After Vanessa's arrival and her being a witness to the whole situation, Wilhelm decided to blame the knights for using force against their allies.
That decision alone made the knights feel extremely bitter and angry at the noble.
`He was the one who cut down our people! How are we getting blamed and not this outsider!?´ They thought in unison.
Of course, such thoughts were only internally and not spoken out loud, especially in the presence of the Necromancer.
To them and the army, finding trouble with mercenaries was pretty common. As usual, they held a higher status than some hired killers.
Most of them followed their respective commanders who were both experienced soldiers and of nobility, making a social circle around the military.
Those 200 knights were actually being lent to Wilhelm for the sake of repairing a favor in the future towards the commander they were following.
In other words, messing with them could also be interpreted as messing with the higher-ups of the army commanders. Allowing them to abuse their none existent authority to look down on mercenaries.
But they never expected that the necromancer Abdiel would resort to killing them! And not even get the blame for this!
Making the knights look at Wilhelm and Danzel in resentment without even trying to show their attitude towards them.
In comparison, Danzel who was riding Skull Claw with his undead following beside her didn´t care the slightest about the looks that they were giving him.
He was simply staring at his status, wondering what to upgrade with the newly acquired XP.
But since he was being pestered by a certain dark elve, he couldn´t focus on what to choose.
"Hey! Abdiel, why are you staring in front of you like that? Is something in front of us that I can´t see?"
`So loud...." Danzel sighed internally, before closing his status.
"...No, I was just thinking about some stuff."
"Hmm, is that so? Anyway, do you think it was wise to seek trouble with those guys? In my experience humans can be pretty petty.." She said while jumping on top of Skull Claw and standing with her feet on her back.
"Krgggh~!" Skull Claw of course growled in dissatisfaction, turning her head and showing her sharp fangs.
Only after Danzel calmed Skull Claw down did he answer Vanessa.
"It doesn´t matter, If they come to seek trouble again, I will simply turn them like those guys over there." Danzel said as he pointed at his Draugrs, most of them being turned from the corpses of the knights.
"By the way, did Master Velkir tell you about my race?" Danzel said with a more serious and cold tone.
Vanessa in turn shook her head.
"Nah, I just made an assumption based on our group and you...well, physical appearance."
"Our group, Deathfull Skulls only accepted those who weren´t humans, at the very least that´s what the Boss said to us. As for your physical appearance, well...it is pretty obvious that you aren´t a human considering how big you are." Vanessa said before sitting behind Danzel, making him slightly uncomparable.
Hearing her reasoning, Danzel couldn´t help but be reminded of his height.
`Right, humans don´t grow so tall... I should think of another race to act as...´ Danzel thought while making a mental note for that.
"Then what race do you think I am?" Danzel asked to gather information.
He could use what she said as a reference for the future.
"Well, Sartan told me that you don´t smell like an orc. Considering that you are wearing a helmet, you shouldn´t be a troll either. Mhm, you also know Agares and little Shiro, so my guess is that you are the same race as them? How is that, am I right?"
`Not useful at all´ Danzel sighed once more internally. Till now he still didn´t see the status window of both of those two and they didn´t tell him either what they were.
Agares looked like a human that was on the taller side while Shiro looked unusually pale human child.
"Who knows..." Danzel answered.
"Ehhh~tell me! Da-I mean Abdiel! You know my race, it´s only fair to give me yours too!"
`Ugh...so loud.´
****
After hours of walking back into the castle, Danzel was guided to his resting room. Which was nothing more than a small room that only had a bed, a desk, and a small box made of straw. Supposedly to be for his loudly.
Except for Skull Claw who was given his own room in a stale where they kept the horses, all his remaining undead were put on hold outside the walls of the castle for obvious reasons.
Outside in the field, he could use the excuse of using the dead as temporary forces to secure their safety. But keeping the undead and creating a personal small army right in front of their doors was a big no-no in the army.
Not only did it bring great displeasure to the soldiers, but it was also a countermeasure in case the necromancer comes out to be a traitor and commanded a small army right in front of their doors.
