Priol sat right at Hal's feet, back straight the goblin skeleton's spine looked perfectly aligned with only a slight curve. As Hal looked closer he could see that the blue soul connections between his bones were a darker shade than the blue of the rest of the skellies. In fact as Hal tried his best to distract himself from the social circumstances happening back in camp he saw that the soul connections were pulsing.
A brighter light traveled light a wave from the base of Priol's back all the way to the back of his skull and then over the front and back down into the third eye. It was inconsistent, wavering, and sometimes it seemed to burn out before making it all the way. Plus he had to look very carefully to see it in the first place, but the light was definitely traveling some kind of circuit through Priol's soul.
Having a thought Hal asked Priol to try to chop at the tree.
Easily enough Priol stood up and bracing himself lazily chopped at the tree with his little goblin dagger. At first Hal was a little upset because he felt like they were never going to get anywhere if they just baby tapped the tree. To his surprise the dagger sank into the bark half an inch and Priol's arm was completely fine.
"What just happened?"
Asking the question out loud, Hal had meant to ask Flo within his mind and just forgot to keep it as a mental thought. He had expected to see Priol explode or at least take some breaking or splintering damage. Instead Priol looked completely fine.
But Flo answered of course.
[Your first goblin skeleton, Priol, has stepped foot into the world of cultivation. I believe that he is now in the first level of the spirit refining realm.]
'What?'
Hal had no idea what this spirit refining realm thing was.
[Yes, you never paid much attention in class did you? Spiritual power can be refined and condensed in a process known as cultivation. There are many cultivation scriptures and different ways to cultivate all of which focus on slightly different methods. The principle of manifesting spiritual power is common throughout.]
'Uhmmm, okay, I never learned about any cultivation in school. How could I learn it in class if they didn't teach it in class?'
Hal said somewhat petulantly.
[Lower worlds ...]
Flo said in response leaving the topic.
'So what? Do I need I just ask Priol to cultivate then? Will he become stronger on his own?'
[No, silly. You must find a cultivation scripture for him. What he is doing now is rather basic and will not allow him to progress much further.]
Educating Hal carefully, Flo told him what he would have to do in the future.
'I have to find a cultivation scripture now, too? Argh, I don't even know what this stuff is.'
Frustrated because his mind had immediately jumped to the conclusion that this cultivation stuff could solve the issue of his skeletons being so weak. If they could cultivate into spirit masters or whatever their power would be off the charts. It sucked realizing that in the end it wasn't going to be so easy.
[I wish I could help you. However, cultivation scriptures are one of those things that is restricted. I am prohibited from giving you information about scriptures. You must discover cultivation avenues and resources for yourself. I would warn you that not all scriptures are equal, though.]
Flo admonished Hal trying to get him to be a little more serious about this train of thought.
[There are two routes that you could take, either toward body strengthening or chi refinement. Then within these two general types of cultivation there are thousands of different scriptures. You will want to be careful. Since your skeletons are basically just bone and nothing else cultivating strong muscles for example would be worthless.]
Flo went on for a while about some things she felt he should look for when searching for a cultivation scripture for his skeletons.
'Argh, there is so much to do.'
Unable to really understand what Flo was talking about Hal ended up putting the idea of a cultivation technique to the back of his mind. There was too much to deal with in the moment. Hal decided to focus on the task at hand and come back to cultivation when there was time.
"Priol have all the skeletons who are not in the spirit refining realm continue to cultivate. As they break through have then work on chopping these trees."
As always Priol didn't respond, but his soul fires flared a bit after hearing Hal's command.
Hal's next thought was to have the barrel crab that had was farming the metal slimes come over.
About a half hour later the barrel crab came lumbering over and stopped in front of Hal. On its way slimes spilled out of the top of the shell little by little. He had not been paying attention and the slimes had over reproduced.
"Now, I am going to have to go back through camp and clean up all these slimes!"
Unthinking Hal got himself all worked up and angry right before he planned to go back into a trance. But he still had to make some bone tools for his skellies and the metal slime was the best material to produce an axe as well as pretty much all the other tools he would need for building a village.
Sighing Hal sat down and tried to adopt the same sort of pose that the skeletons had adopted and eventually calmed himself down enough to go into his trance. Once he was settled he could then use [Bone Realm] to start crafting bone into the desired shapes. Eventually Hal found that most of the day had passed while in trance producing tool after tool and learning better methods for melding said tools.
