The Ruined Death Knight

Chapter 171 - Soul Skill

[Status]

Name: Rue Danzel

Level: 45

Race: Wight

Class: [Black Guard Lv. 1]

Sub-Class: [Runesmith of Undeath Lv.30]

Health: 10010/10010

Mana: 2200/200

Attribute points: 0

Attributes: Strength: 225 Agility: 300 Intelligence: 200 Endurance: 181

Talents: [Superior Undead] [Sin of Wrath] [Reinforced Soul] [Superior Unique Concioness] [Rune Vision] [Dead Rune Knowledge] [Undead Carver] [Dead Mana Affinity] [Dead Mana Resilience] [Undying][Lower Class Death Magic] [Mastery of Himself] [Affinity Carving Mastery]

Skills: [Intermendiate Weapon Mastery Lv.9] [Stone Wall Lv.1] [Leap Lv.1] [Silent Steps Lv.1][Undeath Corruption Lv.1] [Swift Movement Lv. 1] [Shield Charge Lv.1] [Gale Mana Blade Lv.3] [Greater Sense Danger Lv.1] [Curse of Exhaustion Lv.1] [Penetrate Lv.9] [Hand of Mana Affinity Lv.9] [Vanguards Defense Lv.5] [Armor Mana Plating Lv.1] [Cursed Blade Lv.1] [Death Influence Lv.1] [Coating Miasma Lv.1] [Curse of Decay Lv.1] [Raise Undead Lv.8] [Reconstruct Body Lv.1] [Sense of the Damned Lv.1]

[Remark: A Undead that recently became a Wight. Although he lacks knowledge about Death Magic. His Strength alone makes him much stronger than your usually 3rd-tier Undead and shows the behavior of a Lich. ]

[XP: 90 880 425]

"Yes, let´s do it as planned..."

Though the two years, although he restrained his spending quite a lot, that didn´t mean he didn´t upgrade himself at all or didn´t learn anything at all.

One example is the passive skill [Sense of the Damned Lv.1] that he learned from a few books that Hanso gave him about Magic.

Even though the skill sounded quite intimidating, the overall effect could be seen as rather lacking. As all it did was able to sense if someone was dead or not. With undead included too.

The range of the skill was sitting at the pitiful range of 5 meters.

From a two years state point, learning a single spell would be seen as quite pitiful from a magic caster perspective.

The reason for that was simple Danzel, at the end of all, had little of an actual foundation built on his knowledge of magic.

And unlike magic scrolls that had the entire spell made for any caster to cast by following the instruction, the magic books he got were more theory-based and how the spell is supposed to be shaped by your mana and so on.

Although Danzel was quite depressed about it, he found it as a chance to finally build his knowledge of it.

But midway through his research, he quickly found out that...

He didn´t understand a single thing.

At one point he even asked Hanson for advice.

And Hanson's answers were as obvious as it could be...

He lacked the foundation.

As he described it, he was a self-taught magic caster.

Without any guidance from another magic caster, learning even the basic spells would be difficult.

And with his current situation...

That suggestion was shot down.

`It´s much easier spending XP` 

Although he didn´t like the idea of being to relying on using XP as a spell.

The effectiveness of doing so was apparent.

And currently, he knew where to spend it.

[Penetrate Lv.9]: 50 000 XP

It is one of the few skills he levels up between the years for this moment.

And the sole reason for doing so was...

Yes, that was to sacrifice it

[Penetrate level has increased from Lv. 9 to 10]

[The skill Penetrate has reached the modification stage!]

[Chooce 2 of the given option for the skill to focus on]

[Overall improveme-]

...

Danzel ignored all the given options and went for two particular ones.

[Soul Affinity]

[Dead Mana Affinity]

Although he liked it to call it a sacrifice.

It was more of an experiment.

Although the skill [Penetrate] was quite good on delivering of power.

Danzel swordplay was more in the line of slashing than piercing, which made the skill awkward for him to use.

And as it was of his few activation skills, using it as an ingredient to see what skill would come out was quite attractive.

As of why he wanted to use those 2 combinations were...

For the upgrade cost of course.

[The modification for the skill Penetrate has been choosen]

[Penetrate Lv. 10 becomes Mortal Reminder Lv. 1]

"Hmm, let´s see if I ruined the skill or not..."

Pressing at his new skill icon, the description...surprised him.

[Mortal Reminder]: Make being life though a piercing reminder of their mortality. Each wound you create with the use of a weapon leaves a mark that can be activated to summon an illusion of your being, piercing the enemy with the same weapon on the mark. Depending on mental strength it can be lethal.

Reading the description of the skill, Danzel could hardly understand what it does.

But as he already learned the skill, the knowledge in printed in his mind make things made sense.

"Quite interesting..."

It was indeed interesting how the spell worked.

The dead mana left a mark that worked like a curse as a tracker for that illusion of short to find his target.

'It isn't that bad...I think.' Danzel through uncertainty.

Putting that aside, he went out to upgrade another of his skills.

[Intermendiate Weapon Mastery level has increased from Lv. 9 to 10]

[The skill Intermediate Weapon Mastery has reached the modification stage!]

...

[Overall improvement]

[User Weapon Focus]

[Dead Mana Affinity]

[Soul Affinity]

Taking a look at the option, Danzel couldn't he wasn´t confused.

He could somewhat imagine what the first and second were. But the affinity option didn´t make any sense in Danzels's mind.

After all the skill was about how to use one's weapon.

While the overall [Overall improvement] would make him gain better knowledge of how to handle weapons and [User Weapon Focus] would probably improve the weapons that he mainly used far better than the [Overall improvement], those being his shield and longsword.

