By time all my undead had arrived, which was roughly over four minutes, I had already completed the hidden quest of using my necrotic bolt 25 times allowing for me to naturally level it up to level 2. Looking at my undead that were lined up before me, I figured it was time for me to take a quick look at all of their new skills.
Looking amongst my bone undead, all of them had gained a max of 50 health, though they had yet to eat any bones to get healed. I also noticed that their description had changed.
<[ Description ]>
[A monstrosity that defies the will of the gods, and spits on the laws of both the world, and of life. The dead no longer linger in their graves, and the exterminators of life have been released. Death favors those who strike it down. Execute with extreme prejudice. Burn the bones in a holy eternal flame.]
Feeling a sense of satisfaction from reading this description, I then turned towards Casper to see what he had gotten.
[Whispering Spirits - Level 1] (Passive)
-Those in the domain of a spirit recall hearing soft voices whispering from far off
-Induces fear into those weaker than it throughout domain
-1% increase to insanity per minute spent within domain
-Non-active when not in domain
<[ Description ]>
[A monstrosity that defies the will of the gods, and spits on the laws of both the world, and of life. The echoes of the long gone begin to linger, calling out for more to gather around them. The Horns of defiance are being rung and darkness begins to grow. Death favors those who release the trapped soul. Execute with extreme prejudice, obliterate the soul and purify the tainted land.]
I then turned and looked at Poky to see what had changed for him.
[Sense of Dread - Level 1] (Passive)
-Those who look upon the listless eyes and ever hungry jaws of the undead are forever scarred
-Induces terror into those weaker than it and within its presence (5 meters)
-Induces doubt into those stronger than it when within its presence (5 meters)
-Induces dread within all who see it
<[ Description ]>
[A monstrosity that defies the will of the gods, and spits on the laws of both the world, and of life. The corruption it leaves in its wake ruins all life of the world. Death favors those who strike it down. Execute with extreme prejudice.]
To be frank I felt that my undead would be quite a formidable force if I were to release them upon the world, but I had no intention of doing so for fear that I would draw the attention of someone else that was stronger, after all, I didn't know the level of the guildmaster let alone the troops from the barony.
"Alright all of you, from now on there will no longer be any hunting around here. We are drawing far too much attention and people will begin coming out to search for us soon if we don't stop and let the wildlife return. So I guess just kind of sit here and wait until I command you otherwise."
I realized that I wouldn't be getting any levels now that my undead were going to be put on standby, but I felt that this would be more beneficial for me in the long run than gaining experience in the short term. Looking at the sun, I figured I had enough time before dinner to check out my bone crafting ability now that my undead were here.
"Skellie boys, I want you to take these twenty corpses and pull out every bone from their body. Take the bones to the creek and clean them along with yourselves before bringing them back to me and setting them in a pile here. As for the boneless lump of flesh, you can toss it into the pile for Poky and his zombies to eat from." I pointed to where I wanted the bones before looking at my skeletons to make sure they had fully received my command.
I watched as they quickly got to work, and as I waited for the bones to be brought for me, I continued trying to come up with some names for my remaining two skeletons, but nothing seemed to call to me. Until I could come up with a name for them, I figured I could refer to them as Thing 1 and Thing 2.
Eventually White Death brought me the first bone that I could use for crafting and I quickly shook it of any water as I picked it up. Sitting down with my back against the cave wall, I began trying to think of how I thought bone crafting would work. I figured it had something to do with mana and so while holding the bone, I began to gather my mana into my open palm. As the mana gathered, it began seeping from my palm and turning into a gas that seemed to float and cling around the phalange bone itself.
After roughly 5 points of my mana had entered the air as a gas, I began to see that the gas closer to the bone appeared to be creating glue-like strands as it began to seep into the bone at several different points. Focusing as much of my attention upon the bone itself, I quickly noticed it turning from a hard material to that of a soft material like gold or even clay, making it easier to alter its shape.
Realizing this I quickly tried coming up with an idea as to what I wanted to craft, however with no prior experience in crafting anything, I could only think of creating a small circular ring.
As the bone narrowed and shaped under my will, I began to wonder if there was anything that this ring would do, along with what other sorts of crafts I could make. Maybe I could even make weapons and armor for my skeletons with this.
I eventually finished turning the bone into a ring that was roughly 1 millimeter thick and was nearly pure white with a few bits of yellowing and blackening spots along it. Smiling, I decided to see if analyzing would give me any information as to what it could do.
<[ Bone Ring - Level 1/6 ]>
A plain item crafted with the bones from a victim of a necromancer. It is said that hidden deep within the necrotic ring lies an empty void holding the necromancer's most prized treasures and beasts.
0/100 bones stored
Oh? Level 1 out of 6 huh? And I can store bones in here?! I must've hit the jackpot or something. Now I wouldn't have to worry about going somewhere and not being able to summon an undead to assist me. Hell I could even possibly carry my skeletons around with me if I'm really lucky. But wait, what if I de-summon a skeleton and when I resummon it, would it just cause it to become a level 1 skeleton that has no skills or experience from when I taught it?
I could take the risk now and see what it would do on one of my nameless skeletons since I didn't have any immediate or possible threats, but then again, since I was going to be having my undead remain in hiding for a while; if he did come back as a Level 1, I wouldn't be able to level him back up to level 3 until I'm good to start hunting once again.
Hmm, decisions, decisions. After pondering this for a few minutes, I decided that I would hold off on attempting to see what would happen if I were to de-summon an undead. I took a quick look at my stats to check on my amount of mana to see how many more bone rings I could make, and as I was looking I noticed that my mana had dropped from 175 to 170 while my willpower had appeared to drop from 136 to 116 in only a few minutes. I knew for a fact that this wouldn't just happen after noticing that my willpower would roughly drop 50 points a day and as such, I was slightly confused as to what the cause of this could've been.
The only cause that came to my mind was me crafting a bone ring, and I figured the only way I could test this was by crafting another bone ring and seeing what happened to my stats after. Taking the time to concentrate and begin crafting with another phalange bone, I noticed the little tick indicating that I had used 5 mana as the necrotic gas began to once more pour out from me, surround the bone, and begin the process of making it malleable.
It was as I began shaping the bone into a ring when I noticed the slight strain upon my mind, and I immediately figured that this was the indicator to my willpower being drained. After I finished making another 1 millimeter wide Level 1 Bone Ring, I quickly checked my willpower stat and found that it had now become 96 out of 200. So willpower represents my focus or concentration upon something, and possibly the more challenging something is, I'll be forced to concentrate harder on it, leading to more of my willpower being drained.
Taking the two rings, I could now store 200 bones in each one of them, allowing me to release nearly an entire skeleton since my skeletons appeared to be taking humanoid forms which would indicate roughly having 300 bones to make them. Thinking of this requirement, I figured I might as well continue devoting time to crafting more bone rings so that I could place as many of them as possible upon my fingers. After all, the more bone storage I had, the more skeletons I could summon to protect me.
I eventually took four more phalange bones to create four more level 1 Bone Rings, which led to me spending 20 mana and brought my willpower down to a total of 16, causing a large amount of drowsiness to wash over me. I felt so drained that I didn't even feel like trying to walk back to the village, but I knew I had to and forcing myself, I began my walk as I put my new rings on my fingers. Before leaving, I had given my skeleton undead the order to pull and clean all the bones from all the carcasses, and set the fleshy remains in Poky's pile. As for the bones, I would collect and store them all when I returned the following day.