Chương 13: Grinding bones

I left the Pane in the Glass with a rucksack, an Everflame torch, three heavy-duty sacks, four mana potions, a modest selection of summoning materials, and an additional six silver. Pane was a talented merchant, which meant realising that when a skeleton who might potentially be an ancient alchemist rocks up and offers to teach you a new recipe in exchange for prices that any other merchant would have offered at the start, he was getting a good deal.

I was out three kilos of common bone dust, coincidentally almost exactly the amount that Pane would need to use up all his available gnarleroot powder to make Firvulag potions. I figured it was a good trade. Bone dust was something I would soon have in abundance. Whistling required lungs, but I quietly hummed to myself as I made my way out of Clipper Street and headed for the Shroud. I stopped humming More Than A Feeling when I reached the Umbra.

Moving quietly, pausing or slowing down to let groups of maybe-thugs pass me by delayed me a little, but soon I was back in the peace and danger of the Shroud. Rogue spellforms were dodged, monsters avoided, and cannibals eluded. Not that any of the human denizens of the Shroud found me this time, but if they had, I would have escaped.

"Up and at 'em, minions," I announced quietly once I reached the hovel where Bork and I had left the seed of his future undead horde. Thelma groaned as she drew herself upright; the boys just clicked and clacked.

Fred Bone Fighter Level 1 STR 4 AGI 3 MAG 1 ARM 6 Daphne Bone Fighter Level 1 STR 3 AGI 5 MAG 1 ARM 5 Shaggy Bone Fighter Level 1 STR 7 AGI 3 MAG 1 ARM 4 Thelma Rotten Apprentice Level 2 STR 4 AGI 3 MAG 8 ARM 5"I don't know if you ever figured this out in life, but the key to happiness is to prioritise later. If you dedicate yourself now to making tomorrow easier, you'll likely have a better time than if you indulge yourself in the present. I should give Bork that speech at some point as well.

With this in mind, Fred, Daphne, and Shaggy will form a perimeter around the zombie. Thelma, you're the star of the show." I detached the big shields from my back and set them on the floor in front of me. Placing a foot on each of them, I pretended I could take a deep breath, then used them to levitate above my "army". Three skeletons and a zombie craned their heads back as I rose to float above them.

Floating wasn't entirely necessary, but I needed to practice until I got Bone Control to the point where I could use it on my own body. Flight was always a massive advantage. Mobility was vital in any fight, and most people tended to be very focused on the ground-based enemies trying to kill them, with little attention spared for the sky. The wobbles steadied as I started to get the hang of it.

Moving like this would take some getting used to, but hovering over a battlefield would be handy for when I wanted to play general and command the troops. Once the skellies had formed a triangle around Thelma, I nodded in satisfaction.

"Your goal here is to level up. Do as little damage as possible to the rats as you can; I want the bodies undamaged. Well, at least in one piece. Wring the little bastards' necks; don't squish them." They didn't nod or noticeably show that they understood, but I had a mental link to them and could sense that their simple minds had registered the instructions. How well they stuck to them was a dice roll. Raw undead like this lot were a bit unpredictable, but if we kept things simple, they should manage.

"Thelma, do it."

"Incursum Rattorum!" the zombie moaned. Motes of mana shot out from the rotten carcass, tiny, purple-grey specks flying away in seemingly random directions. The spell knew where its targets were, My eyes flicked from corner to corner, waiting for the first victims to appear. I drifted lower in anticipation, and when the first furry rodents arrived, I nodded in satisfaction.

Fred snatched the rat up as it ran towards Thelma, snapped its neck, tossed the body into a corner afterwards, and moved back to his starting position. One thing the undead had going for them was that as long as they understood the instructions and things didn't get too complicated, they could generally stick to the plan. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Thelma was the only one at even moderate risk in this situation.

Rat teeth would do very little to the skeletons, but the zombie's flesh was susceptible to aggressive nibbling. My small shields detached and went down to orbit her, just in case. The spell would summon the rodents as friends to the caster, but as their colleagues were slaughtered, the charm element of the magic would rapidly wear off. One thing about charm is that when it fades, creatures tend to be a little ornery about having been tricked, and would likely turn violent rather than running like they ought to.

They came in waves. A few here and there at the start, then they were dropping from the rafters or scurrying through cracks in the walls in their dozens. Shaggy was kicking them into walls rather than cleanly breaking their necks, but as long as he got XP and I got the bodies at the end, all was well. Ding! Bone Fighter Fred has reached level 2! A few minutes later, I got notifications for the rest as well, Thelma being the last due to her habit of stopping to gnaw the flesh off the rats she killed.

