Town Development

Leroy checked the skeletons and noticed that some of they were Level 28 already. 'They sure level up fast' The skeletons grew stronger as they obtained more essences and bone dust.

Leroy guessed that the essence was absorbed by their souls. The bone dust, on the other hand, they just spread some on their bones and the bones absorbed it naturaly.

As his team grew stronger, the trolls they faced also became a bit stronger.

The team then arrived at a cave, it was guarded by a team of four chieftain undead trolls.

'Their leaders should be inside' Leroy muttered and walked toward the entrance while swiftly dealing with the chieftains.

Once inside the cave, almost fifty trolls waited for him.

"Twenty five Chieftains, twenty Lords and five High Lord trolls. Quite a gang you have there huh?" Leroy said mockingly. "But your days of assaulting Sage's Town has come to an end"

He used Sin of Fury and Magic Synergy and started attacking.

The chieftains inside didn't have a chance to react and died by one or two hits while the lord ranked monsters didn't fare much better, dying on three to five hits.

After a rain of arrows and fire, only the injured the five High Lords remained with wary expressions.

'Dark Slash'

As Leroy draw a silver-black line on the horizons, waves of mana shot from it and clashed into the trolls. They were sent clashing toward the cave walls, howling in pain, after four to six attacks, all of them dropped dead.

The skeletons that followed Leroy made elated movements seeing the trolls being killed efortlessly like this.

'The average exp here is a bit higher than on Star-Moon City' Leroy noticed his experience bar raising a bit even tough he was four Levels higher than the monsters here.

He didn't bother taking any items from the trolls, he would let this skeletons get the essences and bones, the equipment dropped was average at best so he also left it to the skeletons to share.

The trolls also had some chests where they stored tens of bones worth of dust.

Undead were not much different than humans in Leroy's eyes. They also stole and killed in order to grow stronger, humans would not hesistate to kill tens of thousands of creatures for this reason. He didn't understand why people would think they were any better than undead creatures.

After refining the essences and bone dust, some of the skeletons became Lord Rank monsters and five had auras similar to High Lords.

'They sure grow stronger quickly' Leroy was surprised by the raise on their strength, if they were to continue to grow, a team of trolls like these would pose no threat to them.

"Lord..." A skeleton said, and one by one they kneeled in front of Leroy.

System: A team of twenty skeletons has pledged alliegance to you.

'They can even do that?' He then commanded them to return to the city, while the High Lord rank skeletons followed him.

They were certainly very powerful after they upgraded their strength, they now could deal with Lords on their own.

'Is it because of the bones, or because of the undead essences?' Previously, Leroy created the Raven Knights using some humanoid High Lord monster's bones, but he didn't refined them and also didn't gave them any undead essence.

After all, the summoned Raven Knight were just a modified skeleton warrior.

'If I can modify the spell again, they should be stronger than before' He continued to guessed.

Currently, they were on the other side of the mountain, different groups of trolls lived there, some stronger than the others.

"We'll clean them and save ourselves future trouble" He commanded the skeletons and started killing every group on the place.

Most groups had bone dust stored on chests, but none had undead essence there. The five skeletons grew stronger as they refined more bones and undead essence.

A day after, Leroy reached Level 34, the progress of the skeletons was even faster, as they were at similar level to the trolls. Each of them level 31 at the least.

After looking for while, Leroy couldn't find any more monsters and returned to town.

When he arrived, more than fifty skeletons closed on him, leading them were the fifteen that followe him first.

System: A group of undead has pledged alliegance to you.

"Good, from today on you'll be in charge of protecting the town when I am not around." Leroy said and took out hundreds of bags containing bone dust and small vials containing essences. The skeletons made cheerful sounds and started distributing the items between them.

"You, form five teams to hunt for more bones and essences, even tough they are of not of much use to you, others will grow stronger, then you can hunt stronger beings together." Leroy commanded the High Lords who nodded. Absorbing the undead essences improved their intelligence considerably.

He went to the town chief's building. He wanted to test upgrading his summon skill with refined bones and the undead essences.

At the refining room, he took out bags of dust. Some bags already had Refined Bone Dust, while most others were not refined yet. He then used the equipment acording to the refining technique. More than ten hours passed, he refined most of the Bone Dust, but one out of ten would fail and become unusable.

'Refining bones for a town by myself would take forever' Leroy tought.

He already planned having subordinates to hunt for monsters and treasures while other highly intelligent ones to refine the bones and essences. After all, if he killed thousands of monsters outside, he wouldn't be able to refine their essences in a short time.

The steward was by his side, absorbing undead essence from High Lord monsters and some bone dusts.

Leroy took out some magic crystals and activated an ancient simulation device. He then started modifying his summoning spells, the more complex a spell was, the more magic crystals needed. He usually had over 500 with him, as they had some uses.

He simulated the spell changes for six hours until he was satisfied.

Next he started creating the actual spell, adding the refined bone dust and undead essences from some High Lord monsters, he first modified the Raven Knights, followed by the Ghost Wolves.

