it out" He said, he walked to another side of the room and another terminal rose from the floor, he placed his hand on it as it seemed to scan it then input some words on the keypad, soon an item appeared on the terminal and landed in his hand.
"This thing is rather handy you see, I used it a lot back when I was king to mingle in with the citizens without being seen; it was useful for getting a better view of the kingdom"
He walked over to Seth and held his hand holding the item out towards him, when Seth took a look, he couldn't help but feel a little disgusted by its appearance.
[Human Skinwalker Effigy
Strength – 10
Durability – 100%
Doppelganger – Creates a layer of fake skin and flesh over the user to disguise appearance.
Self-repair – Consumes user's mana to recover durability]
It was a human shaped piece of skin that looked like it was roughly modelled after a man, its appearance wasn't pleasant in the least, but the description gave Seth a huge amount of hope.
"This… If I use this, will I basically just look like a human?!" He was excited, it may not be like actually being a human again but at the very least he would be able to act like one.
Lloyd gave a wry smile before replying "Well, I'm not sure how it will work for a skeleton, but it should offer some assistance in the very least"
"So how do I use it?" Seth was eager to give it a try completely ignoring its disgusting appearance now.
"Just hold it to your chest and activate it with your mana, it should do the rest by itself."
Seth did so, he held the effigy in his hands and placed it in front of his rib-cage, he channelled mana in to it like he was activating [Reinforcement] and soon it shuddered slightly, then before he knew it, the effigy seemed to explode and form a wave of skin like material that quickly grasped on to his bones, it was not a pleasant feeling; As if crawled up and coated his entire bone structure he felt as if hundreds of ants were making their way all over him making him shudder and almost making him want to retch, luckily he didn't have a throat to do so.
It quickly covered his entire torso, made its way up his neck and covered his head, then his legs and arms until he was coated in a layer of peach like goo like substance, after another minute it seemed to tighten on to his skeleton and shift and adjust for a while before it finally laid still.
'Is it done?' Seth was thankful it was finally over, it wasn't just on top of his bones the liquid seeped into every inch of his body under everything which scared him a little, luckily it didn't do any harm in the end.
He over his body, at first he was joyed because of the fleshy colour he could see everywhere but soon found something off, he was still fairly… bony.
"I look a little off. Hey, do you have a mirror or something?" He said to Lloyd who soon sighed and fetched a mirror from the terminal behind him, it stood as tall as Seth and reflected his entire figure; Lloyd was stood behind it with a hand on his face with a 'I knew it' look on it.
At first glance Seth looks human, but then if you look closer there are many odd points, first of all he's definitely now a lot taller than your average human after his evolution, then because of his weird bones joints the effigy has created a slightly disproportionate muscley yet bony figure, of course there wasn't any real muscles just fake flesh.
The other parts were of more significance though, first up he had nothing 'down there', of course he was a skeleton so that was obvious, but the skin-walker effigy wasn't designed to make up for this deficit so all that existed was a flat surface, this was something he could hide at least and wasn't too much of a problem lest he decides he wants to get it on which would be a very stupid thing to do.
On the other hand his face was a large problem, at least the nose is there and had been filled in yet he had no eyes; The sockets were entirely empty and were just a black hole with glowing beads in an otherwise slightly off face, along with that he opened his mouth and while he had teeth because he still had them as a skeleton, he was lacking a tongue; His body produced sound with mana automatically so he never had such a thing yet a human lacking both eyes and a tongue will definitely stand out.
Other than that, he did have hair finally, albeit it was white silver like an old person and reached his shoulders.
Lloyd sighed before speaking "Yeah I thought this might happen, the effigy was designed for disguise, but it left vital areas untouched… well I think I have a couple of solutions."
He retrieved a couple more items from the terminal before handing them to Seth which made him ask another question "I was meaning to ask but what happened to everything in the other room?"
"Oh that? It was basically all a projection of stuff in the actual treasury, mostly to 'wow' whoever decided to drop it, it's way more secure stored in the central tower here and sorted by the array, never mind that put those on"
In his hand was a simple looking black eye mask that tied around his head, and what looked to be a peach like fruit, he first put on the mask while holding up the other item.
"What's this?"
"A tongue" Lloyd's reply made him almost jump and drop it out of further disgust, but Lloyd quickly spoke again "Stop panicking it's only a prosthetic, just hold it in place and it should merge with the Skin-walker effigy"
Doing so, he finally gained a tongue, although unmoving it was at least more convincing.
"Well, you should be passable at least; just make sure to keep that wrap on, it's enchanted so it won't obstruct your vision or anything using it like mana vision, so you won't need to take it off at all"
Seth looked at his figure in the mirror, from a skeleton he was now what he would call somewhat of a giant man who looked slightly emancipated while having a fairly built body, white hair that he had now tied into a low ponytail for convenience and a black eye wrap to top it all off.
'Well, not the worst I can do, I look human now at least' With mixed feelings Seth accepted his new disguise.