In the end it wasn't as simple as forming bone into a wedge to make an axe head. Technically an axe shape wasn't hard. The human and for that matter goblin shoulder bone was vaguely axe head shaped. Crafting a bone axe was an easy method to use to get the skeletons chopping and it would at least be better than the daggers and short swords they currently had. But in the end even the bone axe made from the metal slime's core was to fragile.
From reforming the axe heads again and again Hal initially assumed that the bone needed to be refined and compressed down as much as possible. Removing all the weak organic material sounded like a good idea.
Yet, through practice Hal found that his intuition was false! If all the organic material was removed from the axe head not only was it impossible for Hal to work with it anymore, since it seemed to not qualify as bone. But he also found that the organic material also had a hardening affect. Some how the metal was stronger when it maintained some portion of the organic material that constituted bone. Also the bone seemed to allow the axe head to flex to a small degree.
Hal had thought he was clever and had figured out how to create the shape of an axe and then slowly back all the organic parts of the bone out of the axe leaving behind only metal. But when Priol had gone to use the axe it had shattered on the first strike. Hal didn't understand how metal could be so brittle. And there was no way for Hal to figure out why it didn't work. Either the metal from the metal slime was not pure or it was pure and that was the problem.
In the end refining the axe down so that there was only about twenty percent bone seemed to be the right amount of organic material. The bone actually only benefited the final product allowing not just for easy repair, at least easy repair if Hal could go into the trance, but allowing the axe head to gain a multiplication of power effect by combining strength and flexibility.
The final product was an axe, blue green in color with an off white bone handle. The junction between the head of the axe and the handle worked better when there was a buffering material of cartilage. Yes that is right Hal became proficient enough in [Bone Realm] to be able to make cartilage.
In the beginning only Priol and one other skeleton had broken through to the spirit refinement realm. However, every hour about two of three skeletons would break through. Hal didn't know how they could tell, but occasionally a skeleton would stand up and approach Hal. At which point Hal would fabricate an axe for it and the skeleton would then go off and start hacking away at a tree.
Not even one tree was felled before lunch. Priol who was the farthest along in his cultivation and who also had the most time to chop a tree still couldn't make much headway. He was still just too weak. He could only chip away at the tree little by little. Fortunately as a walking dead he had infinite patience and easily stood there dinking away. Every once in a while coming back to Hal to have his axe replaced or sharpened.
After lunch things started to become a little better as Hal's methods for making axes improved.
Actually, the key break through had been in being able to create cartilage. Shock proofing the axe head from the axe handle had been the final inspiration for keeping the axe in good form. And Hal was not shy about applying the idea to his skeletons immediately. First Priol, but then all the others had their bones recapped by cartilage. Capping the bones at the joints with cartilage was a game changer.
Originally the bones would have had cartilage capping the bones at the joints when the goblins had been alive. However, when Hal or Priol had brought these goblin skeletons back as undead all their flesh, muscles, ligaments, and even their cartilage had been burned away by the clumsy use of [Bone Realm]. With a thick layer of glass-like finish and translucent cartilage at all his joints Priol could apply much more of his strength. The speed of his axe chop became faster as the goblin skeleton found that he could now swing with all his strength and not worry about the feed back from the impact. The cartilage absorbed and dispersed the physical rebound.
At dinner Hal finally stood up. Stretching he realized how hungry he was.
Commanding his skeletons to stop cutting down trees and begin to remove branches from the cut down logs Hal turned and walked a little unsteadily towards the camp.
Behind him there were still about a hundred skeletons sitting bizarrely within the logging site and beyond inhumanely still cultivating. While about fifteen little goblin skellies swarmed over a few felled trees removing limbs and smoothing notches in the wood by crudely hacking any protruding bits.
Within half an hour of Hal's retreat all the goblins were back to meditating again. Especially Priol who seemed to be unusually adept at cultivation. Being an undead his soul energy wasn't hidden. It was easier and easier to see the bright light of his soul energy tracking along his meridians. Where before his soul energy had been weak now the light was congregating around from his major bones into the skeleton's solar plexus. Or more rightly where his solar plexus would have been if he was a flesh and blood creature.
Instead the was a congregation of energy hovering just below Priol's rib cage. Most of the energy dissipated and became lost into the air with nothing to absorb it. Some of it did travel up the spine and over the skull into the third eye region where it again dissipated. This time however some of the energy was absorbed by Priol's soul flame.
As night fell the forest was filled with little pairs of stars as the skeleton's eyes burned brighter and brighter.