Sure enough before Hal could get back to the blind a wolf pack began to howl in the distance. Hal knew what would happen if he asked his skeletons to run, so he kept them a walk and had Priol bring up the rear.
At about the time that he thought they should be pretty close to the blind the wolves attacked.
"How many more gaming cliches will we see! First it was goblins, then it was slimes, and now it is wolves!"
Hal sighed and commanded his skeletons to fight. In the dark he couldn't see what was happening.
"Hopefully we can hurt them a bit and scare them away! These aren't berserker goblins or mindless slimes, right?"
Said Hal hopefully.
Sure enough the after the skeletons slapped around a few wolves there were some distinct doggy whines and then there was only left the silence of the dead left.
"That worked?"
Trying to stay in his trance Hal was still unable to prevent himself from expressing some astonishment. Of course by doing so he was dumped out of his flow and knowing that he was screwed now if the skellies couldn't save him.
"Alright, let's run!"
Voicing his command even though he knew he didn't need to speak aloud he put a hand on Priol's head coming up just above his waist and ran.
Once there he had to rely on Priol to direct his flesh hand to the holds and then climbed up into the blind. Without saying anything else he flopped into bed. The last thought he had before closing his eyes was that the slimes would be all over the place when he woke up. But he already felt his consciousness spiraling down into the depths.
_____
In the morning the first thing he was aware of was a text box from Flo.
[You should go back home! You have already been gone for two days!]
But Hal shook his head.
'I can't go back. They don't need me and would do worse with me there. Besides, I am their Lord, if I don't come back with something to show for it, how could I show my face?'
[You have your skeletons and Priol! They will be impressed, trust me.]
Flo pushed him.
'No, I am going to stay out here till I am powerful enough to go to the dragon's grave yard. Imagine if I came back with a dragon skeleton!'
Telling Flo his irrational idea suddenly, he regretted it immediately.
[A bone dragon? Do you know... Wait, I am not going to tell you how much mana will be needed. Knowing you it would work out some how.]
'Right! Just you wait! I am going ...'
Suddenly there was the beating of a drum and Flo sent a whole bunch of pop up text boxes in a row.
[Not possible!]
[Was that a goblin war drum?]
[The goblin's don't attack until the end of act three. Why?]
'Enough of that, it sounds like there are a lot of them! We have to run!'
Hal said as he scrambled down the tree out of the blind.
Just when he was able to run, leaving his skeletons behind a hand grasped the back of his tunic and then slammed him into the trunk of the tree.
Intentionally his head smacked into the mana regen treasure knocking it out of its place and onto the ground. Then the Morrigan dropped him at the base of the tree and began talking.
{My husband is not a coward. You will face the goblin hoard and defeat them or die trying.}
As she spoke she bent down and grasping the treasure she popped it into his open mouth and then she kissed him with plenty of tongue forcing the treasure down his throat.
[That is not the way the mana regen treasure should be ...]
{Be gone system!}
Choking, Hal coughed and coughed unable to do anything until he was able to finally get his throat muscles to swallow that treasure.
Seeing that she had succeeded Morrigan smiled at him then ripped his tunic pulling away a strip of cloth that she used to tie her hair back into a pony tail. This time she was dressed in armor, much like a roman centurion. Every inch of her was covered, but it anything she was even more beautiful than she was before.
{Oh, I so love it when you appreciate me, mortal. Do you like my outfit?}
She put her gauntleted hand on her belt and turned to the side so he could get a profile view.
'Oh, I hate it when girls try to take advantage!'
{You think I am a girl?}
At first Hal thought that he had said something wrong. The last thing he wanted to do was demean a God. But in a moment he realized that he had said something that she loved.
Bending down she kissed him again, this time it was much more tender, the briefest of touches.
{If you die, I will not behave well!}
Confused by her kisses Hal wiped his lips where they had been moistened.
{No, go, kill them all!}
Pointing to the hoard the Morrigan's face was hard, merciless.
'What? No, this isn't right? I am level zero... System are you there? Can I even look at my stats?'
But there was nothing.
'Morrigan, can we talk about this?'
However, when Hal had looked away from her she had disappeared.
"Harrumph."
'I guess this is where I die. At least the hoard doesn't know I am here.'
At that moment the Morrigan appeared out in the distance and screaming called the goblins to her. He couldn't hear what they said, but he knew the result, which was that the hoard shifted directions and chased towards her.
At the last moment she turned into a crow and headed straight for him. As she flew by she whispered into his ear.
{I hate goblins. Destroy them and I will reward you with my body.}
'No, I don't want you body. What kind of a reward is that?'
Immediately Hal spit back.
Instead of responding she stood behind him in front of the tree and then hardened into a statue. The goblins surrounded his position scrambling and tearing the forest even if they couldn't fell the trees.
For his part Hal sat down in the dirt at the base of the tree and began to enter his trance. His six skeletons arrayed in a circle around him began to defend. The problem with his trance state was that it took so long to get into and it was so easy to be knocked out of.
Having no chance to practice anymore or prepare Hal sat there and realized that this was a turning point. Live or die he would not be the same after this.
The Morrigan was a soul domain God. She probably didn't care if he lived or died. Dead she could have have soul.
'Oh, that is why she did this. She wants me to die. Well Morrigan, I am going to show you just how much I reject you. I will not die today!!'
So saying the world around him slowed down, just like it had when he had had his slug fest with Priol. In this state it was easy to fall into a trance and like a gift from above the trance fell upon Hal far deeper and heavier than it had ever been before.
He wasn't tired though. Instead he was intent. All night the slimes had been cloning and while the immediate vicinity of the tree was free of living slimes there were thousands of slime cores on the ground.
'Probably the Morrigan's work. I will have to thank her as I shove a goblin skull down her throat!'
