"Choosing to willingly become an undead servant and being forced into servitude through necromantic control are two completely different things.
Any high-ranking undead can easily compel lower-ranking ones to submit, forcing them to surrender fragments of their soul fire. According to the laws of the undead realm, an undead who hasn't mastered necromantic control is limited to having one servant below level five, two between levels five and ten, four between ten and fifteen, and eight between fifteen and twenty. Once an undead reaches level twenty-four and ascends to a king, the number of 'willing' servants allowed skyrockets to forty. However, even a level forty king is capped at forty servants.
Given this limit, higher-level kings often resort to coercing weaker ones into submission. After all, anyone who becomes a king has likely clawed their way up through brutal battles. This constant struggle for dominance has made wars between undead kings almost countless.
But I digress. Let's shift our focus back to our protagonist—the skeletal mage, Ander.
At this moment, Ander is feeling quite pleased with himself.
Managing to acquire Skeleton Lord Reed as an unexpected servant? That's a big deal. To put it simply, daily hunting chores? Done.
Skeleton Lord Reed's unique skill, *Undead Dread*, is essentially a heavily watered-down version of a king's innate aura of suppression. Though nerfed and simplified, it's still a lord-tier ability. When used at full power, it can influence all lower-ranking undead within a 200-meter radius, forcing them to obey commands.
Once Ander discovered this, he was ecstatic. Reed had been wasting the skill's full potential, but Ander—who could now recite the *Kashnikov Notes* backwards—knew exactly how to maximize it.
And so, here Ander sits, legs crossed on a gravestone, commanding poor Reed to work tirelessly. The skeletons within the 200-meter range are also busy as forced labor. Ander's grand plan? Expand the skeletal temple at the center of the graveyard into a massive fortress.
This graveyard is prime real estate! Located between two rivers, its core area even has a barely livable 'palace.' Endless rows of stone gravestones and tens of thousands of skeletons ready to be enslaved for labor? Ander couldn't resist the idea of using local resources to build a castle.
His demands weren't extravagant: a stone wall surrounding the graveyard, a moat outside the wall, and some repairs to the central structure. With the undead's theoretically infinite lifespan, time was hardly an issue.
Ander's decision to build wasn't spur-of-the-moment. He knew there was no way he could quickly level up to ten. Death God Heidrich's warnings buzzed incessantly in his mind. If he advanced too fast without obtaining something to please the Death God, things could go south quickly. The memory of accidentally squashing ants as a child made him shudder.
So, Ander decided to delay his progress. Thus, the *Phase One Basic Construction Project* of the Skeletal Graveyard began.
To avoid leveling up too quickly, Ander even stopped consuming soul fire from other undead. By day, he supervised Reed and the skeletons in tearing down gravestones to build walls. By night, he studied the *Kashnikov Notes* under the light of the crimson twin moons. His own soul fire absorbed moonlight passively, while his regular undead servants, unhindered, wreaked havoc in the graveyard—killing, looting, and showing off their skills.
Magellan, for instance, absorbed soul fire directly from skeleton soldiers, which Ander humorously named *Star-Swallowing Art*. Da Gama, wielding metal claws recently crafted by Ander, left countless skeleton heads with five distinct punctures, earning the name *Nine Yin Bone Claws*. The less skilled servants fumbled with their metal-ax bones, causing more chaos than progress, to which Ander scolded, "Go train before showing off again!"
As for Ander's three skeletal dogs, he was contemplating covering them with metal plating. Currently, they were busy fishing metal-bone fish by the riverside, staying out of the main chaos.
Yet, Ander hit a snag. His plan to grind metal fish bones into powder and use necromancy to form skeletal coatings felt inefficient. He mused about liquefying the metal first—but how? His current abilities didn't allow it, and blacksmithing methods proved insufficient as even fire from wood wouldn't generate enough heat.
Scratching his head, Ander pondered the pile of metal fish bones.
Just then, Reed came running with his spiked club. "Master, the wall taller than me has been completed as per your instructions!"
Completed? Already? Could Reed have some construction-speed buff?
Curious, Ander followed Reed to the site. One glance, and everything was clear.
Ander had instructed Reed to build a wall as tall as him, with a five-step thickness. Reed had instead built a single, massive stone column as thick as he was.
Looking at the column and the skeleton laborers wandering aimlessly without Undead Dread's influence, Ander's frustration boiled over.
Fine! A column it is!
Given the limited intelligence of these low-level skeletons and their leader's lack of competence, any attempt at a proper wall had collapsed repeatedly. At least this column hadn't fallen over.
"Let's go with this then. Build one stone column every 100 meters. Then we'll chop some logs and fill the gaps."
Grumbling, Ander scaled back his ambitions from a stone castle to a simple palisade fence.
"Understood, Master!" Reed saluted before scuttling off. After a moment, he returned, sending a puzzled thought.
"Master, how far is 100 meters?"
Of course, the country bumpkin had no clue. Ander prepared to explain casually—only to realize something. A hundred meters? In this skeletal world, such units didn't even exist.
This revelation hit Ander like a bolt of lightning. Many assumptions from his previous world were useless here. If something like units of measurement could be ignored, then perhaps even higher laws weren't as unreachable as they seemed.
Abandoning Reed's question, Ander dove into his *Kashnikov Notes*.
...
"Master, what is a hundred meters?" Reed finally couldn't hold back and asked again.
Ander snapped the book shut and marched to the stone column. Taking a wide step, he pointed to the ground and conveyed a clear thought:
"Watch closely. The distance I walk in a hundred steps—that is 100 meters!"
Watching his master striding against the wind, Reed couldn't help but think, *Master's walking posture... is so ugly.*