But what knowledge would the affinity give him?

He didn´t know, but he sure was willing to try.

"As I am undead, taking that affinity shouldn´t be that bad."

Choosing [User Weapon Focus] and [Dead Mana Affinity], new windows started to pop.

[The modification for the skill Intermediate Weapon Mastery has been choosen]

[Intermendiate Weapon Mastery Lv. 10 becomes Death Guarding Swordsmanship Lv. 1]

[Death Guarding Swordmanship]: Your ways of using a shield and a sword have been severely improved. Influenced by your affinity, you managed to mix dead mana into your swordsmanship too. Your skill that both use dead mana or a shield/sword will have their effectiveness by 10% improved.

Once that notification appeared in front of him so did the knowledge flow inside his mind and improve the knowledge that he had for the sword and shield together of how he should passive channel dead mana on those two without wasting his mana.

If he had to describe it it was like making his shield and sword a part of his own body, capable to hold the dead mana.

Just for that, he was satisfied with the outcome of the skill.

Although he wouldn´t be able to use other weapons as efficiently as before, for him the sword and the shield were all that he needed.

An upgrade costing only 9400 XP. it was well worth it.

For a skill that he generally used in his fights, it was long pushed back on his priority list.

Mostly because his opponents were not much better than him with handling the weapons, except for Hanson who could easily see past his attacks.

The lack of his stats also played a big role in losing on the few spars that he requested from Hanson.

Another skill he wanted to upgrade but was hesitant about was his [Undeath Corruption Lv.1].

The reason he was so hesitant is that he was unsure if he would gain another talent or not.

The skill reduction cost was a must if he was going to the road of only death affinity skills. The free attribute points and the free stats that it gave were just nice to have.

But the talent [Superior Undead] was among his talents, one of the best, as it was always active.

Another reason he didn´t want to upgrade it was because he would begin to release more dead mana to the air.

Although he could control it for better when he upgraded, that was only temporary.

It was like having the timer of a bomb and a nuke.

Although the nuke would go out much later in time than the bomb, the damage that it will release to his surroundings was anything but pretty.

At least for the living that is.

With that in mind, Danzel only planned to increase it only after he got away or was in a difficult spot in case it gives him another broken talent.

His plan currently was to upgrade his skills that still sitting on without any upgrades into at least the second evolution of said skill.

As they there price was generally low, it would really be cheap for him if he didn´t do at least that much.

But his remaining XP was reserved for his Level.

He really needed to increase his attributes if he wanted to have any hopes to get out of here.

Escaping meant escaping Hanson, who was many times stronger than him.

Fancy skills and spells could only do that much.

Against absolute power, only strength similar to said power could have any hope to win or at least escape.

And as the level upgrade was really expensive, wasting XP was a big no-no.

The few skills that he had still at level one were the following...

[Leap Lv.1] [Silent Steps Lv.1] [Coating Miasma Lv.1] [Curse of Decay Lv.1] [Reconstruct Body Lv.1] [Sense of the Damned Lv.1] [Death Influence Lv.1].

Some of those were clearly better than others by a large amount.

Compared to his [Curse of Decay], the others looked rather...bad.

The other was more situational.

And honestly, Danzel needed only three for his escape.

Them being...

[Leap Lv.1]: 2500 XP + 300 per upgrade.

[Silent Steps Lv.1]:  2500 XP + 300 per upgrade.

[Curse of Decay Lv.1]: 10 000 XP + 1000 per Upgrade.

Although the other skills were didn´t cost much to upgrade, Danzel was still unwilling to waste his XP on them as cheap as this sounds.

The first two skills made only sense to Danzel if he wanted to escape.

As for the curse, the effect was too strong to pass out.

Tapping on the upgrade option, several notifications started appearing with the similar pain of knowledge being printed inside his mind.

"Ugh..."

...

[Leap level has increased from Lv. 9 to 10]

[Silent Steps level has increased from Lv. 9 to 10]

[Curse of Decay Lv. 9 to 10]

[The skill Leap level reached the maximum level!]

[The skill Leap-]

[The skill Silent Steps-]

[The skill Curse of Decay-]

Ignoring the ongoing notification, Danzel glanced at the end result.

The skill [Leap] turned into the skill [High jump] which generally only improved the effectiveness of his previous form.

[Silent Steps] became [Presentless steps], lowering his presence of being and his steps to become silent if he is so willed.

They were nice and all, but the one skill he was most satisfied with was the [Curse of Decay].

Or rather...

[Curse of Scourge]: A vicious curse. Upon cast into a living being, the target experiences exaggerated decay with their nerves too simplified to receive more than usual pain. Even if the part of the enemy's body has fully decayed, the curse will make it so that the target will still feel the pain in his decayed nerves.

"Truly vicious..." Danzel commended himself.

Forcing his enemies to still feel the pain of their decayed bodies...

It could only be described as a vicious thing to do.

Danzel though wasn´t going to avoid using that curse just because it´s got much more gruesome than before.

If the pain of his enemies helped him win against them, then he very well would use it.

"Now with those things finished."

With his remaining 90 722 025 XP remaining and all his core skills upgraded, only one thing remained for him to upgrade

[Level]: 500 000 XP + 50 000 per upgrade 

"I hate it even after looking at it again..."

The cost was stupidly high that Danzel at first didn´t want to invest in.

But as this was his only way to increase his attributes efficiently.

The XP that he stored through out the two years, started to dwindle at a fast pace...

[Level has increased from Lv. 45 to 46]

[Level has increased-]

As the notification started to come one after the other.

Danzel power started rising into one that of a peaks strength of a 3rd-tier.