What next followed after his preparations, was practicing runesmithing with all those corpses.
Specifically, he would practice the hardest runes that he had available that is.
The Great Runes.
While he had many other experiments to do with other runes, he could no longer postpone them.
Their effects were simply far too powerful to simply dismiss and put at the bottom of his to-do list.
For now, he only had two, but by just thinking of the information of how to make them, Danzel felt somewhat overwhelmed.
Though he knew that practice makes perfect through his years of experience.
'Albeit this part of runesmithing sucks...' Danzel complained as he went and skipped the unique 5 and started carving on the other corpses.
He had other plans for them.
So he seated down and started carving.
And as usual, the quality of the rune came out to be [Poor]. Which was within his expectations, though it sucked to see.
The first great rune he started was the [Great Rune of World's Gaia].
Once he finished with the great rune, he didn't go to the next corpse, instead, he used his [Death Rune Removal] to erase the great rune before once again trying out on the same corpse.
Albeit that harmed the bones itself, which even his [Undead Reconstruction] couldn't restore. More accurately, he could repair the corpse itself, though by using [Rune Vision], he could see that the green light had deem and become slightly yellow.
Though he was saddened that he couldn't abuse the spell to have an endless amount of tries in only a single body.
'I guess I will have to...live with it.' Danzel shook his shake head and regretted saying he somewhere heard once.
The moment of distraction barely lasted a few seconds before Danzel continued refining his craft.
After 2 hours, he found out that the best that he could do was erase 3 times the great rune and still have spots to carve the rune.
The fourth time he tried to erase the rune, they were no more spots to carve runes.
Which made the first corpse have no great runes in its body.
Though it's a pity that when he raised the corpse as an undead, he wouldn't have great runes to strengthen him.
Though knowledge doesn't come without sacrifice.
With the newly acquired knowledge in mind, he started carving exactly 4 of the [Great Rune of World's Gaia] and erasing the first 3.
Though in fact, he could carve both [Great Rune of World's Gaia] and [Great Rune of Ruined Vessel] on them if he really squeezed them together, previously he couldn't do that, but after [Carving Fate with Death] and the [User of Dark Arts] talent it was possible. Though erasing them after would make recarving them impossible, which he found out after sacrificing another corpse for this cause.
If he has done that he would only manage to carve 2 great runes for each corpse.
While he would practice both great runes at the same time, he would essentially carve 2 fewer times per corpse, which wasn't efficient at all.
And as of currently corpses were a limited resource.
"For now that is..." Danzel mumbled as he finished with another corpse.
Thanks to all his bonuses and increase of attributes to intelligence, it was much easier to finish with runes, each corpse taking up to 2 hours of none stop rune carving.
For the rest of the day, he spends his time carving [Great Rune of World's Gaia] till tomorrow morning.
He then decided to check on Shiro even though he knew that she didn't wake up.
Although he didn't have much knowledge of the needs of the living, at the very least he knew that water was essential for them. Food was also there, but he had no idea how he should feed her.
He searched for some kind of bucket and simply used his sword to create an ice spear and break it into small pieces.
"Koji...follow me." Danzel commanded as the living armor walked towards him.
Entering the room of Shiro with the bucket full of ice, Danzel opened her mouth and gently placed a small piece of ice in her mouth.
"Continue doing that till the bucket is empty... once one melts, put another one." Danzel said as he left the bucket in Koji's hands before leaving to continue his work.
Leaving Koji to tent Shiro, Danzel closed the door and stared towards Niyuki, the other living armor.
"You, go and gather any food that there is in this village and bring it back here together with that you judge to be useful or that it could be used as a weapon." He ordered as he went to continue his rune carving.
'I should even order him to do that yesterday, but oh well...' He thought internally as he started once again doing only rune carving.
He entirely focused on his rune only going to Shiro to fill the bucket with ice.
Though many who saw him using his sword that contained the soul of an archmage would complain of his use, creating ice like so was probably cleaner that picking the ice from the ground.
Other than that, his focus was on the 60 corpses.
Could have been more if the ice trolls didn't eat a few of those "fox people".
And just like that, the day passed with no signs of Shiro waking up.
Since she wasn't losing health and was breathing just fine, he let her be.
