With his defeat at the hands of Viscount Poulsen's guards, Marcus' physical form had been completely destroyed. However, being a ghost even with his physical body turned to dust his soul still remained mostly intact.
'Fuck, shit, damn, this fucking hurts way more than I thought it would.'
Having his corporeal form created by his solid soul skill destroyed had left Marcus in a difficult situation. While his solid soul skill allowed him to use his vitality stat for HP and his spiritual form used his spirt stat the two were not mutually exclusive. When the rapier had pieced his neck taking off the last of his physical HP the remaining damage was transferred to his spiritual HP leaving Marcus' soul in an injured state.
'Calm down I need to keep my mental state together or I am going to slip deeper into the ground and my soul will become even more unraveled. If I had known that the stiches holding my soul together would come undone this easily, I would not have pushed myself so hard.'
Having taken a massive amount of damage and his HP being at only around thirty percent, it was taking everything Marcus had to keep himself together and not sink down into the depths of Mirrion.
'It is going to take me two weeks to regain the use of my solid soul skill, and I now have a status condition called soul damage causing my spirit stat to be lowered by nine right now. This is all Wild Wind's fault; they should have told me what had happened, and I probably could have helped them. Instead, they decided to throw me to the wolves, so they better hope I never see them again because if I do, they are dead. I guess I have learned my lesson not to trust anyone, since they will betray me in an instant to save their own skin.'
Unable to do anything but hold himself together until his soul was no longer in danger of coming apart Marcus spent his time planning on how he was going to get his revenge against viscount Poulsen and his guards, when he heard a familiar sound.
'You have leveled up to level 18.'
'Hm, I guess the guard I impaled with my scythe finally croaked, it took longer than I thought it would, people at higher level really are resilient. I managed to store my scythe back into my item box before my body was destroyed but I lost Ander's sword which I had found out was made of a mithril alloy. Oh, well I was not planning on selling or using it anyway, so it frees up some room in my item box. Speaking of my item box at first, I thought it was capped at being small but since it is a regular skill, I tried upgrading it and low and behold it can be turned into a medium item box. The problem is that it costs thirty skill points which is quite steep for me at the moment. I will just have to upgrade it when I break into the twenties and skill points are more abundant. For now I need to increase my combat power.'
Marcus then spent six days recovering his soul before he felt comfortable floating around again. Deciding to spend his time trying to level up before he was able to form his physical body again Marcus tried to kill the monsters and beasts he came across. However, he found that most of them would just run away from his invisible assaults before he could kill them.
'Huh, the monsters on the second level are quite a bit stronger than the ones on the first. They are all level fifteen or higher and the stronger ones can take a hit from me and escape since I cannot move very fast. I was hoping to save my skill points and buy a really powerful skill but at this rate I am going to be wasting my time.'
Having made the executive decision Marcus spent eight of his nine skill points to upgrade his iron magic skill to level four. This of course would make most people green with envy since a level eighteen having a level three magic skill was already impressive, but a level four skill was nearly unheard of.
'Status'
Name: Marcus Ferrous
Age: 28
Race: Unbound Ghost
Level: 18
HP: 830/830 (True Value 920)
MP: 770/770
Status Condition: Soul Damage
STR: – (+67)
AGL: 67
VIT: – (+67)
INT: 77
SPR: 92 (-9)
Stat Points: 0
Skill Points: 1
Unique Skills: Personal Status, #######, Solid Soul
Skills: Small Item Box, Lesser Regeneration Lvl 1, Digging Lvl 1, Fighting Lvl 3, Magic Circulation Lvl 3, Iron Magic Lvl 4, Disassembly Lvl 3, Stealth Lvl 2, Lightning Magic Lvl 2, Creature Appraisal Lvl 2, Fire Magic Lvl 1, Danger Sense Lvl 2, Darkvision Lvl 1, Scythemanship, Superior Lvl 4, Healing Magic Lvl 1, Mana Regeneration Lvl 2, Speed Burst Lvl 2, Mana Body Lvl 2, Powerful Slash Lvl 1, Physical Resistance Lvl 1, Heighten Spells Lvl 1
Blessing of Iron
Race Abilities: Invisible, Ethereal, Chill Zone, Float, Possession (Limited), Undying
Possessed Race abilities:
Specter Powers: Ghost Sounds, Spectral Arm
'That should do it, I equaled out my physical stats and it seems at some point I leveled up fighting and disassembly. Now it is time to try out my new tier four iron magic spell.'
"Iron Golem."
After casting the spell Marcus felt a massive amount of his mana converge into one spot before being expelled and he watched as a five-foot tall vaguely humanoid shape formed out of iron.
'Wow casting this spell once cost me nearly half of my mana, tier four spells really are much different from tier three and lower.'
Marcus then noticed that the golem's status had appeared next to his and looking it over he was quite happy.
Race: Iron Golem
Level: 15
HP: 1150/1150
MP: 0/0
STR: 140
AGL: 50
VIT: 115
INT: 0
SPR: 0
Skills:
Race Abilities: Follow Command, Durable Body, Iron Strength, Magic Resistance
'It is more than two times stronger than me and has a huge amount of HP, its race abilities are also pretty strong making it difficult to destroy and physically stronger. The only thing that holds it back is the time limit, after ten minutes if I do not feed it more mana it will disappear.'
Giving the Golem a few mental commands Marcus watched as the golem completed them all seamlessly until he gave it a command that was impossible, and it just sat there unmoving.
'I guess telling it to fly will not suddenly give it rocket thrusters or something. Oh well I figured that would not work but now that I have something to help me fight, I should be able to level up a bit before my solid soul is back in order.'
Searching around Marcus soon came across a pack of six hulking aquatic ogres and figured that they would be good opponents to test out his iron golem. Giving it the command to engage, the iron golem bounded forward garnering the attention of the ogres. Tackling into one of the eight feet tall ogres, the iron golem knocked the hulking figure known for its strength onto the floor. The other ogres angered by this small metal man that had assaulted them brought up their makeshift clubs and started pounding into the iron golem.
However, the difference in sturdiness was obvious as after just a few blows the ogres' clubs would break apart and the iron golem only had a few dents to show for it. Even with the iron golems impressive sturdiness, as the fight continued for another few dozen seconds, Marcus realized that his iron golem had no chance of winning this fight alone. Fighting six other opponents of equal or higher level was just too much to ask.
Deciding to not let his iron golem go down Marcus stepped in throwing off numerous lightning javelins and using his iron sphere to bash the distracted ogres in the back of the head.
For as dumb and impulsive as the ogres were there instincts still told them when it was time to flee, and they tried to make a break for it away from their invisible assailant. Unfortunately for the ogres with his new iron golem slowing them down, Marcus was able to keep up his ranged assault and only one of them successfully got away.
'I think I can call that a success. With my iron golem I can keep monsters pinned down and in range of my spells while I finish them off.'
Absolutely pleased with his new spell Marcus recast his iron golem replacing the one that was heavily damaged by the ogres and set off in search of more prey.