The process wasn't really hard for him but it took a few tries before he was satisfied.

The structure of the knights changed slightly and their bodies seemed more compact, they now gave a lifeless aura.

'Now this is how an undead creature should be'

Leroy was pleased with the aura, now he felt that the creature was complete. Now he had many more thing he could do with the knight, he started ingraving some skills to them. Their intelligence was higher now and had capacity for some more skills than before. He took his time to perfect the new summoning skill.

System: Are you sure that you want to replace the old skill with this new version?

"Yes"

System: "The skill has changed succesfully."

System: "You have created a new type of undead creature.

You can set the Raven Knights as a class of Sage's Town. Skeleton Warriors will be able to change classes when they meet the standards.

Would you like to do so?"

He could actually made the Raven Knights a class for the skeletons to learn? That was great, raven knights were much stronger, intelligent and their bone structure was better than all other undead he saw so far.

"Agree" He inmediatly agreed to the system notification.

Next he was asked to set the class change system.

A skeleton warrior required Level 20 and Lord Rank as a minimun requirement. They could level by killing creatures but to increase their rank, they would need to improve their body and essence.

Put a price for the change of class and set it as unique for Sage's Town guard. Those undead who wanted to improve their class would need to become part of the town's security or army and work for him.

Then the system generated a book for him. It was a necessary item for the class change, he passed the book over to the steward who was still consuming the essences.

'He has been absorbing them for a while now, other skeletons were much faster. Could this steward's method be different?' He contemplated, the undead recognized by the Half-Moon mage was certainly not ordinary.

Not thinking much of it, he continued.

Next he modified the Ghost Wolves. After many hours, their fur no longer blue but white, their pawns glowed light blue and their physical appearence changed considerable.

The system recognized the Ghost Wolf as a new creature. If he wished, he could allow other undead to upgrade a tammed Undead Wolf into Ghost Wolf. He set the Raven Knights as the only ones capable of upgrading the pets, this would attract more skeletons to join their ranks.

He set the building to class change and wolf upgrade as the one in front of the Town Chief's.

To make new buildings, he needed blueprints and designs, the resources needed could also be a problem. He couldn't start crafting them or remodeling the town as he was.

After he was done with the Ghost Wolves, the steward moved and stood up.

"Thank you, Sage. The passage of time has affected me greatly." The steward bowed to him.

"I am Lucian, I've followed the previous Sage, Lord Vlaric on his early days here. You'll find some use in accepting me" He said again and bowed.

System: Do you wish to assign Lucian as your Personal Guard?

"Agree" He inmediatly agreed, this skeleton steward was not ordinary, after refining the essences and bone dust, he seemed much stronger, his aura was incomparable to those others High Lord skeletons from before.

He then checked the skeleton stats and was not surprised by what he saw. His stats aligned to magic and were even higher than Ifer's. His growth potential only lower than Garo's.

"Lucian, since you've regained part of your strength, what should we do to rebuild the town?" Leroy asked his new personal guard.

"Master, we could start by attracting new undeads to our town with higher amounts of resources. Lord Vlaric usually brought bones and essences from his birthplace to be refined here. This had attracted many undeads to live in the town, we can offer this new benefits for those who join the town guards. They could then look over the town's security and gather resources from nearby areas.

However, it won't be enough to lure Tier 4 undeads, even recruiting Grand Lords won't be easy.

Honestly I've never tought an ordinary Skeleton Warrior could increase his strength like this" Lucian replied and commented in admiration of the Raven Knight Class.

"Alright, I'll give you the permissions to manage all aspects of the town. I'll go back now and return with more resources in the future" Leroy said and gave Lucian the rights to rule the town and guards.

"I appreciate master's trust" Lucian bowed, even the young Vlaric didn't seemed as talented as this person.

"Master... Lord Vlaric mentioned that the mountain where you killed the trolls had valuable resources for him at that time. He would instruct some of us to mine Magic Crystals and other ores from there" Lucian said.

"A Magic Crystal mine?" Leroy was now shocked, Magic Crystals were somewhat usefull resources, it might be worth it to use the mine.

"Yes, among other ores. Magic Crystal doesn't have much value to us compared to the ores there, but Vlaric said that they were as valuable as undead essence to him." Lucian explained without missing a word.

'Hm, magic crystals shouldn't be as valuable as undead essence is to the undead. Is there other use for them that players don't know?' Leroy started thinking, undead essence could improve the creature's rank and strength greatly, magic crystals shouldn't be as valuable.

"Alright, take these, let the guards change their class to the Raven Knight when they can, feel free to change the prerequisites for class change and inform the town of the new class.

Also make what is necessary to start raising Ghost Wolves, they will start as an exclusive mount for the town army and after more undeads knows of them, we'll allow others to upgrade their own Undead Wolves here or purchase one of our own at a high price"

Leroy gave him the books, bones and essences to Lucian and shortly after he left.