It didn't take long for the days to pass by.
Near the end where he was finished carving, Danzel had to move the corpses with the help of Niyuki to various homes because of a snowstorm, but other than that, he finished all corpses except the 5 special ones with different bodies and skulls in the span of the next 4 days.
In the last few tries, he managed to push the [Great Rune of World's Gaia] to the [Good] quality, granting him surprisingly, double the XP of an Epic rune that is.
"If I even had a hundred or so other corpses, I might have managed to bring the quality to [Perfect], but oh well..."
Sending an internal command, Niyuki came over.
And with him, he dragged the now runed corpses to the outside for him to raise.
Once done so, he dismissed the living armor as he watched across the many corpses on the snow-filled ground and then back to his status, watching the [Greater Raise Undead Lv.7].
Thinking about it for a bit, he decided to push the spell to the 4th-tier, spending close to 1 000 000 XP by doing that.
[Greater Raise Undead level has increased from Lv.7 to Lv8]
[Greater Raise Undead level has increased from Lv.8 to Lv9]
[Greater Raise Undead level has increased from Lv.9 to Lv10]
[The skill [Greater Raise Undead] reached the Tempering Process]
[Choise 3 of the given option and enchant 1 of the picked options]
[Dead Mana Affinity]: the skill will be more attuned to the death attribute and change accordingly.
[Soul Affinity]: the skill will be more attuned to soul essence and souls. The change will happen accordingly.
[Strength Focus Minion]: The minions created by this spell will have greater strength.
[Inteligence Focus Minion]: The minions created by this spell will have greater intelligence.
[Agility Focus Minion]: The minions created by this spell will have greater agility.
[Endurance Focus Minion]: The minions created by this spell will have greater endurance.
[Command Range Increase]: the range where one command the minions created by this spell will increase.
[Mass Spawn]: the spell will be able to summon more minions with a minimal mana cost increase.
[No Resource in Cost of Power]: the spell will require no materials in the cost of power.
Seeing the options in hand, Danzel would have made a thoughtful expression if he could.
"What to choose..." he mumbled to himself.
'Let's cut the useless ones first and for all. [Mass Spawn] would work nicely on a battlefield and it would also pair well with [No Resource in Cost of Power], though that's more of quantity than quality that we are speaking of. As I am for the latter, I hard pass on those...'
That also meant that [Command Range Increase] is out of the picture, although it would be quite handy.
"That leaves the attributes and the affinities..."
He found the choice quite hard to make.
He was weighing his options on wherever it was worth picking the [Soul affinity] for the various bonuses that he has.
He didn't want to make his undead ethereal and become wraiths or banshees type of undead. Also, he chose to learn how to make stronger soldiers by the use of runes, as whatever undead he would summon, would be much inferior that from a Lich or any other necromancer that focuses on summons.
Heck, Velkir was capable to summon an army of 3rd-tier undead and by the looks of it, they looked like his inferior undead.
Because of that, he gave up on contesting with having the best minions coming from a spell. He planned in contesting with his runes. The living armors were proof enough that powerful undead could be created by runes alone.
'So I will have to see how to cover something that runes can't do...'
He tried thinking about it in the long term based on each combination and comparing them to the living armor.
After thinking through it, he chose to make a risky choice.
That being picking both affinities, [Soul Affinity] and [Dead Mana Affinity], and also [Inteligence Focus Minion]. And even putting the tempering point at the [Inteligence Focus Minion] option.
If he had no other way of creating undead, he would never make this choice, but as he had, he was fairly confident in the combination. Though he feared for them to become ethereal undead.
Even if they did though, he would be able to create a magic caster as the back line and the living armors as the frontline of his army.
If he ever planned to make one that is.
Though he could probably make stronger physical types of the undead by picking strength and agility if not even endurance. He didn't find much of a point as he himself would be miles stronger than anything he would create.
And the stronger he would become, the stronger the gap between his minions would become.
Thus, he confirmed his choice.
[The Tempering Process for the skill Greater Raise Undead has been finished!]
[Greater Raise Undead Lv.10 becomes Call of Anabast Lv.1]
Raising his hand, his dead mana leaked out and he spread it through all the corpses while simulations cast two