The fact that he resorted to violence toward the knights also didn´t help the situation.
They did tell him that they will consider keeping the undead and that is currently discussed among the higher-ups, but Danzel saw it as nothing but a farce.
The most likely outcome would be them requesting in stopping his spell. In other words, kill his own undead.
[Greater Raise Undead] wasn´t a spell that controlled corpses, but in truth, it was a spell that was born undead and brought the control of the one who raised them.
If they wanted to get rid of them, he had to literally command them to kill themself by breaking their skulls with their weapons. There wasn´t an off-and-on switch that made his undead simple become corpses once more.
In fact, if Danzel abandoned an undead somewhere far away, his control over that one undead would disappear through the passage of time which took years if not decades.
"Still, giving such order to them..."
Thinking of that, Danzel's mood worsens.
Seating on the bead, he shook his head to remove such thoughts.
"No matter, I should just focus on what should be done and nothing more." He said before opening his status screen.
They were a total of 6 skills that he kept to test first and then upgrade. And does were the following.
[Hand of Mana Affinity]
[Restore Undying Body]
[Cursed Wounds Blade]
[Greater Death Blast]
[One with Death]
[Rune Removal]
Every single one of those skills was of level 9 and since they were the 2nd-tier skills, the next upgrade would bring them to the modification stage, which to his experience, was the point where one skill rose in power significantly.
Though they were expensive to upgrade, considering the amount of XP in his wallet, it wasn´t that expensive.
He already had an idea in mind in which direction the skills should be modified.
He decided that three of those skills, them being [Rune Removal] [One with Death] [Restore Undying Body] would simple need their power adjusted instead of reforming them to become something anew.
[Rune Removal] simply needed to be a skill that removed his runes and nothing more, but for the sake of the several bonuses that he had, he decided that choose [Dead Mana Affinity] and [Overall Improvement].
Instead of [Dead Mana Affinity], he could even choose to pick [Soul Affinity] as both of them would have worked increasing the effectiveness of the skill, but he chose the latter as it affects more physical in nature. As the [Overall Improvement] was a must for his aim.
What came out was a skill with the name of [Death Rune Removal].
By its description, he could probably erase runes that were carved in yellow shown areas of an item. As his choice, it was an overall improvement in his skill. But that wasn´t all, the runes that were categorized as [Undead Rune] would be much easier erased from an item than usual runes.
Considering that he chose [Affinity Carving Mastery] and [Mastery of Himself] for talents way back then, such an effect was convenient.
As for the next skill [One with Death], Danzel only wanted to improve the 10% improvement of the dead mana mastery part of the skill instead of the natural mana and health regeneration.
He now had the means to recover his body and even if his mana regeneration increased, it wouldn´t be of much use in a fight.
So he decided to choose the [Soul Affinity] option together with the [Power Improvement].
The former was chosen as this skill was already a Death type skill and choosing [Dead Mana Affinity] could be somewhat of a waste. Instead giving him more control of his own mana affinity was much better.
As for the latter, he chose it because the other option was too vague.
They were options such as [Improve Regeneration], [Undead Effect Improvement], and so on. Nothing specific targets the mana affinity improvements. So Danzel chose [Power Improvent] as it sound the most likely of it being what he wanted.
The outcome of that two modifications was something that he didn´t expect
The skill [One with Death] turns into [Corrupted Soul].
[Though some anomaly you [Corrupted Soul] turned into [Soul of Death!]
"This is..." Danzel was surprised to see this message appear.
He remembered how this message appeared once back when he was in the cursed lake. He didn´t expect to see it again now of all times.
Opening the description of the newly acquired skill, Danzel started reading.
[Soul of Death]: A Undead who managed to corrupt his own soul with death. Resulting in the host soul never again being able to use a living vessel to host his soul. Both dead mana affinity and soul affinity mastery will be increased by a total of 25%. Also, increase both vessel and soul mana and health regeneration by a total of 30%. This skill can only be owned by an undead being. Additionally, the soul will be able to keep its presence in [???].