This deep into the trance [Bone Realm] literally rose up around him. At least that is what Hal's chunibyo mind thought. Actually more visually speaking the light became just a little bit dimmer. And then he began to sing [Soul Requiem] into existence.
Already one of the goblins had fallen. Slowly, ever so slowly, Hal pulled the bones from the corpse and this time sung the red goblin soul into its own skeleton body. He was already getting the hang of [Soul Requiem] and didn't need the crutch that his bone arm could provide.
His five barrel skellies were massive compared to the goblins, almost three times their height. But Hal could see immediately that he had over adapted them into mobile slime farms. In battle they were top heavy and squirmy little goblins could duck and run right through their legs.
Of course none of the goblins had done so. Probably because they were already berserked. His original group of five skeletons were more like walls than anything else. They could swing their arms and kick their legs, but Hal had not thought in advance about what weapon to equip them with. So instead they just seemed rather big and idiotic.
Still, though, Hal had no intention changing their build right in the middle of a battle. It didn't seem to be necessary. With his two goblin skeletons fighting at one end of a six pointed star with himself in the middle everything seemed to be going much better than expected.
That is until a human appeared.
Being carried in on a palanquin the human sat in a throne on top of some sort of box with lumps of objects inside. And the box was being carried by ten huge ogre sized goblins.
'Maybe they are ogres?'
And then horror gripped Hal's mind as some of the lumps inside the jail moved. There were people huddled inside. As the entire parading human came closer Hal realized that the people were women.
Fear gripped his heart as Hal imagined that the human was some kind of super powerful mage and that he would be blown apart by magic or that those super sized goblins would attack. Instead the entire parade came to a stop and the human bothered for the first time to look in Hal's direction.
"Ha, ha, ha, ... ha, ha!"
All Hal could hear was laughter and then the human pointed directly at Hal. The goblin's which had stupidly been throwing themselves at his skeletons suddenly refocused and started trying to run through the barrel skeletons legs.
It was the weakness that he had already thought of. Obviously he hadn't been a genius to think of it, because even that human leading the goblins had thought of it.
Losing his trance state Hal had to get serious as the first goblin made it through the skellies legs.
Not having a weapon Hal was defenseless. The only thing he could do was command a skeleton to turn around and attack this enemy while he dodged.
'I have to make my skellies even bigger!'
This was the thought that went through Hal's mind. Instead of something more intelligent, Hal opted for the simplest of answers. The first thing he did was have his barrel skeletons squat down. In this position they were still head and shoulders above the goblins, but their maneuverability was cut way down.
Hal didn't care. He wasn't out to do anything but create some defenses. Once the skellies were down there legs to the sides were actually a benefit. Even though the legs became almost useless the did widen the theoretical wall that each skelly was starting to become.
Next he had to get back into a trance. His world was still slowed down from all the adrenaline pumping into his brain, but it did no good if he couldn't attain that half asleep half focused state.
'Please forgive me, thank you, I love you, I'm sorry. Please forgive me, thank you, I love you, I'm sorry...'
This was a mantra that Hal had used in his previous life to get over and let go of the things that he could not change. Imagining that he was speaking directly to the child within he was able to let go and relax little by little
Repeating these four phrases over and over again Hal had enough practice letting go that he was able to do so now. It had taken him a few minutes, but this was much better than the ten or fifteen that he had needed before.
Fortunately there were slime cores all over the ground. And while he couldn't go around picking them up Hal had the mana to waste to manipulate them into becoming larger, merging with each other and then to his skeletons. From there it was just a matter of changing the shape of the bone to bring bone matter to the areas that he was focusing on shaping.
The other benefit of the goblin human's command was that suddenly the goblins started dying much more. If they were ignoring any threats to run, dive, and dodge to get within Hal's circle of skeletons.
And Hal didn't think to have his five barrel skeletons tighten their circle so the sixth point where Priol and the new skeleton were fighting was still open.
'I can't forget to strengthen Priol! But first I have to get these skellies strengthened first.'
Desperation is always a good teacher and thankfully there were plenty of materials to work with. Hal enlarged all the bones of the skelly's rib cage and fused their back bones all into one. He needed them to be strong, not agile. Really the only parts of the skellies that needed to move were their arms. Even their heads were redundant and could be decreased in size.
The skeletons didn't seem to need their eyes as much. All that was required was that the soul flames were exposed and the skellies could act. So Hal actually experimented with one skeleton inverting the eye sockets an letting the soul flame burn atop a bone stalk.
Once done with that Hal and seeing that it improved the sensory capabilities of the skeleton he added it to the other four skeletons.
'This is funny, I feel like I am turning my barrel skeletons into crabs. ... Wait ...'
A realization came over Hal as he looked at his skellies in a different light. If they had more pairs of legs and a wider than taller body they really would start looking like crabs.
'I wonder if I could do that?'
Even from within his trance state Hal felt a sense of revelation. But in the next moment he let go of the idea. Hal just didn't have enough bone to make the crab version and he wasn't sure if a crap build would work well with his original intention to create a mobile slime farm. Oh, and I would want to keep the arms... crab pinchers are great and all, but arms ...
'Oh, well. Now that my skellies are basically walls, I need to get Priol some more help.'
But Priol was actually doing just fine. The beserked goblins that were probably his old pals were mindlessly trying to dodge past him not even trying to attack him. So all Priol had to do was trip them or otherwise throw them off balance. The other new goblin skeleton could then easily dispatch them.
Since this had been going on for more than ten minutes they had built up quite a good pile of corpses.
Seeing their work Hal couldn't be anything but proud, even within his trance. And also a little be disgusted with the human who had directed his goblins to act so stupidly. Of course Hal was ignoring the fact that he was also not being the brightest.
He could no longer see the palanquin and could not tell what the human was doing.