When the tide of furry hunger had ebbed, her ankles were looking a little chewed up, but she hadn't taken too much damage. For the skellies, I assigned a point into strength and armour, and Thelma put two points into magic. It was a good start, and for ten minutes of work, it was an efficient use of my time. Unfortunately, the range of the spell was limited, and I wouldn't be able to repeat this for a day or so to give the ratties time to move back into the now-free territory.

Weapons for the skeletons were on my to-do list, but for now, they could cope with their fists. Once they hit level five and got new skills, I'd see what they rolled and figure out ways to equip them based on what they got. This trick wouldn't work for long, but for now it was a more-or-less zero-risk way to powerlevel the minions. As the skellies outleveled the rats, which would almost all be level one to three, they'd get diminished XP for their kills.

Soon enough, I'd have to take them out into the dangers of the Moulder, but for now, it was easiest to do things here.

"Now, it's a good job you're mindless undead because the next bit would be a wee bit gross if you weren't. I want you to fill one sack with the least-damaged bodies, and one sack with the bones from the ones Shaggy kicked about. Not best pleased about that, Shaggy." The skeleton clacked his jaws together unrepentantly. Stepping off my shields and back to terra firma, I took a closer look at the disturbingly large pile of dead rats.

"Hold out your hands," I ordered the skeletons. I used Bone Shaping to narrow the index fingers of their right hands into sharp claws.

"Remember, I just need the bones of the second batch. The others need to be whole, and—Thelma put that down!" She lowered the half-eaten rat corpse and moaned unhappily at me.

"I'll buy you a goat or something. Don't eat the rat bodies." I hammered home the verbal instruction with a mental command that ought to have been unbreakable. My—Bork's minions got to work, and I watched for a couple of minutes to make sure they were doing a proper job. Nodding in satisfaction, I left the hovel, checking both ways hurriedly, then checking the sky as well just in case, and snuck down the street into the relative safety of the Moulder.

As the graveyard spread out around me, I summoned a cigar and stepped onto my shields once more. Drifting along at ten feet above the dirt gave me an excellent line of sight. Most of the monuments were at most eight feet tall, and the gravestones were rarely above waist height. There are many ways to look for something you want to find. Grid patterns, spirals, or wandering around aimlessly and trusting to luck were all valid choices with varying levels of effectiveness.

I opted for a grid pattern, using my vantage to avoid the many small monsters that scurried about on the ground. Deadrats, boneferrets, shambling zombies and skeletons, the occasional bonedog that made Puggy look like a chihuahua. I skipped them all. At level ten, I needed a real challenge, and it was a better use of my time to create it than get bogged down killing every level two zombie I happened upon one by one. I made a point to acquire as much aggro as possible as I floated along above the cemetery.

I circled around, pleased to see I'd built up a bit of a caravan of corpses behind me. My flight speed was a little more than a fast walk, not so fast that I'd outpace the attention I'd gathered. Besides which, I still wasn't confident enough to try to zoom around on the slippery discs. A dozen zombies, most of which were level one to three, and nearly a score of skellies surged towards me. I dropped down to the ground on a low rise, atop which sat a stele.

Moss clung to it on one side, and I swept it away with a hand to reveal the bas-relief carved across it. Leaping deer ran towards the peak while men on horses with packs of dogs at their feet chased them toward the clouds. A moan informed me that my guests had arrived.

"Thanks very much for coming. I really appreciate you taking the time." Bone Throwing launched the darts I had in my hands, then I snatched up another pair from my hipbones and sent those out into the brains of the first zombies. You have killed a level 3 Hungry Shambler! No Bonus XP for you! XP gained: 4! You have killed a level 2 Hungry Shambler! No Bonus XP for you! XP gained: 3! You have killed 2 level 1 Biting Fleshrot! No Bonus XP for you! XP gained: 2! Headshots were very effective on zombies.

While the fleshy undead were usually tougher in other regards, a shaft of bone through the brain was still fatal to them in a way that skellies would just shrug off. Skeletons were by far the superior undead minions, and my own status did not in any way prejudice my opinion in that regard. Shields flashed out at my bonier attackers, looking to break them apart into manageable pieces, at the same time as I pulled back my projectiles and prepared to handle the next groups of zombies approaching behind the skeletons.

I aimed the discus-shaped bone shields at the fragile joints on the skellies. Shoulders, hips, elbows, and knees began to chip and break as the much tougher bone of my weapons battered at them. Some kind of blunt weapon was probably in order if I was going to make a habit out of this kind of thing. A warhammer, perhaps? Or a pick? Blunt side for bashing, paired with a beak for piercing armour?

A skellie collapsed, having lost its leg, but both the body and the detached limb continued trying to drag themselves towards me. Then the next. By the time more zombies slouched into range, eight disassembled but still moving skeletons were littering the ground, making their clumsy footing even more unstable. I summoned a cigar and launched my bone darts at their brains as a cloud of smoke expanded in front of my glowing blue eyes.